OSF Preprints

Journal: OSF Preprints

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Publications1 - 10 of 16

Could closing the knowledge gap help in reducing global environmental impacts of local consumption?
Presberger, David; Quoß, Franziska; Rudolph, Lukas; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Vastly increased international trade over the past few decades has resulted in an ever larger geographical spread in the environmental impacts of local consumption. Particularly in the case of high-income countries, a large share of their total environmental footprint of local consumption now materializes in places far beyond the respective national border. On the presumption that democratic policy-makers should, and often do, act in line with prevailing public opinion we examine whether currently weak policies addressing consumption-based environmental impacts abroad may reflect a knowledge gap amongst citizens, and how closing this knowledge gap would affect policy preferences concerning the greening of international supply chains. We do so based on an experiment, embedded in a large representative survey (N=8’000) in Switzerland, a high-income country with a very large extraterritorial environmental footprint. The main finding is that there is a major knowledge gap amongst the mass public in this area, and that this gap can be closed. However, closing the knowledge gap does not lead to a significant change in policy preferences in favor of reducing the global environmental footprint of local consumption. This points to major policy challenges in trying to mitigate problems of environmental impact shifting in the global economy.
Skin conductance predicts earnings in a market bubble-and-crash scenario
Wichary, Szymon; Allenbach, Monika; von Helversen, Bettina; et al. (2023)
OSF Preprints
In financial markets, profit is usually associated with risk-taking, as those who take risks, use the opportunities that markets present.However, during market bubbles, risk-taking might lead to losses, whereas risk aversion can lead to more profit. Emotion-based warning signals might play a role here by helping to recognize when risk aversion is preferable. To study this, we used a trading simulator, where 27 male participants traded on a historical stock price trend during a market bubble-and-crash scenario, and we continuously monitored their skin conductance level. We found that participants earning the most were characterized by an adaptive pattern of risk-taking —they invested much in the asset in the initial phase of the bubble but sold their stocks before the crash. Their skin conductance level was closely associated with the price trend, peaking before the crash started. This suggests that skin conductance provided a bodily warning signal in this group. Moreover, in high earners, skin conductance level correlated negatively with the proportion of stocks, indicating that the high earners used this warning signal to sell stocks. These results underscore the adaptive role of bodily signals in decision-making and elucidate the neural basis of success in uncertain financial markets.
Operationalisation matters: Weather extremes as noisy natural experiment show no influence on political attitudes
Quoß, Franziska; Rudolph, Lukas (2022)
OSF Preprints
Weather extremes are of (in)direct interest for a large literature. However, measuring "weather" is theoretically ambiguous, with a wide variety of potential operationalisations. Also, the theoretical link between exposure and preferences/behaviour is structured by intermediate steps with multiple potential dependent variables, usually reported on in separate projects. In combination, this leads to vast researcher degrees of freedom increasing the chance of false positive results. We develop a template to caution against false positives, and apply it to the much-researched question whether personal experiences of weather extremes "green" citizens’ preferences. From a large literature with inconclusive results, we derive 34 plausible operationalisations of extreme weather, and 4 core steps investigated. Drawing on high-quality geo-coded survey and weather data for Switzerland, we show that singular specifications support arbitrary conclusions, while the whole set indicates robust null results. This indicates a note of caution for all research with latent variables and spatial clustering.
Climate Policy Feasibility across Europe Relies on the Conditional Middle
Smith, E. Keith; Mlakar, Žan; Levis, Alessio; et al. (2025)
OSF Preprints
Political feasibility of climate policies hinges on persuading the moderate middle of the electorate. A survey evaluates climate policy preferences across 13 EU countries (n=19,328, Summer 2024), identifying `Conditionals', a crucial faction of moderates whose support shifts across 15 climate measures. Conditionals constitute 33\% of Europeans that are active voters for the dominant centrist and centre-right parties. Simulations indicate that even if currently undecided Conditionals simply moved to support, the number of policies with majority backing would more than double (from 4 to 10). Such changes do seem plausible, as Conditionals' preferences hinge less on fixed ideology or demographics, and rather upon things that policymakers can adjust, policy designs and the perceived cost–benefit balances. Overall, our findings emphasize that climate policy success depends on strategic engagement with diverse, moveable constituencies, where tailoring designs with visible benefits offers a pragmatic route to expand the feasibility frontier.
Public Preference Formation Towards Sustainable Global Supply Chains Policy
Kolcava, Dennis; Smith, E. Keith; Bernauer, Thomas (2022)
OSF Preprints
Effectively governing environmental and social externalities throughout the global economy poses challenges for democratic policy-makers in the court of public opinion. Following the median voter model, as the stringency of policy proposals increases, support rises amongst some citizens and falls amongst others. We argue informational disclosure-based governance presents a potential strategy to mitigate this zero-sum logic as citizens discount policy costs while expecting substantive benefits. We focus on political efforts to increase sustainability throughout global supply chains, drawing on two original survey experiments with representative samples in the 12 largest high-income importing economies (N=24,000). Indeed, at higher levels of policy stringency, citizens expect greater benefits than costs. Further, we find that expected benefits are more strongly associated with support than costs. Lastly, we note how policy stringency promotes convergence of expected benefits across the political ideological spectrum. Hence, our findings provide insights into public preference formation towards the globalization-sustainability nexus.
The LvL UP Trial: Protocol for a Sequential, Multiple Assignment, Randomized Controlled Trial to Assess the Effectiveness of a Blended Mobile Lifestyle Intervention
Castro, Oscar; Mair, Jacqueline Louise; Zheng, Shenglin; et al. (2024)
OSF Preprints
Background: Blended mobile health (mHealth) interventions – combining self-guided and human support components – could play a major role in preventing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and common mental disorders (CMDs). This protocol paper describes a sequential, multiple assignment, randomised trial aimed at (i) evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of LvL UP, an mHealth lifestyle intervention for the prevention of NCDs and CMDs, and (ii) establishing the optimal blended approach in LvL UP that balances effective personalised lifestyle support with scalability. Methods: LvL UP is a 6-month mHealth holistic intervention targeting physical activity, diet, and emotional regulation. In this trial, young and middle-aged Singaporean adults at risk of developing NCDs or CMDs will be randomly allocated to one of two initial conditions (‘LvL UP’ or ‘comparison’). After 4 weeks, participants categorised as non-responders from the LvL UP group will be re-randomised into second-stage conditions: (i) continuing with the initial intervention (LvL UP) or (ii) additional motivational interviewing (MI) support sessions by trained health coaches (LvL UP + adaptive MI). The primary outcome is mental well-being (via the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale). Secondary outcomes include anthropometric measurements, resting blood pressure, blood metabolic profile, health status, health behaviours (physical activity, diet), work productivity, and healthcare utilisation. Outcomes will be measured at baseline, 6 months (post-intervention), and 12 months (follow-up). Discussion: In addition to evaluating the effectiveness of LvL UP, the proposed study design will contribute to increasing evidence on how to introduce human support in mHealth interventions to maximise their effectiveness while remaining scalable. Trial registration: The LvL UP Pilot trial was prospectively registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT06360029) on 7 April 2024.
Does international “offshoring” of environmental impacts reflect consumer NIMBYism?
Presberger, David; Kolcava, Dennis; Bernauer, Thomas (2022)
OSF Preprints
Consumption of imported goods whose production affects the natural environment abroad implies international ``insourcing'' of consumer benefits and ``outsourcing'' of environmental impacts. We examine to what extent consumer choices driving such ecological outsourcing in the aggregate, often from the Global North to the Global South, are motivated by environmental NIMBY (not in my backyard) preferences. The analysis relies on an original survey-embedded choice experiment in three large, high-income economies (Germany, Japan, United States, total N=7,494). We find considerable support for environmental NIMBYism in consumer decisions. Whereas consumers generally tend to prefer domestically sourced products, this home bias becomes weaker with increasing environmental impacts of production. One important implication of this finding is that policy makers should address potential unintended side-effects of more stringent eco-labeling requirements. The latter may in fact contribute to further ecological outsourcing by making both information on environmental impacts and product provenance more explicit.
Children’s Reciprocity and Relationship Formation with a Robot Across Age
Leisten, Luca M.; Heyselaar, Evelien; Bosse, Tibor; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Reciprocity, responding to another one’s actions with similar actions, is central to the formation and maintenance of relationships. Reciprocity and relationship formation change with children’s development and are key aspects in human-robot interaction. So far, it is unclear how children reciprocate and build a relationship with a social robot and how reciprocity to social robots develops with age. In the current preregistered study, we collected data from 147 children aged 5 to 12 years to investigate the developmental trajectory of reciprocity towards a social robot and the formation of a relationship with this robot. To test reciprocity, children completed an Alternated Repeated Ultimatum Game with a social entertainment robot and another child. A recently validated survey on relationship formation was used that assesses trust, closeness, and social support. Results from a linear-mixed effects Bayesian analysis indicated that children reciprocated similarly to a robot as to another child. While reciprocity differed across age with lower values for 8-10-year-olds compared to younger and older children, this difference in the developmental trajectory of reciprocity was also observed when children interacted with the robot. Exploratory analysis showed differing results for positive (reciprocating positive actions with positive actions) and negative reciprocity (reciprocating negative actions with negative actions). Children’s relationship formation with a social robot changed with age but showed different developmental trajectories for trust (linear), closeness (negative quadratic), and social support (constant). No association was found between reciprocity towards the robot and relationship formation. Our findings suggest that established theories from human-human literature, such as the developmental trajectory of reciprocity, are also relevant for human-robot interaction. Children’s age is an important determinant for how children interact with and perceive robots. This therefore needs to be considered when designing robotic systems and experiments in the future as it could influence the success and effectiveness of both.
Domino Effects in the Earth System - The role of wanted social tipping points
Smith, E. Keith; Eder, Christina; Donges, Jonathan F.; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Social tipping processes have been identified as potential mechanisms for triggering necessary socio-technical transformations to avoid or mitigate disastrous climate futures. But, the coupling of social and climate systems remains comparatively under-defined. Here, we explore how (anticipated) changes to climate systems can instigate necessary positive transformations within social systems --- the wanted social tipping points. Exemplarily adopting novel survey data from the United States, we investigate how sea-level rise (SLR) risk perceptions shape climate change relevant behavioral intentions and policies. We find that SLR risk perceptions are strongly positively related to a diverse set of behaviors and support for policy measures under analysis in this study. Furthermore, we find that SLR perceptions are one of the strongest drivers toward climate change behavioral intentions, comparatively stronger than many other common individual-level determinants (e.g., political attitudes or different forms of trust). Our findings emphasize the potential role of SLR perceptions as instigators of social tipping dynamics. Heightened risk perceptions could be influential in transcending the temporal barriers presented by the necessity for contemporary socio-technical transformations to mitigate future climate impacts --- serving as a normatively desirable trigger of positive (wanted) social tipping dynamics.
Concern and anticipation of sea-level rise provide grounds for social tipping towards climate action
Smith, E. Keith; Wiedermann, Marc; Donges, Jonathan F.; et al. (2022)
OSF Preprints
Effective climate change mitigation necessitates swift societal transformations. Social tipping processes, where small triggers initiate qualitative systemic shifts, are potential key mechanisms instigating societal change. With large shares of the world's population coastally concentrated, sea-level rise is among the most severe impacts of climate change. Here we combine future sea-level rise estimates, social survey data, and a social activation model to exemplify a transformative pathway where climate change concern increases the social tipping potential, and extended anticipation time horizons shift the system towards an alternative sustainable state of climate action. We find that in many countries, climate change concern is sufficient, such that opportunities for social activation towards this tipped state already exist. Further, drawing upon the interrelation between climate change concern and anticipation of SLR, we find evidence of three qualitative classes of tipping potential that are regionally clustered, with greatest potential for tipping in Western Pacific rim and East Asian countries. These findings propose a transformative pathway, where increased climate change concern shifts tipping potential upwards and extended anticipation time horizons lowers the required size for critical interventions necessary to kick a social system into a more sustainable state.

Publications1 - 10 of 16

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