Scale up urban agriculture to leverage transformative food systems change, advance social-ecological resilience and improve sustainability.

Scaling up urban agriculture could leverage transformative change, to build and maintain resilient and sustainable urban systems. Current understanding of drivers, processes and pathways for scaling up urban agriculture, however, remains fragmentary and largely siloed in disparate disciplines and sectors. Here we draw on multiple disciplinary domains to present an integrated conceptual framework of urban agriculture and synthesize literature to reveal its social-ecological effects across scales. We demonstrate plausible multi-phase developmental pathways, including dynamics, accelerators and feedback associated with scaling up urban agriculture. Finally, we discuss key considerations for scaling up urban agriculture, including diversity, heterogeneity, connectivity, spatial synergies and trade-offs, nonlinearity, scale and polycentricity. Our framework provides a transdisciplinary roadmap for policy, planning and collaborative engagement to scale up urban agriculture and catalyse transformative change towards more robust urban resilience and sustainability.

Trust and subjective knowledge influence perceived risk of lead exposure.

Lead exposure is a persistent environmental hazard that poses risks to human health. But motivating protective action is challenging with this low visibility hazard whose health effects are often subtle and chronic. Higher risk perception is generally associated with taking protective measures, so public health efforts prioritize risk messaging. Yet, little is known about perceptions of lead exposure risk among the U.S. public. Using cross-sectional data from a national survey of 1035 U.S. residents, we measured the role of trust in government management of lead and subjective knowledge about lead as predictors of perceived risk of lead exposure, controlling for demographic and environmental factors. We also assessed if subjective knowledge moderated the relationship between trust and perceived risk. Our results reveal positive relationships between trust in government management of lead, subjective knowledge about lead, and risk perception, which we attribute in part to the important role government agencies play in secondary prevention, or communicating the risks of environmental lead exposure. We also found that younger people and people living in a house built before lead paint regulations passed in 1978 perceived higher lead risks. Our findings suggest that general communication about lead risks should aim to increase people's subjective knowledge in a consistent and balanced way that improves trust in government messengers.

Health and Environmental Protective Behavioral Intentions for Reducing Harm from Water Pollutants.

Understanding what motivates people to adopt protective behaviors is important in developing effective risk messaging. Motivations may vary depending on the nature of the risk and whether it poses a personal or impersonal threat. Water pollution creates both personal (human health) and impersonal (environmental) threats, yet few studies have examined people's motivations to protect both personal health and environmental health. Protection motivation theory (PMT) uses four key variables to predict what motivates individuals to protect themselves in relation to a perceived threat. Using data from an online survey (n = 621), we investigated the relationships between PMT variables related to health and environmental protective behavioral intentions related to toxic water pollutants among residents in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, USA. Among PMT variables, high self-efficacy (belief in one's own capacity to carry out certain behaviors) significantly predicted both health and environmental protective behavioral intentions for water pollutants, while perceived severity of the threat was only significant in the environmental behavioral intentions model. Perceived vulnerability and response efficacy (belief that a specific behavior will effectively mitigate the threat) were significant in both models. Education level, political affiliation, and subjective knowledge of pollutants were significant predictors of environmental protective behavioral intentions, but not health protective behavioral intentions. The results of this study suggest that when communicating environmental risks of water pollution, highlighting self-efficacy in messaging is particularly important to promote protective environmental and personal health behavior.

Conducting conservation social science surveys online.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is affecting the environment and conservation research in fundamental ways. Many conservation social scientists are now administering survey questionnaires online, but they must do so while ensuring rigor in data collection. Further, they must address a suite of unique challenges, such as the increasing use of mobile devices by participants and avoiding bots or other survey fraud. We reviewed recent literature on online survey methods to examine the state of the field related to online data collection and dissemination. We illustrate the review with examples of key methodological decisions made during a recent national study of people who feed wild birds, in which survey respondents were recruited through an online panel and a sample generated via a project participant list. Conducting surveys online affords new opportunities for participant recruitment, design, and pilot testing. For instance, online survey panels can provide quick access to large and diverse samples of people. Based on the literature review and our own experiences, we suggest that to ensure high-quality online surveys one should account for potential sampling and nonresponse error, design survey instruments for use on multiple devices, test the instrument, and use multiple protocols to identify data quality problems. We also suggest that research funders, journal editors, and policy makers can all play a role in ensuring high-quality survey data are used to inform effective conservation programs and policies.

RESUMEN: La pandemia del coronavirus (COVID-19) está afectando al ambiente y a la investigación para la conservación de maneras fundamentales. Muchos científicos sociales de la conservación ahora están aplicando encuestas en línea, pero lo deben hacer mientras aseguran que hay rigor en la recolección de datos. Además, deben abordar un conjunto de retos únicos, como el incremento en el uso de dispositivos móviles por parte de los participantes y la evasión de bots y otros fraudes en las encuestas. Revisamos la literatura reciente sobre los métodos de encuestas en línea para examinar el estado del campo relacionado con la colección y difusión de datos. Ilustramos esta revisión con ejemplos de decisiones metodológicas importantes realizadas durante un estudio nacional de personas que alimentan a aves silvestres, en el cual quienes respondieron la encuesta fueron reclutados por medio de un panel en línea y una muestra fue generada por medio de una lista de participantes en el proyecto. La aplicación de encuestas en línea brinda oportunidades nuevas para el reclutamiento de participantes, diseños y evaluación de pilotos. Por ejemplo, los paneles de las encuestas en línea pueden proporcionar acceso rápido a muestras grandes y diversas de personas. Con base en la revisión de la literatura y en nuestras propias experiencias, sugerimos que para asegurar la elaboración de encuestas en línea de alta calidad uno debe explicar el error potencial de muestreo y por ausencia de respuesta, diseñar instrumentos de encuesta para su uso en diferentes dispositivos, probar el instrumento y usar múltiples protocolos para identificar problemas con la calidad de los datos. También sugerimos que los financiadores de la investigación, los editores de revistas y formuladores de políticas pueden jugar un papel para asegurar que se usen datos de encuestas de alta calidad para orientar a los programas y las políticas de conservación.

Environmental, public health, and economic development perspectives at a Superfund site: A Q methodology approach.

Environmental remediation and restoration at hazardous waste sites is important for reducing risks and sustaining local economies. Navigating trade-offs between diverse and conflicting stakeholder perspectives to identify practical and affordable ways forward is important for sustaining objectives and goals. Differences in stakeholder perspectives are informed by their affiliations and roles and their views towards environmental, economic development, and public health issues. We used Q methodology, an approach that combines priority sorting and interviews, to elicit and interpret the perspectives of 28 stakeholders, representing government entities, non-profits, and industries at a mining-impacted Superfund site in the Coeur d'Alene Basin of Idaho, USA. Four primary perspectives were distinguished by their prioritization of: 1) government intervention, 2) the Superfund remediation, 3) local concerns, and 4) public-private partnerships. Participants' roles and affiliations played an influential role in informing primary perspectives. Overall, collaboration was viewed more favorably when it was associated with concrete implementation pathways.

Perceived Risk and Intentions to Practice Health Protective Behaviors in a Mining-Impacted Region.

Effective risk communication strategies are critical to reducing lead exposure in mining-impacted communities. Understanding the strength of the associations between perceived risk and individuals' behavioral intentions to protect their health is important for developing these strategies. We conducted a survey within three communities of northern Idaho, USA (n = 306) in or near a Superfund Megasite with legacy mining contamination. Survey data were used to test a theoretical model based on the Health Belief Model. Respondents had higher intentions to practice health protective behaviors when they perceived the risk of lead contamination as severe and recognized the benefits of practicing health protective behaviors. Women reported higher behavioral intentions than men, but age and mining affiliation were not significantly associated with behavioral intentions. Although managing lead hazards in communities impacted by mining is challenging due to widely distributed contamination, effective health risk messages, paired with remediation, are powerful tools to protect the health and safety of residents.