Political markets? Politics and economics in the emergence of markets for biodiversity offsets

This paper analyses the relationship between politics and performativity of economics in the emergence of markets for biodiversity offsets. While the role of economics in constructing markets has been demonstrated by sociology and social studies of science, it has also become apparent that politics plays an important role in the material outcome of economic experiments. Two case studies of the creation of markets for biodiversity offsets are analysed, in the United States and England. The findings suggest that the creation of both markets is rooted in the language, concepts and models of economics. Politics, on the other hand, functions as a mediator of the material expression of those models. Through this mediation effect, similar economic models are performed differently, resulting in a variety of markets. This suggests that the material outcomes of processes of market creation are not defined at the outset, but can be influenced by political processes.     

Railways and the Exploitation of Victoria's Forests, 1880s–1920s

Railways made a large contribution to the expansion of Victoria's economy, and in the process enabled and drove environmental change. This article focuses on one industry, forestry. It first examines railway demand for timber in construction and maintenance, particularly for sleepers. This demand caused tensions – a bitter dispute in the 1890s between the Railways Department and the Conservator of Forests, George Perrin, over timber cut on state land led to uneasy co-existence after the turn of the century. Railways not only required timber but also carried commercial quantities in bulk, providing forest industries with access to profitable markets – in particular firewood, the significance of which has been underappreciated previously. Forest products contributed substantially to railway revenue, representing a more stable source of income than other major categories of freight such as wheat, wool, and coal.     

Hotel environmental management initiative (HEMI) scale development

Owing to a lack of construct reliability and validity of environmental management measurements, advancements in understanding hotels’ environmental management practices have been somewhat limited. The goal of this paper is to propose a uniform and parsimonious scale that captures Hotels’ Environmental Management Initiative (HEMI) with the most common three dimensions in the hotel industry: environmental resource conservation efforts, environmental policy and training, and environmental public relation efforts. After the refinement of the initial items, the scale was confirmed with cross-cultural data obtained from full-time hotel employees in two Asian countries. The twenty-one item HEMI scale demonstrated a satisfactory level of content, convergent, discriminant, cross, and criterion-related validity. The proposed HEMI scale will serve as a useful tool for future hospitality scholars who would like to further explore the impact of hotels’ environmental management initiatives on employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward the environment and their environmental performance.     

工业建筑的现状与发展方向

工业建筑自19世纪兴起以来,随着工业产业的迅速发展,必然要求其随之发展并逐步完善。经济、工业产业崛起的同时,工业建筑从其设计理念到设计成果、从结构形式发展到建筑材料更新、从实现其基本功能到实现自动化控制,从满足采光通风的基本要求到实现节能设计,也无不发生着翻天覆地的变化。     

Consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade: Implications for conservationists

This study investigates consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade, drawing implications for conservationists. The first study undertook a quantitative content analysis of 500 Facebook posts in wildlife trade lateral exchange markets to show how creative strategies, media type and persuasion tactics influence the number of likes and comments that posts receive. The second study then undertook a thematic discourse analysis to develop a rich understanding of the culture, beliefs and motivations that influence how consumers engage in the markets. Findings showed that an overwhelming majority of posts use a functional or informational strategy and that when posts use overt persuasion tactics the number of comments decrease. A conceptual model of how cultural factors may impact the success of marketing strategies is then proposed. These findings have implications for conservationists who seek to build engagement with wildlife trade consumers online.     

Is China’s Manufacturing Industry Efficient? Evidence from an Energy-Rebound Effect Perspective

Majority of the increase in global energy consumption is from China; hence, studying energy issues, especially in China’s manufacturing industry (CMI), is worthwhile and of much interest in the academic field. Based on the translog cost function, we develop a research framework to study the rebound effect of CMI. Considering the effect of asymmetric energy price, we augment the energy-cost function with asymmetric influence constraint of energy price. Again, we add time series data of CMI’s capital, labor, energy, and mid-input to the model to calculate the direct rebound effect of CMI. We find that the rebound effect of CMI is 44.2%, and CMI still has large energy-conservation potentials. Based on the results of this study, some policy recommendations are provided.     

The failure of agri-environment measures to promote and conserve grassland biodiversity in Slovenia

The effectiveness of four grassland-specific agri-environment measures (AEM), implemented in the frame of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) in the period 2007–2013 in Slovenia was studied. We questioned whether the measures – “extensive grassland maintenance”; “preservation of special grassland habitats”; “preservation of grassland habitats for butterflies” and “bird conservation in humid extensive meadows in Natura 2000 sites” did genuinely support the conservation (maintenance or improvement) of high nature value (HNV) grasslands in Slovenia. The HNV grasslands were defined on the basis of national fine-resolution field mapping of habitat types. Two main outcomes emerged: AEM did not reach the vast majority of HNV grasslands in Slovenia (only 3%); the proportion of HNV grassland area included in AEM was negligibly low (1). Moreover, even this very limited interest in AEM did not target only grasslands of HNV, but any permanent grasslands regardless of their conservation value: forty-one percent (41%) of the grassland areas included in the AEM were actually non-HNV grasslands (2). The absence of pre-selection criteria for grasslands along with an absence of monitoring of the effectiveness and efficiency of the measures and low interest in the subsidies among farmers, led to almost complete failure of the AEM to promote and conserve species-rich extensive grasslands in Slovenia between 2007 and 2013. Even with some minor differences, the same concept was maintained for the currently running EAFRD 2014–2020, which raises serious concern.     

Measuring the effects of preservation on farm profits in a continuous treatment setting

Despite billions of dollars of public appropriations to state purchase of development rights (PDR) programmes, there has been limited evaluation of the effects of these investments on the economic performance of preserved farms. This article estimates dose-response functions to evaluate the effects of enrolment in New Jersey’s PDR programme on farm profitability. The generalized propensity score method in a continuous treatment setting is used to address selection bias arising from voluntary programme participation. Treatment effects are measured across treatment levels to determine whether farm profitability is affected differently across levels of programme participation. Our findings reveal that, relative to unpreserved farms, profit per acre tends to increase along lower treatment levels. The profit per acre of preserved farms in the 1–40% treatment range is, on average, $407 higher than that of unpreserved farms in the full sample. Positive profit differentials averaging between $317 and $472 per acre are also observed in the 1–20%, 1–40% and 1–60% treatment quintiles in the farming occupation sample. We do not observe statistically significant profitability differentials when treatment effects are averaged across all positive treatment values.     

Theoretical analysis and model design of search for ecological conservation redlines based on the sensitivity assessment of ecosystem services

Most small-scale social economies are characterised by their deficiency, lack, and/or difficulty in matching natural data. Against this backdrop, this paper builds a relatively uniform theoretical framework and designs a more economical and objective method for demarcating ecological conservation redlines (ECR) based on sensitivity assessment of ecosystem services. The results show that the sensitivity assessment model designed in this study can identify sensitive zones effectively, and that the ECR in Hubei Province are well within the sensitive zones so identified. The delimited areas based on the sensitive assessment of ecosystem services have great similarities (95%) with the actual ECR areas in Hubei Province. The most ecologically important functional zones (EIFZ) can also be identified using the regional ecological sensitivity coefficient. When the threshold of EIFZ is set higher, the probability that it falls within the ecologically sensitive areas is greater and the ECR delimited by the method proposed in this study will be more reliable. Theoretically, the delimitation of ECR can be inserted at any evaluation level with a grid resolution higher than that of the land use data, which can be used as a supplement to the ECR delimitation method in ecology or geography.     

Conservation finance and sustainable tourism: the acceptability of conservation fees to support the Tambopata National Reserve,Peru

Protected areas are key to the conservation of global biodiversity and ecosystem services; however, their success is contingent upon adequate funding. One possibility to increase funding for park management is to “sell” a wider suite of ecosystem services “produced” by protected areas, such as carbon sequestration. We conducted 420 tourist surveys to analyze willingness to pay (WTP) for ecosystem service benefits via a conservation fee in the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. We also interviewed eight tour operators about their perceptions of the proposed fee. The average stated WTP was 15 USD. Sixty-six percent of tourists stated they would pay 10 USD or more, which, if actually paid, would have resulted in 318,000 USD for park management in 2015. Most respondents stated they would pay an additional fee if it supported biodiversity conservation or local ecosystem services, such as water, but less than 10% of tourists were motivated by carbon sequestration as a reason to pay the fee. Most tour operators supported the additional fee. Our findings suggest that tourists are willing to pay higher fees to support conservation but that interest in paying for additional ecosystem services from parks may not extend to global and intangible benefits such as carbon sequestration.