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Stated willingness-to-pay for organic fruit and pesticide ban: an evaluation using both web-based and face-to-face interviewing
No full textIncome growth in highly industrialised countries has resulted in consumer choice of foodstuffs no longer being primarily influenced by basic factors such as price and organoleptic features. From this perspective, the present study sets out to evaluate how and to what extent consumer choice is influenced by the possible negative effects on health and environment caused by the consumption of fruit containing deposits of pesticides and chemical products. The study describes the results of a survey which explores and estimates consumer willingness to pay in two forms: a yearly contribution for the abolition of the use of pesticides on fruit, and a premium price for organically grown apples guaranteed by a certified label. The same questionnaire was administered to two samples. The first was a conventional face-to-face survey of customers of large retail outlets located around Bologna (Italy); the second was an Internet sample. The discrete choice data were analysed by means of probit and tobit models to estimate the utility consumers attribute to organically grown fruit and to a pesticide ban. The research also addresses questions of validity and representativeness as a fundamental problem in web-based surveys
Willingness to pay for fluoride-free water in Tanzania: disentangling the importance of behavioural factors
Full text linkApproximately 200 million people, mainly concentrated in rural areas of the Great East African Rift Valley, suffer from fluorosis caused by excess of fluoride naturally contained in water. This study employs the RANAS (Risk, Attitude, Norm, Ability, Self-regulation) model to understand how behavioural factors influence Tanzanian rural communities' willingness to pay for fluoride-free water obtained from a new defluoridator device. Results show that perceived risk, knowledge, attitudes and descriptive norms significantly influence the adoption of the proposed healthy behaviour. Policy implications are discussed taking into account how rural communities could achieve equitable and affordable access to safe water
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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Factors influencing the relationship between fluoride in drinking water and dental fluorosis: a ten-year systematic review and meta-analysis
Full text linkThe relationship between naturally fluoridated groundwater and dental fluorosis has received large attention from researchers around the world. Despite recognition that several factors influence this relationship, there is a lack of systematic studies analyzing the heterogeneity of these results. To fill such a gap, this study performs a systematic review and meta-analysis to understand which factors influence this relationship and how. Selected studies were sampled between 2007 and 2017 from Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus using keywords and Boolean operators. Results of the systematic review show that dental fluorosis affects individuals of all ages, with the highest prevalence below 11, while the impact of other factors (gender, environmental conditions, diet and dental caries) was inconclusive. Meta-regression analysis, based on information collected through systematic review, indicates that both fluoride in drinking water and temperature influence dental fluorosis significantly and that these studies might be affected by publication bias. Findings show that fluoride negatively affects people's health in less developed countries. The conclusions discuss policy tools and technological innovations that could reduce fluoride levels below that of the WHO (<1.5 mg/L)
Application of Octacalcium Phosphate with an Innovative Household-scale Defluoridator Prototype and Behavioral Determinants of its Adoption in Rural Communities of the East African Rift Valley
Full text linkNatural fluoride contamination of drinking water is a serious issue that affects several countries of the world. Its negative health impact is well documented in the East African Rift Valley, where water consumption with fluoride ((Formula presented.)) concentration greater than 1.5 mg/L can cause fluorosis to people. Within the framework of the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 FLOWERED project, we first designed an effective defluoridation device based on innovative application of octacalcium phosphate (OCP) and then explored its acceptance within rural communities. The prototype (FLOWERED Defluoridator Device [FDD]) essentially is composed of a 20-L tank and a recirculating pump that guarantees the interaction between water and OCP. The device is powered by a car battery for a fixed pumping working time using a fixed amount of OCP for every defluoridation cycle. The results of tests performed in the rural areas of Tanzania show that a standardized use of the prototype can lower the dissolved (Formula presented.) from an initial concentration of 21 mg/L to below the World Health Organization (WHO) drinkable limit of 1.5 mg/L in 2 h without secondary negative effects on water quality. The approximate cost of this device is around US0.03/L of treated water. As with any device, acceptance requires a behavioral change on behalf of rural communities that needed to be investigated. To this end, we piloted a survey to explore how psychological and socioeconomic factors influence the consumption of fluoride-free water. Results show that the adoption of FDD and OCP is more appealing to members of the rural communities who are willing to pay more and have a high consumption of water. Moreover, we suggest that given the low level of knowledge about fluorosis diseases, the government should introduce educational programs to make rural communities aware of the negative health consequences. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2020;00:1–15. © 2020 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)
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