Creating safer workplaces: assessing the determinants and role of safety climate

PROBLEM: Although there has been considerable interest in safety climate, relatively little attention has been given to the factors that determine safety climate or to testing the hypothesized mediating role of safety climate with respect to safety-related outcomes. METHOD: Questionnaire responses were obtained from 2,208 employees of a large national retail chain in 21 different locations. RESULTS: After controlling for demographic variables, three factors: environmental conditions, safety-related policies and programs, and general organizational climate, accounted for 55% of the variance in perceived safety climate. Interestingly, organizational climate made a significant contribution to safety climate, even after controlling for the other more safety-relevant variables. Partial correlations showed that safety policies and programs had the largest observed correlation with safety climate, followed by two of the dimensions of organizational climate (communication and organizational support). Using Baron and Kenny's (J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 51 (1986) 1173) procedures, the principal effects of the various work situation factors on perceived safety at work were found to be direct rather than mediated by safety climate. Safety climate influenced perceived safety at work, but its role as a mediator was limited. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: These results are discussed in terms of other recent findings on safety climate and the growing interest in understanding management and organizational factors in the context of workplace safety.     

Cultural ecology of Whitethroat (Sylvia communis) habitat management by farmers: winter in farmland trees and shrubs in Senegambia

The presence of Whitethroats and their potential invertebrate prey in farmland trees and shrubs was investigated. The management of this vegetation by farmers, and their motivation for that management, was explored using participatory techniques. Whitethroats were associated with Guiera senegalensis, the shrub species which supports most caterpillars and spiders. Farmers reported declines in trees and shrubs since the 1950s, loss of fallow areas, declines in soil fertility and crop yields, and increases in the use of fire for clearing fields. Trees are valued by people for their cultural and medicinal uses and some species used by Whitethroats and other birds have potential for restoring soil fertility, although this was not recognised by farmers. More sustainable use of savanna farmland could have both agronomic and wider conservation benefits, and the provision of information that accommodates farmers' cultural and economic incentives could benefit both farmers and wildlife.     

Effects of threat management interactions on conservation priorities

Decisions need to be made about which biodiversity management actions are undertaken to mitigate threats and about where these actions are implemented. However, management actions can interact; that is, the cost, benefit, and feasibility of one action can change when another action is undertaken. There is little guidance on how to explicitly and efficiently prioritize management for multiple threats, including deciding where to act. Integrated management could focus on one management action to abate a dominant threat or on a strategy comprising multiple actions to abate multiple threats. Furthermore management could be undertaken at sites that are in close proximity to reduce costs. We used cost‐effectiveness analysis to prioritize investments in fire management, controlling invasive predators, and reducing grazing pressure in a bio‐diverse region of southeastern Queensland, Australia. We compared outcomes of 5 management approaches based on different assumptions about interactions and quantified how investment needed, benefits expected, and the locations prioritized for implementation differed when interactions were taken into account. Managing for interactions altered decisions about where to invest and in which actions to invest and had the potential to deliver increased investment efficiency. Differences in high priority locations and actions were greatest between the approaches when we made different assumptions about how management actions deliver benefits through threat abatement: either all threats must be managed to conserve species or only one management action may be required. Threatened species management that does not consider interactions between actions may result in misplaced investments or misguided expectations of the effort required to mitigate threats to species.     

Social signals and sustainability: ambiguity about motivations can affect status perceptions of efficiency and curtailment behaviors

Perceived status can affect the diffusion of pro-environmental behaviors and sustainable consumption. However, the status of different forms of sustainable consumption has not been adequately explored. Previous studies suggest that curtailment behaviors are associated with low or neutral status, while efficiency behaviors are associated with high status. However, these studies have generally examined a small number of behaviors. Drawing from costly signaling theory, we developed a mixed methods study to explore whether and why pro-environmental behaviors are perceived to be associated with high or low status, the perceived motivation for those behaviors, and the relationship between motivation and status. We conducted structured, interactive interviews with 71 participants to explore perceptions of 19 behaviors. Using quantitative and qualitative analyses, we find that efficiency is rated higher status than curtailment largely due to monetary considerations. Efficiency is also perceived to be motivated by environmental concern to a greater degree than curtailment. Understanding the motivation for behaviors clarifies the social signal because it provides insights into whether one is incurring personal costs. Importantly, it is often unclear whether low-cost curtailment behaviors are adopted by choice rather than financial need. Ambiguity about the intentionality of behaviors results in such behaviors being perceived as lower status. Those who argue that curtailment will be necessary for long-term sustainability must address status perceptions because social stigmas could hinder their adoption. Overcoming such stigmas may require, indicating that curtailment behaviors are voluntary, but it may be more effective to use social or economic mechanisms to increase efficiency behaviors.     

Barriers and opportunities for adapting to climate change on the North Coast of São Paulo,Brazil

Regional Environmental Change - This paper examines barriers and opportunities for climate change adaptation in an urban coastal setting where adaptation is in its infancy. It draws on a diagnostic...     

Using a social–ecological framework to inform the implementation of conservation plans

One of the key determinants of success in biodiversity conservation is how well conservation planning decisions account for the social system in which actions are to be implemented. Understanding elements of how the social and ecological systems interact can help identify opportunities for implementation. Utilizing data from a large‐scale conservation initiative in southwestern of Australia, we explored how a social–ecological system framework can be applied to identify how social and ecological factors interact to influence the opportunities for conservation. Using data from semistructured interviews, an online survey, and publicly available data, we developed a conceptual model of the social–ecological system associated with the conservation of the Fitz‐Stirling region. We used this model to identify the relevant variables (remnants of vegetation, stakeholder presence, collaboration between stakeholders, and their scale of management) that affect the implementation of conservation actions in the region. We combined measures for these variables to ascertain how areas associated with different levels of ecological importance coincided with areas associated with different levels of stakeholder presence, stakeholder collaboration, and scales of management. We identified areas that could benefit from different implementation strategies, from those suitable for immediate conservation action to areas requiring implementation over the long term to increase on‐the‐ground capacity and identify mechanisms to incentivize implementation. The application of a social–ecological framework can help conservation planners and practitioners facilitate the integration of ecological and social data to inform the translation of priorities for action into implementation strategies that account for the complexities of conservation problems in a focused way.     

Insights from a Systematic Search for Information on Designs,Costs, and Effectiveness of Poliovirus Environmental Surveillance Systems

Poliovirus surveillance plays a critical role in achieving and certifying eradication and will play a key role in the polio endgame. Environmental surveillance can provide an opportunity to detect circulating polioviruses prior to the observation of any acute flaccid paralysis cases. We completed a systematic review of peer-reviewed publications on environmental surveillance for polio including the search terms “environmental surveillance” or “sewage,” and “polio,” “poliovirus,” or “poliomyelitis,” and compared characteristics of the resulting studies. The review included 146 studies representing 101 environmental surveillance activities from 48 countries published between 1975 and 2016. Studies reported taking samples from sewage treatment facilities, surface waters, and various other environmental sources, although they generally did not present sufficient details to thoroughly evaluate the sewage systems and catchment areas. When reported, catchment areas varied from 50 to over 7.3 million people (median of 500,000 for the 25% of activities that reported catchment areas, notably with 60% of the studies not reporting this information and 16% reporting insufficient information to estimate the catchment area population size). While numerous studies reported the ability of environmental surveillance to detect polioviruses in the absence of clinical cases, the review revealed very limited information about the costs and limited information to support quantitative population effectiveness of conducting environmental surveillance. This review motivates future studies to better characterize poliovirus environmental surveillance systems and the potential value of information that they may provide in the polio endgame.     

Male wing color properties predict the size of nuptial gifts given during mating in the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly (Battus philenor)

In many animals, males bear bright ornamental color patches that may signal both the direct and indirect benefits that a female might accrue from mating with him. Here we test whether male coloration in the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly, Battus philenor, predicts two potential direct benefits for females: brief copulation duration and the quantity of materials the male passes to the female during mating. In this species, males have a bright iridescent blue field on the dorsal hindwing surface, while females have little or no dorsal iridescence. Females preferentially mate with males who display a bright and highly chromatic blue field on their dorsal hindwing. In this study, we show that the chroma of the blue field on the male dorsal hindwing and male body size (forewing length) significantly predict the mass of material or spermatophore that a male forms within the female’s copulatory sac during mating. We also found that spermatophore mass correlated negatively with copulation duration, but that color variables did not significantly predict this potential direct benefit. These results suggest that females may enhance the material benefits they receive during mating by mating with males based on the coloration of their dorsal hindwing.     

The invasive grass Agropyron cristatum doubles belowground productivity but not soil carbon

Root dynamics are among the largest knowledge gaps in determining how terrestrial carbon (C) cycles will respond to environmental change. Increases in productivity accompanying plant invasions and introductions could increase ecosystem C storage, but belowground changes are unknown, even though roots may account for 50-90% of production in temperate ecosystems. We examined whether the introduction of a widespread invasive grass with relatively high shoot production also increased belowground productivity and soil C storage, using a multiyear rhizotron study in 50-year-old stands dominated either by the invasive C3 grass Agropyron cristatum or by largely C4 native grasses. Relative to native vegetation, stands dominated by the invader had doubled root productivity. Soil carbon isotope values showed that the invader had made detectable contributions to soil C. Soil C content, however, was not significantly different between invader-dominated stands (0.42 mg C/g soil) and native vegetation (0.45 mg C/g soil). The discrepancy between enhanced production and lack of soil C changes was attributable to differences in root traits between invader-dominated stands and native vegetation. Relative to native vegetation, roots beneath the invader had 59% more young white tissue, with 80% higher mortality and 19% lower C:N ratios (all P < 0.05). Such patterns have previously been reported for aboveground tissues of invaders, and we show that they are also found belowground. If these root traits occur in other invasive species, then the global phenomenon of increased productivity following biological invasion may not increase soil C storage.