The many faces of local community: Exploring lay conceptualizations of the Norwegian lokalsamfunn

ABSTRACT

Despite much attention paid to the topic of community in academic literature and policy documents, there is a relative lack of knowledge about what laypersons perceive as a local community. Based on data from a national survey, the authors examine how c.1400 Norwegians conceptualized local community – lokalsamfunn in Norwegian. They reveal some of the linguistic and conceptual aspects of local community as a term, in addition to tendencies and patterns among the survey responses. The respondents’ conceptualizations contained references to lokalsamfunn variously as a geographical area, people and relations, activities and involvement, attachment to place and people, and provider of local goods and services. Their main emphasis was on lokalsamfunn as a spatial unit. However, the responses contained relatively few references to the relational aspects of lokalsamfunn. The authors conclude that a common, lay understanding may be that lokalsamfunn is a vaguely defined but limited geographical unit filled with people who to varying degrees know each other and interact. Concerning policymaking aimed at fostering communal well-being, the authors hold that any community-based programming requires intricate knowledge of the people who form the community, since without community interaction and a degree of social cohesion any envisioned programmes may not succeed.     

Do perceptions of the Red‐tailed Hawk indicate a human‐wildlife conflict on the island of La Gonave,Haiti?

The Caribbean subspecies of the Red‐tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis solitudinus or B.j. jamaicensis) is the largest native carnivore on the island of La Gonave, Haiti, and the island's apex predator. On other Caribbean islands, raptors have been persecuted by local people typically because of their depredation of livestock. In addition to possible persecution from humans, Red‐tailed Hawks on La Gonave face challenges from island‐wide timber overharvest and rapid land‐cover changes. To better understand the human‐apex predator relationship on La Gonave, we surveyed islanders about their perceptions of, and interactions with, the Red‐tailed Hawk. According to 121 respondents from 10 villages, La Gonavans do not hunt, kill, or consume Red‐tailed Hawks. Our study revealed a notable absence of negative perceptions of the hawk by respondents despite intense hawk depredation of domestic chickens. While the chicken depredation may lead outside observers to consider the human‐hawk relationship on La Gonave as representative of a human‐wildlife conflict, our interview data do not support that conception. Our findings reflect an important conversation in related contemporary scientific literature about what constitutes human‐wildlife conflicts across various cultures. Despite tolerance by residents, Red‐tailed Hawks on La Gonave remain threatened by habitat degradation.     

Personalized risk messaging can reduce climate concerns

One potential barrier to climate policy action is that individuals view climate change as a problem for people in other parts of the world or for future generations. As some scholars argue, risk messaging strategies that make climate change personally relevant may help overcome this barrier. In this article, we report a large-n survey experiment on San Francisco Bay Area residents to investigate how providing spatially-resolved risk information to individuals shapes their climate risk perceptions in the context of sea-level rise. Our results suggest that personalized risk messaging can sometimes reduce concern about sea-level rise. These experimental effects are limited to respondents who believe that climate change is happening. Further, we do not find an effect of providing local risk messages on an individual's willingness to pay for regional climate adaptation measures. Our results emphasize that local messaging strategies around sea-level rise risks may not have the clear impacts that some advocates and scholars presume.     

Climate change or nuclear power—No thanks! A quantitative study of public perceptions and risk framing in Britain

The UK is witnessing a new line in political debate around new nuclear energy generation as one potential feature of future energy policy, specifically for contributing to climate change mitigation alongside energy security. Little is known about how ordinary citizens might be responding to this reframing. This paper reports the results from a major British survey (n=1491) undertaken in the autumn of 2005. The consistent message is that while higher proportions of the British public are prepared to accept nuclear power if they believe it contributes to climate change mitigation, this is a highly conditional view, with very few actively preferring this over renewable sources given the choice. People see both climate change and nuclear power as problematic in terms of risks and express only a ‘reluctant acceptance’ of nuclear power as a ‘solution’ to climate change. The combined data from this survey can also be interpreted as an indication of the complexity surrounding beliefs about energy futures and the difficulty of undertaking simplistic risk–risk tradeoffs within any single framing of the issues; such as nuclear energy versus climate change. The results also indicate that it would be unwise, in the UK as elsewhere, to simplistically assume that there exists any single or stable public ‘opinion’ on such complex matters. We conclude with a discussion of the role and implications of the survey evidence for the policy process.     

An iconic approach for representing climate change

International and national greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals implicitly rely in part on individuals undertaking voluntary emissions reductions through lifestyle decisions. Whilst there is widespread public recognition of climate change as an issue, there are many barriers – cognitive, psychological and social – preventing individuals from enacting lifestyle decarbonisation. More effective climate change communication approaches are needed which allow individuals to engage meaningfully with climate change, thus opening new prospects for lifestyle decarbonisation. This study presents an iconic approach to engagement, tested in the UK context, which allows individuals to approach climate change through their own personal values and experiences. The iconic approach harnesses the emotive and visual power of climate icons with a rigorous scientific analysis of climate impacts under a different climate future. Although some climate icons already exist – for example the Thermohaline Circulation shutdown – these ‘expert-led’ icons fail to effectively engage ‘non-experts’. We demonstrate that the non-expert-led iconic approach helps overcome some of the cognitive and affective barriers that impede action towards lifestyle decarbonisation.     

乡村旅游开发与老年人环境感知的关系

在浙江省余姚市大岚镇柿林村国家4A级景区对29位老人与43位非老人进行分组问卷调查，对老年组与非老年组的自然环境感知、经济环境感知、社会关系感知、旅游及游客感知差异进行卡方检验（X^2）．结果表明，两组人群对环境感知存在着明显差异．乡村旅游地老年人环境感知具有较强烈的乡土意识、对游客与旅游开发普遍持积极的支持态度、希望承担旅游地主人的角色、希望更多分享旅游带来的经济利益等特点．从旅游地老年人这一特殊人群的角度证实了旅游地居民支持旅游发展9个要素的结论，同时发现了中国老人的一些不同之处，提出了期待期的概念，提出从物质和精神两个层面入手，实现乡村旅游可持续发展的建议．     

城市居民对大型活动影响的感知与态度模式——以首届中国国际进口博览会为例

大型活动是城市更新和区域经济发展的重要动力,对城市形象和城市经济具有极大的提升和促进作用。以2018年举办的首届中国国际进口博览会为案例,从居民感知的视角分析首届中国国际进口博览会举办过程中居民的社会交换关系,构建“对政府的信任”“未来结果考虑”“积极影响感知”“消极影响感知”“生活质量”和“支持态度”6个变量的关系模型,采用结构方程模型分析模型构建的合理性,验证了上海居民对首届中国国际进口博览会影响的感知及支持态度的影响因素,并探讨了生活质量在居民感知与支持态度之间的中介效应。结果表明：① 对政府的信任与未来结果考虑对居民感知与支持态度具有重要影响,即居民对政府的信任正向影响其对积极影响的感知及支持态度,负向影响居民的消极影响感知;居民的未来结果考虑也正向影响居民的积极影响感知与支持态度,负向影响居民的消极影响感知。② 居民的积极影响感知对生活质量感知和支持态度具有正向影响,居民的消极影响感知对支持态度具有负向影响,但未影响到居民的生活质量感知。③ 居民的生活质量感知在居民感知与支持态度间的中介效应未获得支持。本文对中国国际进口博览会持续健康发展、上海建设国际会展之都等具有一定的启示意义和参考价值。     

山区农户双重风险感知对搬迁意愿和搬迁行为的影响

以受汶川“5.12”地震和“7.10”特大山洪泥石流灾害严重影响的汶川县原草坡乡为例,从农户风险感知现状出发,考察风险感知对搬迁意愿和搬迁行为的不同影响。研究结果表明：农户对自然灾害风险感知越强、对搬迁安置风险感知越弱,其搬迁意愿越强;较高的自然灾害风险感知会提高农户搬离灾害隐患点或风险区的概率,较强的搬迁安置风险感知会降低农户全家搬迁的可能性;搬迁安置风险感知对未搬迁和部分搬迁农户的影响程度超过自然灾害风险感知的影响。基于汶川县原草坡乡的实证研究,提出避灾搬迁安置决策中的“双重风险感知”假说。     

Barriers perceived to engaging with climate change among the UK public and their policy implications

This paper reports on the barriers that members of the UK public perceive to engaging with climate change. It draws upon three mixed-method studies, with an emphasis on the qualitative data which offer an in-depth insight into how people make sense of climate change. The paper defines engagement as an individual's state, comprising three elements: cognitive, affective and behavioural. A number of common barriers emerge from the three studies, which operate broadly at ‘individual’ and ‘social’ levels. These major constraints to individual engagement with climate change have implications for achieving significant reductions in greenhouse gases in the UK. We argue that targeted and tailored information provision should be supported by wider structural change to enable citizens and communities to reduce their carbon dependency. Policy implications for effective engagement are discussed.     

Rapid ecosystem change challenges the adaptive capacity of Local Environmental Knowledge

The use of Local Environmental Knowledge has been considered as an important strategy for adaptive management in the face of Global Environmental Change. However, the unprecedented rates at which global change occurs may pose a challenge to the adaptive capacity of local knowledge systems. In this paper, we use the concept of the shifting baseline syndrome to examine the limits in the adaptive capacity of the local knowledge of an indigenous society facing rapid ecosystem change. We conducted semi-structured interviews regarding perceptions of change in wildlife populations and in intergenerational transmission of knowledge amongst the Tsimane’, a group of hunter-gatherers of Bolivian Amazonia (n = 300 adults in 13 villages). We found that the natural baseline against which the Tsimane’ measure ecosystem changes might be shifting with every generation as a result of (a) age-related differences in the perception of change and (b) a decrease in the intergenerational sharing of environmental knowledge. Such findings suggest that local knowledge systems might not change at a rate quick enough to adapt to conditions of rapid ecosystem change, hence potentially compromising the adaptive success of the entire social-ecological system. With the current pace of Global Environmental Change, widening the gap between the temporal rates of on-going ecosystem change and the timescale needed for local knowledge systems to adjust to change, efforts to tackle the shifting baseline syndrome are urgent and critical for those who aim to use Local Environmental Knowledge as a tool for adaptive management.