The customer is not always right: customer aggression and emotion regulation of service employees

Research on work aggression or anger has typically focused on supervisors and co‐workers as the instigators of aggression; however, aggressive customers are also likely and may have unique consequences for the employee. We explore this phenomenon with a sample of 198 call center employees at two work sites. The employees reported that customer verbal aggression occurred 10 times a day, on average, though this varied by race and negative affectivity. Using LISREL, our data indicated that both the frequency and stress appraisal of customer aggression positively related to emotional exhaustion, and this burnout dimension mediated the relationship of stress appraisal with absences. Stress appraisal also influenced employees' emotion regulation strategies with their most recent hostile caller. Employees who felt more threatened by customer aggression used surface acting or vented emotions, while those who were less threatened used deep acting. Job autonomy helped explain who found these events more stressful, and implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AGRICULTURE LAND‐USE EFFECTS ON NUTRIENT LOSSES IN WEST TIAOXI WATERSHED,CHINA1

ABSTRACT: Five types of land use/land covers in the West Tiaoxi watershed of China were studied for nutrient losses in artificial rainstorm runoff. A self‐designed rainfall simulator was used. In situ rainfall simulations were used to: (1) compare the concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous in different land use/land covers and (2) evaluate the flux of nitrogen and phosphorous export from runoff and sediment in various types of land use/land covers. Three duplicated experiments were carried out under rain intensity of 2 mm/min, each lasting 32 minutes on a 3 m² plot. Characteristics of various species of nitrogen and phosphorous in runoff and sediment were investigated. The results showed that the concentrations of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorous (TP) were greatest in runoff from mulberry trees and smallest from pine forest. The TN and TP export was mainly from suspended particulate in runoff. TN and TP exports from the top 10 cm layer of five types of land use/land covers were estimated as high as 4.66 to 9.40 g/m² and 2.57 to 4.89 g/m², respectively, of which exports through sediment of runoff accounted for more than 90 percent and 97 percent. The rate of TN and TP exports ranged from 2.68 to approximately 14.48 and 0.45 to approximately 4.11 mg/m²/min in runoff; these rates were much lower than those of 100.01 to approximately 172.67 and 72.82 to approximately 135.96 mg/m²/min in the runoff sediment.     

Book reviews

Common Property Economics: A General Theory and Land Use Applications

Glenn G. Stevenson

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, XIV + 256pp., £35

Controversial Issues in Environmental Policy: Science vs Economics vs Politics

Kent E. Portney

London, Sage, 1992, 181 pp. £22.00 hb., £10.95 pb.

Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment

E. Kula

London, Chapman & Hall, 1992, 287 pp., £40

Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming: Mitigation, Adaptation and the Science Base

Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy (US), Panel on Policy

Implications of Greenhouse Warming

Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 1992, xxiii + 918 pp., $89.95 hb.

Contemporary Rural Systems in Transition, Volume 1: Agriculture and Environment, Volume 2: Economy and Society

I. Bowler, C. Bryant & M.Nellis (Eds)

Wallingford, CAB International, 1992, 288 pp. + 336 pp., £35 + £40 (2 vols. £70) hb.

Third World Cities: Problems, Policies and Prospects

John Kasarda & Allan Parnell (Eds) London, Sage, 1993, 310 pp., £19.50 pb.

Pricing the European Environment

Stale Navrud (Ed)

Oxford, Oxford University Press/Scandinavian University Press, 1992, 288 pp., £30.00 hb.     

Book reviews

The Economics of Art and Culture: An American Perspective

James Heilbrun & Charles M. Gray

New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 378 pp., £14.95 pb

Building Cities that Work

Edmund Fowler

Montreal & Kingston, McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1992, 315 pp.

Interactive Decision Making: The Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

Liping Fang, Keith W. Hipel & D. Marc Kilgour

New York, Wiley, 1993, 221 pp., £49.50

The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory

Andrew Dobson & Paul Lucardie (Eds)

London, Routledge, 1993, 240 pp. + xv, £37.50

Urban Transport in Asia: An Operational Agenda for the 1990s, World Bank

Technical Paper No. 224

Peter Midgley

Washington, DC, The World Bank, 1994, 98 pp.

Landscape Ecology: Theory and Application, 2nd edition

Zev Naveh & Arthur Lieberman

New York, Springer‐Verlag, £34.50     

Money wages,price of nontradable goods,and the environmental goods

The effect of environmental goods on money wages and the price of nontradable goods is analyzed. Environment is treated as a regular good, and as such, is added to the two other composite goods which are typically used as components of the utility function. In the budget constraint the relevant amount of environmental goods consists of that part which the individual might purchase in the market. Under these conditions it is demonstrated that an equilibrium situation will prevail if either the money wage or the price of the nontradable good, or both, are a function of the given amount of the environmental goods.     

Electroremediation part II: A study of the movement of heavy metals during an electroremediation process in Andisol soil

In the Summer 2004 issue of Remediation, the authors presented a study of the influence of buffering behavior in contaminated Andisol soil. This article, Part II, expands on this research by presenting the results of laboratory tests conducted to study the movement of heavy metals in contaminated Andisol soil during the first stage of an electrochemical remediation process. The analysis was performed on the soil after treatment and also on the washing solutions collected during the first four hours. In order to analyze the effectiveness of fast and simple techniques for monitoring the electroremediation process, computer‐aided modeling of speciation in the soil solution was performed in connection with the remediation treatment. The results show that the metals moved mainly as positive species in the soil and later occurred as insoluble forms relative to the pH value in the washing solution from the cathode chamber. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Scaling the quality of teammates' mental models: equifinality and normative comparisons

We tested the impact of teammates' team and task mental model sharedness on team processes and performance using 70 undergraduate teams that completed a series of missions on a PC‐based flight simulator. Moreover, we considered how the quality of mental models might moderate such relationships. Team processes were found to partially mediate the relationship between task mental model sharedness and team performance. Although team mental model sharedness failed to exhibit a significant linear relationship with team processes or performance, it did evidence a multiplicative relationship as moderated by the quality of those models. Team processes and performance were better among teams sharing higher‐quality team mental models than among teams evidencing less sharedness or who had lower‐quality models. Again, team processes partially mediated these relationships. Results are discussed in terms of the equifinality of mental model quality and applications to various team environments. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SELECTED NUTRIENTS AND HEAVY METALS IN SEWAGE SLUDGE FROM NEW JERSEY POTWs1

ABSTRACT: In order to determine appropriate application rates and to ensure low pollutant levels in sewage sludge, knowing the chemical composition of sewage sludge is of great importance in a land application program. The objective of this study is to evaluate the variability of selected chemical characteristics of sewage sludge from New Jersey publicly owned treatment works (POTWs). Measurements of total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), NH₄⁺‐N, P, K⁺, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn reported by 98 facilities in the 1996 and 1997 New Jersey Sludge Quality Assurance Regulations (SQAR) reports were statistically analyzed. Sewage sludge from Category 5 POTWs (greater than 10 percent industrial input) showed higher Cd, Cu, and Pb concentrations than Category 3 and Category 4 facilities (less than 10 percent industrial input). Even though only two years of data were analyzed, there was an indication that Cd and Pb concentrations in sewage sludge are decreasing with time. The yearly mean of only a few facilities exceeded the federal pollution concentration limits (40 CFR Part 503, Table 3). Phosphorus and Cd values showed the highest variability within facilities based on the coefficient of variation. Due to the variability of sewage sludge constituents, the use of the yearly rolling mean of nutrient concentrations to determine application rates was considered inadequate. An actual analysis of the sewage sludge to be applied is more appropriate to determine application rates than historical data.     

RAINGAGE NETWORK DESIGN USING NEXRAD PRECIPITATION ESTIMATES1

ABSTRACT: A general framework is proposed for using precipitation estimates from NEXRAD weather radars in raingage network design. NEXRAD precipitation products are used to represent space time rainfall fields, which can be sampled by hypothetical raingage networks. A stochastic model is used to simulate gage observations based on the areal average precipitation for radar grid cells. The stochastic model accounts for subgrid variability of precipitation within the cell and gage measurement errors. The approach is ideally suited to raingage network design in regions with strong climatic variations in rainfall where conventional methods are sometimes lacking. A case study example involving the estimation of areal average precipitation for catchments in the Catskill Mountains illustrates the approach. The case study shows how the simulation approach can be used to quantify the effects of gage density, basin size, spatial variation of precipitation, and gage measurement error, on network estimates of areal average precipitation. Although the quality of NEXRAD precipitation products imposes limitations on their use in network design, weather radars can provide valuable information for empirical assessment of rain‐gage network estimation errors. Still, the biggest challenge in quantifying estimation errors is understanding subgrid spatial variability. The results from the case study show that the spatial correlation of precipitation at subgrid scales (4 km and less) is difficult to quantify, especially for short sampling durations. Network estimation errors for hourly precipitation are extremely sensitive to the uncertainty in subgrid spatial variability, although for storm total accumulation, they are much less sensitive.     

THE STRUCTURE AND PRACTICE OF WATER QUALITY TRADING MARKETS1

ABSTRACT: The use of transferable discharge permits in water pollution, what we will call water quality trading (WQT), is rapidly growing in the U.S. This paper reviews the current status of WQT nationally and discusses the structures of the markets that have been formed. Four main structures are observed in such markets: exchanges, bilateral negotiations, clearinghouses, and sole source offsets. The goals of a WQT program are environmental quality and cost effectiveness. In designing a WQT market, policy makers are constrained by legal restrictions and the physical characteristics of the pollution problem. The choices that must be made include how trading will be authorized, monitored and enforced. How these questions are answered will help determine both the extent to which these goals are achieved, and the market structures that can arise. After discussing the characteristics of different market structures, we evaluate how this framework applies in the case of California's Grassland Drainage Area Tradable Loads Program.