Sustainability Practices at New Jersey Wineries. Exploring the Roles played by Agricultural Tourism and Firm Size

Using original survey data on 30 New Jersey winery-vineyards, this study tests whether there are more environmentally sustainable practices at operations that practice agritourism, and also at wineries that are relatively large. We take special care to deal statistically with this small sample. The number of sustainability practices in the sample is positively correlated with the quantity of output in bottles and with the amount of land planted in grapes. Agritourism has no discernible effect on conservation practices, in contrast to some prior studies on farms outside of this sector. It is argued that winery-vineyards are unique in ways that cause them to ignore agritourism and other forms of direct marketing as reasons to alter their production processes

Identifying the willingness to pay for eco-certified wine by South African consumers: a comparison of biodynamic, fair trade and sustainably produced wines

As eco-certified wines are being produced in increasing quantities and varieties, so are the definitions and the labels that accompany them. This has resulted in confusion with regard to what type of eco-certified wines customers prefer and what prices they are prepared to pay for such wines. The purpose of the research is to provide clarity regarding consumer knowledge about eco-certified wines and their preferences for each category as expressed by their willingness to pay (WTP). Specifically, the goal of the research was to identify the willingness to pay for South African eco-certified wine with a focus on three labels: biodynamic, fair trade and sustainable. The methodology used by the study was to identify the willingness to pay for the wines by using contingency valuation modelling. A survey was administered using the Qualtrics platform. It consisted of three sections: the first set of questions included questions about purchasing behaviour and important considerations when buying wine. The second set of questions collected perspectives and opinions about the multiple wine certifications discussed in this article and the third set of questions collected demographic data. The research focused on South African consumers and consisted of 267 respondents. Three WTP models were run separately for biodynamic, fair trade and sustainable wines. The study found that younger individuals with higher incomes, higher levels of education, previous eco-labelled product purchases and better knowledge of eco-certified wines have a positive impact on the WTP. The only exception seems to be the in case of biodynamic wines where previous knowledge of eco-certification has a negative effect on the WTP. The research outcomes provide guidelines to producers, retailers and restaurateurs about their output, marketing and salesefforts towards the ever-growing consumer demand for such wines

Extremism propagation in social networks with hubs

One aspect of opinion change that has been of academic interest is the impact of people with extreme opinions (extremists) on opinion dynamics. An agent-based model has been used to study the role of small-world social network topologies on general opinion change in the presence of extremists. It has been found that opinion convergence to a single extreme occurs only when the average number of network connections for each individual is extremely high. Here, we extend the model to examine the effect of positively skewed degree distributions, in addition to small-world structures, on the types of opinion convergence that occur in the presence of extremists. We also examine what happens when extremist opinions are located on the well-connected nodes (hubs) created by the positively skewed distribution. We find that a positively skewed network topology encourages opinion convergence on a single extreme under a wider range of conditions than topologies whose degree distributions were not skewed. The importance of social position for social influence is highlighted by the result that, when positive extremists are placed on hubs, all population convergence is to the positive extreme even when there are twice as many negative extremists. Thus, our results have shown the importance of considering a positively skewed degree distribution, and in particular network hubs and social position, when examining extremist transmission

Identifying the willingness to pay for eco-certified wine by south african consumers: a comparison of biodynamic, fair trade and sustainably produced wines

As eco-certified wines are being produced in increasing quantities and varieties, so are the definitions and the labels that accompany them. This has resulted in confusion with regard to what type of eco-certified wines customers prefer and what prices they are prepared to pay for such wines. The purpose of the research is to provide clarity regarding consumer knowledge about eco-certified wines and their preferences for each category as expressed by their willingness to pay (WTP). Specifically, the goal of the research was to identify the willingness to pay for South African eco-certified wine with a focus on three labels: biodynamic, fair trade and sustainable. The methodology used by the study was to identify the willingness to pay for the wines by using contingency valuation modelling. A survey was administered using the Qualtrics platform. It consisted of three sections: the first set of questions included questions about purchasing behaviour and important considerations when buying wine. The second set of questions collected perspectives and opinions about the multiple wine certifications discussed in this article and the third set of questions collected demographic data. The research focused on South African consumers and consisted of 267 respondents. Three WTP models were run separately for biodynamic, fair trade and sustainable wines. The study found that younger individuals with higher incomes, higher levels of education, previous eco-labelled product purchases and better knowledge of eco-certified wines have a positive impact on the WTP. The only exception seems to be the in case of biodynamic wines where previous knowledge of eco-certification has a negative effect on the WTP. The research outcomes provide guidelines to producers, retailers and restaurateurs about their output, marketing and sales efforts towards the ever-growing consumer demand for such wines

Group Polarization in the Team Dictator Game reconsidered

While most papers on team decision-making find teams to behave more selfish, less trusting and less altruistic than individuals, Cason and Mui (1997) report that teams are more altruistic than individuals in a dictator game. Using a within-subjects design we re-examine group polarization by letting subjects make individual as well as team decisions in an experimental dictator game. In our experiment teams are more selfish than individuals, and the most selfish team member has the strongest influence on team decisions. Various sources of the different findings in Cason and Mui (1997) and in our paper are discussed

Antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Iran: the effects of identity, threat, and political trust

Antisemitism and anti-Zionism constitute two important ideological building blocks of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This article is the first to present quantitative empirical survey data elucidating attitudes towards Jews and Israel among an opportunity sample of Iranians. This study examines the correlates of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Iran with particular attention to the effects of identity, threat, and political trust. Consistent with emerging research into antisemitism and anti-Zionism, there was a positive association between both forms of prejudice, suggesting social psychological overlap between the constructs. Given the pervasiveness of antisemitic and anti-Zionist representations in Iran, there were no significant differences in levels of anti-Zionism or antisemitism on the basis of gender and educational orientations. Political conservatives did manifest greater antisemitism and anti-Zionism than political reformists, although both groups scored high on these scales. There was a significant interaction effect of Iranian national identity and political trust on anti-Zionism, and a significant interaction effect of Muslim religious identity and political trust on antisemitism. Political trust was by far the most powerful predictor of both forms of prejudice, followed by the perception of identity threat. These observations are considered through the lenses of Social Identity Theory and Identity Process Theory from social psychology

Stratification in systemic sclerosis according to autoantibody status versus skin involvement: a study of the prospective EUSTAR cohort

Background: The current subclassification of systemic sclerosis into cutaneous subtypes does not fully capture the heterogeneity of the disease. We aimed to compare the performances of stratification into LeRoy's cutaneous subtypes versus stratification by autoantibody status in systemic sclerosis. Methods: For this cohort study, we assessed people with systemic sclerosis in the multicentre international European Scleroderma Trials and Research (EUSTAR) database. Individuals positive for systemic-sclerosis autoantibodies of two specificities were excluded, and remaining individuals were classified by cutaneous subtype, according to their systemic sclerosis-specific autoantibodies, or both. We assessed the performance of each model to predict overall survival, progression-free survival, disease progression, and different organ involvement. The three models were compared by use of the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic and the net reclassification improvement (NRI). Missing data were imputed. Findings: We assessed the database on July 26, 2019. Of 16 939 patients assessed for eligibility, 10 711 patients were included: 1647 (15·4%) of 10 709 were male, 9062 (84·6%) were female, mean age was 54·4 (SD 13·8) years, and mean disease duration was 7·9 (SD 8·2) years. Information regarding cutaneous subtype was available for 10 176 participants and antibody data were available for 9643 participants. In the prognostic analysis, there was no difference in AUC for overall survival (0·82, 95% CI 0·81-0·84 for cutaneous only vs 0·84, 0·82-0·85 for antibody only vs 0·84, 0·83-0·86 for combined) or for progression-free survival (0·70, 0·69-0·71 vs 0·71, 0·70-0·72 vs 0·71, 0·70-0·72). However, at 4 years the NRI showed substantial improvement for the antibody-only model compared with the cutaneous-only model in prediction of overall survival (0·57, 0·46-0·71 for antibody only vs 0·29, 0·19-0·39 for cutaneous only) and disease progression (0·36, 0·29-0·46 vs 0·21, 0·14-0·28). The antibody-only model did better than the cutaneous-only model in predicting renal crisis (AUC 0·72, 0·70-0·74 for antibody only vs 0·66, 0·64-0·69 for cutaneous only) and lung fibrosis leading to restrictive lung function (AUC 0·76, 0·75-0·77 vs 0·71, 0·70-0·72). The combined model improved the prediction of digital ulcers and elevated systolic pulmonary artery pressure, but did poorly for cardiac involvement. Interpretation: The autoantibody-only model outperforms cutaneous-only subsetting for risk stratifying people with systemic sclerosis in the EUSTAR cohort. Physicians should be aware of these findings at the time of decision making for patient management. Funding: World Scleroderma Foundation