Impact evaluation of community-based coastal resource management projects in the Philippines

The benefits of decentralizing the management of coastal resources to local governments and resource users have long been recognized, but the best systems for coastal resources management depend on many factors. A number of community-based management and co-management projects were started in the Philippines in the early 1980s. This report describes a comparative assessment of these projects to determine where improvements can be made in the design of future community-based coastal resource management projects. Early and continuing involvement by project beneficiaries is one of the factors that contributes to the success of the project development, implementation, and evaluation.

Strengthening impact evaluation in natural resource management

The workshop on Strengthening Evaluation in Natural Resource Management Research is part of an ACIAR-funded Small Research and Development Activity (SRA) on Assessing the Impacts of Natural Resource Management and Policy Research in Development Programs, with WorldFish and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) as partners. The SRA objectives included a review of literature to identify challenges in assessing the impact of NRMR programs and to propose a framework that addresses them. An exploratory workshop was held in February 2012 to initiate collective action within the CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) to identify and address their impact challenges and led to the creation of the NRMR impact community of practice (COP). This follow-up workshop brought together members of the COP and partners in the SRA to discuss and reach agreement on how to progress on our collective goals of building new and appropriate approaches for NRMR IE and how to put these approaches into action through our research programs. This report is a documentation of the workshop process and outputs.

A practical guide for ex-ante impact evaluation in fisheries and aquaculture

This guide provides a framework for ex-ante evaluation of fisheries and aquaculture projects in developing countries. Ex-ante impact evaluations check the potential of a project or program to deliver benefits from proposed interventions. Providing extensive annotated literature citations, this guide is designed for use by practitioners who may not be fisheries or aquaculture specialists. The guide uses concepts from results-based management, organized into five modules that structure the investigation and provide insights regarding alignment of the proposed intervention with stakeholder interests, feasibility of design, potential constraints to implementation, possible impact pathways and distributional effects of the intervention. Separately published case studies of investments in Bangladesh, Malawi and Ghana illustrate application of the guide.

Ex-ante impact evaluation: case studies from Malawi, Bangladesh and Ghana

This document presents ex-ante impact evaluations of research for development projects related to aquaculture in Bangladesh, Malawi and Ghana. The Ghana chapter also includes an ex-ante evaluation of a fisheries project. The case studies utilized preliminary versions of guidelines developed specifically for ex-ante evaluations of aquaculture and fisheries projects. The guidelines, found in A Practical Guide for Ex-Ante Impact Evaluations in Fisheries and Aquaculture, are designed to provide an approach for a qualitative examination of the potential for a project to deliver impacts. Using a conceptual framework based on the outcome focus of results-based management, the guidelines stress careful examination of the setting, internal consistency, a sound theory of change, and an examination of stakeholders’ interests and potential partnerships. The case study reports illustrate the variability with which the guidelines may be interpreted and applied. The different teams, operating with limited time and budget that constrained the collection of new data, were forced to utilize existing secondary data and information and consult with key stakeholders to complete their analyses. The varying levels of reporting reflect the differences among the cases in the amounts of existing information and variety of stakeholders potentially involved in the projects being examined.

An impact evaluation of the Ontario ban on smoking in schools and on school property : does the ban on smoking influence high school students' intentions to smoke cigarettes?

The Ontario Tobacco Control Act of 1994 imposed a total ban on smoking in schools, and on school property for every school in the province. The imposition of this policy created problems for school administrators. For instance, students who were smoking on walkways and properties adjacent to school boundaries, clashed with neighbouring property owners who were angry about the resulting damage and disruption. The enforcement of this policy consumes valuable resources at each school; therefore, knowledge about the impact of the policy is important. If effective, this policy has the potential to improve the health of students over their lifetime, by preventing or delaying smoking behaviour. Alternatively, an ineffective policy will continue to create administrative problems for the school and serve no legitimate purpose. Therefore, knowledge about the impact of the smoking ban policy on students' smoking intentions assists policy makers and school administrators in their understanding of the policy's impact within the schools. This research provided an impact evaluation of the ban on smoking in schools and on school property in Ontario. A total of 2069 students, from five high schools, in the Niagara Region, provided complete responses to a survey, designed to test whether smoking intentions were affected by the imposition of the policy. The study used Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), specifically, the perceived behavioural control measure, to gain some understanding of students' perceptions of control over smoking imposed by the ban. The findings indicate the policy has the potential to influence students' overall smoking intentions. The ban on smoking policy was found to be a significant predictor of the smoking intentions of high school students. As well, attitude, social norms, and perceptions of control were significant predictors of smoking intentions. Exploratory findings also indicated differences between the control beliefs of students from different high schools, indicating potential differences in the enforcement of the smoking ban between schools. The findings also support the utility of the theory of planned behaviour as a methodology for evaluating the influence of punitive policies. This research study should be continued by utilizing the full theory of planned behaviour, including two phases of data collection and the measurement of actual smoking behaviour.

Impact evaluation of a Kenyan Eco Business: a pilot framework.

Promoting social and environmental entrepreneurship is suggested by many, including international institutions, national development agencies and non-governmental organizations, as critical in tackling longstanding complex global sustainable development problems. However while interest in this kind of alternative entrepreneurship grows, with a proliferation of claims made about its potential to catalyze societal transformation, research in this field remains nascent and fragmented, particularly in relation to Africa. There are few examples of work systematically examining the impacts of social and environmental enterprises on sustainable development and poverty alleviation, especially research based on rigorous empirical fieldwork. This paper begins addressing these limitations by proposing a framework for mapping the sustainable development and poverty alleviation impacts of social and environmental enterprises in Africa. This framework is then piloted with reference to a Kenyan ecobusiness.

Distributed generation impact evaluation using a multi-objective tabu search

Distribution networks paradigm is changing currently requiring improved methodologies and tools for network analysis and planning. A relevant issue is analyzing the impact of the Distributed Generation penetration in passive networks considering different operation scenarios. Studying DG optimal siting and sizing the planner can identify the network behavior in presence of DG. Many approaches for the optimal DG allocation problem successfully used multi-objective optimization techniques. So this paper contributes to the fundamental stage of multi-objective optimization of finding the Pareto optimal solutions set. It is proposed the application of a Multi-objective Tabu Search and it was verified a better performance comparing to the NSGA-II method. © 2009 IEEE.

Metodología para la evaluación de efectos de proyectos de infraestructura = Impact evaluation methodology for infrastructure projects

Ofrece una metodologia para evaluar el efecto de los proyectos de infraestructura (abastecimiento de agua, saneamiento, eliminacion de desechos solidos, carreteras y senderos y energia) sobre las caracteristicas socioeconomicas de las comunidades involucradas.

Does public financial support stimulate innovation and productivity? An impact evaluation

This paper contributes to the empirical literature that evaluates the effects of public financial support to innovation on innovation expenditures, innovation itself and productivity in developing countries. Propensity score matching techniques and data from Innovation Surveys are used to analyse the impacts of public financial support to innovation on Uruguayan firms. The results indicate that there is no crowding-out effect of private innovation investment by public funds and that public financial support in Uruguay seems to increase private innovation expenditures. Financial support also appears to induce increased research and development expenditures and innovative sales, with these effects being greatest for service firms. Public funds do not, however, significantly stimulate private expenditures by firms that would have carried out innovation activities even in the absence of financial support.

Input-Output Based Economic Impact Evaluation System for Small City Development: A Case Study on Saemangeum's Flux City Design

The paper aims to develop a quasi-dynamic interregional input-output model for evaluating the macro-economic impacts of small city development. The features of the model are summarized as follows: (1) the consumption expenditure of households is regarded as an endogenous variable, (2) the technological change is determined by the change of industrial Location Quotient caused by firm's investment activities. (3) a strong feedback function between the city design and the economic analysis is provided. For checking the performance of the model, Saemangeum's Flux City Design Plan is used as the simulation target in our paper.

Impacts of tertiary canal irrigation -- impact evaluation of an infrastructure project

We estimate the economic impacts of irrigation using the panel data set from rural Thailand. We employed difference-in-differences estimation and showed that tertiary irrigation has unexpected impacts. Contrary to the local experts predicitions that it should have substantial productivity impacts as it allows better water controls for farmers, we found largely zero profitability impacts. Another unexpected finding is that, while profitability is not affected, we see an increase in cultivation probability with the construction of tertiary canals. This is observed in both wet and dry seasons. This finding suggests that Thai farmers are willing to expand operation scale once they get water.

Symposium on traffic safety effectiveness (impact) evaluation projects. Final report.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Office of Program and Demonstration Evaluation, Washington, D.C.

Summary : St. Charles communities impact evaluation study /

Financed by the Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.