The Effect of Protest Votes on the Estimates of WTP for Use Values of Recreational Sites

Contingent valuation studies are often characterized by a considerable number of protest responses, which may cause selectivity bias on the final estimates for WTP. Sample selection models can detect and – if necessary – correct selectivity bias. In economic applications where the relevant dependent variable is continuous, sample selection models are generally estimated using Heckman's 2-step method rather than the FIML estimator. Either method has its own drawback: computational complexity for the FIML method, susceptibility to collinearity problems for the 2-step method. Using data on valuation of forest resources for recreational use, we analyse the performance of the two estimators. In this application, given the presence of some collinearity, the FIML is preferred to the 2-step method. A procedure is outlined to deal with selectivity problems in similar settings.     

The challenge of articulating human rights at an LGBT ‘mega-event’: a personal reflection on Sao Paulo Pride 2017

Abstract

This paper brings together Critical Event Studies (CES) and a reflexive/narrative autoethnographic approach in order to stimulate a debate around the commodification of public space, and the management of mega-events of dissent. This is achieved using the example of the researcher’s participation in the 2017 Sao Paulo Pride. Sao Paulo Pride is one of the largest LGBT demonstrations in the world. However, corporate interests in the event have commodified dissent in order to commercialise ‘otherness’, and the city has absorbed the demonstration into its cultural offer as a global brand. The confluence of these factors produces a pattern of place dressing and erasure that depoliticise the event and undermines its capacity to effectively articulate human rights. Currently Brazil has some of the most liberal LGBT laws of any South American state, yet recently Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)/Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) human rights have been threatened by a rapid rise in hate crime and the emergence of an evangelical Christian right in state and regional assemblies. Within such a context the need to revive the roots of Pride as an articulation of otherness that demands recognition, and as a robust defence of human rights for the LGBT/SOGI community, is more pressing than ever.     

Strawberry fields forever? Conflict over neo-productivist Spanish polytunnel technology in British agriculture

This paper uses the example of Spanish polytunnels to demonstrate how the deployment of ‘neo-productivist’ agricultural technologies to meet the demands of food security and sustainability within a globalised food chain is likely to precipitate greater countryside conflict. Field-scale ‘Spanish polytunnels’ for strawberry growing have become a new feature of the British agricultural landscape. This has been driven primarily by supermarkets searching for high quality and quantity supplies of soft fruit. With production becoming industrialised, conflict has ensued in some rural communities where polytunnels have appeared. Interviews with prominent strawberry growers and protestors against polytunnels illuminate a vociferous and embittered wrangle. Within it, land use planners are labelled as ‘strawberry fools’ by both sides for failing, until recently, to provide decisive regulation to prevent conflict and effect its resolution. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the future characteristics of conflicts precipitated as new agricultural technologies are implemented rapidly, impact unevenly and are received acrimoniously.     

Happiness and freedom in direct action: critical mass bike rides as ecstatic ritual,play, and temporary autonomous zones

Most leisure research does not consider collective action and social change, while most social movement research overlooks carnivality and spontaneity. A counter-example is the alternative bicycling movement critical mass (CM), a rebellious, liberatory leisure and cultural event. CM is goal-oriented and a libidinal expression of participant desire. This paper investigates CM’s production of happiness and freedom via three heterodox theories. Ecstatic rituals are repetitive, cathartic collective events that people engage in to express joy and flaunt convention. Political theories of play interpret individual’s physically-embodied, creative, and performative actions. Temporary autonomous zones are spatial locations of resistance to authority that evade state detection and suppression. CM – unlike standard bike races or conventional movement protest – transcends the limitations of physical exercise, lackadaisical leisure, and militant direct action. Instead it is a hybrid form of collective action, combining premeditated ritual, rebellious play, and mobile freedom-seeking.     

Campus,City, Networks and Nation: Student‐Migrant Activism as Socio‐spatial Experience in Melbourne,Australia

‘Education–migration nexus’ policies in Australia between 1998 and 2010 linked international education with different forms of temporary and permanent migration. This resulted in a blurring of boundaries around student, worker, consumer, migrant and ethnic identities. While the exploitation, marginalization and vulnerability of international students in Australia has gained a great deal of media and scholarly attention, less consideration has been given to the varied forms of subsequent protest undertaken by student migrants in Australian cities. This article analyses three case studies of protests involving student migrants in Melbourne: a protest against unfair assessment; a fight for a campus prayer room; and labour protests within the retail service and taxi industries. It draws on theoretical work on new social movements and social transformation in urban spaces to find ways to conceptualize this activism in relation to the scales of campus, city and nation. In doing so, it argues primarily that these sites of protest are socio‐spatial experiences that encompass shifting and socially produced spatial scales, as well as complex networks of association across different communities, which in turn reflect different student‐migrant identities.     

Urban Citizenship and Right to the City: The Fragmentation of Claims

In this symposium, we explore how urban citizenship is about expressing, if not producing, difference, and how fragmentation of claims affects urban citizenship and right to the city movements with their universal, all‐inclusive ideals. Investigating social movements, political participation and conflicting diversities in public space in Tel Aviv and Berlin, we see a trend towards a diversification of interests, a weakening of movements, and even a competition over rights and resources rather than a development of mutual support and solidarities among various groups on the pathway to a livable city. This tension, we argue, deserves attention. Radical urban scholarship and politics need to better understand the historical and place‐specific contexts that structure the formation of citizenship claims and the courses that citizenship struggles take. Celebrations of urban citizenship as a more contextualized, community oriented, and bottom‐up framework (in comparison to national citizenship) should therefore be complemented by a careful investigation of their fragmented and fragmenting practices.     

Food Riots: Poverty,Power and Protest1

This paper explores the phenomenon of food riots. It argues that the riots may have been triggered by spikes in food prices in 2007–8, but there were many other factors that underpinned them. Demonstrators challenged injustice, inequality and political repression. Food riots were part of an important groundswell of mobilization that brought together a wide range of political coalitions for change and the promotion of human dignity.     

Protest Responses in Contingent Valuation

A significant number of respondents to contingent valuation surveys tend to either state a zero bid, or refuse to state a bid at all, for reasons associated with the process of valuation. These protest responses are routinely removed from contingent valuation samples because it is assumed that they are not indicative of respondents true values. The censoring of protest responses has led to the emergence of a definitional controversy. One view is that the definition of protest responses and the rules for censoring them are dependent on whether the practitioner conceives of the contingent valuation survey as a market or as a referendum. However, what is not acknowledged is the possibility that protest responses and their meaning may vary according to the type of good being valued, the elicitation format, and the interaction between these elements and external factors. This potential renders the development of unambiguous rules for censoring protest responses difficult. Moreover, when willingness to pay is viewed as a behavioural intention, it becomes important to determine what the responses actually mean. This approach does not assume an interpretative position a priori against which the responses should be judged, but seeks to inform an existing understanding which is inadequate.     

Hugging Trees: Claiming de Facto Property Rights by Blockading Resource Use

This paper explores conflicts between two groups,the industry and theenvironmentalists, over whether an indivisible resource (e.g., an ancient tree) should be harvested or preserved. In a complete information war ofattrition the environmentalists' willingness to blockade harvest attemptsmay control resource use as effectively as if they held property rights. Optimal government intervention will override this ability for somebenefit/cost combinations but may augment it for other combinations.Introducing uncertainty about the environmentalists' benefits results inextended disputes and consequent lack of efficiency. Governmentintervention for welfare reasons generally reduces these efficiencylosses.