Contextual Compliance: Situational and Subjective Cost-Benefit Decisions about Pesticides by Chinese Farmers

This article analyzes how cost-benefit calculation influences compliance with pesticide regulation by Chinese farmers. Building on a study including 150 farmers and experts, it studies how operational costs and benefits and deterrence affect compliance. Moreover, it studies what variation in cost-benefit perceptions there are with different types of rules, farms, and villages. It finds that, in this context, cost-benefit calculation matters for compliance; with operational costs and benefits being more clearly related to compliant behavior than deterrence. It highlights that perceptions about costs and benefits are situational and vary along the type of legal rule and the type of regulated actor. It also shows that such perceptions are individually subjective, as even with similar rules and similar types of actors, perceptions vary. The paper concludes by stating expectations on how the situational and subjective nature of cost-benefit calculation can inform regulators seeking to enhance compliance

A tale of two canyon systems : Gollum and Whittard

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Symmetric and asymmetric motivations for compliance and violation: A crisp set qualitative comparative analysis of Chinese farmers

This article applies crisp set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) to gain insight into the compliance motivations and behaviors of 101 Chinese farmers. It seeks to understand how eight motivations (capacity to comply, legal knowledge, deterrent effect of sanctions, cost-benefit analysis, descriptive social norms, morals, general duty to obey, and procedural justice) combine in compliant and non-compliant behavior, and whether there is only one combination of motivations or several that lead to compliance and non-compliance. It illustrates how csQCA assists in making visible and analyzing situations of interacting compliance motivations (conjunctural causality) and situations where different combinations of motivations result in similar compliance behavior (equifinality). It identifies symmetrical and non-symmetrical relationships between specific compliance motivations and compliance behaviors - indicating that motivations for non-compliance are not necessarily the opposite of those for compliance. This non-symmetry may logically be explained because deterrence plays a different role in compliance decisions than in non-compliance decisions. The article concludes by highlighting the relevance of such insights for theorizing on compliance and for law enforcement, and the limitations of the method applied

KMO-Zone De Winning in Puurs. Een bureauonderzoek, verkennend booronderzoek en archeologische prospectie met ingreep in de bodem

Dit rapport werd ingediend bij het agentschap samen met een aantal afzonderlijke digitale bijlagen. Een aantal van deze bijlagen zijn niet inbegrepen in dit pdf document en zijn niet online beschikbaar. Sommige bijlagen (grondplannen, fotos, spoorbeschrijvingen, enz.) kunnen van belang zijn voor een betere lezing en interpretatie van dit rapport. Indien u deze bijlagen wenst te raadplegen kan u daarvoor contact opnemen met: [email protected]

Osmolarity-Induced Altered Intracellular Molecular Crowding Drives Osteoarthritis Pathology

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a multifactorial degenerative joint disease of which the underlying mechanisms are yet to be fully understood. At the molecular level, multiple factors including altered signaling pathways, epigenetics, metabolic imbalance, extracellular matrix degradation, production of matrix metalloproteinases, and inflammatory cytokines, are known to play a detrimental role in OA. However, these factors do not initiate OA, but are mediators or consequences of the disease, while many other factors causing the etiology of OA are still unknown. Here, it is revealed that microenvironmental osmolarity can induce and reverse osteoarthritis-related behavior of chondrocytes via altered intracellular molecular crowding, which represents a previously unknown mechanism underlying OA pathophysiology. Decreased intracellular crowding is associated with increased sensitivity to proinflammatory triggers and decreased responsiveness to anabolic stimuli. OA-induced lowered intracellular molecular crowding could be renormalized via exposure to higher extracellular osmolarity such as those found in healthy joints, which reverse OA chondrocyte's sensitivity to catabolic stimuli as well as its glycolytic metabolism.</p