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2015 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC This article uses the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) to examine attitudes toward local agriculture and land use issues in Santa Barbara County (SBC), California. To do so, we use data collected for the Central Coast Survey in 2010. Although our study has a narrow geographic scope, it has broad implications. Our results suggest that people with stronger pro-environment views support agriculture, and prefer it over urban expansion, but are also critical of agriculture's negative environmental effects. In addition, we find no significant differences between the traditionally pro-agriculture north and the traditionally pro-environment south SBC residents on key policy issues, which suggests that broad political divisions do not dictate attitudes toward rural–environment conflicts. more...

A growing number of studies have produced results that suggest the shape of the concentration-response (C-R) relationship between PM2.5 exposure and mortality is "supralinear" such that incremental risk is higher at the lowest exposure levels than at the highest exposure levels. If the C-R function is in fact supralinear, then there may be significant health benefits associated with reductions in PM2.5 below the current US National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), as each incremental tightening of the PM2.5 NAAQS would be expected to produce ever-greater reductions in mortality risk. In this paper we undertake a series of tests with simulated cohort data to examine whether there are alternative explanations for apparent supralinearity in PM2.5 C-R functions. Our results show that a linear C-R function for PM2.5 can falsely appear to be supralinear in a statistical estimation process for a variety of reasons, such as spatial variation in the composition of total PM2.5 mass, the presence of confounders that are correlated with PM2.5 exposure, and some types of measurement error in estimates of PM2.5 exposure. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first simulation-based study to examine alternative explanations for apparent supralinearity in C-R functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Due to the high level of uncertainty in the electorate about candidate issue positions, many scholars believe that voters instead use simpler cues such as personality traits to evaluate candidates. However, information about candidate personality traits is also subject to uncertainty. Using a new direct survey measure of uncertainty included in the 1995 and 1996 National Election Studies, we examine the effect of trait opinions on candidate evaluations and test the effect that uncertainty about those opinions has on the use of traits in an evaluation. We find that uncertainly about a candidate's personality traits reduces both the use of opinions about that candidate's traits in evaluations of that candidate and the overall evaluations of that candidate. more...

The discrepancy between the stated and revealed value of personal information is frequently referred to as the 'privacy paradox.' We test for evidence that survey response bias contributes to the privacy paradox through a discrete choice survey experiment based on hypothetical ride-hailing services, some of which track the rider's location and share it with third parties. The value that respondents place on their personal location data is measured by the willingness to pay higher prices to avoid rides with location sharing. Our survey experiment compares a within-subjects design in which location sharing was presented as an attribute of the hypothetical rides within each choice scenario to a between-subjects design in which location sharing was not presented as an attribute – instead, the location-sharing practices of the hypothetical firms were presented to a treatment group before the respondents made their choices. On average, survey respondents placed a positive value on their personal location data under both survey designs. The difference in value between the survey designs was statistically insignificant, indicating there is no evidence that the within-subjects design led to the type of survey response bias that might contribute to the privacy paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

by Constantine J. Spiliotes. College Station, Texas A & M University Press, 2002. 212 pp. $39.95. Examining the influence of the president on the U.S. economy is a perennial research [...]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses health risk assessment to help inform its decisions in setting national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). EPA's standard approach is to make epidemiologically-based risk estimates based on a single statistical model selected from the scientific literature, called the 'core' model. The uncertainty presented for 'core' risk estimates reflects only the statistical uncertainty associated with that one model's concentration-response function parameter estimate(s). However, epidemiologically-based risk estimates are also subject to 'model uncertainty,' which is a lack of knowledge about which of many plausible model specifications and data sets best reflects the true relationship between health and ambient pollutant concentrations. In 2002, a National Academies of Sciences (NAS) committee recommended that model uncertainty be integrated into EPA's standard risk analysis approach. This article discusses how model uncertainty can be taken into account with an integrated uncertainty analysis (IUA) of health risk estimates. It provides an illustrative numerical example based on risk of premature death from respiratory mortality due to long-term exposures to ambient ozone, which is a health risk considered in the 2015 ozone NAAQS decision. This example demonstrates that use of IUA to quantitatively incorporate key model uncertainties into risk estimates produces a substantially altered understanding of the potential public health gain of a NAAQS policy decision, and that IUA can also produce more helpful insights to guide that decision, such as evidence of decreasing incremental health gains from progressive tightening of a NAAQS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

We estimate the value of non-personally identifying information to consumers of online services through a discrete choice experiment based on hypothetical streaming video services. Non-personally identifying information for online services is typically information on the ways in and times at which customers use the service, and is distinct from personally identifying information such as email addresses or telephone numbers. For most of our survey respondents, we find no evidence that they were willing to pay to avoid sharing their non-personally identifying information with third parties. A smaller group of respondents never selected a service that shared information with third parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...