| 1. |
- Amaechina, Ebele, et al.
(författare)
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Policy Note : Policy Responses to Ensure Access to Water and Sanitation Services during COVID-19: Snapshots from the Environment for Development (EfD) Network
- 2020
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Ingår i: Water Economics and Policy. - : World Scientific. - 2382-624X .- 2382-6258. ; 6:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This policy note provides a snapshot of water and sanitation measures implemented by governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 14 countries in the Global South: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Panama, South Africa, Uganda and Vietnam. We find that many countries have taken action to stop utility disconnections due to non-payment. With the exception of Ghana and Vietnam, few countries are instituting new water subsidy programs, and are instead choosing to defer customers’ bills for future payment, presumably when the pandemic recedes and households will be able to pay their bills. It is easier for the utilities’ COVID-relief policies to target customers with piped connections who regularly receive bills. However, the situation for unconnected households appears more dire. Some countries (e.g., Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda) are attempting to provide unconnected households temporary access to water, but these households remain the most vulnerable. This health crisis has accentuated the importance of strong governance structures and resilient water service providers for dealing with external health, environmental and economic shocks.
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| 2. |
- Batrancea, Larissa, et al.
(författare)
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Trust and power as determinants of tax compliance across 44 nations
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Psychology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-4870 .- 1872-7719. ; 74
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2019 The slippery slope framework of tax compliance emphasizes the importance of trust in authorities as a substantial determinant of tax compliance alongside traditional enforcement tools like audits and fines. Using data from an experimental scenario study in 44 nations from five continents (N = 14,509), we find that trust in authorities and power of authorities, as defined in the slippery slope framework, increase tax compliance intentions and mitigate intended tax evasion across societies that differ in economic, sociodemographic, political, and cultural backgrounds. We also show that trust and power foster compliance through different channels: trusted authorities (those perceived as benevolent and enhancing the common good) register the highest voluntary compliance, while powerful authorities (those perceived as effectively controlling evasion) register the highest enforced compliance. In contrast to some previous studies, the results suggest that trust and power are not fully complementary, as indicated by a negative interaction effect. Despite some between-country variations, trust and power are identified as important determinants of tax compliance across all nations. These findings have clear implications for authorities across the globe that need to choose best practices for tax collection.
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| 3. |
- Brühl, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Decision-Making in a Water Crisis: Lessons From the Cape Town Drought for Urban Water Policy
- 2020
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Ingår i: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science.
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The water crisis that gripped Cape Town over the 2016–2018 period gained global attention. For a brief period of time in early 2018, it looked as if the legislative capital of South Africa would become the first major city in the world to run out of water. The case of Cape Town has broad implications for how we think about water management in a rapidly urbanizing world. Cities in the global South, especially, where often under-capacitated urban utilities need to cope with rapid demographic changes, climate change, and numerous competing demands on their tight budgets, can learn from Cape Town’s experience. The case of Cape Town draws attention to the types of decisions policymakers and water utilities face in times of crisis. It illustrates how these decisions, while being unavoidable in the short term, are often sub-optimal in the long run. The Cape Town drought highlights the importance of infrastructure diversification, better groundwater management, and communication and information transparency to build trust with the public. It also shows what governance and institutional changes need to be made to ensure long-term water security and efficient water management. The implementation of all of these policies needs to address the increased variability of water supplies due to increasingly erratic rainfall and rapidly growing urban populations in many countries. This necessitates a long-term planning horizon.
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| 4. |
- Carson, Richard T., et al.
(författare)
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Perceptions of the seriousness of major public health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic in seven middle-income countries
- 2023
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Ingår i: Communications Medicine. - : Springer Nature. - 2730-664X. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- IntroductionPublic perception of the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to six other major public health problems (alcoholism and drug use, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, lung cancer and respiratory diseases caused by air pollution and smoking, and water-borne diseases like diarrhea) is unclear. We designed a survey to examine this issue using YouGov’s internet panels in seven middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in early 2022.MethodsRespondents rank ordered the seriousness of the seven health problems using a repeated best-worst question format. Rank-ordered logit models allow comparisons within and across countries and assessment of covariates.ResultsIn six of the seven countries, respondents perceived other respiratory illnesses to be a more serious problem than COVID-19. Only in Vietnam was COVID-19 ranked above other respiratory illnesses. Alcoholism and drug use was ranked the second most serious problem in the African countries. HIV/AIDS ranked relatively high in all countries. Covariates, particularly a COVID-19 knowledge scale, explained differences within countries; statistics about the pandemic were highly correlated with differences in COVID-19’s perceived seriousness.ConclusionsPeople in the seven middle-income countries perceived COVID-19 to be serious (on par with HIV/AIDS) but not as serious as other respiratory illnesses. In the African countries, respondents perceived alcoholism and drug use as more serious than COVID-19. Our survey-based approach can be used to quickly understand how the threat of a newly emergent disease, like COVID-19, fits into the larger context of public perceptions of the seriousness of health problems.
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| 5. |
- Hasson, Reviva, et al.
(författare)
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Climate Change in a Public Goods Game: Investment Decision in Mitigation versus Adaptation
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We use behavioral and experimental economics to study a particular aspect of the economics of climate change: the potential tradeoff between countries’ investments in mitigation versus adaptation. While mitigation of greenhouse gases can be viewed as a public good, adaptation to climate change is a private good, benefiting only the country or the individual that invests in adaptation. We use a one-shot public-goods game that deviates from the standard public-goods game by introducing a stochastic term to account for probabilistic destruction in a climate-change setting. Probability density function is mapped to within-group levels of mitigation. We compare low-vulnerability and high-vulnerability treatments by varying the magnitude of disaster across treatments. Our results show that there is no significant difference in the level of mitigation across these treatments. Further, our results emphasize the important role of trust in enhancing cooperation.
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| 6. |
- Hasson, R, et al.
(författare)
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Treatment Effects of Climate Change Risk on Mitigation and Adaptation Behavior in an Experimental Setting
- 2012
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Ingår i: South African Journal of Economics. - 0038-2280. ; 80:3, s. 415-430
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the collective action problem as it relates to climate change and develops two models that capture the mitigation–adaptation trade-off. The first model presents climate change as a disaster that will occur with certainty, and where both mitigation and adaptation reduce the size of the loss associated with the disaster (the so-called deterministic model). The second model presents climate change as an uncertain event, where mitigation affects the probability of disaster while adaptation again reduces the size of the loss (this is the so-called stochastic model). Comparing the two models in a one-shot public goods experiment with students, we find no significant differences in subjects' choice to mitigate. The experiments also reveal a relatively low rate of mitigation for both models compared with earlier studies.
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| 7. |
- Klege, Rebecca A., et al.
(författare)
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Tenancy and energy choices in Rwanda. A replication and extension study
- 2022
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Ingår i: World Development Perspectives. - : Elsevier. - 2452-2929. ; 26
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper replicates and extends the study by Martey (2019) by investigating the effect of house ownership patterns and rental status on energy choices for lighting and cooking within the context of Rwanda. Unlike Ghana, Rwanda has a unique house ownership policy which could have implications on the findings of Martey (2019). As an extension, our study explores the heterogeneous effect of tenancy on energy choices across gender of households’ heads and households’ geographical location (rural–urban). Using a bivariate probit model and the fifth Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey data of Rwanda, we find that rental status and dwelling type have varying effects on cooking and lighting fuel choices. Our results show that renters relative to owner-occupants in urban households are more likely to use transition fuels like charcoal for cooking than in rural areas. The result for lighting energy is, however, inconclusive for rural and urban households. We find that female-headed households are more likely to adopt cleaner cooking energy choices. The study only partly supports the energy ladder hypothesis which suggests how evidence does not always provide conclusive support of this hypothesis.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Kocher, Martin G., et al.
(författare)
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Does stake size matter for cooperation and punishment?
- 2008
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Ingår i: Economics Letters. - : Elsevier BV. - 0165-1765. ; 99:3, s. 508-511
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The effects of stake size on cooperation and punishment are investigated using a public goods experiment. We find that an increase in stake size does neither significantly affect cooperation nor the level of punishment.
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| 10. |
- Kocher, Martin G., et al.
(författare)
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Social Background, Cooperative Behavior, and Norm Enforcement
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechansism have been documented in cross-cultural studies, recently. We present data which prove that stark differences in both dimensions can exist even within the same town. For this end, a unique data set was created, based on public goods experiments conducted in South Africa. Most of the group differences can, however, be explained by variables accounting for social capital and social environment, such as trust or household violence.
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