An article by Mark Rouleau (SS) was recently published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, published by Elsevier. The article, titled, “Agent-based modeling for bioenergy sustainability assessment,” is co-authored by Robert J. Zupko II.
Shan Zhou (Social Sciences) recently published “Environmental Justice and Green Schools—Assessing Students and Communities’ Access to Green Schools” in the journal Social Science Quarterly. This article investigates equity in the distribution of green schools in the U.S., what kind of student populations they serve, and what kind of communities host them. Leveraging national school enrollment data (2000–2014), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) data, and communities’ characteristics data from 2010 U.S. Census, Shan Zhou and coauthors estimate logit models to examine the association between green schools and student and community demographics. Results show that higher percentages of minorities in both student population and hosting neighborhood are associated with greater likelihood that new schools are green, and that new schools in more affluent and less educated communities are less likely to be green.
The article, Sorting out a problem: A co-production approach to household waste management in Shanghai, China, published in Waste Management journal and co-authored by Hongmei Lu and Roman Sidortsov explores an innovative approach to waste management in Shanghai.
Rapid urban population growth in China has resulted in significant challenges for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management. To combat these challenges, Chinese authorities implemented a pilot program of MSW sorting in eight Chinese cities including Shanghai in 2000 but is yet to reach a widespread success. This paper uses a qualitative case-study approach to explore the potential of a community-based co-production strategy for household waste sorting as an alternative to the conventional top-down approach. Co-production implies the involvement of citizens, consumers, volunteers and/or community organizations in producing public service. We find two major drivers of the government-volunteer consortium and the peer-pressure effect help realize the potential of waste-management co-production at a lowered cost with improved efficiency and collaborative innovation. In addition, context-specific conditions including policy consistency, strong volunteer effort and compatibility with local culture to promote public participation must be present for further co-production application. We also acknowledge that the co-production approach would be most effective at the initial stage of policy implementation to foster the waste-sorting habit-formation in regions where the waste collection rates remain low.
Hongmei Lu (SS PhD student), Audrey Mayer (SFRES), Adam Wellstead (SS), and Shan Zhou (SS) published an article titled, “Can the dual identity of policy entrepreneur and policy implementer promote successful policy adoption? Vertical greening policymaking in Shanghai, China” in the Journal of Asian Public Policy.
Adam Wellstead co-authored “Peering into the black box of government policy work: The challenge of governance and policy capacity” in the Canadian Political Science Review.
Angie Carter recently published ‘”We Don’t Equal Even Just One Man: Gender and Social Control in Conservation Adoption” in Society & Natural Resources, the flagship journal of the International Association for Society and Natural Resources.
Roman Sidortsov is 1 of 19 residents recently appointed to the UP Energy Task Force by Governor Gretchen Whitmer. In early June, Governor Whitmer signed Executive Order 2019-14 creating the UP Energy Task Force. According to the Governor’s office, “the task force will assess the UP’s overall energy needs and how they are currently being met; identify and evaluate potential changes in energy supply and distribution; and formulate alternative solutions to meet the UP’s energy needs – including alternatives to the current distribution of propane through Line 5, which poses an unacceptable threat to The Great Lakes”. The task force will submit a final report to the Governor in two stages with the first part being due March 31, 2020 and the remainder due March 31, 2021.
Don Lafreniere (SS), Dan Trepal (IHA PhD candidate-SS), Sarah Fayen Scarlett (SS), John Arnold (SS), Robert Pastel (CS), and Ryan Williams (GRF), along with Luke Weidner (Colorado School of Mines) recently published “Public participatory historical GIS” in Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History. In this article the authors call for a new approach to historical geographic information system (HGIS) study that includes public partnership to build HGIS datasets.
Kari Henquinet (SS and Pavlis Honors College) recently published the article “American World Visions of Vulnerabilty: The Sacred, the Secular, and Roots of Evangelical American Aid” in Research in Economic Anthropology, Volume 38, Emerald Publishing Limited, pp.199 – 222. In this article, Henquinet analyzes “constructions of and responses to vulnerability in the US government and the evangelical aid organization, World Vision, during the 1950s and 1960s in Korea and Vietnam.”
Emily Prehoda (EEP PhD candidate-SS), Joshua Pearce (MSE, ECE), and Chelsea Schelly (SS) recently published “Policies to Overcome Barriers for Renewable Energy Distributed Generation: A Case Study of Utility Structure and Regulatory Regimes in Michigan” in Energies 2019, 12(4), 674.