Abstracts of Recent Research
Mazmanian, D. Jurewitz, J., Nelson, H. (forthcoming). The Paradox of “Acting Globally While
Thinking Locally”: Discordance in Climate Change Adaption Policy Formation. Accepted for
publication at Journal of Environment and Development.
The puzzle motivating this paper is why California has acted globally by enacting a
comprehensive mitigation policy to reduce the emissions of Greenhouse gases, under AB32, a
true public good since the benefits will be shared across the planet, but cannot muster the will to
act locally on adoption of an adaptation policy for the state to protect its own public and private
assets and interests. No statewide authority has been established to govern how Californians
respond to the effects of accelerated climate change. It is a puzzle that we attempt to explain by
identifying what it is that differentiates climate change adaptation from mitigation policy, both
substantively and politically.
We posit that adaptation is characterized by very high complexity and low salience as a policy
issue and thus is not prone to strong and pro-active legislative action. Second, a great deal of
adaptation involves property rights and land use regulations, which are highly emotive issues
and are addressed with utmost political caution. Third, adaption policies affect a wide range of
stakeholders, with accompanying ideological and interest conflicts. Fourth, adaptation suffers
from the absence of clear, authoritative, and quantitative goals. Fifth, there is no simple way to
“get the price right” as through a tax or tradable permit system. Moreover, there is a need to “get
the liability right” in order to motivate efficient private investment large-scale public infrastructure
projects. This leads to our last observation that who pays for adaptation is also highly contested
and ambiguous. The paradox notwithstanding, the balance of the paper maps out some
preliminary policies and strategies that would be commensurate with individual and collective
incentives to encourage progress on adapting to the accelerating rate of climate change.
Abdollahian, M., Yang, Z., Nelson, H., Close, B. (ND). Sustainable Energy Modeling
Programming (SEMPro). Under review at Journal of Artificial Social Science. October.
Technical, environment, social, economic and political constraints are critical barriers to the
development of new renewable energy supplies. SEMPro is an agent-based, predictive
analytics model of the energy siting policy in the techno-social space that simulates how
competing interests shape siting outcomes to identify beneficial policy for sustainable energy
infrastructure. Using a high voltage transmission line as a case study, we integrate project
engineering and institutional factors with GIS data on land use attributes and US Census
residential demographics. We focus on modeling citizen attitudinal, Community Based
Organization emergence and behavioral diffusion of support and opposition with Bilateral
Shapely Values from cooperative game theory. We also simulate the competitive policy process
and interaction between citizens, Community Based Organizations and regulatory, utility and
governmental stakeholders using a non-cooperative game theory. We find CBO formation utility
message and NGO messaging have a positive impact on citizen comments submitted as a part
of the Environmental Impact Statement process, while project need and procedure have a
negative impact. As citizens communicate and exchange political opinions across greater
distances with more neighbors, less CBOs form but those that do are more effective, increasing
the number of messages citizens send.
Cain, N.C., Nelson, H.T. (2012). What Drives Opposition to Energy Infrastructure
Projects? Revise and resubmit with Land Use Policy.
This paper critically reviews theoretical and empirical research from the planning, social
psychology, and political science literatures on siting high-voltage transmission lines (HVTLs).
Siting of new HVTLs is important to reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases from the
electricity sector as well as meeting demands for reliable power. We synthesize existing
research by developing a meso-level framework that integrates and extends existing individuallevel theories to better account for the nested impact of social interactions and institutional
variables on siting outcomes. We apply our framework to a HVTL case in California were
community based opposition was effective due to the perceived high risk of the project and
where trust in institutions was low. Statutory preferences for using existing HVTL right of ways,
land use attributes, and political lobbying were also important in explaining the HVTL siting
outcome.
Boussalis, C., Nelson, H., Swaminathan, S. (2012). Towards Comprehensive Malaria
Planning: The Effect of Government Capacity, Health Policy, and Land Use Variables on
Malaria Incidence in India. Social Science and Medicine. 75 (7). October. Pp. 1213-1221. JCR
Impact Factor 2.69
We present what we believe is the first empirical research that accounts for subnational
government capacity in estimating malaria incidence. After controlling for relevant extrinsic
factors, we find evidence of a negative effect of state government capacity on reported malaria
cases in Indian states over the period 1993e2002. Government capacity is more successful in
predicting malaria incidence than potentially more direct indicators such as state public health
expenditures and economic development levels. We find that high government capacity can
moderate the deleterious health effects of malaria in rice producing regions. Our research also
suggests that government capacity may have exacerbated the effectiveness of the World Bank
Malaria Control Project in India over the period studied. We conclude by proposing the
integration of government capacity measures into existing planning efforts, including
vulnerability mapping tools and disease surveillance efforts.
Hal T. Nelson, Adam Rose, Dan Wei, Thomas Peterson and Jeffery Wennberg. (ND).
Intergovernmental Climate Change Mitigation Policy: Theory and Outcomes.
Under review at Journal of Public Policy. JCR Impact Factor .727