Most of the scholarly focus to date has been on large horizontal axis rather than vertical axis wind turbines. It may be possible to improve the efficiency of vertical axis wind technology by ...deploying turbines in clusters. There might also be advantages to deploying vertical axis turbines at a smaller scale in urban or suburban areas and in places where the risk of bird damage is highest. Would these features increase public acceptance of new wind turbine installations and possibly open up new areas for wind energy development?
We conducted a public opinion poll in California to examine public receptiveness. We used experimental design to assess the willingness to accept vertical axis turbines in certain urban settings. We find that the visual differences between the vertical and conventional wind turbines did not matter very much in any of the hypothetical settings in which we placed them. However, the prospect of killing fewer birds registered strongly with our survey respondents, though it could be outweighed by concern for cost. We also show that certain segments of the population, particularly those who are more educated, may be open to a more extensive deployment of vertical axis turbines in urban communities.
•We conducted a poll in California to assess opinion toward vertical axis turbines.•Little perceptual differences between the vertical and conventional wind turbines.•The prospect of killing fewer birds registered strongly with our respondents.•But it could be outweighed by concern for cost.•More educated respondents are open to vertical turbines in urban communities.
Human-centered redistricting automation in the age of AI Cho, Wendy K Tam; Cain, Bruce E
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
2020-Sep-04, 2020-09-04, 20200904, Volume:
369, Issue:
6508
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Human-machine collaboration and transparency are key
Redistricting—the constitutionally mandated, decennial redrawing of electoral district boundaries—can distort representative democracy. An adept ...map drawer can elicit a wide range of election outcomes just by regrouping voters (see the figure). When there are thousands of precincts, the number of possible partitions is astronomical, giving rise to enormous potential manipulation. Recent technological advances have enabled new computational redistricting algorithms, deployable on supercomputers, that can explore trillions of possible electoral maps without human intervention. This leaves us to wonder if Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was prescient when she lamented, “(t)he 2010 redistricting cycle produced some of the worst partisan gerrymanders on record. The technology will only get better, so the 2020 cycle will only get worse” (
Gill
v.
Whitford
). Given the irresistible urge of biased politicians to use computers to draw gerrymanders and the capability of computers to autonomously produce maps, perhaps we should just let the machines take over. The North Carolina Senate recently moved in this direction when it used a state lottery machine to choose from among 1000 computer-drawn maps. However, improving the process and, more importantly, the outcomes results not from developing technology but from our ability to understand its potential and to manage its (mis)use.
China leads the world's wind energy market, but little has been written about public receptivity towards wind energy generators in China. To fill this gap, we pursue a survey experimental approach to ...examine explanations for receptivity based on evidence from OECD countries as well as the importance of public knowledge in augmenting public acceptance of wind energy generators in China. We find that Chinese respondents are sensitive to siting near their residences, to cost considerations when imposed on them directly, to wildlife externalities, and to noise from turbines. Interestingly, Chinese respondents seem to be concerned about radiation, a finding unprecedented in the literature, and are less assured by scientific assurances that radiation is not a problem. Instead, the Chinese central government is best suited to address concerns about this topic. Targeted information provision to the public can improve public knowledge about aspects of wind energy of concern. Hence, the Chinese central government can promote wind energy deployment not just because it is an authoritarian government determined to get things done, but also because it can provide relevant information to reduce potential public resistance.
•Urban Chinese respondents exhibit a NIMBY attitude towards wind energy generators.•Urban Chinese respondents are sensitive to direct costs and to wildlife externalities.•Urban Chinese respondents are concerned about radiation from wind turbines.•The central Chinese government rather than scientists is better suited to address concern.•Distributing relevant information about turbines to the public may boost support.
The new institutionalism in election law aims to lessen the necessity of court intervention in politically sensitive election administration matters such as redistricting by harnessing politics to ...fix politics. Many hope that independent citizen commissions (ICCs) will improve the politics associated with drawing new district boundaries. As the recent round of redistricting comes to a close, I offer some observations about ICCs as effective court redistricting buffers. My basic points are as follows. Independent citizen commissions are the culmination of a reform effort focused heavily on limiting the conflict of interest implicit in legislative control over redistricting. While they have succeeded to a great degree in that goal, they have not eliminated the inevitable partisan suspicions associated with political line-drawing and the associated risk of commission deadlock. Additional political purity tests and more careful vetting of the citizen commissioners are not the solution. I argue that ICCs in the future should adopt a variation of New Jersey's informal arbitration system as a means of reducing partisan stakes and encouraging coalition building among stakeholders.
Despite the widespread use and extensive studies of collaborative governance in the United States, we still know too little about how the public at large evaluates the formal inclusion of private ...stakeholders in collaborative decision making. We examine this question by conducting a series of survey experiments about the function, composition, and power of a proposed regional transportation board. The survey results reveal that while our respondents generally favored collaborative governance (i.e., public officials with private stakeholders) over collaborative government (i.e., public officials only), it was largely due to the inclusion of private citizens, not the stakeholder group representatives. This finding is consistent with a populist framework that presumes that interest group influences tend to impede or distort the will of the electoral majority and that favors functionally delimited mandates and limited power for non-elected decision-making bodies. This has important implications for the design and public acceptance of future collaborative government arrangements.
In recent years, wildfires have ravaged the landscape in many Western American states, especially California. But will these horrific wildfire experiences increase public support for wildfire ...adaptation measures? We conducted an individual-level survey in California in 2019. Combining survey data with geocoded information about a respondent’s proximity to wildfire events and exposure to wildfire smoke, we assess whether respondents’ experiences increased support for several wildfire adaptation policies. We also control for party affiliation. We find that Californians generally oppose restrictive resilience policies and view the decision to take adaptive steps as a matter of personal choice. Republicans are generally more opposed than Democrats to spending public funds to incentivize resilience measures, but proximity to wildfires lessens their opposition to using public funds to encourage homeowners to upgrade their properties for increased protection from wildfires and encourage relocation to safer places. Although exposure to wildfire smoke is extensive and harmful to health, we found that its main impact on policy preferences was statistically insignificant.
Sexual harassment and gender discrimination have become more salient in U.S. politics in recent years due, in part, to the #MeToo movement. We conducted two surveys on Californians in the 2018 ...primary and general election. We find that experiencing either of these types of interactions shaped how Independent voters evaluated political figures but had a smaller effect on Democratic and Republican party identifiers. On average, experiencing gender discrimination has stronger effects on the evaluation of political figures than sexual harassment. Both experiences played out differently for Independent men and Independent women. The boost in female support for Democratic candidates was counterbalanced by a backlash vote from Independent men who reported they experienced gender discrimination, aiding the President and hurting Democratic political figures. This suggests that the pro-Kavanaugh backlash had deeper roots in male resentment towards the perceived preferential treatment of women, especially in work environments.
Creating successful collaborative governance regimes is difficult, but can be especially hard when collaborations are externally generated by higher levels of government as opposed to self-generated ...by local agencies and stakeholders due to the lack of spontaneity. We analyze this problem as it applies to California’s Integrated Regional Water Governance Program. Public administration theory indicates that a core element in a successful collaboration is empowering local leaders who share the collaboration’s intended goal. However, the political concessions to local autonomy necessary to enact an externally generated collaboration can undermine its success. The tensions between maintaining local autonomy and creating a regional approach are inherently strong in a “layered collaborative governance” approach that acknowledges and accommodates local boundaries. Drawing on the concept of role differentiation, we hypothesize that the roles participants play in layered collaborative governance will frequently derive from their preexisting issue areas, geographic orientations, and power relations, but that program design incentives can influence which groups participate in the effort and how they engage. We test these hypotheses in the context of California’s Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) program. We find evidence of role differentiation on grant leadership both with respect to the initial goal of regional collaboration as well as later efforts to address the water issues of disadvantaged communities.
Despite its importance as a tool for protecting air and water quality, and for mitigating impacts to protected species and ecosystems, the environmental permitting process is widely recognized to be ...inefficient and marked by delays. This article draws on a literature review and interviews with permitting practitioners to identify factors that contribute to delayed permit decisions. The sociopolitical context, projects that are complex or use novel technology, a fragmented and bureaucratic regulatory regime, serial permit applications and reviews, and applicant and permitting agency knowledge and resources each contribute to permitting inefficiency when they foster uncertainty, increase transaction costs, and allow divergent interests to multiply, yet remain unresolved. We then use the interviews to consider the potential of a collaborative dialogue between permitting agencies and applicants to mitigate these challenges, and argue that collaboration is well positioned to lessen permitting inefficiency.
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