Community-Engaged Bidirectional Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication With Immigrant and Refugee Populations During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives: This study was conducted to assess an intervention that was created by a community–academic partnership to address COVID-19 health inequities. We evaluated a community-engaged bidirectional pandemic crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) framework with immigrant and refugee populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A 17-year community-engaged research partnership adopted a CERC framework in March 2020 to address COVID-19 prevention, testing, and socioeconomic impacts with immigrant and refugee groups in southeast Minnesota. The partnership used bidirectional communication between communication leaders and their social networks to refine messages, leverage resources, and advise policy makers. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation for intervention acceptability, feasibility, reach, adaptation, and sustainability through multisource data, including email communications, work group notes, semistructured interviews, and focus groups. Results: The intervention reached at least 39 000 people in 9 months. It was implemented as intended and perceived efficacy was high. Frequent communication between community and academic partners allowed the team to respond rapidly to concerns and facilitated connection of community members to resources. Framework implementation also led to systems and policy changes to meet the needs of immigrant and refugee populations. Conclusions: Community-engaged CERC is feasible and sustainable and can reduce COVID-19 disparities through shared creation and dissemination of public health messages, enhanced connection to existing resources, and incorporation of community perspectives in regional pandemic mitigation policies.

Food Waste Reduction from Customers’ Plates: Applying the Norm Activation Model in South Korean Context

Researchers have pointed out the urgent need to tackle food waste from customers’ plates, considering its environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Nonetheless, little is known about reducing food waste from customers’ plates in the restaurant context. The present research successfully addressed how customers can reduce food waste by using the Norm Activation Model (NAM). A customer survey was employed to collect quantitative data to verify the hypotheses of this study. The NAM of this study involved awareness of environmental impact (of the restaurant industry), ascribed responsibility for food waste, and moral norm for food waste reduction as predictors for food waste reduction intention. In addition, this study adopted self-efficacy to food waste reduction as a moderator on the path from the moral norm for food waste reduction to food waste reduction intention. Our empirical results supported all the hypotheses suggested in the research model. Consequently, the findings of this study adequately explained how restaurant customers form their intention to reduce food waste and thus provided important clues about how it can be encouraged. For example, based on the findings, a nudging message may be displayed on the restaurant wall to raise customers’ self-efficacy, saying, “Saving the earth is as easy as finishing your food or taking it home”.

Socioeconomic impact of small-scale irrigation on household’s livelihood improvement in Bena-Tsemay district of South Omo zone, Southern Ethiopia

The study investigated the socioeconomic impacts of irrigated agriculture and factors affecting the decision of agro-pastoralists to participate in irrigation during 2017-2018. The result depends on cross-sectional data collected from a sample of 120 households of which 90 irrigation users and 30 non-users using a combination of purposive and random sampling. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression to assess factors that affect participation in irrigation. The logistic regression model revealed that age, credit access, extension contact, distance to water, and labor force significantly affected the decision of given agro-pastoralists to participate in irrigation practices at less than 5% probability levels. This indicates that the explanatory variables included in the model influence the decision of agro-pastoralists to participate in irrigation practices. Therefore, the provision of credit service to allow rapid progress in introducing technologies like tractors for farming practices and frequent extension contact with irrigation users could enhance the productivity in the area. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. Tech. 11(2): 139-146, Dec 2021

Transformational Change for Achieving Scale: Lessons for a Greener Recovery

Achieving transformational changes that can be then effectively scaled up requires ambition in design, a supportive policy environment, sound project design and implementation, partnerships, and multistakeholder participation. This chapter presents a framework that can be applied at the design stage to plan for change and scaling up and provides relevant lessons based on GEF interventions. Achieving change and scale can be an iterative and a continuous process until impacts are generated at the magnitude and scope of the targeted scale. Successful transformations typically adopt a systems approach and address multiple constraints to attain environmental and other socioeconomic impacts.

Perceptions of the Socioeconomic Impacts of a Women’s Major Sporting Event in Africa

Major sports events have emerged as an important destination development tool for many developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This study aimed to assess the socioeconomic impacts of the 2016 Women African Cup of Nations (WAFCON) hosted in Cameroon. Taking the hosting cities (Limbe and Yaounde) as the case study sites, the study utilized a mixed-methods research approach. The data emerged from the 759 questionnaires distributed to the event attendees and 10 interviews with key informants. The study showed the event to have created employment and income generation opportunities in the host cities and have contributed to increased national pride and social cohesion. Also, the study found the event to have played an important role in the advancement of women in sport. However, the research revealed little leveraging of the event’s socioeconomic opportunities for longer gain. The study concludes that female sports events, for destination development and the advancement of women’s sport, is an important but neglected area of focus. The study argues for stronger collaborations and partnerships within tourism and sport stakeholders to ensure the positive advancements of female sports events are sustained.

Fear or Competition? Antecedents to U.S. Business Student Immigration Attitudes

Immigration is an important and contemporary topic in management education given its impact on labor, wages, innovation, and diversity. However, extant research offers few insights into the antecedents to student immigration attitudes. Survey data from undergraduate students taking business courses at two large public universities in the southeast U.S. reveal that while student attitudes toward immigration are more moderate than the general U.S. population, these attitudes differ by gender, political affiliation, and immigration background. Following realistic conflict theory and social identity theory, these student immigration attitudes are a function of both fear and competition. First, their attitudes are confounded by conflicting antecedents in perceived personal competition for resources with immigrants (e.g., jobs, wages) versus immigration benefits (e.g., costs, labor base, innovation). Second, xenophobia (fear of immigrants) is a remarkably powerful influencer of one’s immigration attitude and its antecedents. With these points, management educators must engage students in critical thinking about immigration to prepare them to effectively work with diverse colleagues and business partners while leading global organizations. We, therefore, present four cross-disciplinary areas of intersection between immigration and management education, including diversity and cultural intelligence, human resource management and ethics, entrepreneurship and innovation, and finally, economic and socioeconomic impacts.

From Movement Control to National Recovery Plan: Malaysia’s Strategy to Live with COVID-19

With COVID-19 vaccination gaining momentum, strict lockdowns have been perceived as no longer necessary due to their far-reaching socioeconomic impacts. This overview aims to provide insight into Malaysia’s strategy in preparing to live with COVID-19 through stage-wise transition. This overview examined scholarly articles, news articles as well as official government announcements and data pertaining to the National Recovery Plan (NRP) which replaces COVID-19 lockdowns officially known as Movement Control Order (MCO) in Malaysia. NRP, which presents a stage-wise relaxation of lockdown leading ultimately to conditional reopening of all sectors and lifting of travel restrictions, adopts three major indicators for transitions of phases. The indicators are daily new COVID-19 cases, occupancy rate of intensive care units and full vaccination rate. Domestic travel initiatives have been initiated during the NRP, allowing domestic visits to certain tourist spots in the nation. Interstate travel in most parts of the nation has also been permitted without needing to show a negative COVID-19 test. On 28 October 2021, six states and three federal territories of Malaysia were already in phase 4 of NRP, which is the ultimate phase of lockdown relaxation, while all other states were in phase 3. This has resulted in a positive outlook on the gross domestic products of Malaysia in quarter 3, 2021. This overview highlights that a different approach to COVID-19 is necessary as total elimination of COVID-19 is not yet in sight. It sheds light into the use of pertinent indicators or indices to capture the status of COVID-19. Keywords: COVID-19; indicators; Malaysia; MCO; National Recovery Plan;Vaccination.

Public Perceptions of Deer Management in Scotland

In Scotland, large deer populations are associated with negative ecological and socioeconomic impacts, such as damage to peatlands and forests, agricultural and commercial forestry losses, Lyme disease transmission, and road accidents. Increasing the annual deer cull might help address these negative impacts, but could be ethically controversial. A stratified sample of adults living in Scotland (n = 1,002) responded to our online questionnaire measuring perceptions of deer management, including the acceptability of increasing the deer cull if doing so would help achieve a variety of ecological and social objectives. Overall, respondents indicated that it would be acceptable to increase the deer cull if doing so would serve public interests by reducing negative impacts of deer, with deer welfare, environmental conservation, and public health and safety being the most relevant ethical considerations. Although rural and urban respondents reported significantly different experiences and perceptions of deer, their values (i.e., attitudes, beliefs, and policy preferences) regarding deer management were very similar. Understanding values of the general public, beyond vocal interest groups, can help inform decisions on contentious wildlife management issues.