Honesty in the provision of expert services: The effect of naturalistic framings and participants' professions

This thesis studies the incentives and behaviour of providers of expert services, like doctors, financial advisors and mechanics. The focus is in particular on provision of health care using a series of credence goods experiments conducted to investigate undertreatment, overtreatment and overcharging in a medical context. The findings of study one suggest that a medical framing compared to a neutral framing significantly increases pro-social behaviour for standard participants in economic experiments. Study two compares the behaviour of medical practitioners - mainly doctors - to students. It is observed that medical doctors’ undertreat and overcharge significantly less, but at the same time overtreat significantly more than students. The final study compares behaviours for other experts - accountants, engineers and lawyers - using experimental framings drawn from the respective contexts and students from the respective faculties as participants in credence goods experiments.

The role of gender and framing in shaping community activists' perceptions of environmental risks

campaign to oppose projects proposed in their local community. The social constructionist perspective advocates that these motivations are driven by activists’ interpretation of reality, such that activists will assign multiple meanings to and frame environmental issues in a way that reflects their view of reality. Past research suggest that these are also influenced by patterns of shared meaning and interpretation that develop over time in protest movements that shape activists’ perceptions of the environmental risks and impacts associated with construction activity. This paper explores the role of gender distinctions in shaping perceptions of environmental risk and how this affects their framing of the environmental, social, cultural/ historical impacts associated with a construction project. Using Snow and Benford’s (1988) 3-prong analytical tool for framing: diagnostic framing, prognostic framing and motivational framing, this paper presents findings from the content analysis of in-depth interviews of 24 activists protesting against a highly controversial housing project in the greater Sydney metropolitan area. The research adopts a single case study approach, and is particularly significant as it investigates an extensive and on-going community-based protest campaign (dating back almost 20 years) that has generated the longest standing 24-hour community picket in Australia.

Uncritical framing : lesson and knowledge structure in school science

There is clearly contention over the shape and formation of science curriculum and over, ultimately, what will count as scientific knowledge, skill, capacity and world view. The Cold War set the policy context for an ongoing focus on science education across Western nations. Sputnik-era US and UK educational policy offered a broad premise for the purpose of school science: in a risky geopolitical environment, high levels of advanced scientific expertise were central to the national interest and necessary for the maintenance of military/industrial and technological power. Half a century on, in the context of global economic and environmental crisis, as a justification for digital, industrial and biomedical innovation, the rationale for the production of scientific capital is central to curriculum settlements and educational policy in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

An orientation to early childhood education for sustainability and research : framing the text

This publication arose from the interests of the chapter authors, ‘a small group of thoughtful people’ almost all of whom participated in one or both Transnational Dialogues in Research in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability, held in Stavanger, Norway in 2010 and Brisbane, Australia in 2011 (Refer Appendix 1 for list of participants). These meetings were the first time that a critical mass of researchers from vastly different parts of the globe - Norway, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand at the inaugural meeting, with additional participants from Korea, Japan and Singapore attending the second - had come together to debate, discuss and share ideas about research and theory in the emerging field of Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS. Some of the researchers who joined these Transnational Dialogues, had met serendipitously at earlier conferences and meetings, or corresponded via email, but many had never met face-to-face. Now a significant number are contributing authors in this text. It is a testament to these researchers’ interest in this agenda that they mostly self-funded their travel and other costs to attend the Transnational Dialogues research meetings. While most chapter authors come from the field of early childhood education, a few are more aligned with education for sustainability/environmental education, while a much smaller number are already working at the intersection of early childhood education and education for sustainability. What we share as a group is a range of perspectives and orientations to research and to the research focus at the heart of this book - young children and their actual and potential capabilities as agents of change for sustainability. As researchers, regardless of experience and perspectives, participants knew they had something extra to offer - their expertise as researchers - providing scholarly insights into the work of practitioners, applying critically reflective lenses to curricula, pedagogies and assumptions, testing of ideas and theories, and presenting a sense for where ECEfS might fit or, indeed, go beyond norms and orthodoxies. This is a text, then, for both researchers and those whose primary interests lie in daily interactions with children, families and communities.

Re-framing planning decision-making : increasing flood resilience in Jakarta

Purpose – Rapid urbanisation, fragmented governance and recurrent flooding complicates resolution of DKI Jakarta’s chronic housing shortage. Failure to effectively implement planning decisionmaking processes poses potential human rights violations. Contemporary planning policy requires the relocation of households living in floodplains within fifteen metres of DKI Jakarta’s main watercourses; further constraining land availability and potentially requiring increased densification. The purpose of this paper is to re-frame planning decision-making to address risks of flooding and to increase community resilience. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a preliminary scoping study for a technologically enhanced participatory planning method, incorporating synthesis of existing information on urbanisation, governance, and flood risk management in Jakarta. Findings – Responsibility for flood risk management in DKI Jakarta is fragmented both within and across administrative boundaries. Decision-making is further complicated by: limited availability of land use data; uncertainty as to the delineated extent of watercourses, floodplains, and flood modelling; unclear risk and liability for infrastructure investments; and technical literacy of both public and government participants. Practical implications – This research provides information to facilitate consultation with government entities tasked with re-framing planning processes to increase public participation. Social implications – Reduction in risk exposure amongst DKI Jakarta’s most vulnerable populations addresses issues of social justice.

Promoting pro-environmental action in climate change deniers

A sizeable (and growing) proportion of the public in Western democracies deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change. It is commonly assumed that convincing deniers that climate change is real is necessary for them to act pro-environmentally. However, the likelihood of ‘conversion’ using scientific evidence is limited because these attitudes increasingly reflect ideological positions. An alternative approach is to identify outcomes of mitigation efforts that deniers find important. People have strong interests in the welfare of their society, so deniers may act in ways supporting mitigation efforts where they believe these efforts will have positive societal effects. In Study 1, climate change deniers (N D 155) intended to act more pro-environmentally where they thought climate change action would create a society where people are more considerate and caring, and where there is greater economic/technological development. Study 2 (ND347) replicated this experimentally, showing that framing climate change action as increasing consideration for others, or improving economic/technological development, led to greater pro-environmental action intentions than a frame emphasizing avoiding the risks of climate change. To motivate deniers’ pro-environmental actions, communication should focus on how mitigation efforts can promote a better society, rather than focusing on the reality of climate change and averting its risks.

Cooperative choice and its framing effect under threshold uncertainty in a provision point mechanism

This paper explores how threshold uncertainty affects cooperative behaviors in the provision of public goods and the prevention of public bads. The following facts motivate our study. First, environmental (resource) problems are either framed as public bads prevention or public goods provision. Second, the occurrence of these problems is characterized by thresholds that are interchangeably represented as "nonconvexity," "bifurcation," "bi-stability," or "catastrophes." Third, the threshold location is mostly unknown. We employ a provision point mechanism with threshold uncertainty and analyze the responses of cooperative behaviors to uncertainty and to the framing for each type of social preferences categorized by a value orientation test. We find that aggregate framing effects are negligible, although the response to the frame is the opposite depending on the type of social preferences. "Cooperative" subjects become more cooperative in negative frames than in positive frames, whereas "individualistic" subjects are less cooperative in negative frames than in positive ones. This finding implies that the insignificance of aggregate framing effects arises from behavioral asymmetry. We also find that the percentage of cooperative choices non-monotonically varies with the degree of threshold uncertainty, irrespective of framing and value orientation. Specifically, the degree of cooperation is highest at intermediate levels of threshold uncertainty and decreases as the uncertainty becomes sufficiently large.

In Situ Observation of the Thermal Decomposition of Weddelite by Heating Stage Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy

The morphological and chemical changes occurring during the thermal decomposition of weddelite, CaC2O4·2H2O, have been followed in real time in a heating stage attached to an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope operating at a pressure of 2 Torr, with a heating rate of 10 °C/min and an equilibration time of approximately 10 min. The dehydration step around 120 °C and the loss of CO around 425 °C do not involve changes in morphology, but changes in the composition were observed. The final reaction of CaCO3 to CaO while evolving CO2 around 600 °C involved the formation of chains of very small oxide particles pseudomorphic to the original oxalate crystals. The change in chemical composition could only be observed after cooling the sample to 350 °C because of the effects of thermal radiation.