Ecofeminism, Women, and the Squander Cycle in Food Waste in the United Kingdom: Evaluating the Influence of Values and Gender in Food Shopping

This paper examines the direct interconnections between gender, class, food security, sustainability and food waste, and value-driven choices. By doing so, we link feminist economics and ecofeminism in the context of grocery shopping in the United Kingdom. This affords us the opportunity to not only interrogate feminist economics relative to women’s position within a particular socio-economic system but also to position women’s decision-making on a day-to-day basis within a larger value system connecting the sustainability debate and environmental protection. Our central assumptions are both that the earth is being violated, and that sustainable living is necessary to avoid environmental catastrophe. In addition, our assumption was that women are more inclined to engage with sustainable shopping than men. To that end, we examined the views and perceptions on sustainable shopping in the UK, by using yellow sticker shopping as a case study. Data were collected using a bought Smart Survey sample in a UK-wide population in an approximately 20-minute online questionnaire. A data set of 792 complete responses was included in the data analysis. We collected an expected sample from across the UK segmented for gender (women 51%, men 49%) and region. Overall, these data demonstrate that men and women do see grocery economy differently. The findings suggest that values are the most important predictors of the ways in which women evaluate yellow-sticker food shopping. However, the data also reveals that socio-economics also significantly influences how women evaluate yellow-sticker food shopping. Finally, views on corporate social responsibility and environmentally friendly shopping influence attitudes towards yellow sticker shopping, and women who are more inclined to support CSR initiatives and environmentally friendly shopping are also more inclined to purchase yellow sticker food

Whose crisis is it anyway? Examining complexity in blame attribution and reputational risk in the airline industry.

The airline industry has long been identified as crisis prone (Gonzales-Herrero & Pratt, 1996). Yet in recent years, the industry has faced an increasingly difficult task in managing issues, not least of all because of the complex international audiences and situations facing it. The complexity surrounding catastrophic events is not limited to the different global audiences to whom the airline might be speaking but also the level of coordination required to respond as was demonstrated by the March 2015 crash of the Germanwings flight in France where the world heard from the leaders of France, Spain, and Germany along with the Spanish King all before hearing from the company itself. In a 2x2 experimental design, approximately 200 respondents from each of the following countries – Bulgaria, Nigeria, Oman, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the US – were exposed to a news article customised to their region reporting on either a health or safety crisis with either an accommodative or defensive response from the airline

Women And The Squander Cycle In Food Waste In The United Kingdom: An Ecofeminist And Feminist Economic Analysis

This paper examines the interconnections between gender, class, food security, sustainability food waste, and values. We link feminist economics and ecofeminism in the context of grocery shopping in the United Kingdom. As an environmental and economic issue, food waste is emerging as a global threat with developed nations grossly contributing to the squander sequence of resources. This context affords the opportunity to both interrogate feminist economics and place routine decision-making within a larger value system connecting the sustainability debate and environmental protection. Data were collected using a bought Smart Survey sample in a UK-wide population in an approximately 20-minute online questionnaire. A data set of 792 complete responses was included in the data analysis. The findings present a dual narrative on grocery shopping suggesting that reduced-priced shopping is often evaluated by women as socially responsible and environmentally friendly. However, women from lower socio-economic backgrounds demonstrate a resentment and negative evaluation of price-reduced shopping. We argue these different attitudes reflect relative perceptions of agency and control which these data suggest are connected to the propensity for food waste and a worsening squander sequence

Testing times: Communicating the role and uncertainty of analytical procedures in a food safety crisis

Abstract When people get sick from eating contaminated food, producers, regulators, and consumers confront a food safety crisis. Scientific testing is central both to determining the nature of the contamination, assessing its seriousness, and evaluating future supplies for their safety. This paper examines a case where testing was involved in both the triggering and the resolution of the largest food safety scare ever to hit New Zealand. The 2013 incident involved the country’s largest dairy exporter, Fonterra, and the putative presence of clostridium botulinum in whey protein sold to business customers who used it in infant formula and other consumer goods. The case highlights the need for food producers to develop narratives around testing for inclusion in their stakeholder-related crisis planning. Such narratives must be compatible with the goals of the audience especially consumers, who wish for certainty and to see decisive action being taken. Practical Applications Communicators dealing with food safety-based risks and crises need to take into account lay publics’ biases towards assurances of zero risk. This should be part of determining audiences’ information needs and calibrating provision of scientific information, including information about necessary testing, in ways that meet these needs. Doing so will help build trust, including about the scientific method and the organisations applying it to determine not only the nature of a given risk but also to assess how best it might be mitigated. While distrust might surface in a risk-based crisis, communicators should focus on messaging that addresses uncertainty through providing consistent and credible information

Pandemic Communication: Information Seeking, Evaluation, and Self-Protective Behaviors in Vietnam and the Republic of Korea

Saliou (Eur J Epidemiol, 1994, 10 (4), 515–517) argued that pandemics are special kinds of crises and requires the public health sector to focus on: 1) reducing uncertainty, 2) rumor mitigation, and 3) ensuring the public reduces their risk of contracting the disease. With this as a backdrop, the central aim of this research is to better understand the connections between public information seeking, evaluation, and self-protective behaviors in the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on a comparison between the Republic of Korea and Vietnam to provide insights into the influence of the individual, institutional, and information factors influencing people’s experience with COVID-19. Thus, there are two major contributions of this study. First, it provides a cross-theory evaluation of the factors that contribute to information seeking, evaluation, and self-protective behaviors. Second, the study identifies potentially critical differences in information seeking, evaluation, and self-protective behaviors based on acute disease reproduction in countries with a successful pandemic suppression history. Findings suggest that in countries where there are high levels of trust and satisfaction even small changes in the infection rates lead to different information seeking and self-protective behaviors

Computer vision and machine learning for robust phenotyping in genome-wide studies

Traditional evaluation of crop biotic and abiotic stresses are time-consuming and labor-intensive limiting the ability to dissect the genetic basis of quantitative traits. A machine learning (ML)-enabled image-phenotyping pipeline for the genetic studies of abiotic stress iron deficiency chlorosis (IDC) of soybean is reported. IDC classification and severity for an association panel of 461 diverse plant-introduction accessions was evaluated using an end-to-end phenotyping workflow. The workflow consisted of a multi-stage procedure including: (1) optimized protocols for consistent image capture across plant canopies, (2) canopy identification and registration from cluttered backgrounds, (3) extraction of domain expert informed features from the processed images to accurately represent IDC expression, and (4) supervised ML-based classifiers that linked the automatically extracted features with expert-rating equivalent IDC scores. ML-generated phenotypic data were subsequently utilized for the genome-wide association study and genomic prediction. The results illustrate the reliability and advantage of ML-enabled image-phenotyping pipeline by identifying previously reported locus and a novel locus harboring a gene homolog involved in iron acquisition. This study demonstrates a promising path for integrating the phenotyping pipeline into genomic prediction, and provides a systematic framework enabling robust and quicker phenotyping through ground-based systems

Identifying nurses' rewards: a qualitative categorization study in Belgium

BACKGROUND: Rewards are important in attracting, motivating and retaining the most qualified employees, and nurses are no exception to this rule. This makes the establishment of an efficient reward system for nurses a true challenge for every hospital manager. A reward does not necessarily have a financial connotation: non-financial rewards may matter too, or may even be more important. Therefore, the present study examines nurses' reward perceptions, in order to identify potential reward options. METHODS: To answer the research question "What do nurses consider a reward and how can these rewards be categorized?", 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with nurses were conducted and analysed using discourse and content analyses. In addition, the respondents received a list of 34 rewards (derived from the literature) and were asked to indicate the extent to which they perceived each of them to be rewarding. RESULTS: Discourse analysis revealed three major reward categories: financial, non-financial and psychological, each containing different subcategories. In general, nurses more often mentioned financial rewards spontaneously in the interview, compared to non-financial and psychological rewards. The questionnaire results did not, however, indicate a significant difference in the rewarding potential of these three categories. Both the qualitative and quantitative data revealed that a number of psychological and non-financial rewards were important for nurses in addition to their monthly pay and other remunerations. In particular, appreciation for their work by others, compliments from others, presents from others and contact with patients were highly valued. Moreover, some demographical variables influenced the reward perceptions. Younger and less experienced nurses considered promotion possibilities as more rewarding than the older and more senior ones. The latter valued job security and working for a hospital with a good reputation higher than their younger and more junior colleagues. CONCLUSION: When trying to establish an efficient reward system for nurses, hospital managers should not concentrate on the financial reward possibilities alone. They also ought to consider non-financial and psychological rewards (in combination with financial rewards), since nurses value these as well and they may lead to a more personalized reward system