北京市区居住环境的区位优势度分析

首先选取服务设施、自然环境、交通状况、区位条件等因子作为北京市城市内部居住环境区位优势度的评价要素;然后构建评价模型,对北京市不同区域居住环境进行区位优势度评价,并分析其空间特征;进一步又研究了居住环境区位优势度与住宅价格的空间关系,以及与居民居住区位选择行为的关系;最后得出结论为,居住环境区位优势度空间变化趋势与商品房价格的空间分异以及居民居住区位选择的空间偏好具有相似性,即居住环境区位优势度高的地区商品房价格也相对较高,也是居民居住空间偏好地区。     

Beyond climate,culture and comfort in European preferences for low-carbon heat

It is imperative that climate, energy, and sustainability policy researchers and practitioners grapple with the difficulty of decarbonizing heat, which remains the largest single end-use energy service worldwide. In this study, based on a comparative assessment of five original and representative national surveys in Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (N = 10,109), we explore public attitudes of household heat decarbonization in Europe. We explore how people conceive of the purposes of low-carbon heat, their preferences for particular forms of heat supply, and their (at times odd) practices of heat consumption and temperature settings. The data reveal four significant challenges to heat decarbonization that are consistent across geographies: 1) High satisfaction with existing, often fossil fuel based, heating systems; 2) Varying and divergent preferences and expectations for thermal comfort; 3) Householders unlikely to change their heating system in the near-term, in part driven by low familiarity and knowledge of alternative systems; and 4) heat satisfaction appears lower as the fuel mix is decarbonized. The paper concludes by connecting these findings with policy and research implications.     

Welfare reform and the intra-regional migration of beneficiaries in New Zealand

This paper investigates the net effect of major cuts in welfare benefits and associated changes in the delivery of housing assistance on the relocation behavior of beneficiaries. It does so against an international literature which has documented the tendency of welfare recipients to adjust their costs of living by moving from urban to rural settlements. The paper reviews the literature on welfare and migration, introduces a theoretical framework based on a metropolitan labour market and then tests several hypotheses about the possible effects of benefits cuts on spatial adjustment. The research design uses quinquennial census data to compare core beneficiary relocation patterns with those of non-beneficiaries before and after the cuts to welfare benefits in the Wellington region of New Zealand in 1991. The period following the benefit cuts in New Zealand was characterised by increasing job opportunities which helped to mitigate their adverse effect and made it difficult to identify a more general down-market residential adjustment. While a downward adjustment in housing consumption by core beneficiaries was identified, residential movement from urban to the cheaper settlements in adjacent rural areas was only observed from former State house areas where the income effects of benefit cuts were compounded by increases in rents on former State houses. Thus, while this paper supports the findings of independent sample survey work, our census based analysis underscores the highly contingent nature of that response. Evidence of urban-rural migration is placed in the context of the government's `remote area policy' which attempts to dissuade beneficiaries (who are receiving a social security benefit related to their employment status) from moving without good reason to `remote' locations where job prospects are weak. The paper raises the more general policy issue where benefit cuts, designed to stimulate more active job searching among the unemployed, actually prompt some beneficiaries to relocate to the urban fringe and in some cases to remote parts of the country where job prospects are weak. The theoretical and policy implication of this paper is that there are geographical correlates to the reservation wage which need to be integrated into thinking about the participation consequences of setting benefit levels.     

Socio-spatial differentiation and residential segregation in Delhi: a question of scale?

This paper focuses on the pattern of social-spatial differentiation and segmentation of the metropolitan area of Delhi. The main objective is to analyse the mechanisms of residential segregation and the factors that explain it both at the micro- and macro-level. In the context of the Indian society and its caste system traditionally associated with strong social and spatial segregation, we try to appraise the extent to which the metropolitanization process in Delhi engenders original forms of spatial segmentation or perpetuates and strengthens the traditional forms of socio-spatial divisions. At the level of the global spatial organization of the urban agglomeration, our objective is twofold: to analyse the factors that shaped the urban landscape and introduced spatial discontinuity, from physical barriers to the different historic periods and the impact of town planning; to analyse the residential pattern of different segments of the urban population, in order to detect whether certain economic and socio-cultural attributes generate a pattern of segregation. We then pursue a more detailed investigation at the level of a zone, based on the case study of Mayur Vihar-Trilokpuri in east Delhi. We analyse the residential practices developed by different socio-economic groups, their strategies as regards the occupation of the geographical and economic space, their tendency to residential clustering that leads to a pattern of social segregation at the level of the neighbourhood. In this perspective, the links between the urban policies at the macro-level and the individuals’ residential practices at the micro-level are also examined.     

Does membership matter? Individual influences in natural resource management decision making

Increasingly, natural resource management decision making is being undertaken by management committees that consist of a range of stakeholder groups. Representatives on these committees potentially have widely differing objective preferences. Consequently, there exists the potential for management decisions to be affected not only by the type of representation, but by the individuals themselves. In this paper, the robustness of management decision making to both the stakeholder representation and the individual representatives is tested using the case of fisheries management, for which a number of studies have been undertaken in Australia to assess objective preferences within a multi-objective framework. The results suggest that, in most cases, management decisions are robust to membership, but in a small number of instances the actual composition of individuals in a committee may result in different decisions.     

Spatial association between residential radon concentration and bedrock types in New Hampshire

Using a large database of residential short-term radon measurements in New Hampshire, this study evaluated the ability of expert-assigned bedrock radon potential for predicting residential radon concentration. First, each bedrock type was assigned a radon potential level by a geologist familiar with the local geology. Then, using residential radon measurements, a continuous surface of radon concentration was generated through a kriging process. The mean residential radon concentration within the spatial extent of each bedrock type was then calculated based on that surface. The Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient was calculated between the two ranks of the bedrock types, one based on the expert-assigned potential level and the other based on the mean residential concentration. A strong correlation between the rank correlation and the area of the bedrock type was found. When only the 15 largest bedrock types were used, the Spearman Correlation Coefficient reached 0.6. Geological knowledge is concluded to be useful in predicting and mapping residential radon concentration, but the prediction should be interpreted with caution, especially for areas in which the underlying bedrocks are highly localized.     

Human health as a motivator for climate change mitigation: results from four European high-income countries

Invoking health benefits to promote climate-friendly household behavior has three unique advantages: (i) health co-benefits accrue directly to the acting individual, they are "private goods" rather than public ones; (ii) the evidence base for, and magnitude of health co-benefits is well-established; and (iii) the idea of a healthy life-style is well-engrained in public discourse, much more so than that of a climate-friendly life-style. In previous research, assessing the influence of information on health effects on people’s motivation to adopt mitigation actions, health co-benefits for the individual were typically confounded with collective health co-benefits, for example from pollution reduction. The present research aims to overcome this limitation by providing information on individual health co-benefits that are unconditional on the actions of others (direct health co-benefits). We report effects of this kind of health information on stated willingness to adopt mitigation actions as well as on simulation-based carbon emission reductions in a pre-registered experimental setting among 308 households in 4 mid-size case-study cities in 4 European high-income countries: France, Germany, Norway and Sweden. For each mitigation action from the sectors food, housing, and mobility, half of the sample received the amount of CO₂equivalents (CO₂-eq) saved and the financial costs or savings the respective action generated. The other half additionally received information on direct health co-benefits, where applicable. For households receiving information on direct health co-benefits, we find a higher mean willingness to adopt food and housing actions, and a greater proportion very willing to adopt one or more mitigation actions (OR 1.86, 95% CI 1.1, 3.12); and a greater simulated reduction in overall carbon footprint: difference in percent reduction -2.70%, (95% CI -5.34, -0.04) overall and -4.45%, (95% CI -8.26, -0.64) for food. Our study is the first to show that providing information on strictly unconditional, individual health co-benefits can motivate households in high-income countries to adopt mitigation actions.     

Seasonal changes in phytoplankton densities in four North Island lakes, 1973–74

In a 1973–74 survey of preserved phytoplankton from Lakes Rotoiti, Rotoehu, Rotoma and Waikaremoana, 205 algal taxa (including 111 Chlorophyta, 56 Chrysophyta, 17 Cyanophyta, 16 Pyrrhophyta, and 5 Euglenophyta) were found. The greatest number of species was found in Lake Rotoehu, but monthly maxima based on cell counts were usually greater in Lake Rotoiti. A summer bloom of the toxic blue‐green alga Aphanizomenon flos‐aquae occurred in Lake Rotoehu. Each lake had its own pattern of dominance. Surface and subsurface samples showed marked differences in species composition and abundance. Diatoms were important winter and spring components, with desmids forming conspicuous subordinates. Cemtium hirundinella was prominent in subsurface layers of Lakes Rotoma and Waikaremoana.

Compound indices (ratios of number of species of most other algae to that of desmids) point to Lake Rotoehu as extremely eutrophic, to Lake Rotoma as moderately eutrophic, and to Lakes Rotoiti and Waikaremoana as oligotrophic rather than meso‐ or eutrophic.     

农牧民偏好对政府主导生态建设工程的生态适应性意义——以江西山江湖和青海三江源为例

使用参与性农村评估、历史资料文献、生态时限等方法,重点分析农牧民偏好对生态建设工程的生态适应性。结果表明:山江湖农民和三江源牧民在经济收益最大、生产方式延续和信仰习俗维持上的偏好是决定政府主导生态建设工程能否顺利实施并取得预期成效的稳定性力量,具体生态适应性措施选择和对策安排时必须确保、延续或维持,它们有的可为生态适应性对策的安排或进一步合适调整提供新的思路或指示,有的则因本身就是生态适应性恢复或重建做法可直接利用的。但是,山江湖农民偏好归根结底就是对经济利益最大化的追求,山场重建的适应性安排中易于利用,而三江源牧民偏好则仍停留于宗教习俗框架内,草场恢复的适应性调控中难以改变。但在施加适当引导措施的情景下,前者可转换为更为主动的适应性参与而后者仍有很大的被动性。