Diffusion of shared goods in consumer coalitions. An agent-based model

This paper focuses on the process of coalition formation conditioning the common decision to adopt a shared good, which cannot be afforded by an average single consumer and whose use cannot be exhausted by any single consumer. An agent based model is developed to study the interplay between these two processes: coalition formation and diffusion of shared goods. Coalition formation is modelled in an evolutionary game theoretic setting, while adoption uses elements from both the Bass and the threshold models. Coalitions formation sets the conditions for adoption, while diffusion influences the consequent formation of coalitions. Results show that both coalitions and diffusion are subject to network effects and have an impact on the information flow though the population of consumers. Large coalitions are preferred over small ones since individual cost is lower, although it increases if higher quantities are purchased collectively. The paper concludes by connecting the model conceptualisation to the on-going discussion of diffusion of sustainable goods, discussing related policy implications

Crime and police resources: the street crime initiative

In this paper we look at links between police resources and crime in a different way to the existing economics of crime work. To do so we focus on a policy intervention - the Street Crime Initiative - that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocated additional resources to some police force areas to combat street crime, whereas other forces did not receive any additional funding. Estimates derived from several empirical strategies show that robberies did fall significantly in SCI police forces relative to non-SCI forces after the initiative was introduced. Moreover, the policy seems to have been a cost effective one. There is some heterogeneity in this positive net social benefit across different SCI police forces, suggesting that some police forces may have made better use of the extra resources than others. Overall, we reach the conclusion that increased police resources do in fact lead to lower crime, at least in the context of the SCI programme we study

Designing an effective evaluation model for the South African Department of Agriculture

Governments are under increasing pressure to deliver results. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of the public service in implementing policies and programmes for social betterment. Without such evaluations, it is difficult to ensure that evidence is integrated into policy and used in practice due to lack of generalizability and learning. This paper focuses on (1) the knowledge that is relevant to understand evaluation influence, (2) the possible conceptual frameworks that enable understanding of the evaluation implementation process, (3) possible models of the process of organizational evaluation, and (4) the main ways of intervening to increase influence. The context for analysis is the South African Department of Agriculture.Evaluation, Evaluation Influence, Policy, Programmes, South Africa, Political Economy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Champagne training on a beer budget

[Abstract]: When confronted by rapidly escalating costs for End User Computing (EUC) training and support, the Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) - the local government authority for Australia’s premier tourist destination - took a proactive stance by adopting a low-cost strategy. This strategy has now been in place for about six years and, as shown in this case study, is reaping rewards in terms of productivity increases and technology diffusion. After identifying an appropriate theoretical perspective for the study, this paper describes the EUC training approach taken at GCCC, and investigates its impact on the productivity of the 1500 person workforce. Both the trainees and the trainers were surveyed to evaluate fully this low-cost strategy. Related social issues of empowering the stakeholders are examined and recommendations are made to ensure that this approach will continue to provide champagne training on a beer budget

Bridging research, policy, and practice in African agriculture

"Policy research on African agriculture is long on prescriptions for what needs to be done to spur agricultural growth but short on how such prescriptions might be implemented in practice. What explains this state of affairs? What might be done to correct it, and, most important, how? This paper addresses these questions via a comprehensive review and assessment of the literature on the role and impact of research in policy processes. Six major schools of thought are identified: the rational model; pragmatism under bounded rationality; innovation diffusion; knowledge management; impact assessment; and evidence-based-practice. The rational model with its underlying metaphor of a 'policy cycle' comprising problem definition and agenda setting, formal decision making, policy implementation, evaluation, and then back to problem definition and agenda setting, and so on has been criticized as too simplistic and unrealistic. Yet it remains the dominant framework guiding attempts to bridge gaps between researchers and policy makers. Each of the other five schools relaxes certain assumptions embedded within the rational model e.g., wholly rational policy makers, procedural certainty, well-defined research questions, well-defined user groups, welldefined channels of communication. In so doing, they achieve greater realism but at the cost of clarity and tractability. A unified portable framework representing all policy processes and capturing all possible choices and tradeoffs faced in bridging research, policy, and practice does not currently exist and is unlikely ever to emerge. Its absence is a logical outcome of the context-specificity and social embeddedness of knowledge. A fundamental shift in focus from a 'researcher-as-disseminator' paradigm to a 'practitioner-as-learner' paradigm is suggested by the literature, featuring contingent approaches that recognize and respond to context-specificity and social embeddedness. At bottom, the issue is how to promote 'evidence-readiness' among inherently conservative and pragmatic policy makers and practitioners and 'user-readiness' among inherently abstraction-oriented researchers." Author's AbstractPolicy research ,Agriculture Africa ,Agricultural growth ,Research Methodology ,Knowledge management ,evaluation ,

The utilisation of health research in policy-making: Concepts, examples, and methods of assessment

Chapter 1: Introduction and Background • The importance of utilising health research in policy-making, and therefore the need to understand the mechanisms involved, is increasingly recognised. Recent reports calling for more resources to improve health in developing countries, and global pressures for accountability, draw greater attention to research-informed policy-making. • For at least twenty years there has been recognition of the multiple meanings or models of research utilisation in policy-making. It has similarly been long recognised that a range of factors is involved in the interactions between health research and policy-makers. • The emerging focus on Health Research Systems (HRS) has identified additional mechanisms through which greater utilisation of research could be achieved. Assessment of the role of health research in policy-making is best undertaken as part of a wider study that also includes the utilisation of health research by industry, medical practitioners, and the public. Chapter 2: The Nature of Policy-Making, Types of Research and Utilisation Models • Policy-making broadly interpreted includes national health policies made by government ministers and officials, policies made by local health service managers, and clinical guidelines from professional bodies. In this report, however, the main focus is on public policy-making rather than that conducted by professional bodies. The utilisation of health research in policy-making should eventually lead to desired outcomes, including health gains. Research can make a contribution in at least three phases of the policy-making process: agenda setting; policy formulation; and implementation. Descriptions of these processes, however, can over-estimate the degree of rationality in policy-making. Therefore, the analysis is informed by a review of the full range of policy-making models. These include rational and incrementalist models. • Various categories of research are likely to be used differently in health policy-making. Applied research might be more readily useable by a policy system than basic research, but health policy-makers tend to relate more willingly to natural sciences than social sciences. When research is based on the priorities of potential users, and/or is research of proven quality, this increases the possibility that it will be translated into policies. There also appears to be a greater chance of research being used in clinical policies about delivering care to patients, than in national policies on the structures of the health service. • Models of research utilisation in policy-making start with a link to rational or instrumental views of policy-making, and include descriptions of how commissioned research can help to find solutions to problems. Other models relate to an incrementalist view in which policy-making involves a series of small steps over a long period; research findings might gradually cause a shift in perceptions about an issue in a process of ‘enlightenment’. Interactive models of research utilisation stress the way in which policy-makers and researchers might develop links over a long period. Research can also be used symbolically to support decisions already taken. Chapter 3: Examples from Previous Studies • A study of health policy-making in two southern African countries illustrates how policy-making processes can be analysed. It addresses agenda setting, policy formulation and implementation. The methods used included documentary analysis and key informant interviews. • Many previous studies of research utilisation can provide lessons for future assessments. Two broad approaches can be identified. Some studies start with pieces, or programmes, of research and examine their impact. Others consider policy on a particular topic and assess the role of research in the policy-making. There are advantages and drawbacks in each approach, and overlaps between them. • To facilitate comparison, studies of research utilisation are best organised around a conceptual framework. Despite that, the influence of contextual factors in different settings makes it difficult to generalise. • The two methods used most frequently, and usually together, come from the qualitative tradition: documentary analysis and in-depth interviews. Questionnaires, bibliometric analysis, insider knowledge and historical approaches have all been applied. A few recent studies have attempted to score or scale the level of utilisation. • The examples suggest there is a greater level of utilisation and final outcomes in terms of health, health equity, and social and economic gain than is often assumed, whilst still showing much underutilisation. There is considerable variation in the degree of utilisation, both within and between studies. Chapter 4: Key Issues in the Analysis of Research Utilisation in Policy-Making • Increasing attention is focusing on the concept of interfaces between researchers and the users of research. This incorporates the idea that there are likely to be different values and interests between the two communities. • In relation to utilisation, the prioritisation debate revolves around two key aspects: whether priorities are being set that will produce research that policy-makers and others will want to use, and whether priorities are being set that will engage the interests and commitment of the research community. • Interactions across the interface between policy-makers and researchers are important in transferring research to policy-makers. This fits especially well with the interactive model of utilisation. Actions by individual researchers can be useful in generating interaction, but it is desirable to consider the role of the HRS in encouraging or facilitating interactions, networks and mechanisms at a system-wide level. The HRS could provide funding and organisational support for various items including: long-term research centres; research brokerage/translator mechanisms; the creation of official committees of policy-makers and researchers; and mechanisms for review and synthesis of research findings. • There is increased recognition of the significance of policy-makers in their role as the receptors of research. In relation to the perspective of policy-makers there is a spectrum of key questions. These range from whether relevant research is available and effectively being brought to their attention, to whether they are able to absorb it and willing to use it. The HRS has a responsibility, especially in the early parts of the spectrum, but the wider health system also has a responsibility to create appropriate institutional mechanisms and ensure there are staff willing and able to incorporate relevant research. • More attention should be given to the role of incentives, both for researchers to produce utilisable research, and for policy-makers, at the system or individual level, to use it. The assessment of utilisation becomes a key issue if rewards are to focus on relevance as well as research excellence. • An appropriate model for assessing research utilisation in policy-making combines analysis of two issues: the role of receptors and the importance of actions at the interfaces. An emphasis on the role of the receptor is necessary because ultimately it is up to the policy-maker to make the decisions. Any assessment of the success of the HRS in relation to utilisation must accept that the wider political context is beyond the control of the HRS, but consider the activities of the HRS, within its given context, to enhance the utilisation of research by increasing the permeability of the interfaces. Chapter 5: Assessment of Research Utilisation in Health Policy-Making • The reasons for assessing the utilisation of research in policy-making include: advocacy, accountability, and increased understanding. For the World Health Organization there could be a role in conducting such assessments with the aim of providing evidence of the effective use of research resources. This could support advocacy for greater resources to be made available for health research. It is important that the purposes of any assessment are taken into account in planning the methods to be used. • Previous studies demonstrated the difficulties of making generalisations about specific factors associated with high levels of utilisation. To address this in any cross-national WHO initiative involving a series of studies in a range of countries, it would be desirable to structure all the studies around a conceptual framework (such as the interfaces and receptor framework considered here) and base the studies in each country on common themes. These could include policies for the adoption of multi-drug therapy for treating leprosy, and for the equitable access to health services. • Analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews would be appropriate methods in each study assessing the role of research in policy-making on a specific policy theme. Questionnaires could also have a role. These approaches would provide triangulation of methods and data-sources and should also provide material to help identify the relative importance, in relation to the level of utilisation recorded, of the HRS mechanisms described in the previous analysis. The types and sources of research used, and reasons for their use, should also be recorded and attempts made to correlate them with the previous priority setting approaches. It is expected that each study will produce its own narrative or story of what caused utilisation in the particular context, but the data gathered could also be applied to descriptive scales of the level research utilisation. The four scales could cover the consistency of policy with research findings, and the degree of influence of research on agenda setting, policy formulation, and implementation. • The findings from the assessments in each participating country should be collated. For each policy theme or topic the analysis would compare two sets of data: the scales for level of research utilisation in each country, and the contextualised lists of the HRS activities and other mechanisms and networks thought to be important. Although the account here has focused on research impact on policy-making, the evaluations would be stronger as part of a wider analysis covering research utilisation and interactions with practitioners, industry and the public. • Given appropriate and targeted topic and country selection, this approach is likely to meet the purpose of using structured methods to provide examples of effective research utilisation. The approach should contribute towards enhanced understanding of the issues and could provide the basis of an assessment tool which, if used widely in countries, could lead to greater utilisation of health research.Research Policy and Co-operation (RPC) Department of the World Health Organization, Geneva; UK Department of Health’s Policy Research Programme; Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research from the governments of Norway and Sweden; World Bank and International Development Research Council of Canad

The role of intermediaries in facilitating e-government diffusion in Saudi Arabia

Recent studies of e-government activity have highlighted adoption and diffusion issues as important subjects for rating e-government success. However in developing countries inadequate resources and limited citizens’ capabilities regarding new e-government have resulted in low diffusion and adoption of e-government services. This paper examines the role of intermediaries, which can be played by a third party; in bridging the gap between e-government implementation and social reality, and looks at the roles a third party can add within the e-government services mechanism. This paper uses a case study approach in order to reflect e-government progress within the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as one developing country. The result of this paper shows that intermediaries play an important role in the diffusion of e-services in relation to improving the availability, accessibility and enhancing privacy and security

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed