“We are Maine”—Is There an Authentic Maine Public Policy?

The authors explore whether there is something about how policy is developed, approved, and implemented—or something about the content of policy—that is based upon Maine as place? Is there a genuine Maine public policy that reflects the unique demography, geography, and culture of this place? Or is the work of policy here essentially the same as anywhere else in our democracy

Does Green Consumerism Increase the Acceptance of Wind Power?

In this paper, we discuss what might be termed an action-based learning approach to promoting important pro-environmental actions, such as support for or acceptance of environmental policy. Such an approach involves promoting simple and easy behaviours as entry points for more radical steps towards sustainability, referred to as “catalytic” or “wedge” behaviours. Despite the obvious need for innovative approaches to promote important pro-environmental behaviour, and sound theoretical backing for such concepts, there is a lack of research testing the key propositions of this approach. In a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of Maine, USA, we find that both everyday “green” behaviour and the acceptance of an expansion of wind power are rooted in environmental concern and that everyday “green” behaviour gives a significant contribution to predicting acceptance of wind power when controlling for environmental concern. Hence, the promotion of everyday “green” behaviours may prepare the grounds for increasing acceptance of more far-reaching changes in the population, such as an expansion of wind power

Interdisciplinary Research and Environmental Law

This Article considers the involvement of environmental law researchers in interdisciplinary research. Using a survey and a series of unstructured interviews, we explore environmental law professors’ level of interest in such research; the extent of their engagement in it; and the inducements and barriers they perceive to such research. We conclude that levels of engagement in such research are probably lower than they ought to be, and we therefore recommend steps that individuals and institutions could take to facilitate more and better interdisciplinary work. More generally, we conclude that some common critiques of interdisciplinary legal research rest on assumptions that are not accurate, at least for the subfield of environmental law

MR442: Business Climate for Maine\u27s Environmental and Energy Technology Sector

This report presents findings from a survey that concentrated on issues pertaining to Maine’s business climate for the environmental and energy technology sector. The Environmental and Energy Technology (E2Tech) Council of Maine commissioned the survey, with support from the Maine Technology Institute’s Cluster Enhancement Award. The survey, conducted during the summer of 2006, collected information on the factors believed to affect the business climate for Maine’s environmental and energy technology sector, including availability of external investment, skilled workforce, collaboration among firms and in-state partners. Information on state characteristics (e.g., taxes, state/local government support, location relative to key inputs) that may affect growth potential was also captured on the survey.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_miscreports/1015/thumbnail.jp

Forever Chemicals Needing Immediate Solutions: Mainers’ Preferences for Addressing PFAS Contamination

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a diverse class of synthetic fluorinated chemicals also referred to as “forever chemicals.” The release of these chemicals into the environment presents an urgent, emerging threat to human and environmental health. Decision-makers seeking to address a variety of PFAS-related issues need better understanding of citizens’ knowledge of PFAS contamination and their preferences for managing the issue. To provide this vital information, we analyze data from a survey of Maine citizens. We assess Maine residents’ baseline knowledge of PFAS contamination, as well as their preferences for generation and allocation of funds to address PFAS contamination in Maine. Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a diverse class of synthetic fluorinated chemicals also referred to as “forever chemicals.” The release of these chemicals into the environment presents an urgent, emerging threat to human and environmental health. Decision-makers seeking to address a variety of PFAS-related issues need better understanding of citizens’ knowledge of PFAS contamination and their preferences for managing the issue. To provide this vital information, we analyze data from a survey of Maine citizens. We assess Maine residents’ baseline knowledge of PFAS contamination, as well as their preferences for generation and allocation of funds to address PFAS contamination in Maine

The Psychology of Eco-Consumption.

Information programs to promote cellulosic biofuels may not achieve their objectives unless consumers can be induced to care about the information presented to them. The social psychology literature highlights two commonly used models to link psychological variables to environmentally related behaviors: the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Norm Activation Theory (NAT). Other studies have compared the strength of these models or have adapted these models by adding additional variables, but few have compared across the alternative variable combinations noted in the literature. That is, most studies have added one or two psychological variables to the NAT or TPB models and have found that the additional variable is a significant factor influencing behavior. However, we are unfamiliar with any study that has included the full suite of examined variables within one model. This could be a problem in that the psychological variables are likely to be correlated. In turn, the output of these models may suffer from omitted variable bias; which could lead to erroneous conclusions about the importance of any specific variable. Previous findings that individual variables are significant in influencing behaviors may be incorrect. One objective here then is to start examining whether these \u27significant findings\u27 are robust, and if not, whether we can be more parsimonious in future modeling efforts. Economists often assume preferences are adequately proxied by the person\u27s socioeconomic characteristics or by the person\u27s participation in some environmental behavior. Recently, economists have begun to recognize that these characteristics are poor proxies especially since the proxies commonly used are binary (0/1) variables that provide relatively little detail, are usually not policy or program relevant and lack a theoretical justification. Thus, another objective is to compare the performance of models that incorporate these proxy variables with models incorporating psychological variables. Our results suggest: that a combined TPB and NAT model may be more effective than either model alone; that many variables seen as important in the literature may be less important than previously thought (allowing for more parsimonious models - resulting in less costly data collection); and that common proxy variables like membership in an environmental group may not work that well

Whose values count: is a theory of social choice for sustainability science possible?

If sustainability science is to mature as a discipline, it will be important for practitioners to discuss and eventually agree upon the fundamentals of the paradigm on which the new discipline is based. Since sustainability is fundamentally a normative assertion about tradeoffs among values, how society chooses the specifics among these tradeoffs is central to the sustainability problem. Whose values should count in making social decisions and how should the multiplicity of values that exist be known and used in that decision process? Given the vast spatial domains and temporal domains at work in the sustainability problem, we need some means of reconciling the inevitably divergent choices depending on whose values we count, how we know what those values are, and how we count them in making social decisions. We propose an approach to dealing with these questions based on Rawls (A theory of justice. Belknap Press, Cambridge, 1971) and explore the problems inherent in a social choice theory for sustainability science

Thinking past, thinking future: An empirical test of the effects of retrospective assessment on future preferences

In recent work, we asserted that the largest group of stakeholders for sustainability science is future generations; yet intergenerational tradeoffs are often understudied. We proposed retrospective assessment as one potential means of clarifying what future preferences might be. Using a split-sample design we test the potential for retrospective assessment to influence citizens\u27 preferences for future policy decision. We test the potential for retrospective assessment to yield increased or decreased support for policy. Our findings reveal context dependent public policy preferences where the presence of retrospective assessment significantly impacts citizens\u27 preferences and outcomes appear strongly influenced by the attributes of the historical (or retrospective) scenario provided

Special Issue on the Economics of Changing Coastal Resources: The Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems

Viewed through the perspective of the nexus of food, energy, and water systems, improved management of coastal resources requires enhanced understanding of cross-system and cross-scale interactions and dynamics. The economics of changing coastal resources hinges on increased understanding of complex tradeoffs associated with these complex multisystem and multiscale relationships. How diverse forms of change will affect water quantity and quality as well as food and energy production in coastal areas is not well understood. Coastal resources provide many goods and services and influence markedly the nature of many human communities. In 2010, 43 percent of the US population lived in marine coastal counties (US Census 2012), and from 1960 to 2010, the population of these counties increased by 87 percent, faster than the rest of the United States (62 percent). In addition to serving as attractive settlement locations, coastal areas provide critical ecosystem services, including critical habitat for commercially important species in some cases (Gutman 2007, Kroll et al. 2012, Hales et al. 2014). Abundant natural resource amenities also provide valuable recreation and tourism experiences (Hales et al. 2014). Further, new economic opportunities also exist in coastal areas, with many recent examples of emerging products (Barros et al. 2009), innovative seafood technologies (Ayer and Tyedmers 2009, Bugallo et al. 2013), and potential biomedical compounds of different macroalgae (Shekhar et al. 2012) and bivalves (Newell, Ma, and Doyle 2012)

Giving Voice to the Future in Sustainability: Retrospective Assessment to Learn Prospective Stakeholder Engagement

There is a broad understanding that intergenerational equity is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for sustainability. Likewise, there is a growing consensus that sustainability science requires stakeholder engagement to be successful. These two ideas demand some meaningful way of engaging the future as a stakeholder if sustainability is to be operationalized. Rawls\u27 theory of justice provides a model for how this might be accomplished, yet there are both conceptual and practical problems with a Rawlsian approach. We propose using retrospective assessment as a means of learning how to approach future stakeholder engagement in sustainability