Environmental determinants of landmine detection by dogs: Findings from a large-scale study in Afghanistan

This article’s purpose is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of mine-detection dogs in different environments. The experiments employed a total of 39 dogs in Afghanistan between October 2002 and July 2003. The results are discussed here

Hyperbolic Discounting with Environmental Outcomes across Time, Space, and Probability

Environmental discounting is a potentially important research area for climate change mitigation. We aimed to replicate and extend earlier work on the discounting of a negative environmental outcome. We measured ratings of concern, and willingness to act to mitigate, an outcome involving air pollution that would hypothetically affect the garden and drinking water of the participants over psychological distance represented by temporal (1 month, 6 months, and 1, 3, 5, 10, and 80 years), spatial (5, 20, 50, 100, 1000, and 5000 km), and probabilistic (95%, 90%, 50%, 30%, 10%, and 5% likelihood) dimensions. For our data from 224 first-year psychology students, of four potential models (an exponential, simple hyperbolic, and two hyperboloid functions), the Rachlin hyperboloid was the best-fitting model describing ratings of concern and action across all three dimensions. Willingness to act was discounted more steeply than concern across all dimensions. There was little difference in discounting for outcomes described as human-caused rather than natural, except that willingness to act was discounted more steeply than concern for human-caused environmental outcomes compared to natural outcomes across spatial (and, less conclusively, temporal) distance. Presenting values of the three dimensions in random or progressive order had little effect on the results. Our results reflect the often-reported attitudebehavior gap whereby people maintain concern about a negative event over dimensions of psychological distance, but their willingness to act to mitigate the event is lower and more steeply discounted

Mobile technologies in schools: The student voice

Intermediate and high school students spend a large amount of time using mobile devices (Lauricella, Cingel, Blackwell, Wartella, & Conway, 2014), and such devices are increasingly being integrated into our school system. We conducted a series of student-led focus groups, with this early adolescent cohort, in order to better understand their experiences of the recent technological shift. Four main ideas emerged from a thematic analysis of three focus group discussions: restrictions, student-led technology use, bypassing the restrictions, and connectivity as a need. Direct quotes from students and our analysis of these themes suggest that young people should be included, to a much greater extent, in discussions about the evolution of teaching practices in today’s digital age. Clear benefits and risks linked to greater use of mobile technologies were evident in our discussions, the implications of which are discussed along with limitations of the current study and proposed future research

An Incident Control Centre in action: Response to the Rena oil spill in New Zealand

Following the Rena grounding and oil spill in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, an Incident Command Centre was established which, among other tasks, coordinated a volunteer clean-up effort. We interviewed volunteers and organisers to gain insight into the efficacy of the volunteer coordination effort. Volunteers praised the system of communication and the involvement of indigenous groups. They expressed a desire for better training, more flexibility and community autonomy, a quicker uptake of volunteer support, and the use of social media. Locating the Incident Command Centre in a single site aided interaction between experts, and the sharing of resources. Overall, the volunteer coordination was considered a success

How volunteering reduced the impact of the Rena oil spill: Community responses to an environmental disaster

Following the Rena oil spill off the Bay of Plenty coast in New Zealand and subsequent volunteer clean-up programme, we interviewed 39 volunteers and 9 people involved in the volunteer organisation. We aimed to learn about people’s responses to an environmental disaster, what factors motivate people to volunteer, and how volunteering after a disaster assists individuals and communities to adjust to changing circumstances. The oil spill had an emotional, physical, cultural, social and spiritual impact on both individuals and communities. People were motivated to volunteer from a sense of duty and history of volunteering, a concern and sense of collective responsibility for the environment for current and future generations, a desire to contribute to their community, and to connect with others and cope with their negative responses. There was a strong typical New Zealand “can do” response in that volunteers expressed they had time and capability to help so they just wanted to get on with it. After volunteering, most participants reported a sense of satisfaction, renewed social ties, and renewed optimism. The clean-up programme brought communities together, resulting in timely removal of oil from beaches and coastline and demonstrating that citizen volunteers can contribute to oil spill mitigation

Response efficacy in environmental discounting: Concern and action towards climate change threats

Extending preceding environmental discounting studies, we examined the role of response efficacy (in low, control, and high conditions) in participants’ valuation of climate-change concern and action across four psychological distance dimensions (temporal, spatial, social, and probabilistic). Participants gave ratings of concern and action in the context of two hypothetical scenarios which were directly related to two different threats (droughts and floods) posed by unmitigated climate change. Rachlin’s hyperboloid discount functions fit the data well. The previously observed gap between concern and action ratings was not replicated in the main analyses, but was seen in the ratings at the minimum distance values. Response efficacy differentially affected ratings of concern and action at the minimum distance values for the temporal, social, and probabilistic dimensions, but differentially affected discount values (k) only for the probabilistic dimension. Compared to their level of concern with the environmental threat, participants who were led to believe that their actions were not efficacious were less willing to engage in mitigation behaviors than participants who were led to believe that their actions were efficacious. The insights gained through the current research effort may be valuable for policymaking as well as intervention design aiming to increase societal mitigation and adaptation efforts

The Relationship Between Sociodemographics and Environmental Values Across Seven European Countries

Given the importance of environmental values (altruistic, biospheric, and egoistic) to pro-environmental behavior, it would be useful to segment the population – an approach known as market segmentation – to tailor pro-environmental messages more effectively. Sociodemographic variables are popular targets for segmentation, as such variables are often knowable in the absence of more nuanced information about individuals. However, evidence for the relationship between sociodemographics and environmental values is sparse, and contradictory. We examined the extent to which popular sociodemographic variables (gender, age, income, education, urbanization level, and political orientation) were predictive of environmental values for 11,820 participants across seven European countries. Overall, sociodemographics were hardly related to environmental values. Only gender and political orientation were weakly but significantly related to environmental values, whereby men and right-wingers showed weaker altruistic and biospheric, and stronger egoistic, values than women and left-wingers. We conclude that sociodemographic variables cannot be considered a suitable proxy for environmental values, and thus that behavior-change campaigns might be more impactful when focused on alternative segmentation strategies in relation to environmental aims

The Prevalence and Targets of Cyberbullying Behaviours: An Observational Approach

The online environment has few boundaries and is evolving quickly, which may enable a greater prevalence of negative behaviour, like cyberbullying. Most cyberbullying researchers have used self-report methodologies, focussed on young people, and have had limited ability to explore contextual factors such as whether messages were retaliatory. Using stratified sampling, we selected a total of 40 YouTube® clips showing singing or dancing performances by young girls and boys. We conducted an exploratory content analysis using the first 20 comments for each of these clips (n = 800), coding eight quantitative factors and identifying themes for each comment. The key measure was the degree of positivity of each comment towards the performer in the clip, and if applicable, the degree of positivity towards the other commenters. Negative comments were directed at performers in 20% of the observed cases, whereas 74% of the comments directed at other commenters were negative, suggesting that commenters are most at risk of receiving negative comments online. Male performers received more negative comments than female. About a third of commenters appeared to criticise users for posting negative comments towards others, which is of continued interest because bystander intervention may mitigate some of the harmful effects of cyberbullying

Using SmartQuit®, an acceptance and commitment therapy smartphone application, to reduce smoking intake.

Objective: SmartQuit® is a smartphone application (app) for smoking cessation based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a behavioural therapy that encourages individuals to accept internal experiences, such as cravings to smoke, without acting on those experiences or urges. We used a single-subject (A-B-A) design with 10 participants to examine whether SmartQuit® use would reduce cigarette intake in a New Zealand sample. Methods: 10 smokers tallied their own cravings experienced and cigarettes smoked then sent those tallies to the first author every day until we observed stable patterns (Phase A1). We then gave the participants individual access to the SmartQuit® app (Phase B). When they advised that they had ceased using the app, they again recorded daily cravings and cigarettes smoked for a minimum of three days (Phase A2). We also collected follow-up smoking and craving data at 1, 2 and up to 13 months after completion of Phase A2. Results: Using SmartQuit® reduced our participants' daily cigarette intake significantly in the short-term and three individuals remained smoke-free up to 13 months later. Cravings to smoke did not differ significantly across Phases A1, B and A2, but graphical analysis showed a trend for decreasing cravings. Conclusion: Our results suggest that SmartQuit® provides another readily accessible intervention to help people stop smoking and is suited for use with a New Zealand population

Influences of monetary incentives on Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) performance

Performance-based incentives may improve the validity of results from implicit attitude assessment tasks and improve attrition rates. Participants working to obtain the incentive may be less likely to edit their responses to conform to social expectations and more likely to meet experimental inclusion criteria. We examined the influences of a monetary incentive ($20 voucher) for fast and accurate performance on an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) task evaluating implicit attitudes about bodyweight. We randomly assigned 82 university students to incentive and control (non-incentive) groups. Although there was no significant effect on accuracy or latency measures, participants in the incentive group displayed a significantly stronger bias against overweight individuals than did participants in the control group. There were no differences between groups with respect to attitudes toward slim individuals. More participants in the incentive group (97.5%) met performance criteria than in the control group (87.8%). These results suggest that incentives for meeting performance criteria may reduce the attrition rate and increase the validity of the IRAP and other implicit measures, but additional research is required to determine the predictive validity of implicit attitude assessments with and without performance-based incentives