Individual-level Actions Research Articles

Individualism, universalism and climate change

Abstract Is ‘individualism’ pure selfishness? The climate change literature often assumes so. However, individualism can be seen as capturing values aligned with self-determination and self-achievement but also universalism. Indeed, cultural psychology recognises individualism as reflecting both personal agency and one's embeddedness, not in narrowly defined in-groups, but in society broadly. Through this lens, individualism can be consistent with adopting pro-social behaviours, including climate-friendly behaviours. But the under-exploration of the concept means empirical evidence is limited. Using cross-country, cross-sectional data we find that individualistic values are associated with an increased willingness to take individual-level actions against climate change. Individualism is also not associated with less support for additional taxes levied to fight climate change, and those willing to take more individual level actions against climate change are also more supportive of additional climate change taxes. Overall, our results confirm that individualism can be associated with taking actions for the greater good.

Environmental agency, moral reasoning, and moral disengagement in adults

ABSTRACT To assess the relationships between environmental agency, prosocial moral reasoning, and civic moral disengagement, 544 community-dwelling adults were administered the image-based Environmental Agency Scale (EAS), the Prosocial Moral Reasoning Objective Measure (PROM), and the Civic Moral Disengagement Scale (CMDS). The EAS Agentic Self and Agentic Other dimensions proved to be reliable measures and showed adequate factor validity. Mean/median score comparisons between EAS Agentic Self Scale and Agentic Other Scale scores indicated that participants viewed society-level actions as more relevant than individual-level actions when environment defense is at issue. Partial correlation analysis results showed that environmental agentic self was grounded in individual differences in prosocial moral reasoning. Civic moral disengagement yielded negative associations with EAS Agentic Other Scale scores, providing further support to the relevance of moral disengagement process in environmental sensitivity. These results may improve our understanding of environmental agency and its connections with prosocial moral reasoning and moral disengagement.

Speaking in unison? Explaining the role of agenda-setter constellations in the ECB policy agenda using a network-based approach

ABSTRACT Policy agendas are a well-studied institutional level phenomenon that capture the set of policy issues that an institution pays attention to over time. They are emergent in nature in that individual behaviour shapes institutional level outcomes when policy makers allocate attention to policy issues. To examine the link between individual-level actions and system-level outcomes we introduce the concept of the agenda-setting constellation, defined as a group of policy makers paying attention to a set of policy issues. Taking the European Central Bank as a case study, and using a combination of text-analysis and networks-analysis techniques, we demonstrate how these meso-level structures shape the evolving policy agenda. We then examine the roles of personal experience, institutional constraints, and policy context in driving agenda-setter constellation membership. Our results show the value of studying policy agendas as networked processes and the key role that agenda-setter constellations play in driving policy agenda dynamics.

Perceived national wealth increases support for structural climate policies

Climate change cannot be successfully mitigated solely through individual-level actions. Structural change is urgently needed. While wealthy countries have the greatest capacity to implement structural change, the question remains to what extent perceived country wealth is associated with support for structural climate policies over individual-level behaviour change policies. We found in Australian (Study 1) and UK (Study 2) samples (N = 967) that perceived national wealth positively predicts people's support for structural (vs. individual-level behaviour) change policies. In an experimental (Study 3, N = 401) and a quasi-experimental study (Study 4, N = 400; comparing South African and UK participants), we found that people in both wealthy and poor countries more strongly prefer wealthy (vs. poor) countries to implement structural (vs. individual-level behaviour) change policies. There was some evidence that these effects are mediated by perceiving wealthy countries to have a moral obligation to contribute to the solution of global issues. The findings suggest that there is considerable public support for wealthy countries to spearhead structural transformations to limit climate change. These insights can help environmental organisations and policymakers to gain public support for climate policies by emphasising their countries' moral obligation to implement change and by countering blame-deflecting narratives.

Communication about sexual orientation and gender between clinicians, LGBT+ people facing serious illness and their significant others: a qualitative interview study of experiences, preferences and recommendations

BackgroundHealthcare organisations have legal and ethical duties to reduce inequalities in access to healthcare services and related outcomes. However, lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT+) people continue to experience and...

Patient-Identified Solutions to Primary Care Access Barriers in Canada: The Viewpoints of Nepalese Immigrant Community Members.

Accessing healthcare for immigrants in Canada is complicated by many difficulties. With the continued and upward trend of immigration to Canada, it is crucial to identify the solutions to the barriers from the perspectives of different immigrant communities as they encounter them including the relatively smaller and less studied population groups of immigrants. As such, Nepalese immigrants in Canada are a South Asian ethnic group who have their own distinct language, culture, and socio-economic backgrounds, however, their experience with accessing healthcare in Canada is scarce in the literature. We conducted 12 focus group discussions with first-generation Nepalese immigrants who had experiences with primary care use in Canada. Informed consent and demographic information were obtained before each focus group discussion. The verbatim transcription of the focus groups was analyzed using thematic analysis. The participants expressed a range of potential solutions to overcome the barriers, which we presented using the socio-ecological framework into 4 different levels. This includes individual-, community-, service provider-, and government/policy-levels. Individual-level actions included improving self-awareness and knowledge of health in general and navigating the healthcare system and proactively improving the language skills and assimilating into the Canadian culture. Examples of community-level actions included community events to share health information with immigrants, health literacy programs, and driving/carpooling to clinics or hospitals. Actions at the service provider level were mainly focused on enhancing communications, cultural competency training for providers, and ensuring to hire primary care workforce representing various ethnocultural backgrounds. Overall, focus group participants believed that the provincial and federal government, as appropriate, should increase support for dental and vision care support and take actions to increase the healthcare capacity, particularly by employing internationally graduated health professionals. Access to primary care is essential for the health of immigrant populations in Canada. Individuals, community organizations, health service providers, and governments need to work both individually and collaboratively to improve immigrants' primary care access.

2019 TOKYO DECLARATION

As the Congress explored the nature of burnout among doctors and health professionals in differing settings and in different nations it is clear that burnout is a global phenomenon. An organizational paradigm changes to a person- and people-centered system that incorporates complexity, is adaptive and integrative is essential. Such a change will enable continuing medical education be effective and the current unaffordable and unnecessary waste of human resources that the Congress identified reduced. The Congress reviewed a range of features precipitating burnout including a dysfunctional work–life balance and a variety of relatively simple individually protective factors. It is because of this variety that person- and people-centered initiatives rather than narrowly based top-down management solutions will prove effective Individual-level actions can be taken to reduce stress and poor health symptoms through effective coping and promoting healthy behavior. But there needs to be a much better alignment between the health system and the individual physician so that there are shared professional values within a clear medical ethical framework [23] that encourages professional development and adaptation to the health service environment and health system.

Policy Implications for Protecting Health from the Hazards of Fire Smoke. A Panel Discussion Report from the Workshop Landscape Fire Smoke: Protecting Health in an Era of Escalating Fire Risk.

Globally, and nationally in Australia, bushfires are expected to increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change. To date, protection of human health from fire smoke has largely relied on individual-level actions. Recent bushfires experienced during the Australian summer of 2019–2020 occurred over a prolonged period and encompassed far larger geographical areas than previously experienced, resulting in extreme levels of smoke for extended periods of time. This particular bushfire season resulted in highly challenging conditions, where many people were unable to protect themselves from smoke exposures. The Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research (CAR), an Australian research centre, hosted a two-day symposium, Landscape Fire Smoke: Protecting health in an era of escalating fire risk, on 8 and 9 October 2020. One component of the symposium was a dedicated panel discussion where invited experts were asked to examine alternative policy settings for protecting health from fire smoke hazards with specific reference to interventions to minimise exposure, protection of outdoor workers, and current systems for communicating health risk. This paper documents the proceedings of the expert panel and participant discussion held during the workshop.

Opioids and the Workplace Prevention and Response Awareness Training: Mixed Methods Follow-Up Evaluation.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program piloted an Opioids and the Workplace: Prevention and Response training tool and program in 2019. The pilot trainees (N = 97) were surveyed (n = 27) and interviewed (n = 6) six months posttraining, and those who downloaded the training tool from the Worker Training Program website (n = 87) were surveyed (n = 19) and interviewed (n = 1) two to six months postdownload, to evaluate the impact of the training program. Workplace policy and program-level actions were reported less frequently than individual-level actions by trainees, except for planning and conducting training and education. Barriers to taking actions included not being able to make changes on their own without supervisor support and lack of upper management support and approval. We found some evidence that the Opioids in the Workplace training program and materials contributed to helping workers introduce policies and programs related to opioids within their workplace or union.

Exploring implementation processes in general practice in a feedback intervention aiming to reduce potentially inappropriate prescribing: a qualitative study among general practitioners

BackgroundPotentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) has been linked with adverse health outcomes and increased healthcare costs. Feedback interventions targeting PIP have shown promising results. However, translation from research to everyday practice remains a challenge. With the Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) as overarching framework, we aimed to explore the implementation processes performed by general practices in a real-life, quality improvement intervention using feedback on practice-level prescribing.MethodsAll 376 general practices in the Central Denmark Region received a prescribing feedback intervention targeting selected types of PIP. Six months later, they received an evaluation questionnaire, to which 45% responded. Among 102 practices reporting to have made changes in response to the intervention, we conducted individual, semi-structured interviews with ten GPs. Maximum variation was sought in terms of baseline prescribing status, implementation activities, practice type and geographical location. The interviews were analysed thematically using NPT.ResultsThe implementation processes in general practice reflected the four NPT constructs. Key motivators for implementation included the GPs’ professional values and interests, but pragmatic considerations were also of importance (coherence). A collective versus an individual approach to the engagement and planning of the implementation process (cognitive participation) was observed. Similarly, a distinction was evident between practice-level actions involving the entire practice team as opposed to individual-level actions performed by the individual GP (collective action). Several challenges to the implementation processes were identified, including patient influences and competing priorities at multiple levels (reflexive monitoring). Additionally, internal evaluation and normalisation of new practices occurred in varying degrees.ConclusionNPT provided a useful framework for understanding implementation processes in general practice. Our results emphasise that clear professional aims and feasible content of interventions are key for GP motivation. This may be ensured through cooperation with GPs’ professional organisation, which may strengthen intervention legitimacy and uptake. Two main implementation strategies were identified: practice-level and GP-level strategies. Intervention developers need to recognise both strategies to deliver intervention content and implementation support that promote sustainable improvements in prescribing practice. Competing demands and patient influences remain important challenges that need to be addressed in future studies to further facilitate the reduction of PIPs.

I Know What You Mean: Information Compensation in an Authoritarian Country

How do people address information deficiency caused by rigid control of information in authoritarian regimes? We argue that there exists an internally oriented information compensation approach through which people can glean extra information from official messages domestically. This approach does not violate state regulations directly and allows people to retrieve information not explicitly publicized by the government. We delineate the circumstances of internally oriented information compensation using the case of China. We conduct trend and text analysis on the data of millions of individual-level actions of Chinese Internet search engines and social media users during a large anticorruption campaign that conspicuously claimed to crack down on influential corrupt leaders without naming who exactly. We show that some Chinese netizens were able to identify the unnamed high-ranking officials targeted by the campaign based on negative official reports about their family members. Some of the netizens even correctly predicted the downfall of the officials months before the government’s announcements. As the existing literature is increasingly concerned about the threat of digital authoritarianism on throttling the free flow of information, our findings indicate that some authoritarian citizens, instead of passively accepting the government’s information control, acquired their own arts of information self-salvation. This, though not directly challenging the government, constitutes an everyday politics under digital authoritarianism.

Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont by Teresa M. Mares

Reviewed by: Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont by Teresa M. Mares Megan A. Carney Teresa M. Mares, Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. 240 pp. Anthropologists are increasingly studying the ways that food systems intersect with patterns of human migration. Across sub-fields, such as the anthropology of food and nutrition and medical anthropology, ethnographers have been engaging with questions of food insecurity and human mobility from the macro-contexts of multilateral trade agreements (e.g., Galvéz 2018) and industrial agricultural production (e.g., Holmes 2013) to the intimate spheres of feeding and eating (e.g., Carney 2015). Teresa Mares's Life on the Other Border makes a significant contribution to this literature by utilizing a community-based ethnographic lens to study the experiences of immigrant farmworkers in Vermont's dairy industry. The result is a refreshingly nuanced and complex portrait of the lives of these individuals and the broader transnational social networks to which they belong. Based on more than six years of "community-based ethnographic research" (3), Mares draws on multiple forms of empirical evidence, such as interviews, surveys, and participant observation in community garden settings, farmworkers' homes, and public places of activism. Throughout the text, Mares probes the "politics of visibility." She argues that, "Within agricultural regions, hegemonic whiteness, or more specifically the reproduction of whiteness, is enabled by the exclusion and marginalization of non-white bodies" (4). She demonstrates how a politics of visibility at once shields immigrant farmworkers from the view of consumers, upholds a [End Page 1651] bucolic (and mostly white) depiction of Vermont's agriculture, and makes Latinx people hypervisible and vulnerable to surveillance in a non-traditional migrant destination. Mares brings attention to the injustices incurred by farmworkers whose "labor contributes to the livelihoods of farmers and the well-being of consumers across the food chain" (2) while reminding us that despite Vermont's ostensibly progressive politics, it remains a border state and its status as such threatens those without formal authorization to be in the United States. Rather than perpetuate the invisibility of immigrant laborers in Vermont's dairy industry, Mares foregrounds their struggles and illuminates "examples of resiliency and autonomy within marginalized communities that are typically rendered invisible by those in power" (25). This invisibility also extends into the ways that immigrant farmworkers' daily struggles with food procurement and preparation are obscured through existing survey instruments to measure food insecurity in the United States. Based on her own implementation of the USDA Household Food Security Survey Module with 100 Latinx farmworkers, Mares rightly derides "the assumptions underlying how we define and measure food insecurity" (58). While her critique of this particular survey instrument is not necessarily new, the discrepancies she observes between her qualitative data and survey data further justify existing calls for going beyond the "realm of quantifiable data" in working "for real solutions and opportunities for justice in our food system" (84). In Chapter 1, Mares challenges current thinking that Vermont is a state devoid of Latinx migrants by presenting the lived experiences of farmworkers and the myriad vulnerabilities they face as brown bodies in a border region. Chapter 2 presents Mares's survey findings on food insecurity in farmworker households and compares these results against data collected through interviews and observations. She then pivots from the concept of food security to food sovereignty in Chapter 3 to introduce Huertas, a project that "supports migrant farmworkers in planting home kitchen gardens" (89). Calling for a more expansive definition of food sovereignty that bridges both structural and individual-level actions, Mares draws on her experiences as co-director of Huertas and working alongside farmworkers, student volunteers, and interns to implore us to reconsider the garden as a site of autonomy and resistance. She writes, "In this political climate, it seems that gardens are even more necessary, even as they might seem more trivial amidst the massive threats to immigrant well-being and [End Page 1652] safety" (117). Chapter 4 steers our attention to the roles of service providers in working to improve food access, health, and overall well-being of Vermont...

An empirical investigation of country level efficiency and national systems of entrepreneurship using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the TOBIT model

The goal of this paper is to investigate effects of national systems of entrepreneurship on the country level efficiency, on addition we find what macro factors affect efficiency as well. From a comprehensive database of 59 countries using GEM, WDI, WCI for 2018 using data envelopment analysis (DEA) we find the results support the theoretical grounding of Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) hypothesis. The GEI methodology has been designed to capture the core features of the National Systems of Entrepreneurship theory. It approaches country-level entrepreneurship as a systemic phenomenon, which is driven by the interaction between individual-level actions and country-level framework conditions. While discussing country level framework, we have depicted key macroeconomic indicators in the analysis along with GEI index. The DEA analysis followed this framework to assess the performance of the study countries. Though inefficiency widely varies across countries, while the group of factor-driven countries is the most inefficient while innovation-driven economies are the most efficient ones. Subsequently, we apply the Tobit model to explain efficiency. Based on the Tobit regression model, the DEA VRS technical efficient score could be improved through GDP per capita and social capital. From policy perspective, to promote economic growth policy makers should consider national systems of entrepreneurship as their priority so that entrepreneurs can allocate resources in the economy effectively.

How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information

Conventional wisdom assumes that increased censorship will strictly decrease access to information. We delineate circumstances when increases in censorship expand access to information for a substantial subset of the population. When governments suddenly impose censorship on previously uncensored information, citizens accustomed to acquiring this information will be incentivized to learn methods of censorship evasion. These evasion tools provide continued access to the newly blocked information—and also extend users’ ability to access information that has long been censored. We illustrate this phenomenon using millions of individual-level actions of social media users in China before and after the block of Instagram. We show that the block inspired millions of Chinese users to acquire virtual private networks, and that these users subsequently joined censored websites like Twitter and Facebook. Despite initially being apolitical, these new users began browsing blocked political pages on Wikipedia, following Chinese political activists on Twitter, and discussing highly politicized topics such as opposition protests in Hong Kong.

Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study

We conducted a one-year longitudinal study in which 600 American adults regularly reported their climate change beliefs, pro-environmental behavior, and other climate-change related measures. Using latent class analyses, we uncovered three clusters of Americans with distinct climate belief trajectories: (1) the “Skeptical,” who believed least in climate change; (2) the “Cautiously Worried,” who had moderate beliefs in climate change; and (3) the “Highly Concerned,” who had the strongest beliefs and concern about climate change. Cluster membership predicted different outcomes: the “Highly Concerned” were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions, whereas the “Skeptical” opposed policy solutions but were most likely to report engaging in individual-level pro-environmental behaviors. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The social preferences of local citizens and spontaneous volunteerism during disaster relief operations

Existing studies on disaster relief operations pay limited attention to acts of spontaneous volunteerism by local citizens in the aftermath of disasters. The purpose of this paper is to explore how social preferences motivate citizens to help during post-disaster situations; above and beyond their own self-regarding interests. The paper begins by synthesising the literature on social preferences from the field of behavioural economics and social psychology with the discourse surrounding behavioural operations management and humanitarian operations management. By doing so, we identify the motivators, enablers and barriers of local citizen response during disaster relief operations. These factors inform a theoretical framework of the social preferences motivating spontaneous volunteerism in post-disaster situations. We evidence facets of the framework using archival and unstructured data retrieved from Twitter feeds generated by local citizens during the floods that hit Chennai, India in 2015. Our model highlights the importance of individual-level action during disaster relief operations and the enabling role of social media as a coordination mechanism for such efforts.

Exploring the microfoundations of servitization: How individual actions overcome organizational resistance

Servitization research has principally focused on the transition of organizational-level strategy, systems, capabilities, and processes for firms to be able to offer advanced services to their customers. Less is known of the underlying microfoundational dynamics of such transitions at the individual-level. Based on a multiple case study of six large multinational industrial firms engaged in servitization efforts, this paper identifies the tactics (i.e., evangelizing, bootlegging, leveraging, and collaborating) that individuals adopt to overcome organizational resistance to servitization. This study also presents the conditions that are necessary for individual employees to adopt these tactics. The present study provides theoretical and practical implications of the microfoundations of servitization, focusing attention on individual-level actions that affect the outcomes at the organizational-level to drive servitization efforts.

How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information

Conventional wisdom assumes that increased censorship will strictly decrease access to information. We delineate circumstances when increases in censorship will expand access to information. When governments suddenly impose censorship on previously uncensored information, citizens accustomed to acquiring this information will be incentivized to learn methods of censorship evasion. These tools provide continued access to the newly blocked information and also extend users’ ability to access information that has long been censored. We illustrate this phenomenon using millions of individual-level actions of social media users in China before and after the block of Instagram. We show that the block inspired millions of Chinese users to acquire virtual private networks (VPNs) and join censored websites like Twitter and Facebook. Despite initially being apolitical, these new users began browsing blocked political pages on Wikipedia, following Chinese political activists on Twitter, and discussing highly politicized topics such as opposition protests in Hong Kong.

Promiscuity of the past: neoliberalism and gay sexuality pre- and post-AIDS

ABSTRACTScholars of LGBT advocacy often characterize the 1990s as a pragmatic and conservative era of activism – a time when neoliberalism “de-sexed” the movement and suppressed any lingering “liberationist” sentiment. AIDS, of course, figures prominently into this narrative. This paper explores the point of convergence between neoliberalism, sexual praxis, and political advocacy, making two primary contributions. First, I investigate how interest group representation serves the ends of neoliberal governance by mobilizing neoliberal citizens. This form of citizenship emphasizes not only a market-centered individualism, but it also promotes individual-level actions in the face of deeply structured social problems and encourages deference to strategy-minded professional managers and entrepreneurs. Second, I reintroduce pivotal leaders and organizations of the 1970s into the story of LGBT politics, arguing that these organizations laid the groundwork of a sexually conscientious gay citizenry before the AIDS crisis began. While a sincere concern over public health undoubtedly motivated activists throughout the 1980s, AIDS merely intensified (rather than initiated) community leaders’ policing of gay sexuality.

Persistence of social inequalities in modern welfare states: Explanation of a paradox.

Social-epidemiological explanations of health inequalities usually take the existence of social inequality as a given and ignore the fundamental questions of why social inequality exists in the first place and why it is so persistent. I review here theories of the explanation of social inequality to identify the processes and/or structures responsible for its persistence. This paper is a review of the relevant sociological literature. The sociological literature suggests that what persists over long periods of time is not a specific manifestation of social inequality but a 'meta-phenomenon': the fact that there are different social positions, that these social positions give access to different levels of resources in some graded way and that the distribution of individuals over social positions follows rules that create inequalities in the opportunities for achieving a more advantaged social position. The durability of social inequality in this generic form can then be understood from the persistence of the underlying mechanisms and processes - for example, humans are driven by self-interest, while most objects of their striving are in short supply, therefore a struggle for rewards is present in all societies; humans are unequally endowed, therefore some are more successful in this struggle for resources than others; and the inequalities resulting from these individual level actions are structurally fixated through the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage, various societal institutions, and cultural factors. The sociological literature suggests that some mechanisms producing and perpetuating social inequality are more 'benign' than others. Health inequalities may be more than a consequence of social inequality and may play a more profound part by amplifying social inequalities.