Abstract
Despite revolutionizing the work of practicing economists by providing a direct link between neo-classical economic theory and revealed market preference data, Random Utility Theory has yet to guide research applications in global market sustainability. With the worldwide adverse socio-economic effects of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), such application now becomes timely. Therefore, relying on a Random Utility theoretic formulation of youths’ preferences for the biosphere (ecosystem services, sustainability) and science-based disease prevention to characterize their planetary health interests, this paper adopts a micro-based planetary view of markets to retrospectively analyze the health and ecological implications of digital media consumption among youths in the global economy. Empirically, we rely on a mixed bivariate ordered probit specification, which is estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Our findings reveal a strong, positive correlation coefficient (0.835) between youths’ interests in the biosphere and science-based disease prevention. Moreover, digital media consumption in the form of increased frequency of ecological website visits, news blogs visits, and web-browsing on broad science, significantly reduce youths’ interests in the biosphere. A similar reduction in youths’ interest in science-based disease prevention is observed, from news blogs visits and web-browsing on broad science. Conversely, ecological website visits appear to raise youths’ interests in science-based disease prevention. Furthermore, we find a gender-based gradient in youths’ planetary health interest, in favor of the female gender. Overall, our findings confirm the appropriateness of a holistic view of health, and suggests a couple of policy implications for the long-term sustainability of our planet.
Highlights
One of the greatest contribution of science to humanity has been its progressive unveiling of the influence on human health of the environment, and the many adverse impacts that human activities have on the environment [1]
For our Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation, of the RUMBOP model, we defined 50,000 iterations of the algorithm with a burn-in period of 15,000 iterations, and a thinning interval of 10 iterations. This has led to an effective random sample of 3500 Markov draws, which were used to estimate the parameters of the model, along with their 95% confidence intervals (CI)
The fourth subsection focuses on describing the impacts of the socio-economic and demographic control variables on youths’ interests in the biosphere, while the fifth subsection focuses on describing their impacts on youths’ interests in science-based disease prevention
Summary
One of the greatest contribution of science to humanity has been its progressive unveiling of the influence on human health of the environment (in all its aspects: physical, social, economic, political, cultural, and historical), and the many adverse (local and planetary) impacts that human activities have on the environment [1].
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