Normative Goals Research Articles

Determining the role of self-efficacy in sustained behavior change: An empirical study on intention to use community-based electric ride-sharing

This study aims to explore the role of travel-related self-efficacy in sustained behavior change. Community-based electric ride-sharing as a pilot project has been introduced to reduce residents’ reliance on private cars in Bangkok, Thailand. This study integrated the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and goal-framing theory to explain the cognitive process from intending a trial ride to sustaining behavioral change to substitute present travel modes. A sample of 101 valid responses was collected from the service users. The findings show a pivotal role of travel-related self-efficacy in encouraging users to keep using the promoted service by finding eudaimonic and normative goals during the intervention. Multi-group analysis was further applied to examine the moderating roles of transport mode preferences on hypothesized relationships. Pilot service users showed overall high self-efficacy associated with community-based mobility, and the stated self-efficacy was positively related to the intention to sustain behavior change. However, a drastic decrease was shown in user intention to pay for the service. Additional evidence was given to inform the importance of an affordable mobility service to secure residents’ self-efficacy in daily transport. Based on research findings, this study provides recommendations on practical applications and future research directions.

Toward a Latinx Stratification Economics

This paper describes Latinx stratification economics (LSE) as a scholarly approach to studying the economic status of Latinas/os/es/xs primarily in the United States. We coin the term LSE to refer to work that draws on and is in conversation with both the emergent, interdisciplinary subfield of stratification economics (SE) and the interdisciplinary field of Latinx studies (LS). SE and LS have distinct intellectual traditions and drawing on both leads to strong theoretical and empirical scholarship on Latinxs, on the operation of race across space and historical time, and on the intersection of race with other systems of domination. We discuss how, based on these perspectives, it is misguided to expect racial/ethnic categories like Hispanic to be consistent over time and space and to correspond reliably with phenotypical characteristics or culture. We argue that a good faith reading of the LS literature would result in the recommendation to subordinate models of migration to models of colonialism and imperialism. We discuss the significance of normative goals and social justice to complement “gap analysis” comparisons to non-Hispanic whites. Lastly, we discuss deficiencies of the dominant models of discrimination and, as an alternative, we highlight rational models of racism that involve strategic identifications with whiteness, blackness, and mestizaje, including by members who identify as Latinx or those with Hispanic ancestry.

Towards a future-oriented political ecology of climate change

Unprecedented climate extremes will likely become a new ‘normal’. Urban political ecology is thus confronted with the challenge of exploring and theorising emerging geographies of unprecedented climate change. This raises questions on the extent and ways in which past socionatures can be mobilised for this task. It also urges a critical reflection on what forms of knowledge are needed to meet political ecology’s normative aspirations of transforming emerging and future socionatures of climate change. I argue that a critique of past and present socionatures alone is not enough to meet these theoretical and normative goals. The main objective of this paper, therefore, is to lay the foundations of a future-oriented urban political ecology that approaches geographies of climate change more experimentally and speculatively. To this aim, I examine the explanatory potential of two (of many possible) experiments, collaboratively developed by a team of hydrologists, climatologists, and political ecologists. Both experiments depart from past and present logics of colonial violence, racial capitalism, and climate change, but explore competing notions of unprecedented futures. The first experiment consists of a critical-realist scenario approach that examines how power and variability in the exercise of agency might shape outcomes of future unprecedented climate extremes. The second involves a model that speculatively brings about a better world in response to climate extremes and lays the foundation of a political ecology of possibility. The paper thereby serves as a demonstration of how critique can be mobilised to explore and reimagine urban futures.

A Battle of the Big Three?—Competing Conceptualizations of Personal Data Shaping Transnational Data Flows

Abstract In the unfolding digital era, personal data has increasingly been conceptualized in a hybrid way, primarily drawing on notions of economics, privacy, and national security. Such a sui generis nature makes personal data something of its own category, opening the door to different conceptualizations by different actors. This article identifies three primary conceptualizations of personal data adopted by three major powers (the US, the EU, and China) with respect to cross-border data transfers—namely, a factor of production, an embodiment of fundamental rights, and an element of national security. Highlighting different attributes of personal data, these conceptualizations differ in what they understand personal data to be, how they address the relationship between individuals, their data, and the governments, as well as what they frame as the most important normative goals for regulatory interventions. Moreover, these conceptualizations are embedded in different philosophies and ideologies, ranging from neo-liberalism to human rights and to sovereignty. These irreducible normative elements render the contestations among such conceptualizations unable to be easily resolved. Further, divergent conceptualizations of personal data mandate and justify different legal paradigms to institutionalize their basic logics and policy choices. Built on different primary conceptualizations of personal data, three major legal paradigms compete to regulate cross-border personal data flows: a trade paradigm, a privacy paradigm, and a security paradigm. Aligned with its major conceptual framing of personal data, a great power often embraces a particular paradigm as its dominant approach to regulate cross-border transfers of personal data. These paradigms strive to provide legal and regulatory solutions (including legal prescriptions, regulatory institutions, and enforcement tools) to address the salient problems identified and framed by different conceptualizations of personal data.

Principle versus practice: the Institutionalisation of ethics and research on the far right

ABSTRACT Institutional ethics review procedures aim - in principle - to minimise harm and evaluate risks, providing an important space to consider the safety of participants and researchers. However, literature has questioned the effectiveness of the process, particularly for reviewing ‘risky’ topics in a risk-averse environment. This article reports the findings of interviews with 21 researchers of the far right and manosphere to understand how early career researchers perceive and engage with the process as a component of risk management. It argues that scholars experience IRBs struggling to meet their normative goal of ‘no undue harm’ due to a focus on legality and liability whilst lacking topical and methodological expertise. The lack of expertise produced misperceptions of risk, establishing institutional ethics as an obstacle rather than evaluative aid, creating holes in the ‘safety net’ that institutional ethics can provide. These findings contribute to concerns raised about the effective management of risk by early career researchers and the ethical review of ‘sensitive’ topics.

EU Digital Competition Law: The Socio-legal Foundations

AbstractCompetition policy in the EU and UK is in the process of a significant reconfiguration. Its key postulates, methodologies, and normative goals are being subject to intense discussion and revision. The emergence of sui generis ‘new competition tools’ in the area of digital markets—EU Digital Markets Act and UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (bill)—epitomises this trend. The purpose of this Article is to attempt to provide legal theoretical foundations for the new subfield of competition law and policy by systematising and conceptualising these trends into the framework of socio-legal scholarship.

Food waste ‘Warriors’, ‘Strugglers’ and ‘Slackers’: Segmenting households based on food waste generation and sorting behaviours

Food waste is a largely avoidable global issue with adverse environmental and economic impacts. Households are the main generators of food waste, with two main food waste behaviours contributing to the issue: generation and sorting. Online survey data from 939 households was used to segment households based on two measures of food waste generation (total food waste volume and the proportion of total food waste that is avoidable) and one measure of sorting behaviour (proportion of food waste sorted sustainably). Three segments were identified: ‘Warriors’ (39.6%), ‘Strugglers’ (19.6%), and ‘Slackers’ (40.8%). Warriors have low total and avoidable food waste and sort it sustainably (i.e. sorting into a kerbside organics bin, composting, and feeding to pets). Slackers have low food waste but sort little of it sustainably. Strugglers have high food waste and a medium level of sustainable sorting. These segments were profiled based on the Motivation – Opportunity – Ability framework with motivation based on the three goal-framing motivations (i.e. gain, hedonic, and normative goals) for reducing and sorting food waste between segments. These findings can help inform the design of interventions aimed at reducing and sorting food waste in specific segments of municipal populations.

A Holistic Introduction of Goal Framing

Framing and life are strongly intertwined, in the framing effect, various ways of expressing messages have different outcomes. Goal framing, a more complex variant of framing effects, will be investigated in the study. Additionally, three distinct categories of goal framinghedonic, gain, and normative goal framingwill be introduced in the essay. Currently, Psychological Reactance Theory and Prospect Theory, Dual-process theory, and the Regulatory Focus Theory are most frequently used by researchers to explain the psychological mechanism underlying the goal framing effect. Moreover, the article also includes additional information about goal framing and its applicability to environmental and medical testing. The goal framing effect, however, has several restrictions like influencing by the authority of the information source emotion and so forth. The experimenter can investigate additional controlling factors, like environment and personality, to increase the effectiveness of goal framing and then attempt to lessen or even eliminate the impact of these external factors.

Digital tools as experts in international peace and security

Abstract Over the past decades, knowledge about peace and security has become increasingly mediated and co-produced with and through digital objects such as databases, indicators, apps, big data and data analysis algorithms. Only recently has the literature begun to recognize this. This article addresses the gap in the literature by exploring the centrality of digital objects' design in their emergence as experts in relation to international peace and security practices. By centering the politics of design, we contribute to broader debates on the effects of technology for who/what is considered an expert in contemporary international policy. Through a material-semiotic analysis of the UN SanctionsApp and the Security Assistance Monitor database, and semi-structured interviews with creators and users, we show how the normative goal of inclusion is inscribed into digital artifacts and translated into use. These cases were selected based on their inclusion of relevant state and nonstate actors into policy decisions, and our findings suggest that usage and material infrastructures play an important role in how this purpose is advanced. We shed light onto how digital expert objects produce actionable knowledge via the web of relations implicated in their production and highlight the importance of practitioners' participation in the making of such objects.

A New Explanation of Why the Euthyphro Dilemma Is a False Dilemma

The article gives a new explanation for why the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma and argues that it is a middle position that both the theist and the atheist could accept. The argument is that both the will of God and the preferences of individuals are necessary truthmakers for what the good is. Each of the components is insufficient on its own, but jointly they are sufficient. Individual preferences are necessary to provide the normativity of the good, while God is necessary for the objectivity of the good. It is the combination of individual preferences into a possible world that is valuated the most by the most that gives the normative goal for moral choices. It is the knowledge of God of what would most probably be valuated the most by the most that makes a concrete choice the morally right thing to do in a concrete situation.

Motivated to learn? Investigating the link of achievement goals and informal workplace learning of lecturers in higher education

AbstractResearch on lecturers' achievement goals and their impact on professional learning in higher education is a topic that has assumed importance in recent years. However, previous studies have neglected the multidimensionality of informal workplace learning and ignored the differences between self‐based and social‐based informal learning. Based on the Achievement Goal Theory, we propose positive links between learning approach goals and self‐based informal learning, as well as positive links between normative goals and social‐based informal learning. Findings from a first cross‐sectional study with 317 lecturers from higher education institutions in Germany show associations that are largely consistent with our hypotheses. While learning approach goals are moderately related to self‐based informal learning, normative avoidance goals are slightly related to social‐based informal learning. In a second study, 185 lecturers from higher education institutions in Austria received three text‐based vignettes and answered a survey about which teaching‐related informal learning activities they would use in specific situations (i.e., before, during, and after the teaching phase). The results replicate most of the findings from the first study; however, the results are not stable when various control variables are included. Moreover, the associations between achievement goals and informal learning are largely consistent across the simulated semester, although lecturers with strong learning approach goals engage in self‐based informal learning particularly before and during the teaching phase. Our findings provide support for the notion that personal motivational characteristics, in the form of achievement goals, are associated with informal learning in the workplace. We conclude by discussing practical implications for those teaching in higher education.

How gender mainstreaming plays out in Tanzania's climate‐smart agricultural policy: Isomorphic mimicry of international discourse

AbstractMotivationGender mainstreaming is often promoted internationally as the vehicle of choice to achieve gender equality. Concepts of mainstreaming are commonly seen in climate‐smart agriculture (CSA), where it is proposed that they can bridge gender gaps in agricultural input use and productivity. The rhetoric of mainstreaming, however, often relies upon and perpetuates gender myths and assumptions.PurposeWe investigate how gender mainstreaming has spread into Tanzania's agricultural policies. We ask whether the government has the capacity to put these concepts into practice to address gender inequality. We explore this in the context of CSA, an increasingly important aspect of agricultural policy.Methods and approachUsing the literature on policy transfer and isomorphism, we critically analyse gendered discourse in Tanzania's CSA policies to explore how gender is problematised and governed within policy. We use NVivo 12 to inductively code policy documents. We support these insights with the observations of key informants.FindingsWe find little evidence that gender has been effectively mainstreamed in Tanzania's CSA policies. We see a gap between the normative goal of gender mainstreaming and the practices intended to address gender (and intersectional) inequalities. The gap is made all the wider by limited recognition within government‐from national to local—of how such inequalities affect agriculture. Not only are policies detached from local contexts leading to infeasible plans, but also local government lacks both resources and capacity to implement them.Policy implicationsOur study calls into question much of the global discourse on gender mainstreaming, especially the myths that support it. It shows how representing the problem in a particular way can lead to dysfunctional policy.A better approach would be to start with understanding the various inequalities seen in agriculture in Tanzania, inequalities of gender but also of class. It would take into account the capacity to implement policy in the field. A more practical approach, tailored to the realities of rural Tanzania, would benefit the people of Tanzania more than just imitating questionable international discourse.

Students’ Food Consumption Behavior during COVID-19 Lockdown

This study is experimental in nature. The cognitive purpose of this study is to examine the reduction in food waste by students in the economic process during the lockdown. The normative goal is to identify drivers of social rationality of ex ante food stewardship by students, by reducing food waste. The subjects of the study consisted of students from the Faculty of Economics and Management at the University of Zielona Góra, Poland. To achieve the study’s goal, we use Consumer 4.0 model and develop one main hypothesis and six working hypotheses. The hypotheses were verified, and the study’s goals were achieved by employing desk research, followed by the descriptive, comparative, survey, and model methods, accompanied by deduction, induction, descriptive statistics, and visualization. The comparative method was used to perform the study in two periods—lockdown (S1) and pandemic threat (S2)—and to compare with the results of other authors. The model method was used to reflect the factor gap in consumer behavior. The conclusion stipulates that during the lockdown and pandemic risk period the behavior of students was similar and did not reflect food saving by deliberately reducing waste. The reason for this was the demonstrated gap of intangible factors, defined by their weakness, in both analyzed periods, in relation to their optimal level in the theoretical Consumer 4.0 model. This study determined a gap caused by the weakness of intrinsic factors during the lockdown and pandemic risk between the typical student behavior model and the theoretical model of Consumer 4.0, with respect to food-saving practices.

Critical workplace information literacy

In this paper, the author explores the prospect of, and the rationale for, the critical workplace information literacy (CWIL) construct, by situating it at the junction of critical information literacy (CIL) and workplace information literacy (WIL), the two hitherto discrete frameworks and subdomains of information literacy (IL). This preliminary attempt at the conceptualisation of a new construct was guided by the question of what role CIL can play in empowering workers to attain decent work. The author frames the conceptualisation around the ‘decent work’ (DW) concept, as a normative goal of the critical workplace information literacy construct, and discusses the rationale for it in the framework of the discussion on the decent work deficits in the contemporary work and information environment. Freire’s critical hermeneutics and dialectics of voice and empowerment are drawn upon. The paper argues positively for the role of CIL in attaining decent work and for the need for a new construct that would help fill the knowledge and discursive gap in IL and its subdomains and overcome the current silos in the IL community. The author concludes that developing a concept requires a broad deliberative process informed by both theoretical and empirical research, and gives suggestions for future research.

Testing the effectiveness of increased frequency of norm-nudges in encouraging sustainable tourist behaviour: a field experiment using actual and self-reported behavioural data

Norm-nudges are effective in encouraging sustainable consumer behaviour in various settings, by raising the salience of the target behaviour via social norms. Tourism presents a highly hedonic context, in which behaviour is primarily framed by self-oriented goals as opposed to normative ones related to the good of the environment and society. While the existing literature provides insights on the appropriate content of norm-nudges to raise the salience of normative goals, less is known about an appropriate frequency of nudges. It is important to address this gap in tourism because tourists need to be aware of desired sustainable behaviours, while overly obtrusive nudges may backfire. A field experiment was conducted to test the extent to which an increased frequency of norm-nudges has a backfiring effect on sustainable tourist behaviour, using donations for mountain-biking trails as the target behaviour. Results show that increasing the frequency of norm-nudges does not diminish their positive uptake, which suggests that they can be used more to encourage sustainable behaviour and enhance tourists’ experiences. Using actual and self-reported behavioural data, this study provides new empirical evidence on the effectiveness of increased frequency of norm-nudges in a real tourism setting, contributing to knowledge on norm-nudges and backfiring effects.

Emerging sociotechnical imaginaries – How the smart home is legitimized in visions from industry, users in homes and policymakers in Germany

Debates about the digitally enhanced and “smart” home include different visions associated with implementing digital technologies in private homes. This paper analyzes the “visions” put forward in Germany from smart home industry actors, users in smart homes and policymakers and the processes through which legitimacy for the smart home is created. When it comes to digital energy futures, the multiple ways in which visions legitimize the uptake of emerging technologies belong to the driving forces in institutionally stabilizing sociotechnical imaginaries. We identify legitimation strategies that can be found within those visions. Our analyzes are empirically based on a qualitative content analysis of smart home marketing websites from the ten most common smart home providers in Germany and on policy documents from German ministries, as well as on qualitative interviews with German smart home users. We discovered four different legitimation strategies that contribute to institutionally stabilizing emerging German smart home imaginaries: cognitive/emotional alignment, solutionism, coupling with normative goals and expert/scientific legitimation. Our findings reveal how visions that, in their formation phase, are shared only between small actor collectives gain traction through several legitimation strategies.

Institutionalization of human rights to health care in the international legal space

Work analyzes international and national legal documents related to the moral right to health and the obligations of states to ensure it. International health law includes the right to health care as one of its constituent parts. The state's concern for the health of its citizens is not only related to the problem of improving health, but also to other fundamental norms of international human rights law, such as dignity and equality, which require the provision of basic medical care and the fair distribution of all resources Health Care. The conditions for ensuring the highest attainable level of health and their connection with the level of socio-economic development of the state, the availability of resources and opportunities for international cooperation are analyzed. International law on human rights to health focuses on the social determinants of health. Many social determinants of health, including education and water, are separate international rights. Components articulating other recognized rights, clearly related to the right to health, limit the scope of its possible realization. Expanded access to health care does not correlate with the normative goals of the right to health, and health care is not a strong causal factor in achieving it, at least compared to many social determinants of health. However, universal access to health care is a valuable asset for ensuring the realization of the right to health, so most states have enshrined the right to health (in one sense or another) in their basic laws. It is no accident that the declaration on health care (or "right to health") is enshrined in most modern constitutions, which in itself gives this right a special social and legal status, taking into account the importance of the basic law in the hierarchy of regulatory acts of any country. Such a legal arrangement does not always mean the possibility of actual realization of the right to health care, this is largely facilitated by the political, economic and cultural conditions of a particular country.

The political theory of technological change: Lessons from the liberalism-ecologism debate

Little consideration has been given to the process of technological change in political theory. Given that ideas about this process play an important role in many strands of normative political thought, and are especially crucial to climate change politics, this is a remarkable oversight. It risks political theory being irrelevant to climate change mitigation. The implications of this oversight for political theory are explored here through an analysis of the liberalism-ecologism debate. The article argues that attempts to green liberalism – to move it beyond environmentalism – cannot succeed while liberalism is silent about technological change. More broadly, given that most political theory traditions make claims about technological change, claims crucial to their worldviews and normative goals, it argues that much more theorisation of the concept is necessary. Especially now that they shape how the world understands climate change mitigation, contests over the meaning of technological change are intensely political contests. Political theory needs to get much more involved.

Novel organisms and the ethics of conservation: Divergent views on gene drives reflect divergent ideas about humans and nature

What concepts of nature, humans, and their relationships underpin the debate about gene drives for conservation? To provide some answers to this question, the eradication of invasive rodents on islands is used as an example. While current debates mostly weigh the potential benefits for conservation against the potential ecological risks, it is worthwhile to move beyond such a risk-benefit perspective. Ethical issues that are more specific to conservation are: the significance of “natural”, the normative goals of conservation, and the ideal of living in harmony with nature.

Legal Sociology Approach: A Critical Study on Understanding the Law

The need for legal certainty as progress and change in societal life. This article seeks to provide a description of legal practices in society that emphasizes a legal sociology approach to comprehending the laws, whether they are appropriate, different from or even at odds with the laws in the law book, or unwritten laws that are accepted as legitimate by society. This change has continued since antiquity, modern times, and even this age of civility or globalization. There are many approaches and methods or approaches that can be used in building justice, including in the sociology of law approach. Studies related to the method approach have recently experienced a dynamic development along with the needs and demands of the community. Theoretical studies and empirical research seek to answer various problems about the effectiveness of the work of law in the entire institutional structure of law in society. This legal sociology approach expects to describes the state of society complete with interrelated social structures and symptoms. It is used because the normative goal of the law is to have a good balance in society, the process of law is in the society itself, thus it can be said that society is the source of law, and the law cannot be separated from the social environment. It emphasizes the study of the relationship between law thinking and its social base and does not see the law as an esoteric area. The study of legal sociology using various approaches may give a positive contribution in understanding and developing law products and build a guaranteed life in accordance with applicable laws and regulations as well as community compliance with the law.