Voluntary Cost-Sharing for Environmental Risk Reduction: A Pollution Abatement Case Study

This paper develops the notion of voluntary cost-sharing as a paradigm for ameliorating pollution: polluters and sufferers can choose to share the costs of pollution abatement and participate together in reducing pollution. If both polluters and sufferers each care about the state of the environment but have limited resources, the issue is one of optimality: a better level of environmental quality could be achieved if polluters and sufferers in a locale share costs of abatement. An example—nitrogen pollution due to fertilizer for food—is used to demonstrate that a preferred outcome can be obtained with cost sharing among polluters and consumers as compared to a “Polluter Pays” outcome. Input taxes and ambient subsidies or taxes are also relevant policy tools with cost-sharing.     

Am I intruding? Developing a conceptualisation of advertising intrusiveness

This study develops a conceptual framework of advertising intrusiveness that extends previous research on the topic by examining both drivers and consequences. To achieve this, the work draws on in-depth interviews with 29 adult consumers who report experiencing intrusive advertising in their daily lives. Three drivers of advertising intrusiveness are identified – temporal disruption, visual disruption and flow disruption – along with three consequences – emotional response, behavioural response and cognitive response. From these drivers and consequences, a conceptual framework of advertising intrusiveness is developed based on ideas about psychological reactance. Based on this framework it is proposed that, while all advertisements might ultimately be perceived as intrusive, an advertisement’s characteristics, which are the identified subcomponents of the drivers of intrusiveness, exacerbate the resultant consequences.     

When nutritional guidelines and life collide: family fruit and vegetable socialisation practices in low socioeconomic communities

Abstract

Parents play a critical role in promoting fruit and vegetable consumption, for eating patterns established early in life tend to persist into adulthood. Despite this, the factors that facilitate or inhibit parents’ capacity to socialise fruit and vegetable consumption into their children’s daily diets remain poorly defined. Thirty-eight semi-structured interviews with residents, allied healthcare professionals, community leaders, community programme leaders and a local government leader living or working in two low socioeconomic suburbs were consequently conducted to ascertain factors exogenous and endogenous to the family unit that shaped parental food socialisation practices. Budgetary and time constraints emerged as exogenous factors that constrained fruit and vegetable socialisation. Constraining effects were also found for a range of endogenous factors, including commensal experiences, children’s food fussiness and the feeding styles employed by parents. As such, while many caregivers may wish to socialise fruit and vegetable consumption into their children’s daily diets, their capacity to do so is often inhibited by factors beyond their volitional control. Failure to take heed of these factors could therefore result in the development of social marketing campaigns that are ineffective at best or give rise to unintentionally harmful outcomes at worst.     

Accessibility and Quality in Higher Education

Accessibility and excellence in university education in Canada are usually seen as mutually exclusive. This study presents data from two independent studies of student progress which show substantial student development regardless of entry level grades. A talent development ideal, which combines accessibility and student development for all those admitted to university education, is suggested as a way of escaping the dilemma.