Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Conserving rhinos by legal trade: Insights from a choice experiment on rhino horn consumers
Published: 2021-04-11
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Economic Theory, Economics, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
A legal rhino horn trade is suggested to reduce poaching. To examine this proposition we conducted a choice experiment with 345 rhino horn consumers in Vietnam investigating their preferences for legality, source, price and peer experience of medicinal efficacy as attributes in their decision to purchase rhino horn. We calculated consumers’ willingness to pay for each attribute level. Consumers [...]
Supporting actionable science for environmental policy: Advice for funding agencies from decision makers
Published: 2021-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Successful incorporation of scientific knowledge into environmental policy and decisions is a significant challenge. Although studies on how to bridge the knowledge-action gap have grown rapidly over the last decade, few have investigated the roles, responsibilities, and opportunities for funding bodies to meet this challenge. In this study we present a set of criteria gleaned from interviews [...]
Applying the FEW nexus concept at the local scale
Published: 2021-04-01
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus describes interactions among domains that yield gains or tradeoffs when analyzed together rather than independently. In a project about renewable energy in rural Alaska communities, we applied this concept to examine the implications for sustainability and resilience. The FEW nexus provided a useful framework for identifying the cross-domain benefits of renewable [...]
Global economic and diet transitions drove Latin American and Caribbean forest change during the first decade of the century.
Published: 2021-03-31
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) contain more tropical high-biodiversity forest than the remaining areas of the planet combined, yet experienced more than a third of global deforestation during the first decade of the 21st century. While drivers of forest change occur at multiple scales, we examined forest change at the municipal and national scales integrated with global processes such as [...]
Hutchinsons ecological niche for individuals
Published: 2021-03-31
Subjects: Animal Studies, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
We here develop a concept of an individualized niche in analogy to Hutchison’s population-level concept of the ecological niche. We consider the individualized (ecological) niche as the range of environmental conditions under which a particular individual has expected lifetime reproductive success of ≥1. Our concept is essentially ecological primarily in the sense of fit of individual phenotypes [...]
Novel phylogenetic methods reveal that resource-use intensification drives the evolution of “complex” societies
Published: 2021-03-23
Subjects: Anthropology, Other Anthropology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Explaining the rise of large, sedentary populations, with attendant expansions of socio-political hierarchy and labor specialization (collectively referred to as “societal complexity”), is a central problem for social scientists and historians. Adoption of agriculture has often been invoked to explain the rise of complex societies, but archaeological and ethnographic records contradict simple [...]
Temporal Change Detection Analysis of Monroe County, NY tree cover from 2009 to 2017
Published: 2021-03-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
Forests provide many ecosystem services which are enjoyed by nearby residing communities. This includes pollution and flood mitigation, carbon sequestration, oxygen production, food, fuel, education, recreation, and aesthetics. These ecosystem services also come from urban and suburban forests. Urban ecosystems, specifically urban green spaces services have been noted to improve human health [...]
Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model
Published: 2021-03-13
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biological Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Many researchers assume that until 10-12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile, relatively egalitarian bands composed mostly of kin. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” informs evolutionary explanations of behavior and our understanding of how contemporary societies differ from those of our evolutionary past. Here, we synthesize research challenging this model and propose an alternative, the [...]
Wildlife gardening: an urban nexus of social and ecological relationships
Published: 2021-03-05
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity in urban environments continues to decline, alongside diminution of human connections with nature and community. An integrated ethic and practice of caring for one’s human and ecological community could help address these issues. Here, we describe how wildlife gardening can be such a pathway. We snapshot related social dynamics and human wellbeing benefits, highlighting a case study [...]
The origins of human cumulative culture: from the foraging niche to collective intelligence
Published: 2021-02-22
Subjects: Anthropology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Various studies have investigated cognitive mechanisms underlying culture in humans and other great apes. However, the adaptive reasons for the evolution of uniquely sophisticated cumulative culture in our species remain unclear. We propose that the cultural capabilities of humans are the evolutionary result of a stepwise transition from the ape-like lifestyle of earlier hominins to the foraging [...]
When cheap talk is not that cheap – interviewing the super-rich about illegal wildlife consumption
Published: 2021-02-08
Subjects: Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Obtaining insights on the illicit consumption of endangered wildlife products is challenging, especially when the study objects are the super-rich. This research note draws upon my experience interviewing nearly 1,000 rhino horn consumers in Vietnam. Trust is crucial in such interactions. No interviews could have been conducted without good rapport between interviewers and respondents. [...]
COVID-19 restrictions and recreational fisheries in Ontario, Canada: preliminary insights from an online angler survey
Published: 2020-12-18
Subjects: Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding public health mitigation strategies have altered many facets of human life. And yet, little is known about how public health measures have impacted complex socio-ecological systems such as recreational fisheries. Using a web-based online snowball survey, we targeted resident anglers in Ontario, Canada, to obtain preliminary insight on how the pandemic has [...]
Agricultural Beneficial Management Practices: A Synthesis of Co-benefits, Tradeoffs, and Co-costs between Crop Yield and Non-provisioning Ecosystem Services
Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agriculture, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although agricultural “best (or beneficial) management practices” (BMPs) first emerged to mitigate agro-environmental resource challenges, they may also enhance ‘non-provisioning’ ecosystem services. The enthusiasm for adopting BMPs partially depends on evidence that doing so will lead to agro-environmental benefits while not substantially reducing crop productivity or farmer income. We survey [...]
Students of color speak on racial equity in environmental sustainability
Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Race and Ethnicity, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology, Sustainability
This is a preprint of an article published in Nature Sustainability. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00759-7. Racial and ethnic diversity in environmental sustainability advances social equity and innovation solving social-ecological crises. Yet, Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) remain underrepresented in sustainability [...]
Management effectiveness positively influences forest conservation outcomes in protected areas in Mexico
Published: 2020-12-07
Subjects: Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Understanding the factors that drive protected area outcomes is critical to increase the success of global conservation efforts. Until recently, our understanding of the influence of management effectiveness has been restricted by the limited availability of standardized management data and study design limitations of prior evaluations. Here we use a quasi-experimental matching approach to test [...]