A social-ecological analysis of ecosystem services supply and trade-offs in European wood-pastures

Los pastizales de bosques son sistemas socio-ecológicos complejos (SES), que son el producto de la interacción a largo plazo entre la sociedad y el paisaje que la rodea. Tradicionalmente caracterizados por una gestión multifuncional de baja intensidad que mejoraba una amplia gama de servicios de los ecosistemas (SA), la gestión actual de las explotaciones agrícolas ha cambiado hacia modelos de explotación más intensivos. Este estudio evalúa la oferta de SA en cuatro áreas de estudio dominadas por los pastizales de bosques manejados en España, Suecia y Rumania. Sobre la base de 144 encuestas en granjas y el uso de técnicas multivariadas, caracterizamos el manejo y la estructura de las granjas en las áreas de estudio e identificamos las compensaciones en el suministro de SA asociados a este manejo. Vinculamos estas compensaciones a múltiples factores que caracterizan la gestión de la tierra: económicos, sociales, ambientales, tecnológicos y de gobierno. Finalmente, analizamos cómo los valores y perspectivas de los propietarios de la tierra tienen un efecto en las decisiones de gestión. Los resultados muestran un patrón diferenciado de la oferta de SA en las cuatro áreas de estudio. Identificamos cuatro tipos de compensaciones en la oferta de SA que aparecen dependiendo de lo que está siendo promovido por la administración de la finca y que están asociadas con diferentes dimensiones del manejo de los pastizales de bosques: compensaciones relacionadas con la productividad, compensaciones relacionadas con la producción de cultivos, compensaciones relacionadas con la multifuncionalidad y compensaciones relacionadas con la accesibilidad de la finca. Estas compensaciones se ven influidas por complejas interacciones entre las propiedades del CSE, que tienen una influencia directa en las perspectivas y motivaciones de los propietarios de las tierras. Las conclusiones de este documento hacen avanzar la comprensión de la dinámica entre los agro-ecosistemas y la sociedad y pueden servir de base para las políticas agrícolas y de conservación basadas en el sistema.Wood-pastures are complex social-ecological systems (SES), which are the product of long-term interaction between society and its surrounding landscape. Traditionally characterized by multifunctional low-intensity management that enhanced a wide range of ecosystem services (ES), current farm management has shifted toward more intensive farm models. This study assesses the supply of ES in four study areas dominated by managed wood-pastures in Spain, Sweden, and Romania. On the basis of 144 farm surveys and the use of multivariate techniques, we characterize farm management and structure in the study areas and identify the trade-offs in ES supply associated with this management. We link these trade-offs to multiple factors that characterize the landholding: economic, social, environmental, technological, and governance. Finally, we analyze how landholders’ values and perspectives have an effect on management decisions. Results show a differentiated pattern of ES supply in the four study areas. We identified four types of trade-offs in ES supply that appear depending on what is being promoted by the farm management and that are associated with different dimensions of wood-pasture management: productivity-related trade-offs, crop production–related trade-offs, multifunctionality-related trade-offs, and farm accessibility–related trade-offs. These trade-offs are influenced by complex interactions between the properties of the SES, which have a direct influence on landholders’ perspectives and motivations. The findings of this paper advance the understanding of the dynamics between agroecosystems and society and can inform system-based agricultural and conservation policies.• European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme. Grant nº 613520 (Project AGFORWARD)peerReviewe

Quantity versus quality in publication activity: knowledge production at the regional level

This study contributes to the ongoing debate regarding the balance between quality and quantity in research productivity and publication activity. Using empirical regional knowledge production functions, we establish a significant correlation between R&D spending and research output, specifically publication productivity, while controlling for patenting activity and socioeconomic factors. Our focus is on the dilemma of research quantity versus quality, which is analysed in the context of regional thematic specialization using spatial lags. When designing policies and making forecasts, it is important to consider the quality of research measured by established indicators. In this study, we examine the dual effect of research quality on publication activity. We identify two groups of quality factors: those related to the quality of journals and those related to the impact of publications. On average, these factors have different influences on quantitative measures. The quality of journals shows a negative relationship with quantity, indicating that as journal quality increases, the number of publications decreases. On the other hand, the impact of publications can be approximated by an inverse parabolic shape, with a positive decreasing slope within a common range of values. This duality in the relationship between quality factors and quantitative measures may explain some of the significant variations in conclusions found in the literature. We compare several models that explore factors influencing publication activity using a balanced panel dataset of Russian regions from 2009 to 2021. Additionally, we propose a novel approach using thematic scientometric parameters as a special type of proximity measure between regions in thematic space. Incorporating spatial spillovers in thematic space allows us to account for potential cross-sectional dependence in regional data

The Innovation Waltz: Unpacking Developers’ Response to Market Feedback and Its Effects on App Performance

To remain competitive in the intensely competitive mobile app market, developers often rely on user feedback to fuel the innovation process. Past studies, however, have rarely examined the impact of developers’ incremental innovation strategies by treating app innovation as a continuous process. This knowledge gap prompted us to advance a framework of developers’ incremental innovation strategies comprising four coping strategies: sailing, optimizing, supplementing, and patching. Employing a multi-state Markov model to capture the probability of a developer employing an incremental innovation strategy in response to distinct types of market feedback during the app innovation process, we analyze data sourced from the Android app store that consists of 4,583 apps, 29,307 updates, and 231,817 reviews. We discovered that market feedback affects the adoption of the four incremental innovation strategies differently. Additionally, we found that sailing, supplementing, and optimizing strategies boost app downloads, while supplementing, optimizing, and patching strategies improve app ratings

Why We Use a New Currency: The Role of Trust and Control in Explaining the Perception and Usage of Bitcoin

Social media, e-commerce, global peer-to-peer technologies, and the near ubiquity of computers and smartphones allow people to interact, trust, and exchange value across traditional socio-economic control boundaries and over significant distances. Since the creation in 2008 of a new cryptographic currency system called Bitcoin, a financial technology market sector of about 250 billion USD has rapidly emerged, raising questions about the nature of currency in society and whether new types of non-national money are warranted and viable. This debate has pitted heterodox economic interests against orthodox economic interests while it has rekindled interest in theories that view money as a social construct with a multitude of potential forms beyond ‘state’ or fiat money, and in forms that are increasingly predicted to be purely digital in the future. This study seeks to explain the policy, social, and economic factors that underlie perceptions and usage of these new currency types. First, I develop a novel theoretical matrix of trust and control to explain the conditions under which people choose to use any monetary system. Then, I test this theory with a quantitative analysis of policy, trust, socio-economic, and cultural factors affecting the perceptions and usage of the new currency systems of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in 28 countries. This analysis draws on usage metrics recorded from the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency network systems, attitudinal data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS), and a proprietary survey of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage in 15 countries conducted by Ipsos for the behavioral economics research department at ING Group. I performed principal component analyses (PCA) to reduce factors among collected metrics, and I then integrated the findings of the PCA into a series of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions along three primary vectors: trust, control, and culture. Based on my empirical findings, I group these new currency system users’ personality perspectives into four categories: Evangelists, Pragmatists, Skeptics, and Speculators. The analysis finds Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage are not correlated with the strictness or laxness of public policies concerning Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The analysis also finds Bitcoin interest as measured by Google Search Trends is not correlated to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage but is correlated to several lower socio-economic metrics related to crime and lack of confidence in law enforcement and government control. There is more favorable perception and usage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in countries with less developed socio-economic profiles, and less favorable perceptions and usage in countries with more developed socio-economic profiles. There is more favorable perception and usage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in countries with aggregate lower generalized trust and lower democratic tendencies, and less favorable perceptions and usage in countries with aggregate higher generalized trust and higher democratic tendencies. Overall, the findings show the extent to which trends in usage and perception of the emergent currencies of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are associated with basic cultural and attitudinal tendencies that are not necessarily related to public policy or other typical monetary theory-based controls. I conclude that a matrix of trust and control is effective at demonstrating how sociological factors explain the landscape of historical, extant, and emergent currency systems and this matrix predicts where Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies situate in society relative to these other currency systems

Influence Of Developer Sentiment And Stack Overflow Developers On Open Source Project Success: An Empirical Examination

The collaborative effort of software developers around the world produces Open Source Software (OSS) products, and most importantly, the source code of the software product is shared publicly. A recent survey of 1300 IT professionals by Black Duck Software showed that the percentage of companies using open source software grew from 42% to 78% between 2010 and 2015. There has been a significant increase in the formation of self-organizing virtual teams to produce open source software products and services. The current literature does not address the factors affecting the success of open source projects through the lens of self-organizing virtual teams and the sentiment among the developers and the sentiment among software developers. This phenomenon suggests a need to understand how successful project teams are created in a virtual collaborative environment. This research investigates how successful virtual teams are formed through the influence of an online developer community. The focus of this research is to assess how the online developer community, Stack Overflow (SO), influences the success of open source projects. More precisely, the study empirically tests the influence of the SO community on successful Github (GH) projects. The investigation also empirically examines how the ties among the software developers in the SO community initiate the self-creation of OSS project teams. The research also explores the perception of the developers about open source projects. Furthermore, the study probes the impact of OSS artifacts, namely “feature” and “patch” requests, on open source projects. The findings indicate that the perception of the developers in the SO community, prior ties among the developers in the community, and the artifact type of the project are the factors that influence the success of OSS projects. The research discusses the implications of the outcomes concerning self-organizing open source project teams

Patients\u27 Perspectives on Discussing Complementary and Alternative Medicine Therapies With Conventional Doctors

Currently, little is known about patients\u27 perceptions and beliefs in discussing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with their conventional medical (CM) doctor. The purpose of this descriptive research was to show whether CAM-using patients have an interest in discussing CAM treatments with their CM doctor for comprehensive care as described by the health belief model (HBM) constructs of perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness, and perceived benefits of taking action. A sample of 165 participants age 18 or older from 2 chiropractic clinics in the midwestern United States completed a Likert-scaled survey. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression to determine if there is a relationship between the variables of the need for a CAM discussion with a CM as the outcome using HBM constructs as the independent variables. The primary findings from this study were that (a) the participants were interested in discussing CAM with their physicians, with the majority of the participants stating that they discussed CAM either often (33.5%) or always (29.3%); and (b) perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness, and perceived benefits of taking action were not predictive of a CAM discussion. Future studies should be conducted to (a) examine samples with varying demographic characteristics to assess the generalizability of the current findings; and (b) to include additional predictors of CAM discussions from the HBM such as barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy. The results of this study add to the limited literature on CAM usage and may prompt future research. Implications for positive social change include understanding patient interest in discussing CAM which can help improve the overall quality of patient service