Irish Sea Coastal Stakeholder Engagement in NW England consultation, participation, strategic purpose and rhetoric. Do you reap just what you sow?

The creation of a holistic more inclusive approach to marine management could be positively influenced by the development of well structured and sincere Stakeholder Engagement and Public Participation (SEPP) processes. However poorly designed frameworks and processes lacking sincerity may engender skepticism, mistrust and create barriers in the attainment of a thriving and diverse coastal economy During 2009 a public participation and stakeholder engagement policy has been used by government agencies, Defra and the Department of Energy and Climate Change to gauge public opinion within the marine and coastal environment of the Irish Sea. This concerns the development of Irish Sea Conservation Zones and the UK’s Nuclear Newbuild programme. Both issues have complex dynamics regarding their environmental, economic, societal and sustainability aspects. This paper studies two contrasting styles of SEPP deployed during this critical ‘first contact’ stage by a participatory observation approach and assesses how this phase may affect the development of the engagement process and how this may affect a project’s outcome

The Effect of Historical Entitlements in Cooperative Bargaining Over Evironment Policy: An Experimental Test

Collaborative policy making has been an increasingly popular method of solving use conflicts on public lands. Representatives of interested groups are authorized to negotiate land use policy in the shadow of a government imposed backstop policy. This process can be modeled using cooperative game theory over multiple goods in an Edgeworth Box framework, and its outcomes predicted using axiomatic bargaining theories (e.g. Pareto efficiency or the Nash bargain). A challenge for collaborative policymaking arises when users’ historical land use entitlements differ from the backstop the government will impose if negotiations fail. A challenge for the predictive power of axiomatic bargaining theory arises when the government’s backstop policy (and the Nash bargain it generates) creates substantial inequality of benefits among users. In this paper, we use laboratory experiments to test the effect on bargaining of 1) the divergence of historical entitlements from the prospective backstop and 2) the divergence of the Nash bargain generated by the backstop policy from the outcome that equalizes benefits. We examine the effects of both types of divergence on agreement rates, and on the likelihood that parties settle inside the bargaining lens, on the contract curve, and at the Nash bargain. We find that divergence of historical entitlements from the backstop significantly changes bargaining outcomes when the historical benefits were equally distributed and the benefits at the backstop and Nash are not. At the same time, historical entitlements do not affect outcomes when they were unequal but the backstop and Nash bargain generate equal benefits. We also find the outcomes parties reach are affected by the divergence of equality from the Nash bargain, independent of historical entitlement.Historical entitlements; Collaborative policy making; Land use conflicts

The Effect of Entitlements and Equality on Cooperative Bargaining with Private, Unverifiable Information

In many bargaining situations a third party is authorized to impose a backstop position on the bargainers. Prominent examples include governments who use collaborative policymaking between stakeholders to set public policy, but also compulsory arbitration in labour negotiations. Axiomatic models of cooperative bargaining, such as the Nash bargain, presume that the status quo allocation will have no effect on the outcome parties reach if it differs from the backstop set by the third party. In contrast, experimental findings have suggested that both equality of outcomes and entitlement (where the status quo establishes a focal point) may affect the agreements bargainers reach, at least under full information. This paper extends the investigation of the effect of equality and entitlement on cooperative bargaining to the case where parties have private, unverifiable information concerning the value of outcomes. We use a two-party, two-attribute experimental design in which subjects take part in unstructured, face-to-face bargaining to jointly select from among approximately 200 potential outcomes. We find that, relative to full information, parties who bargain under private information are almost as likely to reach agreements as those under full information, and that these agreements are still approximately Pareto efficient. Further, the effect of the status quo (rather than backstop) allocation seems amplified under private information, while the effect of equality is dampened, but not eliminated.cooperative bargaining; private information; Nash bargain; egalitarian; entitlement; fairness; focal points

The Efficiency of Direct Public Involvement in Environmental Policymaking: An Experimental Test

In one of the most ambitious forms of environmental decision-making, representatives of interested parties – environmentalists, developers, farmers, loggers, miners, etc. - are charged with the responsibility of developing a set of public policies that is acceptable to all of them. Although this approach has become increasingly popular, and has been widely discussed in the academic literature, little is known about the characteristics of the outcomes that are reached in this type of negotiation. We do not know, for example, whether these outcomes meet the standard criteria for efficiency or equity. In this paper, we use laboratory experiments to test whether a number of axiomatic models of bargaining can predict the behavior of the parties to environmental decision making. In recognition of the multi-dimensional aspect of most public land use conflicts, we ask pairs of subjects to negotiate over two goods, without the possibility of cash side payments. We thus provide one of the first experimental tests of a prediction associated with the Edgeworth Box: that parties with an initial endowment that is Pareto inefficient will make trades until they reach a Pareto efficient allocation. We further test whether parties in particular reach the Nash bargain when it coincides with or conflicts with outcomes that maximise the parties’ joint payoffs and with outcomes at which the parties’ receive equal payoffs. Finally, the effect of providing parties with full or partial information regarding payoffs is also examined.Axiomatic models of bargaining; Experimental tests; Land use conflicts; Collaborative policymaking

The Changing Pattern of Immigrants' Labour Market Experiences

This report extends the initial analysis of the first wave of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia (LSIA) conducted in 1995. Most immigrants in the survey have been interviewed a second time, starting in March of 1995 (approximately 18 months after arrival), and it is now possible to begin to assess what has happened to them over the first year and a half of the settlement process. The analysis is concerned with changes in immigrant labour market outcomes, and how these are related to, among other things, visa category, State/Territory of residence, age, gender, educational level, marital status, English language ability, and whether or not an immigrant visited Australia prior to migration. Extensive cross-tabulations are reported, and these results are supplemented with regression analysis.

Coupled aerodynamic and acoustical predictions for turboprops

To predict the noise fields for proposed turboprop airplanes, an existing turboprop noise code by Farassat has been modified to accept blade pressure inputs from a three-dimensional aerodynamic code. A Euler-type code can handle the nonlinear transonic flow of these high-speed, highly swept blades. This turbofan code was modified to allow the calculation mesh to extend to about twice the blade radius and to apply circumferential periodicity rather than solid-wall boundary conditions on the blade in the region between the blade tip and the outer shroud. Outputs were added for input to the noise prediction program and for color contour plots of various flow variables. The Farassat input subroutines were modified to read files of blade coordinates and predicted surface pressures. Aerodynamic and acoustic results are shown for the SR-3 model blade. Comparison of the acoustic predicted results with measured data show good agreement

A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF A VALUES INTERVENTION AND A VALUES REMINDER ON CLINICALLY RELEVANT OUTCOMES

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is designed to target psychological flexibility, broadly defined as engagement with personal values regardless of the presence of difficult private events. As engagement with valued behaviors is imperative to psychological flexibility, clarification of values is an essential skill for clients to learn. Practicing of skills in treatment has historically been a difficult hurdle for clinicians to implement between sessions for clients as well. The present study examined the utility of a novel values card sort activity, as well as the utility of a rubber band to act as a reminding agent for engagement with values. 112 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a values card sort condition, a values card sort condition with a rubber band given to the participant, and a control card sort condition. Each participant completed questionnaires assessing connection with values, lack of contact with values, negative affect, and quality of life at baseline and at a one-week follow-up. A series of ANCOVAs were conducted to determine if there were any group differences between the three conditions at follow-up, with baseline scores as a covariate. The analyses indicate no significant difference between the conditions at follow-up across any of the variables of interest. Endorsement of prior therapy experience suggested unique trends and differential reaction to the card sorting activity. These findings suggest the values card sort may not be an effective intervention for subclinical populations but may be a fruitful intervention for clinically-elevated individuals

Exercise for the older adult (1993)

"Reviewed October 1993.

Product Development in the World Auto Industry

macroeconomics, auto industry, management efficiency, productivity