Exploring the 'Issue-Attention Cycle': Does Length of Time Since Wildfire Predict Social Acceptability of Prescribed Burning?

Social acceptability of environmental management actions, such as prescribed burning used to reduce wildfire risk, is critical to achieving positive outcomes. However, environmental managers often need to implement strategies over a long time period, and sustaining long-term community support can be challenging. Public attention to environmental issues is argued to vary over time, with acceptability of management interventions theorized to decrease with time since experiencing an environmental problem. However, it is unknown whether a person needs to personally experience the problem to maintain support, or if hearing about it in the media is sufficient. In this paper we explore whether acceptability of prescribed burning used to reduce wildfire risk declines with length of time since personally experiencing a wildfire. In a sample of 4390 Australians, acceptability of prescribed burning was not predicted by length of time since personally experiencing a wildfire, or perceptions of wildfire risk. Significant predictors included perceptions of local fuel loads, and of positive and negative impacts of prescribed burning, suggesting addressing these issues may be more effective in maintaining long-term support for wildfire management policies than investing in increasing attention to wildfire risk. This suggests environmental managers can design communication strategies to maintain support for environmental actions even in the absence of an individual personally experiencing the problem the action is designed to address.

A framework to diagnose factors influencing proenvironmental behaviors in water-sensitive urban design.

The ongoing challenge of maintaining and improving the quality of water that leaves urban stormwater systems is often addressed using technical rather than social solutions. The need for investment in often expensive water infrastructure can be reduced through better investing in promoting human behaviors that protect water quality as part of water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) initiatives. Successfully achieving this requires understanding factors that influence adoption of proenvironmental behaviors. We review past studies examining this topic and identify that factors influencing adoption of proenvironmental behaviors relevant to WSUD commonly fall into four domains: proenvironmental values and norms, awareness and knowledge of environmental problems and the actions that can address them, proximity and place-based identity, and life-stage and lifestyle factors. We propose the VAIL (values, awareness, identify, lifestyle) framework, based on these four domains and able to be contextualized to specific water-quality problems and individual communities, to assist in diagnosing factors influencing adoption of proenvironmental behaviors. We demonstrate the applicability of the framework in a case study examining adoption of gardening practices that support water quality in Canberra, Australia. We developed 22 locally relevant VAIL indicators and surveyed 3,334 residents to understand engagement in four water-friendly gardening behaviors that help improve water quality in local lakes. In regression modeling, the indicators explained a significant amount of variance in these behaviors and suggested avenues for supporting greater adoption of these behaviors. Predictor variables across all four VAIL domains were significant, highlighting the importance of a multidomain framework.

Drought and Distress in Southeastern Australia.

Droughts may increase the risk of mental health problems, but evidence suggests a complex story with some groups being vulnerable while others are not. Previous studies from Australia have found associations with suicide, depression and distress that vary by age, gender and remoteness. Understanding the effects of drought on mental health is important because drought is predicted to be more intense in some areas in the future. We investigated the associations between drought and distress in a survey of rural Australians by age, gender and farming status. We collected distress data using a survey of 5312 people from across the state of Victoria, Australia, in 2015. Respondents completed the Kessler 10 (K10) Psychological Distress Index, and demographic and general health data were collected. We linked a climatic drought index to the locality of residence of respondents. Associations between distress and drought were analyzed using multivariable regression models with interactions by age, gender and farming occupation. Parts of Victoria were in drought in 2015. Drought duration was associated with higher distress in younger rural women (aged 40-54: odds ratio 1.18 per inter-quartile range increase in drought duration) but not older rural women or men. This pattern did not vary between farmers and non-farmers. Drought was associated with increased distress, but this differed between subgroups. Our results suggest that supporting younger women may be particularly important, and understanding ways older Australian rural women cope may enable us to build adaptive capacity and resilience.

Perceived profitability and well-being in Australian dryland farmers and irrigators.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the relationship between self-reported farm profitability and farmer well-being, and to explore potential implications for farmer assistance policy. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of farmers from Regional Wellbeing Survey data (wave 1, 2013) and comparison between groups. PARTICIPANTS: Participants were 1172 dryland farmers (35% women) and 707 irrigators (24% women). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The Personal Wellbeing Index and the Kessler 10-item measure of general psychological distress. RESULTS: There is a consistent and significant relationship between higher profitability, greater well-being and less distress among dryland farmers and irrigators. CONCLUSIONS: The relationship between farm profitability and the well-being of Australian dryland farmers and irrigators has the potential to inform farmer assistance policy. Assistance programs can be more effective if they explicitly incorporate a profitability assessment into their targeting and eligibility requirements and a well-being component into program design and delivery. SETTING: Rural Australia. INTERVENTION: Not applicable.

Satisfaction with fishing and the desire to leave.

Predicting who may leave a fishery is an important consideration when designing capacity reduction programs to enhance both ecological and economic sustainability. In this paper, the relationship between satisfaction and the desire to exit a fishery is examined for the Queensland East Coast Trawl fishery. Income from fishing, and changes in income over the last 5 years, were key factors affecting overall satisfaction. Relative income per se was not a significant factor, counter to most satisfaction studies. Continuing a family tradition of fishing and, for one group, pride in being a fisher was found to be significant. Satisfaction with fishing overall and the challenge of fishing were found to be the primary drivers of the desire to stay or leave the fishery. Surprisingly, public perceptions of fishing, trust in management and perceptions of equity in resource allocation did not significantly affect overall satisfaction or the desire to exit the fishery.

Healthier land, healthier farmers: considering the potential of natural resource management as a place-focused farmer health intervention.

Farmers have particular wellbeing-related vulnerabilities that conventional health interventions struggle to address. We consider the potential of natural resource management (NRM) programs, which reach large numbers of farmers, as non-conventional place-focused wellbeing interventions. Although designed to address environmental degradation, NRM can influence the wellbeing of farmers. We used qualitative meta-synthesis to reanalyse studies examining social dimensions of NRM in Australia and generate a theoretical framework identifying potential pathways between NRM and wellbeing, intended to inform subsequent empirical work. Our results suggest NRM programs influence several important determinants of farmer wellbeing, in particular social capital, self-efficacy, social identity, material wellbeing, and health itself. The pathways by which NRM influences these determinants are mediated by distal factors such as changes in land conditions, farmer skills and knowledge and resources accessible to farmers. These, in turn, are moderated by the design and delivery of NRM programs, suggesting potential to enhance the health benefits of NRM through specific attention to program design.

Divergent stakeholder views of corporate social responsibility in the Australian forest plantation sector.

Although the Australian forest plantation industry acknowledges that there is a role for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in forest management, there is confusion as to what this constitutes in practice. This paper describes the conflicts between internal and external stakeholder views on CSR in plantation forestry. We conducted in-depth interviews with key informants across three plantation management regions in Australia: Tasmania, the Green Triangle and south-west Western Australia. We interviewed a range of stakeholders including forest company employees, local councils, Indigenous representatives, and environmental non-government organisations. CSR-related initiatives that stakeholders believed were important for plantation management included the need for community engagement, accountability towards stakeholders, and contribution to community development and well-being. Although there was wide support for these initiatives, some stakeholders were not satisfied that forest companies were actively implementing them. Due to the perception that forest companies are not committed to CSR initiatives such as community engagement, some stakeholder expectations are not being satisfied.