The Minor League Experience: What Drives Attendance at South Atlantic League Baseball Games?

An examination of the determinants of minor league baseball attendance in the South Atlantic League is performed through regression analysis. Potential determinants included in the regression model include demographic variables, team performance variables, and dummies for various categories of promotions. Overall, South Atlantic League baseball appears to be an inferior good, fans do not significantly respond to winning teams, fans do respond favorably to high-scoring games, and promotional events play a major role in attendance. The events that are shown to have the biggest impact at the gate are fireworks and concerts. It appears that the overall entertainment experience, not the success of the home team, is what attracts fans to South Atlantic League baseball games

Policy Implications of a Behavioural Economics Analysis of Land Use Determinants in Rural Scotland

The paper analyses the land use behaviour of Scottish land managers and the factors influencing it in the current context of the EU rural land use policies. The analysis employs a frequently used behavioural economics method, namely structural equation modelling (SEM). Central to the empirical analysis in this paper is a cross-section database containing data collected in May to June 2009 through telephone interviews of 600 land managers in Scotland. The model tests and estimates the relationships between land use behaviour, i.e., behavioural intentions to change the size of business/holding, and several of its a priori determinants found significant in the scientific literature. The results indicate that a stronger propensity to change size of their businesses is exhibited by younger land managers who intend to pass their land on to family, with larger land size and stronger attitudes towards increasing it, with lower percentage of their income made up from Government support, who are less likely to have perceived changes in regulation and input/output prices as having an impact on their business, who discuss and plan changes in size of business with their banks/building societies, and frequently access sources of information to help with their strategic decisions.Land use, rural policies, Scotland, structural equation modelling, Land Economics/Use,

Agri-environmental diversification: Linking environmental, forestry and renewable energy engagement on Scottish farms

AbstractIn this paper we broaden the debate on agri-environmental scheme participation to include farm woodland expansion and renewable energy production, developing a conceptualisation of ‘agri-environmental diversification’. Utilising structural equation modelling, we assess a telephone survey of 2416 Scottish farmers, undertaken in 2013. Findings demonstrate the path dependencies of farming participants, with those already engaged in each of these activities the most likely to plan to be involved in future. Similar factors have influenced the uptake of all three activities since 2005, and intention to increase involvement by 2020. Farmers who are: younger, better educated, information-seeking, certified as organic, receive subsidies, have non-farming income and plan to continue farming in the medium term, are more likely to plan for future engagement in the three activities. Environmental attitudes are also important, but a stronger relationship was found between observation of environmental gains from agri-environmental schemes and the three forms of agri-environmental diversification, suggesting that scheme involvement enables farmers to learn to produce, recognise and value environmental goods. We argue that when assessed within the broader perspective of agri-environmental diversification, agri-environmental scheme participation may represent an initial step on a farming trajectory that involves multiple forms of agri-environmental engagement

Comparing visions for CAP reforms post 2015: Farmer intentions and farm bio-economic modelling

This paper illustrates the impacts of two of the potential CAP reform post 2015 scenarios using an optimising farm level model and compares results with farmers’ perception about the policy changes, captured in a farmer intentions survey. The model results suggest that beef farms suffer a loss in farm net margins under fully decoupled (up to -21%) as well as under partially decoupled scenario (up to -19%) compared to current historical single farm payments. The model also shows that farm respond by reducing the number of beef animals on farm by up to 5%. However, under a partial decoupled scenario, beef farms increase calf numbers by 15% to benefit from coupled calf payment. A survey of 1,400 beef producers with respect to their intentions toward 2020 was conducted in the Summer of 2013. A set of hypothetical payment scenarios was used to test self-reported response to a number of scenarios related to expanding and extensifying. These were compared with the modelling results and found a range of responses which could, we argue, be used for future calibration and ‘sense-checking’ of results within future modelling strategies

Experimental validation of a fast-tracking FOCV-MPPT circuit for a wave energy converter embedded into an oceanic drifter

Wave Energy Converters (WECs) are an ideal solution for expanding the autonomy of surface sensor platforms such as oceanic drifters. To extract the maximum amount of energy from these fast-varying sources, a fast maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique is required. Previous studies have examined power management units (PMU) with fast MPPT circuits, but none of them have demonstrated their feasibility in a real-world scenario. In this study, the performance of a fast-tracking fractional open circuit voltage (FOCV)-MPPT circuit (sampling period TMPPT of 48 ms) is compared with a commercial slow-tracking PMU (TMPPT of 16 s) in a monitored sea area while using a small-scale, pendulum-type WEC. A specific low-power relaxation oscillator circuit is designed to control the fast MPPT circuit. The results demonstrate that by speeding up the sampling frequency of the MPPT circuit, the harvested energy can be increased by a factor of three.The first author was supported by the European Union—NextGenerationEU and the Ministerio de Universidades—Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia under a Margarita Salas post-doctoral research fellowship (ref. 2022UPC-MSC-94068). This work was partially supported by the project MELOA from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 776280. This study was developed using the framework of the Research Unit Tecnoterra (ICM-CSIC/UPC) and the following project activities: PLOME (PLEC2021-007525; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) and BITER (PID2020-114732RB-C32; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version