Peruvian Case Study Research Articles

Changing carbon footprints and the consequent impacts of carbon taxes and cash transfers on poverty and inequality across years: A Peruvian case study

Carbon taxes are key policies to achieve climate goals. Yet, they increase prices especially in the short term, and can affect households’ income depending on their carbon footprints. Cash transfer programs can be used to address adverse social impacts and protect the poorest. However, because carbon footprints, and the consequent tax impacts, may change over time it is important to understand how to design and adapt such cash transfer programs accordingly. As the existing studies focus on single years, we address the gap in the literature in two steps. First, we estimate changes in carbon footprints and their drivers over time; second, we simulate the effects of a carbon tax in combination with cash transfers on poverty and inequality for the years 2004, 2007 and 2011 in Peru. We combine a bottom-up household carbon footprint estimation, and multiple scenarios simulation. We show that, in a context of rapid economic growth, footprints increase over time, particularly for lower deciles. Most importantly, the distributional impacts of a reform combining carbon tax and cash transfers change by year. The paper concludes that, to maximize poverty and inequality reduction, the design of cash transfer programs and tax levels need to be adapted over time.

Responsible consumption trend in Generation Z and millennials its impact on SDG 12. A Peruvian case study

PurposeThis study aims to analyze the responsible consumption of Generation Z and millennials in the Latin American market, with special emphasis on the Peruvian case, to identify their differences with consumers born in 1980 and earlier and to evaluate their contribution to Sustainable Development Goal 12.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted on a sample of 309 persons living in Lima. After developing and validating an instrument, an online questionnaire was used to collect data. These data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially, using chi-square tests to validate the relationship between variables.FindingsThe study identifies and explains the new trend of responsible consumption among Generation Z and millennials in emerging markets, where end consumers interact with and prefer products and services from companies that demonstrate responsible behavior and offer trust. It identifies new consumption variables that go beyond the traditional ones.Research limitations/implicationsThe study reveals a trend in the responsible consumption of Generation Z and millennials in Peru. However, it is necessary to complement the study in other countries in the region, as well as to study the new generations, such as the alpha generation and their consumption patterns.Practical implicationsThe new trend of responsible consumption among Generation Z and millennials is forcing companies to implement strategies and develop corporate social responsibility programs. These companies must demonstrate ethical, environmental, socially responsible and sustainable behaviors in their daily operations to satisfy their stakeholders.Originality/valueThe study reveals a new trend in Peru, a developing country, where the market – the end consumer – is more informed and therefore demands better corporate performance from companies, including care for the environment and a contribution to society that includes a good relationship with its stakeholders.

Sustainable use of wood sawdust as a replacement for fine aggregate to improve the properties of concrete: a Peruvian case study

Sustainable use of wood sawdust as a replacement for fine aggregate to improve the properties of concrete: a Peruvian case study

Stakeholders, social and environmental impact management as key factors of the corporate social management in the mining industry: A Peruvian case study

AbstractIt is known that companies manage their stakeholders and their social and environmental impacts to achieve a good relationship with the community. Therefore, this research aims to know the strategies used by mining companies when different levels of stakeholder management and social and environmental impact management variables are involved. For this purpose, qualitative research with case study methodology is carried out, collecting information from various sources such as interviews, document analysis, and audio‐visual material. The result shows a framework based on the literature review and where different scenarios are shown according to the degree of the variables studied and the strategies used. Four main corporate strategies were found: sustainable, legalistic, business‐oriented, and compensating.

Enhancing community development management and the management of social and environmental impacts to get social license to operate in the mining industry: A Peruvian case study

AbstractThis research aims to determine the type of strategy used by mining companies according to the degree of community development management and social and environmental impact management. For this purpose, a qualitative study has been carried out using the methodology of case studies of mining companies in Peru, for which written and virtual reports and audiovisual material have been analyzed. The results show a framework whose main axes are community development management and social and environmental impact management. In addition, it is shown four types of community relations strategies: shared value strategy, compensatory strategy, business‐oriented strategy, and compliance strategy.

The social management canvas for the mining industry: A Peruvian case study

The objective of this research is to integrate social management components into a solid framework that illustrates any mining company's level social management responsiveness from social conflict to community development. To this end, qualitative research was conducted using case study methodology. Data were gathered from interviews, recordings, and documents and then analyzed to generate a framework for analysis. The result was a social management canvas with nine blocks: the social value propositions, the definition of the community, community participation, community management, key social resources, key social activities, key social partners, the social investment structure, and social benefits.

Use of Social Networks in University Studies: A Peruvian Case Study

The aim of this study was to determine the degree of addiction to social networks among students at a Peruvian university. The sample consisted of 3026 students (1768 females, 58.4%; 1258 males, 41.6%) from three different fields of study: social sciences, engineering, and biomedical sciences. Data were collected using the Social Media Addiction Scale–Student Form (SMA–SF), which was previously adapted to the Peruvian context, establishing four dimensions: satisfaction/tolerance, problems, obsession with being informed and need to be connected. Among the results obtained, it is possible to highlight factors that influence the use of social networks, such as, that their use varied according to age, year of university studies, gender, and area of study; in addition, significant differences in gender were observed, with men using them more for various activities and expressing feelings about their use. Engineering and Social Science students were more likely to show feelings towards networks than Biomedical Science students, among others. Students in the 16–20 age range showed greater expressions of feelings about the use of social networks than those in other age ranges.

Reliability of cross-regional applications of global fire danger models: a Peruvian case study

BackgroundFire danger indexes (FDIs) are used as proxies for fire potential and are often developed for specific locations. For practical purposes, the extrapolation of the underlying calculations into novel locations is common, but it is generally uncertain if the relationships between FDIs and fire potential observed in the environment in which the index was developed are equally relevant in others. For example, although a topographically, ecologically, and climatologically complex country, f ire danger forecasts in Peru use a standard set of nationwide thresholds applied to the Fire Weather Index. In this study, we validate the underlying assumption that weather-fire relationships are spatially uniform within Peru by (1) making cross-regional comparisons of the statistical distributions of four FDIs—Burning Index, Energy Release Component, Fire Weather Index, and Keetch-Byram Drought Index, and (2) making cross-regional comparisons of the expected daily MODIS hotspot count percentiles conditioned on FDI values.ResultsSignificant regional differences in the distributions of daily FDI values were observed in every pair of regions within Peru, and with the exception of a pair of regions within the Amazon, little data (<90 days) were necessary to detect these differences. After controlling for FDI values and seasonal and annual effects with regressions, differences in predicted hotspot percentiles were common, differing by as much as 47 percentage points. Across the pairs of regions, the magnitude of these differences tended to decrease as climatic similarity increased, but some counterexamples were also apparent.ConclusionsThe noticeable differences in the distributions of daily FDI values suggest that a standard set of breakpoints may produce unreliable inferences regarding fire potential. We also find that even if the climatic conditions were similar across Peru, the same FDI values in two locations can produce substantially differing predictions of wildfire activity. This suggests that other factors besides FDI values can strongly mediate wildfire activity and that better fire potential predictions could be produced if these factors are accounted for.

Methodology for an automatic license plate recognition system using Convolutional Neural Networks for a Peruvian case study

In Peru, the number of vehicles increased in the last decade, therefore, the automatic control requires a long database with a specific license plate model. It should be used for registration, evaluation and information extraction associated to the cars to control access parking with a particular license plate characteristic, especially for government buildings, therefore, an automatic evaluation of the license plate should be more dynamic and effective than European systems due to quantity of characters, specific segmentation and additional information in the Peruvian plate. License plate recognition is a widely applied system in artificial vision for the automatic obtaining of car license plates. This research article seeks to design a Peruvian license plate recognition system to reduce the time of vehicle registration and it involves accurate recognition of the plate location and extraction. Image processing techniques are used using the Python programming language, together with the OpenCV library. In addition, with YoloV4 a neural network is trained to locate the area where the license plate is located to facilitate the application of an Optical Character Recognizer (OCR). Our findings are a new improvement and evaluation in the traditional license plate software, with a new Peruvian database, so it allowed extracting the registration information instantly with high accuracy evaluated with 200 to 1000 images; therefore, the new contribution is the improvement in the false positive values with an accuracy of 100%, rate of failure of 0% and the sensibility of 100% with a specificity of 100% (neural network trained with 1000 images); besides it is the database for the future works for Peruvian cars.

The Impacts of Carbon Taxes and Cash Transfers on Poverty and Inequality Across Years: A Peruvian Case Study

The Impacts of Carbon Taxes and Cash Transfers on Poverty and Inequality Across Years: A Peruvian Case Study

Teaching Design Management tools during a pandemic: A Peruvian case study

During the year 2020, the sanitary emergency norm forced universities to teach under the remote learning method, representing a challenge of designing courses that require high effectiveness. The purpose of this work is to present the strategies that were successfully applied during the teaching of design management tools for a building project, implemented in a course part of the Civil Engineering master of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. The methodology considered the effect of the Covid-19 Pandemic and had as objective to develop soft skills and employability, for which a balanced use of virtual platforms as well as software was proposed for videoconference and laboratories. On the other hand, during this course, students developed a proposal for integrated planning and management of the design phase using tools of norms and guidelines of project management systems such as ISO 21500, Lean Construction, Building Information Modeling, PMBOK of the Project Management Institute, Integrated Project Delivery, among others. Under this framework, the participation of stakeholders, multicriteria decision making, development of project design deliverables and project sequence was analyzed, which presented an important change under the collaborative contracts. The success of this methodology is reflected in the high quality of final papers and expositions, the result of surveys taken - effectiveness of 99%-, and in the improvement opportunities detected. This paper presents important information that may be adapted by academic and practitioners during the phases of the pandemic and post-pandemic.

Community partnership and ownership as key factors of community strategies. A Peruvian case study

The objective of this research is to determine the type of strategies used by mining companies based on the degree of economic community partnership and community ownership of the social project. Economic partnership can be understood to be the investment of community assets in social projects, and “community ownership of the project” can be understood to mean the community is taking charge of the social project, has given its consent, and feels it “owns” the project. The results illustrate four types of community relations strategies: competing, compliant, paternalistic, and sustainable.

Health system adaptation to climate change: a Peruvian case study.

Despite mitigation attempts, the trajectory of climate change remains on an accelerated path, with devastating health impacts. As a response to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change call for National Adaptation Plans, Peru has developed a national and decentralized regional adaptation plans. The purpose of this article is to understand the role and priority status of health within the adaptation planning and process. Peru was used as a case study to analyse the policy process in the creation of adaptation plans, encompassing the need to address climate change impacts on health with a particular focus on marginalized people. An actor, content and context policy analyses were conducted to analyse 17 out of 25 regional adaptation plans, which are available. The national adaptation plans (2002, 2015) do not include health as a priority or health adaptation strategies. In a decentralized health care system, regional plans demonstrate an increased improvement of complexity, systematization and structure over time (2009-17). In general, health has not been identified as a priority but as another area of impact. There is no cohesiveness between plans in format, content, planning and execution and only a limited consideration for marginalized populations. In conclusion, the regional departments of Peru stand on unequal footing regarding adapting the health sector to climate change. Findings in the strategies call into question how mitigation and adaption to climate change may be achieved. The lack of local research on health impacts due to climate change and a particular focus on marginalized people creates a policy vacuum. The Peruvian case study resembles global challenges to put health in the centre of national and regional adaptation plans. In-depth cross-country analysis is still missing but urgently needed to learn from other experiences.

Stakeholder perceptions of scientific knowledge in policy processes: A Peruvian case-study of forestry policy development

Abstract There is a need to better understand how scientific knowledge is used in decision-making. This is especially true in the Global South where policy processes often occur under high political uncertainty and where a shift toward multilevel governance and decision-making brings new opportunities and challenges. This study applies knowledge-policy models to analyse a forestry research project that succeeded in influencing national policy-making. We investigate how decisions were made, what factors affected and shaped the policy process, and how scientific knowledge was used. The results highlight the complexity of policy processes and the related challenges in crossing the science-policy interface. Perceptions of scientific knowledge differed greatly among stakeholders, and those perceptions strongly influenced how scientific knowledge was valued and used. The findings suggest a need for researchers to better understand the problem context to help design and implement research that will more effectively inform decision-making.

Life Cycle Assessment of rice husk as an energy source. A Peruvian case study

Energy consumption linked to non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and increases resource depletion. In this context, the use of agricultural solid residues such as rice husk, coffee husk, wheat straw, sugar cane bagasse, among others, has been widely studied as an alternative energy source in order to decrease the use of fossil fuels. In Peru, up to 693,308 metric tons of rice husk is generated annually and at present, 85% is burned in the open air or disposed in rivers, harming human health and contaminating our environment. On the other hand, official Peruvian energy policy is to incorporate the use of renewable energy sources, such as agricultural residues. Consequently, the aim of the study is to perform a technical and environmental assessment of the production of energy from rice husk as an alternative energy source to coal in Peru. Rice husk from Peru was characterized to identify its physical properties and chemical composition. In order to perform the environmental assessment, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was employed. LCA is a standardized methodology to identify and quantify the environmental impacts from initial obtention of materials, through production, distribution and use to final disposal (ISO 14040, 2006 and ISO 14044, 2006). Four scenarios were evaluated, varying in paddy rice yield and dryer efficiency. The results show that the environmental impacts to obtain 1 MJ from rice husk, including elements in the global warming, acidification and eutrophication categories, are less than that from 1 MJ obtained from coal, 97%, 88% and 80% less, respectively. However, the opposite was found in water depletion, with the use of coal to generate heat having a 98% better impact over rice husk.

Comparing three scheduling methods using BIM models in the Last Planner System

Abstract This article presents strategies for teaching scheduling methods such as takt-time, flowlines, and point-to-point precedence relations (PTPPRs) using building information modeling (BIM) models in the Last Planner System. This article is the extended version of the article entitled “Teaching Takt-Time, Flowline and Point-to-point Precedence Relations: A Peruvian Case Study,” which has been published in Procedia Engineering (Vol. 196, 2017, pages 666–673). A case study is conducted in final year students of civil engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. The mock-up project is an educational building that has high repetitive processes in the structural works phase. First, traditional tools such as Excel spreadsheets and 2D drawings were used to teach production system design with takt-time, flowlines, and PTPPR. Second, 3D and 4D models with Revit 2016 and Navisworks 2016 were used to integrate the previous schedules with a BIM model and to identify its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, Vico Office was used for the automation of schedules and comparison of the methods in 4D and 5D. This article describes the lectures, workshops, and simulations employed, as well as the feedback from students and researchers. The success of the teaching strategy is reflected in the survey responses from students and the final perceptions of the construction management tools presented.

Pensions, Peasants, and the Informal Economy: Family and Livelihood in Contemporary Peru

A Peruvian case study explores how urban informal workers negotiate their livelihoods as they age, highlighting reciprocity among urban informal workers, retired formal sector workers, and peasants in a pattern of rural-urban circular migration. Labor-intensive mining in the twentieth century created a proletarian workforce that included men from the peasant community of Allpachico. Their wages became an anchor for kin-linked clusters of households. Now, despite an economic boom, the lack of formal jobs forces younger Allpachiqueños to undertake precarious and informal work. Resource-sector-funded state social spending, such as through state-administered pensions for retired workers and the elderly poor, has replaced wages as a stable source of cash. This state mediation between the technology-intensive resource sector and citizens elicits suspicion and uncertainty. Dispossessed of the right to work and subjected to conditions of eligibility for social programs, urban informal workers continue to rely on kin and community. Un estudio de caso peruano explora cómo los trabajadores informales urbanos negocian sus formas de ganarse la vida conforma envejecen, y destaca la reciprocidad entre dichos trabajadores, los trabajadores jubilados del sector formal y los campesinos en un patrón de migración circular del campo a la ciudad. Durante el siglo XX, la minería intensiva dio lugar a una fuerza de trabajo proletaria que incluía a hombres de la comunidad campesina de Allpachico. Sus salarios se convirtieron en una forma de anclaje para grupos de hogares con vínculos consanguíneos. Ahora, a pesar del auge económico, la falta de empleos formales oblige a los jóvenes de Allpachico a trabajar de manera precaria e informal. El gasto social estatal financiado por los recursos del sector, como las pensiones estatales para trabajadores jubilados y los ancianos pobres, ha sustituido los salarios como fuente estable de efectivo. Dicha mediación estatal entre un sector de recursos con tecnología intensiva y la ciudadanía provoca sospechas e incertidumbre. Sin derecho a un trabajo y sometidos a los criterios impuestos de admisibilidad para recibir asistencia social, los trabajadores informales urbanos continúan dependiendo de sus familiares y comunidad.

Teaching Takt-Time, Flowline, and Point-to-point Precedence Relations: A Peruvian Case Study

Over the last few years, Point-to-Point Precedence Relations (PTPPR) has emerged as a significant theme in the construction industry, indicating that point-to-point relations are better than Critical Path Method (CPM), both theoretically and practically. As the same time, research has focused on takt-time and flowlines. Both methods have been compared and integrated. This article presents strategies for teaching the integration of these popular methods in construction-management courses to undergraduate students of civil engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. The case study is a community-house project that has highly repetitive processes in the structural works phase. First, we used traditional tools such as Excel spreadsheets and 2D drawings to teach production-system design with takt-time, flowlines, and PTPPR. Second, we used 3D and 4D models with Revit and Navisworks to integrate the previous takt-time schedule with a BIM model and identify its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we used Vico Office for the automation of schedules and comparison of the methods in 4D and 5D. The article describes the lectures, workshops, and simulations employed, as well as feedback from students and instructors. The success of this teaching strategy is reflected in the survey responses from students and the opportunities for improvement identified.

“La Plata Llega Sola”

Corruption is a global problem that feeds on national and localopportunities. Instead of the prevailing attempts to reduce anti-corruptionstrategies to the protection of business interests, corruption needs to be seenas a sociopolitical relation that emanates from the convergence betweenmore immediate circumstances and long-term institutional tendencies.Corruption is, therefore, a phenomenon with synchronic and diachronicdimensions. The complexity of corruption is examined in relation to theorganization of Peruvian state and society, in particular considering therecent liberalization reforms and investments in the water industry of Lima.The Peruvian case study shows how corruption becomes a productive forcefrom the perspective of conservative elites and the maintenance of politicalhegemony.

Inclusive Innovations Through Social and Solidarity Economy Initiatives: A Process Analysis of a Peruvian Case Study

This paper seeks to explain the process by which an innovative social and solidarity economy initiative allowed a marginalized population that had no say in development activities to meet certain urgent needs and bring about sustainable social and institutional change. The article looks at the case of a solid waste management program initiated by a group of residents and structured around a third sector organization in Cerro el Pino, a hillside slum located in the La Victoria District of Lima, Peru. We analyze this project through a processual model that focuses on three dimensions: context, process, and consequences. The results highlight the role of social and human capital and the presence of various types of knowledge in the implementation of an initiative driven by locals.