A Corporate Scandal that Hits Close to Home: Examining Owners’ Responses to the Volkswagen Diesel Emissions Scandal

<p>The 2015 Volkswagen Group (VW) diesel emissions scandal has affected no group of individuals more directly than owners of the affected vehicles. Yet to date no research has examined in depth how owners have responded to the scandal. This includes not only what owners have already done or plan to do with their vehicles (e.g. repair, participate in the buyback programme) but also their interpersonal communicative actions (e.g. talking with other owners) and attitudinal reactions (e.g. perceptions of the VW-EPA settlement). We conducted two surveys—one prior to and one after a settlement was reached between VW and US regulators—to examine owners’ behavioural and attitudinal responses. Here we present descriptive, topline results from these surveys, which reveal relatively strong but heterogeneous owner engagement with the scandal. Owners report significant ambivalence about their own and VW’s mitigative options moving forward. Given the role owners will play in mitigating the environmental and health impacts of the scandal, understanding their responses is of critical importance.</p

Peer pressure on the riverbank: Assessing catch-and-release anglers' willingness to sanction others' (bad) behavior

Given the well-documented impacts of angler behavior on the biological fitness of angled and released fish, optimizing the conservation value of catch-and-release angling hinges on the extent to which anglers are willing to adopt recommended best practices and refrain from harmful ones. One potentially powerful mechanism underlying adoption of best practices is the social pressure anglers can apply to one another to enforce community norms and values. Past work in other domains demonstrates that forms of interpersonal communication—including social sanctioning—can foster context-appropriate social norms and increase cooperative behavior; yet to date, little research has examined these dynamics in the context of species conservation. We conducted in-person and online surveys to explore the role of social sanctioning in the context of an internationally renowned wild steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) fishery in British Columbia, Canada. We investigated how diverse social-psychological and demographic factors influence anglers' past and future sanctioning propensity. Results highlight that perceived capacity to influence the angling practices of others and professed concerns about one's own reputation were strongly predictive of both past and future sanctioning. Furthermore, while anglers reported relatively low-levels of past sanctioning behavior, most anglers simultaneously expressed a strong desire to sanction others in the future. Identifying ways to increase the social desirability and visibility of sanctioning actions could assist resource managers in promoting adoption and maintenance of best practices. More broadly, our findings underscore a significant yet underappreciated role for wildlife users and enthusiasts in cultivating a shared conservation ethic to help ensure biological conservation

Digital fisheries data in the Internet age: Emerging tools for research and monitoring using online data in recreational fisheries

Recreational fisheries are diverse in scale, scope, and participation worldwide, constituting an important ecosystem service of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Management of these socio-ecological systems is challenged by monitoring gaps, stemming from difficulties engaging with participants, biased sampling, and insufficient resources to conduct biological or social surveys of fish and human populations. In the Internet age, online data have great potential to make a meaningful contribution to recreational fisheries research, monitoring, and management. Recreational fishers in some countries increasingly use social and other digital media to share their experiences with followers, with most data freely available to web scrapers that compile databases of text (e.g. tweets, status updates, comments), photos, videos and other media that contain information about spatiotemporal activity, sentiments towards catches/experiences, targeted and bycatch species, effort levels, and more. Although the future of recreational fisheries research, monitoring and management will likely involve more digital scraping, uptake is only just beginning and there are several challenges including tool availability/accessibility, sampling biases, and making findings relevant and usable to practitioners. Despite these challenges, we envision fisheries managers will increasingly turn towards online sources of fisheries data to supplement conventional methods. We challenge scientists to work towards continued method development and validation of various digital fisheries data tools and emphasize how biases from the online behaviour of users may complicate interpretations of these data for fisheries management

Digital fisheries data in the Internet age: Emerging tools for research and monitoring using online data in recreational fisheries

Recreational fisheries are diverse in scale, scope, and participation worldwide, constituting an important ecosystem service of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Management of these socio-ecological systems is challenged by monitoring gaps, stemming from difficulties engaging with participants, biased sampling, and insufficient resources to conduct biological or social surveys of fish and human populations. In the Internet age, online data have great potential to make a meaningful contribution to recreational fisheries research, monitoring, and management. Recreational fishers in some countries increasingly use social and other digital media to share their experiences with followers, with most data freely available to web scrapers that compile databases of text (e.g. tweets, status updates, comments), photos, videos and other media that contain information about spatiotemporal activity, sentiments towards catches/experiences, targeted and bycatch species, effort levels, and more. Although the future of recreational fisheries research, monitoring and management will likely involve more digital scraping, uptake is only just beginning and there are several challenges including tool availability/accessibility, sampling biases, and making findings relevant and usable to practitioners. Despite these challenges, we envision fisheries managers will increasingly turn towards online sources of fisheries data to supplement conventional methods. We challenge scientists to work towards continued method development and validation of various digital fisheries data tools and emphasize how biases from the online behaviour of users may complicate interpretations of these data for fisheries management.publishedVersio

Digital fisheries data in the Internet age: Emerging tools for research and monitoring using online data in recreational fisheries

Recreational fisheries are diverse in scale, scope, and participation worldwide, constituting an important ecosystem service of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Management of these socio-ecological systems is challenged by monitoring gaps, stemming from difficulties engaging with participants, biased sampling, and insufficient resources to conduct biological or social surveys of fish and human populations. In the Internet age, online data have great potential to make a meaningful contribution to recreational fisheries research, monitoring, and management. Recreational fishers in some countries increasingly use social and other digital media to share their experiences with followers, with most data freely available to web scrapers that compile databases of text (e.g. tweets, status updates, comments), photos, videos and other media that contain information about spatiotemporal activity, sentiments towards catches/experiences, targeted and bycatch species, effort levels, and more. Although the future of recreational fisheries research, monitoring and management will likely involve more digital scraping, uptake is only just beginning and there are several challenges including tool availability/accessibility, sampling biases, and making findings relevant and usable to practitioners. Despite these challenges, we envision fisheries managers will increasingly turn towards online sources of fisheries data to supplement conventional methods. We challenge scientists to work towards continued method development and validation of various digital fisheries data tools and emphasize how biases from the online behaviour of users may complicate interpretations of these data for fisheries management

Digital fisheries data in the Internet age: Emerging tools for research and monitoring using online data in recreational fisheries

Recreational fisheries are diverse in scale, scope, and participation worldwide, constituting an important ecosystem service of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Management of these socio-ecological systems is challenged by monitoring gaps, stemming from difficulties engaging with participants, biased sampling, and insufficient resources to conduct biological or social surveys of fish and human populations. In the Internet age, online data have great potential to make a meaningful contribution to recreational fisheries research, monitoring, and management. Recreational fishers in some countries increasingly use social and other digital media to share their experiences with followers, with most data freely available to web scrapers that compile databases of text (e.g. tweets, status updates, comments), photos, videos and other media that contain information about spatiotemporal activity, sentiments towards catches/experiences, targeted and bycatch species, effort levels, and more. Although the future of recreational fisheries research, monitoring and management will likely involve more digital scraping, uptake is only just beginning and there are several challenges including tool availability/accessibility, sampling biases, and making findings relevant and usable to practitioners. Despite these challenges, we envision fisheries managers will increasingly turn towards online sources of fisheries data to supplement conventional methods. We challenge scientists to work towards continued method development and validation of various digital fisheries data tools and emphasize how biases from the online behaviour of users may complicate interpretations of these data for fisheries management