Social Consensus Research Articles

Restitutio Interruptus: Minority Churches, Property Rights and Europeanisation in Romania

The article aims to explain the changing dynamics of property restitution to historical Hungarian churches in Romania. While in the early 2000s most claims by these churches were approved, after 2010 most of their petitions were denied when the courts started questioning these churches’ historical property rights. It is argued here that this jurisprudential shift can be explained by the changing political environment after Romania’s EU accession, when the courts deferred to the prevailing social consensus, reflecting the unpopularity of restitution to minority churches amongst the Romanian public.

Understanding the Paradoxical Effects of (Environmental) Activists and Their Discourses: When and How are They Penalized for Seeking Change?

ABSTRACT Activists are often negatively stereotyped and appraised, yet they can also influence the change they seek. This suggests that the dimensions and processes involved in their stereotyping and their influence are still unclear, as are the impacts of their argumentative style and the level of social consensus about the cause they defend. We focus on clarifying through an experimental study (n = 226): (1) how the argumentative style – radical or moderate – environmental activists employ and the level of societal consensus about their cause affect how they are viewed in three stereotypical dimensions (warmth, competence, and trustworthiness); (2) how these dimensions are associated with a general appraisal of the activist and with (3) respondents’ pro-environmental behavioral intentions. Results both corroborate and challenge previous findings, suggesting that activists are penalized on warmth, but not competence, that trustworthiness elicited by (radical) activists, and societal consensus play relevant roles. Suggestions for more nuanced communication strategies informed by these findings are discussed.

An Exploratory Study on Accompanying Companion Animals during Disaster Evacuations

This study deduced improvement measures such as institutional deficiencies and improvement points for accompanying animals during disaster evacuation. As a result of using the AHP analysis technique for experts, the most important factors were factors that improved public awareness, such as developing promotional contents for companion animals and strengthening trust in the government. The population living with companion animals in Korea is continuously increasing, and it is judged that the issue of companion animals accompanying disaster shelters in the event of a disaster will become an issue in the future disaster and response field. Social consensus on companion animal standards is needed, and it is necessary to establish the concept of livestock and companion animal ranges and boundaries. This study is meaningful in that it presents the direction of experts' perceptions and the government's direction for measuring items of system and policy improvement, operational plan improvement, and public awareness improvement in companion animal accompaniment in disaster evacuation following a disaster.

Eight Strategies to Engineer Acceptance of Human Germline Modifications.

Until recently, scientific consensus held firm that genetically manipulated embryos created through methods including Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy or human germline genome editing should not be used to initiate a pregnancy. In countries that have relevant laws pertaining to heritable human germline modifications, the vast majority prohibit or restrict this practice. In the last several years, scholars have observed a transformation of scientific and policy restrictions with insistent calls for creating a regulatory pathway. Multiple stakeholders highlight the role of social consensus and public engagement for governance of heritable human germline modifications. However, in the drive to gain public acceptance and lift restrictions, some proponents provide distorted or misleading narratives designed to influence public perception and incrementally shift the consensus. This article describes eight discrete strategies that proponents employ to influence framing, sway public opinion, and revise policymaking of human germline modifications in a manner that undermines honest engagement.

The #longcovid revolution: A reflexive thematic analysis

Research has identified long COVID as the first virtual patient-made condition (Callard and Perego, 2021). It originated from Twitter users sharing their experiences using the hashtag #longcovid. Over the first two years of the pandemic, long COVID affected as many as 17 million people in Europe (WHO, 2023). This study focuses on the initial #longcovid tweets in 2020 (as previous studies have focused on 2021–2022), from the first tweet in May to August 2020, when the World Health Organization recognised the condition.We collected over 31,000 tweets containing #longcovid from Twitter. Using Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis (2020), informed by the first author's experience of long COVID and drawing on Ian Hacking's perspective on social constructionism (1999), we identified different grades of social constructionism in the tweets. The themes we generated reflected that long COVID was a multi-system, cyclical condition initially stigmatised and misunderstood. These findings align with existing literature (Ladds et al., 2020; Rushforth et al., 2021).We add to the existing literature by suggesting that Twitter users raised awareness of long COVID by providing social consensus on their long COVID symptoms. Despite the challenge for traditional evidence-based medicine to capture the varied and intermittent symptoms, the social consensus highlighted that these variations were a consistent and collective experience. This social consensus fostered a collective social movement, overcoming stigma through supportive tweets and highlighting their healthcare needs using #researchrehabrecognition. The #longcovid movement's work was revolutionary, as it showed a revolutionary grade of social constructionism, because it brought about real-world change for long COVID sufferers in terms of recognition and the potential for healthcare provisions.Twitter users' accounts expose the limitations of traditional evidence-based medicine in identifying new conditions. Future research on novel conditions should consider various research paradigms, such as Evidence-Based Medicine Plus (Greenhalgh et al., 2022).

Domestic environmental impacts of OFDI: City-level evidence from China

With the increasingly severe ecological environment, seeking sustainable development between the economy and the environment has become the main social consensus. Under this background, this study explores the domestic environmental impacts of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) activities, using the panel data of 222 Chinese cities from 2007 to 2019. The following results are obtained: (1) With every 1% increase in OFDI flows, the overall domestic environmental quality can get improved by 1.55%. (2) The home-country environmental effect differs among cities due to the economic-regional factors, being more evident in the eastern region cities, highly industrialized cities, and cities with better business facilitation. (3) Although a spatial relationship exists between cities, no obvious evidence supports the spatial spillover phenomenon. Domestic environmental quality is mainly improved by its own OFDI activities. This study has important practical significance for international investment activities and home-country environment protection with several related policy implications.

Civil discourse as a source of social consensus: significance in wartime

Civil discourse as a source of social consensus: significance in wartime

Labor Recruitment and Coloniality in the Agricultural Sector: On Plantation Archives, Underclassing, and Postcolonial Masculinities in Switzerland

This study provides insights into mechanisms of underclassing in modern society based on interviews with recruiters of agricultural workers in Switzerland. I show that narratives that racialize and ethnicize workers are nurtured by colonial legacies. This reveals that plantation practices and discourses have shaped Switzerland and remain as powerful means of enforcing agricultural racial capitalism. Furthermore, I argue that postcolonial masculinities drive these intersubjective relations. Tracing and situating these postcolonial subject formations on farms allows one to see how caring narratives entangle with a dehumanizing grammar and how this colonial logic is incorporated into social consensus on extractive labor practices. Finally, this reveals how coloniality operates in a postcolonial country that claims political neutrality.

How does the opening of China's high-speed rail affect the spatial mismatch of haze pollution and economic growth?

A better reconciliation of haze pollution and economic growth has become the social consensus in China. The development of China's economy and air quality will be significantly impacted by its efforts to create high-speed rail (HSR). Based on panel data from 265 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this paper investigates how the opening of HSR affects the spatial mismatch of haze pollution and economic growth by using the spatial mismatch index model, multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model, and intermediary effect model. We find that the spatial mismatch in China has an overall decreasing trend. And its spatial agglomeration is dominated by low levels. Further empirical analysis shows that HSR opening can effectively restrain the spatial mismatch. Even after some robustness tests and endogenous treatment, the conclusion is still valid. In addition, population density, FDI, and industrial structure are also explicit factors affecting the spatial mismatch. Second, there is significant heterogeneity in the impact. This is reflected in the fact that HSR opening can suppress the spatial mismatch of service-oriented cities and the eastern region, while other cities and regions have no noticeable effect. Third, spatial transfer of haze pollution (STHP) and balanced development of economic growth (BEG) are two important conduction paths for the opening of HSR to affect the spatial mismatch. Specifically, HSR opening can constrain the spatial mismatch by inhibiting STHP and BEG. Based on the above findings, recommendations related to promoting a better harmony between haze pollution and economic growth are proposed.

Economic value of the development of nuclear power plant decommissioning technology in South Korea

The nuclear power plants (NPPs) worldwide operating for more than 30 years have reached over 50% of the total and have entered the deterioration stage in earnest. Thus, the requirement and demand for NPP decommissioning technology are expected to continue to increase in the future. The primary purpose of this research is to estimate the national willingness to pay (WTP) for the development of NPP decommissioning technology. To this end, we used the contingent valuation method with survey data from 1,028 Korean respondents. It was found that 812 out of 1,028 respondents were willing to pay for the development of NPP decommissioning technology. The mean WTP was estimated at KRW 14173.86 (USD 10.87), and it was also found that respondents with a higher level of knowledge of NPP decommissioning had higher WTPs. The analysis shows that additional policies and projects to boost public acceptance of NPP decommissioning must be preempted to achieve a suitable level of social consensus to promote the development of NPP decommissioning technology in Korea.

Shaping individual paths for decision-making: a fuzzy set approach of religious and humanistic beliefs leading to the (non)acceptance of euthanasia

PurposeWhile the influence of individual beliefs on decision-making has been widely acknowledged, the interaction of different types of beliefs remains an under-researched topic. This study analyses how the simultaneous influence of religious beliefs and nonreligious beliefs shapes individual decision-making. This study aims to contribute to inform organizational decisions on topics potentially associated with these two types of beliefs, including corporate social responsibility matters. This study also aims to provide insights to ethical decision-making in situations of absence of social consensus, a subject that is relevant for individuals, organizations and policymakers.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to identify how different configurational groupings of Christian beliefs and humanistic beliefs lead to the acceptance or nonacceptance of euthanasia in a sample of individuals who identify as Catholic.FindingsAmong individuals sharing a Catholic religious affiliation, the authors identify three different configurations of beliefs – Cultural Catholics (religious beliefs are absent and humanistic beliefs are present), Observant Catholics (religious beliefs are present and humanistic beliefs are irrelevant) and Secular Catholics (both religious beliefs and humanistic beliefs are present).Originality/valuePrevious research has put forward the role of religion-related variables, such as religious affiliation and level of religiosity, for views on euthanasia. This study provides a more detailed analysis of the role of belief systems, identifying how different configurational groupings of beliefs lead to a decision grounded in moral and ethical considerations but for which there is an absence of social consensus.

A Study on Understanding Placeness and Immigrant-related Social Issues in Rural Areas and Determining the Overarching Characteristics

Background and objective: The influx of foreign workers has also increased in South Korea over the past 20 years due to the global labour movement between countries and the labour shortage caused by the aging of South Korea. In the case of rural areas, the youth age group was insufficient, and the aging population was more serious, so the dependence on foreign manpower was inevitably higher. In rural areas through the influx of foreign workers, spaces reflecting their culture are emerging. The purpose of this study is to provide implications for resolving issues of overseas migrants by analysing recent Korean and foreign research trends and characteristics of overseas migrants in rural areas, with a focus on placeness.Methods: To address the aim this study utilised bibliometric analysis employing visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer program for overseas research collected from Scopus document search and Netminer program for South Korea research drawn from Korean Citation Index (KCI) database.Results: This study determined that first, since the 2000s, there has been an increase in related overseas research. However, there were only 382 studies covering all of ‘place,’ ‘immigrant,’ and ‘rural,’ and the number was even lower in South Korea. Second, in research on overseas immigrants in rural areas based on place, community and health were identified as major issues. Third, the difference in research issues between overseas and South Korea was analysed by the degree of community and the approach to health issues. As a result, this study concluded that social inclusion should be addressed first through community and health issues.Conclusion: Through research characteristics related to ‘place’, ‘immigrant’ and ‘rural’ at home and abroad, the placeness of overseas immigrants in rural areas has brought up issues of community and health. However, more importantly, concluding remark is that social consensus on social inclusion should be prioritised to contextualise these issues.

위기아동 보호를 위한 가정위탁제도의 활성화에 관한 연구

The home consignment system provides protection for children exposed to crisis for a certain period of time, and is a necessary system for children subject to crisis protection to live in foster homes for a certain period of time. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said that from June 22, 2022, children subject to protection can be extended to 25 years old (to 24 years old) at their will, allowing them to enter society after fully preparing for self-reliance. Until now, children living in child care facilities had difficulty living alone at an early age, regardless of the degree of self-reliance preparation, except in some exceptional cases (schools below university, vocational education and training), and at the age of 18. With this revision, if the self-reliance ability is insufficient during the extension of the protection period, it is possible to determine whether to terminate the protection measures by comprehensively determining one's intention and level of self-reliance preparation. However, consignment families still lack childcare support funds, supply and demand costs far from reality, and supply and demand management systems. It is not easily accessible to general families, such as strict management of related agencies, notification of the return of supervisory agencies to the original course, qualification of foster families, screening, and management issues. It has been almost 20 years since the home consignment system was established, but it is still a big homework for us. The United States goes through complex procedures and screening to become a foster family, but because there is no social consensus on the importance of family consignment, it provides various social services to foster families such as housekeeper dispatch services, day care, and psychological counseling. The number of protected children is increasing rapidly due to repeated child abuse, and the difficulties of children already living in facilities have long been discussed. It is urgent to protect children in crisis by revitalizing the foster family system suitable for our reality.

AI 로봇세의 도입에 관한 연구

The development of AI robots leads to a decrease in tax revenue due to a decrease in earned income due to the loss of human jobs, an increase in social security costs for unemployment benefits and retraining, and furthermore, as the income gap widens, social problems caused by income inequality are worried about As a result, continuous discussions are being made in countries around the world about the introduction of AI robot tax, and Korea is also studying with interest in what AI robot tax is. Discussion on AI robot tax should start with what AI robots are and whether they can legally be taxpayers or subject to taxation. Depending on the definition, the taxation system of AI robot tax is quite different. First of all, a robot with artificial intelligence, that is, an AI robot, refers to an intelligent robot in which AI technology is applied to the robot. AI robots have abilities similar to humans to some extent. If the AI ​​robot tax is introduced because it replaces humans, it should be reviewed whether it will become a taxpayer with the same legal status as humans. To this end, AI robots must be recognized for their legal status under civil law. However, the current civil law does not grant AI robots the same legal status as humans. Therefore, it is still premature to tax AI robots as taxpayers under the tax law, that is, to impose AI robot taxes like income tax or corporate tax. If so, if robots are treated like automated equipment in industrial settings, AI robots will be subject to taxation. In response, there is an objection that taxing AI robots introduced for technological innovation may undermine the country's future competitiveness in industrial development and result in a violation of tax equity between the AI ​​robot industry and other industries. Therefore, even in order to solve these problems, it is important to set clear standards when introducing AI robot taxes. For example, the problem of how to set the tax base for AI robot tax must also be resolved. In other words, it depends on whether it is based on the number of workers who are fired if it is not the loss of employment of workers due to AI robots, or whether they are simply taxed as assets. Therefore, since it is too much to apply in the current tax law, it is desirable to introduce the AI ​​robot tax based on social consensus through continuous discussion.

Research on Integrated Resorts (IR) and the Tourism Strategy Choice of Singapore

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to trace the process by which Singapore considered and reached social consensus on the development of integrated resorts (IR), including casinos. Additionally, this study aims to derive policy implications as a systemic basis for future IR development in Japan. Design/Methodology/Approach – A meta-analysis was conducted to analyze the context and content of policy decisions in detail, focusing on the theoretical discussion of the characteristics of Singaporean IR, and the political and social decision-making process surrounding the introduction of the IR business. Findings – The Singaporean government demonstrated an inclusive policy decision-making process that convinced various stakeholders, especially civil society and the religious community, on the introduction of casinos. In addition, to minimize the social side effects of introducing casinos, the government actively provided safety measures, and pursued a strategy to lead investors to invest a large amount of money in Singapore’s tourism infrastructure along with license renewal negotiations. Research Implications – By analyzing the policy compliance process of citizens and the effective use of policy framing regarding politically and socially controversial IR business, this study helps to understand the policy decision-making process concerning IR. Furthermore, through the successful case of Singapore, this study can provide a framework that can be applied systematically for future IR business development in Japan.

Потенціал громадських організацій у формуванні правової ідеології українського соціуму

The article reveals the potential of public organizations in shaping the legal ideology of Ukrainian society. Revealing the role of the activities of public organizations in the formation of the legal ideology of Ukrainian society, the following functions of them in this process are determined: civil and professional socialization; communication function; regulatory, organizational, oppositional, protective, educational and personnel functions. The article found out that among the most popular ways of forming the legal ideology of Ukrainian society, which are used by public organizations and are extremely significant in military conditions, the following should be singled out: volunteer and charitable activities, educational and scientific work, establishing international relations, providing support socially vulnerable citizens, internally displaced persons, victims of military operations, and military personnel and their families. The article emphasizes that the potential of public organizations in the formation of legal ideology lies primarily in achieving general social consensus, social compromise, on the basis of an established, integral vision of the role of law in the state and civil society, as well as in determining the main goals, methods and mechanisms of legal regulation. One of the obligations of the state in relation to public organizations is the regulatory and legal support of their activities and interaction with public authorities, in particular, the adoption of special laws that determine their legal status.

Structure of Society From the Rugby to the Rubik’s Cube: A Stability Perspective on Social Structural Transformation

The Rugby-shaped society is considered a nearly ideal type of social structure, becoming an essentially stereotyped elite theory in the global mainstream sociology, which is fundamentally based on the practice and theoretically repeated confirmation of the super-stability function of the Rugby-shaped society in developed capitalist countries. As a result, the Rugby-shaped society has become a theoretical goal of social transformation and a general social consensus. The feasibility of localized social groupings exhibiting a Rugby-shaped structure is not necessarily adequately replicable under the condition of closer global social linkages, and the occupation-based social class structure is not always hyper-stable. The more multidimensional Rubik’s cube society contains both uncertainty and hyper-stability, and the proposed Rugby-shaped society for China should take into account the more complex influencing factors in the systemic global social structure of a Rubik’s cube society. Non-occupational factors may also increase the risk of social instability.

New approach for quality function deployment based on multi-granular unbalanced linguistic information and consensus reaching process

As a widely used product improvement technique, the quality function deployment (QFD) can satisfy customer requirements and realize higher customer satisfaction by translating them into corresponding engineering characteristics. Nonetheless, two basic challenges hinder the effective application of QFD are the imprecise relationship assessments between customer requirements and engineering characteristics because of the uncertainty inherent in human judgements and the unreasonable importance ranking of engineering characteristics due to the heterogeneity of domain experts. In response, this paper puts forward a new hybrid QFD approach for the priority of engineering characteristics to satisfy customer requirements. First, multi-granular unbalanced linguistic term sets are utilized to describe the vague relational evaluations between customer requirements and engineering characteristics. Then, the opinion evolution social network consensus reaching model is employed to assist QFD experts in deriving consensual relational evaluations. Taking the conflict customer requirements into consideration, the combined compromise solution method is adopted and extended to derive the priority orders of engineering characteristics. To illustrate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed QFD approach, a product development case about low pressure pulse filter is provided with comparative analysis and simulation experiments. The results show that the proposed approach can represent complex linguistic relationship assessments of experts and determine more accurate priority orders of engineering characteristics in QFD.

Social Science and Consensus in Estimates of the US Jewish Population: Response to Sasson and DellaPergola

In response to Isaac Sasson and Sergio DellaPergola’s commentaries on our assessment of the validity of the Pew Research Center's 2020 estimate of 7.5 million US Jewish adults and children (Tighe et al. 2022), we address key points of agreement and contention in the validity of the estimate; in particular, how the Jewish population is identified and defined. We argue that Pew’s definition of the Jewish population is consistent with major studies of American Jewry, from NJPS 1990 to recent local Jewish community studies. Applying a consistent definition that includes the growing group of “Jews of no religion” with one Jewish parent, as Pew Research Center does, allows for a faithful comparison across national and local studies and a more accurate understanding of levels of Jewish engagement and expressions of Jewish identity.

긍정심리자본과 사회적지지가 행복감에 미치는 영향 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of social support on the influence of positive psychological capital on happiness in middle-aged women engaged in the emotional service industry. To this end, a survey was conducted on middle-aged women (40s-50s) engaged in the appraisal service industry nationwide for 6 days from December 17 to 22, 2022, and as a result, 300 valid surveys were used in this research analysis. As a result of the analysis, first, it was analyzed that the higher the positive psychological capital, the greater the positive (+) effect on happiness. Second, social support was analyzed to have a significant positive (+) effect on happiness. Third, the mediating action of social support between positive psychological capital and happiness was found to be significant. In other words, it was shown that the mediating explanatory power of social support had a very significant effect on the influence relationship between positive psychological capital and happiness. These results show the necessity of preparing policies through strengthening relationships with family and friends and forming social consensus to support them in order for the positive psychological capital of middle-aged women engaged in the emotional service industry to be the driving force of social support to increase happiness. Based on these research results, the theoretical and practical implications of social support to improve the happiness of middle-aged women engaged in the emotional service industry were presented.