“Mum,did you just leave that tap running?!” The role of positive pester power in prompting sustainable consumption

This paper offers novel insights on the socio‐structural factors that sustain (or break) everyday behaviours in the home. Specifically, the adoption of sustainable consumption in the home as influenced by Green‐School children is explored. The findings presented are derived from surveys with Green‐School (Eco‐School) children and in‐depth interviews with their parents. The process of sustainable consumption adoption in the home, in the context of the Green‐Schools programme, is explored with an aim to understand if, and how, Green‐School children affect behaviours in the home. The findings enlighten our understanding of not only how environmental education programmes are reconciling the Dominant Social Paradigm with the New Environmental Paradigm, but also in terms of how sustainable consumption in the home, such as recycling and water and energy conservation, are initiated and reinforced by children through their use of positive pester power.     

When social intrusiveness depletes customer value: A balanced perspective on the agency of simultaneous sharers in a commercial sharing experience

A major pattern of non‐ownership consumption is “simultaneous sharing,” whereby customers simultaneously share the same resource in either a virtual or physical setting. However, little research examines the actual value that consumers derive from such a group‐based commercial experience. By integrating the literature on customer value and the psychology of autonomy, this study proposes a theoretical model of the simultaneous sharing experience that balances the benefits and social intrusiveness of sharer agency. Based on data that were collected from members of a collaborative platform dedicated to flat sharing and analyzed through structural equation modeling, social intrusiveness is found to be a pervasive phenomenon that strongly impairs customer satisfaction, whereas communal benefits, as reflected by enjoyment, companionship, informational guidance, and emotional support, enhance it. As a major antecedent of both communal benefits and intrusiveness, perceived homophily nourishes satisfaction, however, customer age may reduce the buffering influence of perceived homophily on intrusiveness, whereas an additional positive effect on communal benefits is associated with the sharer social integrative motive. We discuss the implications of this study for customer experience and commercial sharing consumption research.     

Community Leadership and the Construction of Political Legitimacy: Unpacking Bourdieu's ‘Political Capital’ in Post‐Apartheid Johannesburg

Apart from local monographs and normative texts on community participation, research on community leadership constitutes a blind spot in urban leadership, urban politics, social movements and urban studies. This article, based on case studies in post‐apartheid Johannesburg, contributes to theorizing community leadership, or informal local political leadership, by exploring Bourdieu's concepts of ‘political capital’ and ‘double dealings’. Considering community leaders as brokers between local residents and various institutions (in South Africa, the state and the party), we examine how leaders construct their political legitimacy, both towards ‘the bottom’ (building and maintaining their constituencies), and towards ‘the top’ (seeking and sustaining recognition from fractions of the party and the state). These legitimation processes are often in tension, pulling community leaders in contradictory directions, usefully understood under Bourdieu's concept of ‘double dealings’. Community leaders are required, more than formally elected political leaders, to constantly reassert their legitimacy in multiple local public arenas due to the informal nature of their mandate and the high level of political competition between them — with destructive consequences for local polity but also the potential for increased accountability to their followers. We finally reflect on the relevance of this theoretical framework, inspired by Bourdieu, beyond South African urban politics.     

Structural Reforms and Labour‐market Outcomes: International Panel‐data Evidence

This paper explores the impact of structural reforms on a comprehensive set of macro‐level labour‐market outcomes, including the unemployment rate, the average wage index, and overall and female employment levels and labour force participation rates. Together, these outcome variables capture the overall health of the labour market and the aggregate welfare of workers. Yet, to our knowledge, there seems to be no other comprehensive empirical investigation in the existing literature of the impact of structural reforms at the cross‐country macro‐level on labour‐market outcomes other than the unemployment rate. After documenting the average trends across countries in the labour‐market outcomes up to 10 years on either side of each country's structural reform year, we run fixed‐effects ordinary least squares and instrumental variables regressions to account for the likely endogeneity of structural reforms to labour‐market outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that structural reforms lead to positive outcomes for labour. Redistributive effects in favour of workers, along the lines of the Stolper‐Samuelson effect, may be at work.     

Networks in family business: a multi-rational approach

Current research on networks in family businesses has approached the topic from a mono-rational perspective where the family, business and social networks are each considered in relative isolation. This paper argues that multi-rational approaches, which accept that the three groups of networks interact and overlap, offer a useful alternative perspective. In proposing the case for multiple rationalities as a framework within which family business networking can be viewed – and in putting forward an initial model – the paper allows the interaction of the different networks within the family business to be more fully acknowledged. Evidence from the literature is presented as a basis for further exploration using empirical approaches and it is emphasised that further and empirical approaches are required.     

Empirical labor search: A survey

This paper surveys the existing empirical research that uses search theory to empirically analyze labor supply questions in a structural framework, using data on individual labor market transitions and durations, wages, and individual characteristics. The starting points of the literature are the Mincerian earnings function, Heckman's classic selection model, and dynamic optimization theory. We develop a general framework for the labor market where the search for a job involves dynamic decision making under uncertainty. It can be specialized to be in agreement with most published research using labor search models. We discuss estimation, policy evaluation with the estimated model, equilibrium model versions, and the decomposition of wage variation into factors due to heterogeneity of various model determinants as well as search frictions themselves. We summarize the main empirical conclusions.     

Tourism experiences within an attributional framework

This paper reports on a conceptualization of previously reported data by the authors. Using the critical incident technique, tourists were asked to recount their most positive and most negative tourism experiences. These qualitative data were reduced using the attribution theory. This framework allows researchers to determine which of four causes (ability, effort, task ease/difficulty, and luck) they use to explain their experiences. Results showed an attribution bias where tourists are more likely to use internal (dispositional) attributions for positive tourism outcomes compared to more external (situation) attributions for negative experiences. Tourists perceive less personal control for both positive and negative experiences. Implications for the industry, tourism education, and tourists themselves are discussed.     

Contribution of associated trees to long-term species conservation,carbon storage and sustainability: a functional analysis of tree communities in cacao plantations of Central Cameroon

In Central Africa, most cacao is still cultivated in low-input agroforests where cacao associated trees are traditionally valued by farmers. These systems are sustainable on the long run, support biodiversity conservation and carbon storage. Yet, little knowledge exists on the contribution of tree community management to explain such results. In Central Cameroon, we investigated cacao agroforest associated tree community contributions to the long-term (i) maintenance of tree species encountering a conservation issue and (ii) carbon storage. We further simulated the simplification of these systems by checking for the effect of tree density decrease on community functional groups or traits. Finally, we linked farmers’ use of associated trees to their functional features and conservation status. Cacao agroforestry systems were able to combine high levels of species richness with long-term conservation abilities and carbon storage. Simplification emphasized consistent shifts of functional traits/groups that will change the way they function and alter the existing balances between different associated tree uses. Since traditional agroforests are now foreseen as providers of timber/non-timber forest products, our study argues that this paradigm change in such low-input systems - if carried improperly - is likely to impair the provision of the services they currently provide as well as their sustainability.     

Communication and information in France's underground laboratory siting process: clarity of procedure,ambivalence of effects

France is engaged in an innovative research programme for the management of high level radioactive wastes. The programme is framed by a national law (Waste Act of 30 December 1991) that seeks to guarantee 'permanent democratic control' of an open process. At least two underground laboratories are required by this Act in order to test the feasibility of a permanent deep repository. This study, performed in 1996–97, centres on the candidate evaluation phase of laboratory site search. Public information and communication practices by the national radioactive waste management agency, Andra, are examined. Agency information efforts appear to fit well with a strategy of insertion into the local context, including methods to rally potential allies inlocal officials. The study also examines the activities of local information commissions (LICs) created by law on each of three candidate sites, and reviews arguments by opponents to the RhÔne Valley site proposal. The LICs are judged highly institutionalized, thereby missing an opportunity to foster a true public forum and solution-seeking debate. Opponents' discourse is seen to centre on the danger of regional stigmatization, with concern for mid-term economic losses. The communication process overall is characterized by institutional attempts to channel and contain controversy. Counter plays by other stakeholders illustrate the broad spectrum of risk definitions associated today with radioactive waste.