Evaluating sustainable development policies in rural coastal economies.

Sustainable development (SD) policies targeting marine economic sectors, designed to alleviate poverty and conserve marine ecosystems, have proliferated in recent years. Many developing countries are providing poor fishing households with new fishing boats (fishing capital) that can be used further offshore as a means to improve incomes and relieve fishing pressure on nearshore fish stocks. These kinds of policies are a marine variant of traditional SD policies focused on agriculture. Here, we evaluate ex ante economic and environmental impacts of provisions of fishing and agricultural capital, with and without enforcement of fishing regulations that prohibit the use of larger vessels in nearshore habitats. Combining methods from development economics, natural resource economics, and marine ecology, we use a unique dataset and modeling framework to account for linkages between households, business sectors, markets, and local fish stocks. We show that the policies investing capital in local marine fisheries or agricultural sectors achieve income gains for targeted households, but knock-on effects lead to increased harvest of nearshore fish, making them unlikely to achieve conservation objectives in rural coastal economies. However, pairing an agriculture stimulus with increasing enforcement of existing fisheries' regulations may lead to a win-win situation. While marine-based policies could be an important tool to achieve two of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (alleviate poverty and protect vulnerable marine resources), their success is by no means assured and requires consideration of land and marine socioeconomic linkages inherent in rural economies.

Beliefs and emotions have different roles in generating attitudes toward providing personal help and state-sponsored help for people with a mental illness.

The aim of this study was to examine the role of emotions like pity and anger in mediating the relationship between beliefs about the controllability of a mental illness, and the willingness to help someone with a mental illness. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that the effects of beliefs about controllability on the willingness to provide personal help are mediated by the emotions of pity and anger, but that the effects of beliefs about controllability on the willingness to condone state-organised help were more direct, and not mediated by emotions. A between-groups design was employed to investigate the effects of manipulating controllability attributions via 3 hypothetical vignettes. ANOVA analysis of responses to a revised version of the AQ-27 from 371 participants demonstrated that beliefs about controllability lead to significantly higher personal responsibility beliefs, negative affective reactions and decreased helping intentions in comparison to when the cause of mental illness was believed to be uncontrollable. A mediation analysis demonstrated that pity and anger fully mediate the relationship between beliefs about controllability and the willingness to offer personal help, and also demonstrated that pity and anger partially mediate the relationship between beliefs about controllability and the willingness to condone help provided by the state. The partial mediation may indicate that the effects of beliefs about controllability on state-sponsored may be mediated by pity in some people, but that in other people, beliefs have a more proximal effect on behavior.