Beyond Productivity: Considering the Health, Social Value and Happiness of Home and Community Food Gardens

We are living in an age of concern for mental health and wellbeing. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to investigate the perceived health, social value and happiness benefits of urban agriculture (UA) by focusing on home and community food gardens in South Australia. The results reported in this paper are from “Edible Gardens”, a citizen science project designed to investigate the social value, productivity and resource efficiency of UA in South Australia. Methods include an online survey and in-field garden data collection. Key findings include: dominant home gardener motivations were the produce, enjoyment, and health, while dominant community gardener motivations were enjoyment, connection to others and the produce. Exploratory factor analysis revealed four key factors: Tranquillity and Timeout, Develop and Learn Skills, the Produce, and Social Connection. The key difference between home and community gardeners was an overall social connection. Although home gardeners did not appear to actively value or desire inter-household social connection, this does not mean they do not value or participate in other avenues of social connection, such as via social learning sources or by sharing food with others. The combined results from this research regarding health and wellbeing, social connection and happiness support the premise that engagement in home or community food gardening may provide a preventative or supportive role for gardener health and wellbeing, regardless of whether it is a conscious motivation for participation.

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Telling Our Stories: Resilience during Resettlement for African Skilled Migrants in Australia

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph18083954 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (8) ◽

pp. 3954

Author(s):

Lillian Mwanri ◽

Leticia Anderson ◽

Kathomi Gatwiri

Keyword(s):

Cultural Values ◽

South Australia ◽

Qualitative Inquiry ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Face To Face ◽

Health And Wellbeing ◽

African Migrants ◽

Cultural Expectations ◽

The Social ◽

Resilience Factors

Background: Emigration to Australia by people from Africa has grown steadily in the past two decades, with skilled migration an increasingly significant component of migration streams. Challenges to resettlement in Australia by African migrants have been identified, including difficulties securing employment, experiences of racism, discrimination and social isolation. These challenges can negatively impact resettlement outcomes, including health and wellbeing. There has been limited research that has examined protective and resilience factors that help highly skilled African migrants mitigate the aforementioned challenges in Australia. This paper discusses how individual and community resilience factors supported successful resettlement Africans in Australia. The paper is contextualised within a larger study which sought to investigate how belonging and identity inform Afrodiasporic experiences of Africans in Australia. Methods: A qualitative inquiry was conducted with twenty-seven (n = 27) skilled African migrants based in South Australia, using face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Participants were not directly questioned about ‘resilience,’ but were encouraged to reflect critically on how they navigated the transition to living in Australia, and to identify factors that facilitated a successful resettlement. Results: The study findings revealed a mixture of settlement experiences for participants. Resettlement challenges were observed as barriers to fully meeting expectations of emigration. However, there were significant protective factors reported that supported resilience, including participants’ capacities for excellence and willingness to work hard; the social capital vested in community and family support networks; and African religious and cultural values and traditions. Many participants emphasised their pride in their contributions to Australian society as well as their desire to contribute to changing narratives of what it means to be African in Australia. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that despite challenges, skilled African migrants’ resilience, ambition and determination were significant enablers to a healthy resettlement in Australia, contributing effectively to social, economic and cultural expectations, and subsequently meeting most of their own migration intentions. These findings suggest that resilience factors identified in the study are key elements of integration.

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THE INFLUENCE OF UTILITARIAN VALUE, HEDONIC VALUE, SOCIAL VALUE, AND PERCEIVED RISK ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: SURVEY OF E-COMMERCE CUSTOMERS IN INDONESIA

Verslas teorija ir praktika ◽

10.3846/btp.2020.12143 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 613-622

Author(s):

Tri Yulistyawati Evelina ◽

Andriani Kusumawati ◽

Umar Nimran ◽

Sunarti

Keyword(s):

Customer Satisfaction ◽

Perceived Risk ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Online Survey ◽

Social Value ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Hedonic Value ◽

Utilitarian Value ◽

The Social ◽

Customer Satisfaction Survey

The purpose of this study is to build an understanding of the influence of utilitarian value, hedonic value, social value, and perceived risk on e-commerce customer satisfaction in Indonesia. Data was collected through an online survey and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with the WarpPLS tool version 6.0 which was then analyzed through Inferential Statistics analysis. The results of the study showed that utilitarian value significantly influences customer satisfaction. Hedonic value significantly influences customer satisfaction. However, the findings showed that social value did not have a significant effect on customer satisfaction, meaning that the level of the social value of e-commerce customers does not have a significant impact on the level of customer satisfaction. Finally, the results show, perceived risk significantly influences customer satisfaction.

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Thy Will Be Done: Exploring the Longitudinal Rewards of Religious Group Membership Enactment During Volunteering

10.31234/osf.io/ev8jg ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Juliet Wakefield ◽

Mhairi Bowe ◽

Blerina Kellezi

Keyword(s):

Group Dynamics ◽

Online Survey ◽

Group Identification ◽

Religious Group ◽

Voluntary Work ◽

Health And Wellbeing ◽

Dynamic Relationship ◽

The Social ◽

The Relationship ◽

Social Identity Approach

The volunteering literature is replete with studies revealing the health benefits of volunteering. This has led psychologists to question whether social processes may help deliver these benefits while also supporting sustained volunteering engagement. The Social Identity Approach (SIA) recognises that volunteering takes place in groups, and sheds light on these processes by providing insights into group dynamics. Specifically, recent work within the Social Cure tradition has revealed the dynamic relationship between volunteering and group identification, and how this can influence health and wellbeing. This study extends previous work by exploring whether the relationship is mediated by the extent to which volunteers feel able to enact their membership of a valued group (specifically their religious group) through their volunteering. People who volunteer with religiously-motivated voluntary groups (N = 194) completed the same online survey twice, three months apart (T1/T2). For participants high in religiosity, T1 identification with their voluntary group positively predicted their sense of being able to enact the membership of their religious group through their voluntary work at T2, which in turn was a positive predictor of T2 mental health and volunteer engagement. The implications of these findings for both the theoretical literature and for voluntary organisations are discussed.

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The social value of rescuing food, nourishing communities

British Food Journal ◽

10.1108/bfj-04-2016-0149 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 118 (12) ◽

pp. 3044-3058 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Miranda Mirosa ◽

Louise Mainvil ◽

Hayley Horne ◽

Ella Mangan-Walker

Keyword(s):

Online Survey ◽

Social Value ◽

Evaluation Tool ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Content Type ◽

Value Evaluation ◽

The Social ◽

Corporate Social ◽

The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the social value food rescue enterprises can create for both their stakeholders and the wider community “in the meantime” whilst longer term solutions to the problems of insecurity and waste are sought. Design/methodology/approach FoodShare, a New Zealand urban-based social enterprise specialising in food redistribution, served as a case study for this research. Semi-structured interviews (n=13) were conducted with FoodShare staff and key stakeholder groups (food donors, financial donors, recipient agencies and volunteers). In addition, an anonymous online survey (n=40) was completed by the wider organisational volunteer network. The interview guides were structured around a new social value evaluation tool, Social Return on Investment, which is increasingly used to demonstrate the impact of such programmes. Deductive methods were used to code the resulting transcripts to identify key outcomes experienced by FoodShare’s stakeholders. Findings The outcomes of FoodShare’s work differed for the various stakeholders. For food donors, outcomes included “more involved relationships with community”, and “improved perceptions of corporate social responsibility”. Identified key outcomes for the financial donors included “key promotional opportunity” and “do something good”. For recipient agencies, important outcomes were “greater volume of food” and “increased reach”. Volunteers reported “meeting new people”, “a sense of accomplishment in helping others” and “learning new skills”. There were also a number of nutritional and environmental outcomes for the wider community. Originality/value Given the dearth of evidence on the societal value that is created in redistributing unsold food to people in need, this novel perspective makes a significant contribution to the literature in this area.

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Wanting without enjoying: The social value of sharing experiences

10.31234/osf.io/b3zju ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Eshin Jolly ◽

Diana Tamir ◽

Bethany Burum ◽

Jason Mitchell

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Social Isolation ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Social Experiences ◽

Social Value ◽

Social Connection ◽

Hedonic Value ◽

Shared Experiences ◽

The Social ◽

Strong Motivation

Social connection can be a rich source of happiness. Humans routinely go out of their way to seek out social connection and avoid social isolation. What are the proximal forces that motivate people to share experiences with others? Here we used a novel experience-sharing and decision-making paradigm to understand the value of shared experiences. In seven experiments across Studies 1 and 2, participants demonstrated a strong motivation to engage in shared experiences. At the same time, participants did not report a commensurate increase in hedonic value or emotional amplification, suggesting that the motivation to share experiences need not derive from their immediate hedonic value. In Study 3, participants reported their explicit beliefs about the reasons people engage in shared experiences: Participants reported being motivated by the desire to forge a social connection. Together, these findings suggest that the desire to share an experience may be distinct from the subjective experience of achieving that state. People may be so driven to connect with each other that social experiences remain valuable even in the most minimalistic contexts.

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The Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources: A Comparative Study From Jordan

Frontiers in Medicine ◽

10.3389/fmed.2020.603406 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

Author(s):

Muhannad H. Yousef ◽

Yazan N. Alhalaseh ◽

Razan Mansour ◽

Hala Sultan ◽

Naseem Alnadi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Online Survey ◽

Social Value ◽

Medical Resources ◽

Important Principle ◽

Lay People ◽

Equal Importance ◽

The Social ◽

Instrumental Values ◽

Medical Crisis ◽

Survey Responses

The allocation strategies during challenging situations among the different social groups is based on 9 principles which can be considered either individually: sickest first, waiting list, prognosis, youngest first, instrumental values, lottery, monetary contribution, reciprocity, and individual behavior, or in combination; youngest first and prognosis, for example. In this study, we aim to look into the most important prioritization principles amongst different groups in the Jordanian population, in order to facilitate the decision-making process for any potential medical crisis. We conducted an online survey that tackled how individuals would deal with three different scenarios of medical scarcity: (1) organ donation, (2) limited hospital beds during an influenza epidemic, and (3) allocation of novel therapeutics for lung cancer. In addition, a free-comment option was included at the end of the survey if respondents wished to contribute further. Seven hundred and fifty-four survey responses were gathered, including 372 males (49.3%), and 382 females (50.7%). Five groups of individuals were represented including religion scholars, physicians, medical students, allied health practitioners, and lay people. Of the five surveyed groups, four found “sickest-first” to be the most important prioritization principle in all three scenarios, and only the physicians group documented a disagreement. In the first scenario, physicians regarded “sickest-first” and “combined-criteria” to be of equal importance. In general, no differences were documented between the examined groups in comparison with lay people in the preference of options in all three scenarios; however, physicians were more likely to choose “combination” in both the second and third scenarios (OR 3.70, 95% CI 1.62–8.44, and 2.62, 95% CI 1.48–4.59; p < 0.01), and were less likely to choose “sickest-first” as the single most important prioritization principle (OR 0.57, CI 0.37–0.88, and 0.57; 95% CI 0.36–0.88; p < 0.01). Out of 100 free comments, 27 (27.0%) thought that the “social-value” of patients should also be considered, adding the 10th potential allocation principle. Our findings are concordant with literature in terms of allocating scarce medical resources. However, “social-value” appeared as an important principle that should be addressed when prioritizing scarce medical resources in Jordan.

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Anthropometric history and the measurement of wellbeing

10.1553/populationyearbook2021.rev02 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Bernard Harris

Keyword(s):

Environmental Conditions ◽

Labour Productivity ◽

Human Growth ◽

Social Value ◽

Average Height ◽

Anthropometric Data ◽

Health And Wellbeing ◽

The Social ◽

The Impact

It has often been recognised that the average height of a population is influencedby the economic, social and environmental conditions in which it finds itself, andthis insight has inspired a generation of historians to use anthropometric data toinvestigate the health and wellbeing of past populations. This paper reviews someof the main developments in the field, and assesses the extent to which heightremains a viable measure of historical wellbeing. It explores a number of differentissues, including the nature of human growth; the impact of variations in diet andexposure to disease; the role of ethnicity; the relationships between height, mortalityand labour productivity; and the “social value” of human stature. It concludes that,despite certain caveats, height has retained its capacity to act as a “mirror” of theconditions of past societies, and of the wellbeing of their members.

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Social responses to and motivation involving knitting vlog viewing

Convergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies ◽

10.1177/1354856520960287 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 135485652096028

Author(s):

Peter B Gregg

Keyword(s):

Psychological Factors ◽

Online Survey ◽

Cultural Practice ◽

Social Connection ◽

Social Psychological ◽

Social Responses ◽

Relationship Strength ◽

The Social ◽

Parasocial Relationship ◽

Expected Outcomes

This project explores social psychological factors and motivation involving vlogs, filling gaps in the understanding of viewing needs and outcomes of this new cultural practice. An exploratory online survey asked over 400 knitting vlog viewers about expected outcomes of viewing, loneliness, identification, perceived homophily, parasocial relationship strength, motivation to knit, and motivation to view knitting vlogs, addressing hypotheses involving common expected outcomes and viewing motivation, how well loneliness predicts parasocial relationship strength, and how these feelings predict motivations to view vlogs and to knit. The results showed that feelings of activity and social connection most strongly predicted motivation to view and to knit. Loneliness did not play a role in parasocial relationship strength. These findings suggest that the social qualities of knitting vlogs may play an important role in motivating viewers to watch and to knit.

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Current Postvention Research and Priorities for the Future

Crisis ◽

10.1027/0227-5910/a000459 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (3) ◽

pp. 202-206 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Karl Andriessen ◽

Dolores Angela Castelli Dransart ◽

Julie Cerel ◽

Myfanwy Maple

Keyword(s):

Social Life ◽

Online Survey ◽

Research Priorities ◽

Future Research ◽

Physical And Mental Health ◽

Intercultural Collaboration ◽

The Social ◽

The Future ◽

Suicide Bereavement ◽

Ethical Approval

Abstract. Background: Suicide can have a lasting impact on the social life as well as the physical and mental health of the bereaved. Targeted research is needed to better understand the nature of suicide bereavement and the effectiveness of support. Aims: To take stock of ongoing studies, and to inquire about future research priorities regarding suicide bereavement and postvention. Method: In March 2015, an online survey was widely disseminated in the suicidology community. Results: The questionnaire was accessed 77 times, and 22 records were included in the analysis. The respondents provided valuable information regarding current research projects and recommendations for the future. Limitations: Bearing in mind the modest number of replies, all from respondents in Westernized countries, it is not known how representative the findings are. Conclusion: The survey generated three strategies for future postvention research: increase intercultural collaboration, increase theory-driven research, and build bonds between research and practice. Future surveys should include experiences with obtaining research grants and ethical approval for postvention studies.

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The Impact of Endorsing the Belief in a Just World on Social Judgments

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000105 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 44 (3) ◽

pp. 209-218 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Benoît Testé ◽

Samantha Perrin

Keyword(s):

Social Desirability ◽

Social Value ◽

Social Utility ◽

Western Society ◽

Social Judgments ◽

Just World ◽

The Social ◽

Main Effect ◽

The Impact

The present research examines the social value attributed to endorsing the belief in a just world for self (BJW-S) and for others (BJW-O) in a Western society. We conducted four studies in which we asked participants to assess a target who endorsed BJW-S vs. BJW-O either strongly or weakly. Results showed that endorsement of BJW-S was socially valued and had a greater effect on social utility judgments than it did on social desirability judgments. In contrast, the main effect of endorsement of BJW-O was to reduce the target’s social desirability. The results also showed that the effect of BJW-S on social utility is mediated by the target’s perceived individualism, whereas the effect of BJW-S and BJW-O on social desirability is mediated by the target’s perceived collectivism.

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