Explicit and implicit attitudes toward gay and lesbian scenarios and traditional gender roles: sexual orientation, sexual stigma and perceived masculinity/femininity

The main purpose of the current doctoral dissertation was to contribute to the literature about negative attitudes toward gay and lesbian individuals, within the sexual minorities themselves.Considering how strong the traditional gender roles is related to sexual stigma and internalized sexual stigma in heterosexual and sexual minorities respectively, we wanted to deepen their interaction role on peoples’ negative attitudes toward gay and lesbian individuals, who are not conform to stereotypical gender roles.The first study of this dissertation will investigate the role of participants’ sexual orientation and perceived masculinity on negative attitudes toward two gay man scenarios. Specifically, we will compare explicit negative affect toward stereotypical feminine and masculine gay man scenarios in an Italian sample of heterosexual and gay men. This research will extend previous literature, exploring gay men’s attitudes to feminine and masculine gay scenarios, also focusing on the impact of their internalized sexual stigma. The main purpose of the second study of this doctoral thesis will be to extend the investigation on negative attitudes both in lesbian participants and toward stereotypical masculine and feminine lesbian scenarios. This research will examine the differences between Italian gay men and lesbian participants in their negative attitudes toward either gay or lesbian scenarios, described with either stereotypical masculine or feminine characteristics. The third study will focus exclusively on Italian lesbian participants. This is the first study to explore negative attitude toward gay and lesbian scenarios, by investigating lesbian participants’ internalized sexual stigma and their adherence or violation of traditional feminine role. The scenarios will be the same of the second study and represent either a gay man or a lesbian woman conforming to either masculine or feminine traditional gender roles. The last study of this doctoral dissertation will describe the effects of heterosexual and gay men’s manipulation of masculinity threat, their sexual stigma and their adherence to traditional masculinity on the implicit attitudes toward feminine and masculine gay men. First of all, the description of the several construction phases of this instrument and the two pilot studies will be illustrated. Afterwards, the description of the main study will follow

Regenerating Urban Spaces under Place-specific Social Contexts: a Commentary on Green Infrastructures for Landscape Conservation

This study investigates the issue of green infrastructures in contemporary cities, adopting a strategic vision for increasingly complex metropolitan regions. Green infrastructures play an important role in ecological services and biodiversity preservation, improving significantly the quality of life of residents and visitors. The social dimension of gardens and parks at local (e.g. urban district) scale and green infrastructures at larger spatial scales is also addressed, fostering the relationship between local communities and urban landscapes. With economic crisis, urban parks are increasingly considered a primary component of integrated strategies for urban regeneration with a bottom-up approach, addressing the demand for "natural landscape" in peri-urban areas. By recovering public spaces with social purposes and providing a comprehensive strategy for aesthetic improvement of common goods, the analyzed case studies give examples of specific measures for promoting environment-friendly urban regeneration strategies under place-specific social contexts

A Fifty-Year Sustainability Assessment of Italian Agro-Forest Districts

DistrictAs cropland management and land use shifted towards more intensive practices, global land degradation increased drastically. Understanding relationships between ecological and socioeconomic drivers of soil and landscape degradation within these landscapes in economically dynamic contexts such as the Mediterranean region, requires multi-target and multi-scalar approaches covering long-term periods. This study provides an original approach for identifying desertification risk drivers and sustainable land management strategies within Italian agro-forest districts. An Environmental Sensitivity Area (ESA) approach, based on four thematic indicators (climate, soil, vegetation and land-use) and a composite index of desertification risk (ESAI), was used to evaluate changes in soil vulnerability and landscape degradation between the years 1960 and 2010. A multivariate model was developed to identify the most relevant drivers causing changes in land susceptibility at the district scale. Larger districts, and those with a higher proportion of their total surface area classified as agro-forest, had a significantly lower increase in land susceptibility to degradation during the 50 years when compared with the remaining districts. We conclude that preserving economic viability and ecological connectivity of traditional, extensive agricultural systems is a key measure to mitigate the desertification risk in the Mediterranean region

Semi-Parametric Empirical Best Prediction for small area estimation of unemployment indicators

The Italian National Institute for Statistics regularly provides estimates of unemployment indicators using data from the Labor Force Survey. However, direct estimates of unemployment incidence cannot be released for Local Labor Market Areas. These are unplanned domains defined as clusters of municipalities; many are out-of-sample areas and the majority is characterized by a small sample size, which render direct estimates inadequate. The Empirical Best Predictor represents an appropriate, model-based, alternative. However, for non-Gaussian responses, its computation and the computation of the analytic approximation to its Mean Squared Error require the solution of (possibly) multiple integrals that, generally, have not a closed form. To solve the issue, Monte Carlo methods and parametric bootstrap are common choices, even though the computational burden is a non trivial task. In this paper, we propose a Semi-Parametric Empirical Best Predictor for a (possibly) non-linear mixed effect model by leaving the distribution of the area-specific random effects unspecified and estimating it from the observed data. This approach is known to lead to a discrete mixing distribution which helps avoid unverifiable parametric assumptions and heavy integral approximations. We also derive a second-order, bias-corrected, analytic approximation to the corresponding Mean Squared Error. Finite sample properties of the proposed approach are tested via a large scale simulation study. Furthermore, the proposal is applied to unit-level data from the 2012 Italian Labor Force Survey to estimate unemployment incidence for 611 Local Labor Market Areas using auxiliary information from administrative registers and the 2011 Census

Sports as a risk environment: homophobia and bullying in a sample of gay and heterosexual men

Research on bullying and homophobic bullying has mainly focused on school contexts, with little research in sports-related contexts. This study used a sample of 88 gay males and 120 heterosexual males between 18 and 36 years of age to examine the frequency of bullying experiences in Italian sports-related contexts. The results showed that gay men reported more frequent bullying and homophobic bullying than heterosexual men. Gay men reported dropping out of sports more frequently, namely due to a fear of being bullied and greater familial pressure to conform to masculine-type sports. It is necessary to promote safer sports-related contexts for people who self-identify as a sexual minority

Am I guilty or not? Deontological guilt, uncertainty, and checking behavior

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Finite mixtures of quantile and M-quantile regression models

In this paper we define a finite mixture of quan- tile and M-quantile regression models for heterogeneous and /or for dependent/clustered data. Components of the finite mixture represent clusters of individuals with homogeneous values of model parameters. For its flexibility and ease of estimation, the proposed approaches can be extended to ran- dom coefficients with a higher dimension than the simple random intercept case. Estimation of model parameters is obtained through maximum likelihood, by implementing an EM-type algorithm. The standard error estimates for model parameters are obtained using the inverse of the observed information matrix, derived through the Oakes (J R Stat Soc Ser B 61:479–482, 1999) formula in the M-quantile setting, and through nonparametric bootstrap in the quantile case. We present a large scale simulation study to analyse the practical behaviour of the proposed model and to evaluate the empiri- cal performance of the proposed standard error estimates for model parameters. We considered a variety of empirical set- tings in both the random intercept and the random coefficient case. The proposed modelling approaches are also applied to two well-known datasets which give further insights on their empirical behaviour

Re-sewing the urban periphery. A green strategy for fontivegge district in Perugia

The present study debates on the issue of urban regeneration in contemporary cities, adopting a strategic vision which includes the use of vegetation and green infrastructure to create a network of public spaces. Especially, urban periphery lacks of public spaces, meaning a public use of urban space for outdoor activities and social networks. The extraordinary program for the Italian peripheries, addressed to all the metropolitan cities and provincial capitals in 2016, inspired to Renzo Piano idea of “resewing” urban fabrics, has been a good opportunity for testing new approaches to urban regeneration. The case study investigated in this study is the financed project for the city of Perugia, which provides different interventions aimed at improving (and developing new) public spaces through vegetation enhancement and a large area destined to vegetable social gardens as a strategy for urban infill. By recovering public spaces with social purpose and providing a comprehensive strategy for aesthetic improvement of the city, the case study provides a representative example, how greening the city may promote together biodiversity conservation and urban regeneration

Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual (LGB) peoples' leadership self-effectiveness: The roles of internalized sexual stigma, LGB positive identity, and traditional masculinity

Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of the minority stress model and the model of positive identity in sexual minority people, the current research contributes to fill a gap in the previous literature, investigating the relationships among leadership self-effectiveness, internalized sexual stigma, positive identity, and adherence to traditional masculinity of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (LGB) individuals. Through a correlational study (N = 449), we collected data from 229 gay/bisexual men (51%) and 220 lesbian/bisexual women (49%). We hypothesized that lower internalized sexual stigma, higher LGB positive identity, and higher adherence to traditional masculinity were associated to higher self-perceived effectiveness. The interactive relationships among the variables, including participants’ gender, were investigated from an exploratory perspective. The hypotheses were tested through two moderated regression models and the results confirmed that participants with lower internalized sexual stigma and higher LGB positive identity were more likely to perceive themselves as potential effective leaders. Also, the results showed a significant interaction between participants’ gender and traditional masculinity score suggesting that high adherence to traditional masculinity was a significant predictor of self-perceived effectiveness only for gay/bisexual men, but not for lesbian/bisexual women. This research contributes to provide both confirmation and novel insights into the key role of relevant factors impacting on LGB people’s leadership self-effectiveness, which might contribute to preserve the gay glass ceiling effect. The presence of antidiscrimination policies in organizations not only might reduce reports of discrimination but also enhance LGB employees’ positive sense of self, which is a critical aspect to emerge as a leader