The impact of the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme on New Zealand’s economy

cap and trade, domestic policy, New Zealand, emissions trading scheme

Attitudes toward Illegal Drug Use

In order to understand how these students perceived illegal drugs, we examined what factors may contribute to how these views are formed

Causal Graphical Models for Systems-Level Engineering Assessment

Systems-level analysis of an engineered structure demands robust scientific and statistical protocols to assess model-driven conclusions that are often nontraditional and causal in their content. The formal mathematical, statistical, and philosophical foundations of causal inference on which such protocols are based are, nevertheless, not widely understood. The aims of this article are to (1) communicate the essentials of graph-based causal inference to the civil engineering community, (2) demonstrate how rigorous causal conclusions—and formal quantification of uncertainty regarding those conclusions—may be obtained in a typical engineered system application, and (3) discuss the value of this approach in the context of engineered system assessment. The concepts are illustrated via a river-weir ecosystem case study as an example of decision making for engineered systems in the built environment. In this setting, it is demonstrated how rigorous predictions can be made about the outcome of decisions that take a lack of prior knowledge about the system into account. The findings highlight to end users the value in applying this approach in providing quantitative probabilistic outputs that counter decision uncertainty at system level

What drives customer propensity to recommend a brand?

This paper investigates the drivers of customer propensity to recommend a brand. DFS, a leading UK retailer, has provided Staffordshire University with access to its large data set of responses to customer satisfaction surveys. We use the Net Promoter Score methodology to differentiate between different levels of customer loyalty (i.e. “detractors”, “passive” and “promoters”). We then use a logistic regression model to determine what influences the likelihood of a customer becoming a “promoter”. We use factor analysis to reduce the large number of survey questions to a manageable number of explanatory variables. The most important factors identified are (i) satisfaction with product quality, (ii) satisfaction with the sales experience and (iii) the ability of the company to exceed customers’ expectations. We find that the law of diminishing returns applies; i.e., when average satisfaction is already high, management should expect lower returns on investment in additional improvements. In addition, we find that satisfaction is a better predictor of true loyalty than previous purchase

Integrating Process with Outcome Data in a Randomized Controlled Trial of Sex Education

Integration of process with outcome evaluations has been recommended as a way of addressing some of the criticisms of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) for evaluating social interventions. This is the second of two articles (the first was published in issue 10(4) of this journal) discussing the design, implementation and analysis of a process evaluation as an integral part of the RIPPLE (Randomized Intervention of Pupil Peer-Led sex Education) Study. The methods for integrating process and outcome data are outlined and findings are presented to illustrate how integration of process and outcome data enabled exploration of: 1) variation between schools in the extent and quality of the intervention implemented, and any impact of this on outcomes; 2) the processes by which the intervention might affect outcomes; and 3) the extent to which different subgroups of students or schools may have responded differently to the intervention. The article concludes with a discussion of the methodological issues arising from this attempt at integrating process and outcome evaluations within the design of an RCT

Regional seismic stratigraphic framework and depositional history of the post- : Valanginian passive margin sequences in the Northern Carnarvon Basin, North West Shelf of Australia

Acknowledgements We would like to express our gratitude to Geoscience Australia for the provision of public domain seismic and well log data. All available datasets used in this research are open source, can be accessed through the National Offshore Petroleum Information Management System (NOPIMS; https://nopims.dmp.wa.gov.au/nopims). Schlumberger are thanked for the provision of Petrel software. Mulky Winata is supported by a collaborative PhD scholarship under the Aberdeen – Curtin Alliance (http://aberdeencurtinalliance.org/) namely between Curtin University (Perth, Australia) and the University of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, Scotland). Diego Kietzmann, Victorian Paumard, Marina Rabineau and two anonymous referees are thanked for their thoughtful reviews of earlier versions of this manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Confronting deep uncertainty in the forest carbon industry

Global momentum on carbon markets has the potential to direct substantial capital toward protecting the world’s forests. Yet the billion-dollar forest-carbon-offsetting industry is attracting criticism, in part from doubts about the methods used to measure and causally attribute changes in tree cover and biomass (1). Many actors in the industry are thus pursuing increasingly detailed measurement and monitoring of carbon outcomes and risks, under the assumption that this will improve accuracy and offset integrity (2). However, mounting scientific evidence (3, 4) implies that many forest landscapes are subject to “deep uncertainty” (5), such that claims of high accuracy in assessing carbon change are likely to remain inherently contestable, regardless of the technology or methodology deployed. Further, demands for such accuracy are likely to perpetuate inefficiencies and injustices among carbon suppliers (6–9). Approaches from other sectors may offer alternative ways forward in the absence of highly accurate measurements of outcomes

Investigating the Bowland Shale

The Bowland Shale (late Mississippian, early Carboniferous) has potential for the unconventional extraction of hydrocarbons in the UK and in equivalent successions that extend across Europe to the Lublin Basin, Poland. The Bowland Shale was deposited in a marine epicontinental seaway and in a basinal setting. This study seeks to characterise the controls (sedimentological, geochemical, biological, preservation) on the spatial and temporal distribution of organic matter in the Bowland Shale within the Craven Basin (UK) and link this to resource potential

The Effect of The Net Promoter Score on Sales: A Study of a Retail Firm Using Customer and Store-Level Data

Existing industry-level evidence does not inform practitioners about when and by how much sales will grow as a result of an increase in NPS. We investigate the relationship between sales and NPS for a leading retail firm by combining individual stores’ monthly sales data with data from customer satisfaction surveys from which we calculate NPS for every UK store in every month over a four-year period. We find nonlinear sales effects of (i) stores’ own NPS and (ii) the average NPS of the other stores of the same company in the same region. Both NPS effects on stores’ sales at first increase and then decrease over the five to 10 months after the product purchases to which the NPS refers. If every store could achieve a sustained increase in its NPS of one percentage point, then across all UK stores the additional annual sales would be around £3 million