Shedding Light on the light bulb puzzle: the role of attitudes and perceptions in the adoption of energy efficient light bulbs

Despite the potential energy savings and economic benefits associated with compact fluorescent light bulbs, their adoption by the residential sector has been limited to date. In this paper, we present a theoretical model that focuses on the agents' ability to perceive the correct cost of lighting and on the role of environmental attitudes as key determinants of the adoption decision. We use original data from Ireland to test our theoretical predictions. Our results emphasize the importance of education, information and environmental awareness in the adoption decision.

Explaining the multiparty systems of Western Europe prior to the adoption of proportional representation

The literature has difficulty explaining why the number of parties in majoritarian electoral systems often exceeds the two-party predictions associated with Duverger’s Law. To understand why this is the case, I examine several party systems in Western Europe before the adoption of proportional representation. Drawing from the social cleavage approach, I argue that the emergence of multiparty systems was because of the development of the class cleavage, which provided a base of voters sizeable enough to support third parties. However, in countries where the class cleavage became the largest cleavage, the class divide displaced other cleavages and the number of parties began to converge on two. The results show that the effect of the class cleavage was nonlinear, producing the greatest party system fragmentation in countries where class cleavages were present – but not dominant – and smaller in countries where class cleavages were either dominant or non-existent.

A research-based approach to exploring the adoption of novel UK-based concrete test methods in Chinese construction sector

As part of a UK-China science bridge project - a UK government funded initiative linking leading universities and businesses in selective partnering countries in 2009 a collaborative research programme was initiated between Queen's University and the Research Institute of High Performance Concrete (part of the Central Research Institute of Building and Construction) in Beijing.

For further details email b.magee@ulster.ac.uk

When innovation fails: An institutional perspective of the (non)adoption of boundary spanning IT innovation

We combine the concepts of legitimacy, institutional (mis)alignments, strategic responses and organizing visions to develop a conceptual framework to analyse the adoption of innovations that span organisational fields. We apply the framework to examine a telehealth innovation connecting a public sector hospital-based eye clinic with private sector optometry practices. We find that while compromise strategies were successful in encouraging adoption within each field, the innovation ultimately failed as fields developed different organising visions which could not be reconciled. The findings suggest that institutional misalignments within and between fields interact to amplify their overall effect on the adoption of hybrid innovations.

The Distribution and Adoption of the Byre-house (Longhouse) in Late Medieval Britain

It has long been recognized that the byre-house or longhouse, in which animals and humans lived in the same building and with direct contact, was a distinctive building plan. Earlier interpretations have seen it as a ubiquitous house type found throughout Britain, but gradually replaced by separate buildings for keeping animals and accommodating humans. More recent work has suggested that it was a regional variant of the common late medieval domestic plan. The use of this building type was restricted to parts of Wales, and northern and western areas of England. It is argued that the introduction of the byre-house occurs mainly in the thirteenth century as part of a wider trend to provide accommodation for livestock during the winter months. The byre-house was a one response to this need, and its adoption was not due to climatic or geographical factors. Instead, it is interpreted as reflecting localized cultural attitudes to the relationship between humans and animals.

Adoption of farm-based irrigation water-saving techniques in the Guanzhong Plain, China

This article analyses adoption of farm-based irrigation water saving techniques, based on a cross-sectional data set of 357 farmers in the Guanzhong Plain, China. Approximately 83% of the farmers use at least one farm-based water-saving technique. However, the traditional, inefficient techniques border and furrow irrigation are still prevalent whereas the use of advanced, more efficient techniques is still rather rare. We develop and estimate an adoption model consisting of two stages: awareness of water scarcity and intensity of adoption. We find that awareness of water scarcity and financial status enhance adoption of more advanced techniques whereas access to better community-based irrigation infrastructure discourages it. We furthermore find both community-based irrigation infrastructure and farm-based irrigation water-saving techniques have mitigating effects on production risk. From the results it follows that adoption can be stimulated via financial support and via extension aimed at enhancing awareness of water scarcity.

Cooperative traits of technology adoption: Website adoption in Irish credit unions

The purpose of this paper is to examine website adoption and its resultant effects on credit union performance in Ireland. Credit union specific factors influence adoption as does the socio-economic profile of the population from where the credit union draws its membership. Website adoption results in a reduction in the spread between the loan and dividend rate with this primarily driven by a fall in the loan rate. Given that the adoption of a website, albeit with limited functionality, translates into cost benefits this augurs well for the current restructuring process underway for Irish credit unions which has as one of its objectives the upgrade of credit union ICT sophistication.

Infrastructure and the Architectures of Modernity in Ireland 1916-2016

At the formation of the new Republic of Ireland, the construction of new infrastructures was seen as an essential element in the building of the new nation, just as the adoption of international style modernism in architecture was perceived as a way to escape the colonial past. Accordingly, infrastructure became the physical manifestation, the concrete identity of these objectives and architecture formed an integral part of this narrative. Moving between scales and from artefact to context, Infrastructure and the Architectures of Modernity in Ireland 1916-2016 provides critical insights and narratives on what is a complex and hitherto overlooked landscape, one which is often as much international as it is Irish. In doing so, it explores the interaction between the universalising and globalising tendencies of modernisation on one hand and the textures of local architectures on the other.

The book shows how the nature of technology and infrastructure is inherently cosmopolitan. Beginning with the building of the heroic Shannon hydro-electric facility at Ardnacrusha by the German firm of Siemens-Schuckert in the first decade of independence, Ireland became a point of varying types of intersection between imported international expertise and local need. Meanwhile, at the other end of the century, by the year 2000, Ireland had become one of the most globalized countries in the world, site of the European headquarters of multinationals such as Google and Microsoft. Climatically and economically expedient to the storing and harvesting of data, Ireland has subsequently become a repository of digital information farmed in large, single-storey sheds absorbed into anonymous suburbs. In 2013, it became the preferred site for Intel to design and develop its new microprocessor chip: the Galileo. The story of the decades in between, of shifts made manifest in architecture and infrastructure from the policies of economic protectionism, to the opening up of the country to direct foreign investment and the embracing of the EU, is one of the influx of technologies and cultural references into a small country on the edges of Europe as Ireland became both a launch-pad and testing ground for a series of aspects of designed modernity.