Stringent sustainability regulations for global supply chains are supported across middle-income democracies.

Expanded international trade and globalised production networks are increasing the environmental and social impacts in middle-income countries (GNI per capita $1,136-$13,845). High-income countries (>$13,845) are seeking to mitigate the negative impacts of domestic consumption by imposing new sustainability regulations on global supply chains. Recent evidence suggests that these regulations are broadly supported across high-income countries.

Effects of improved on-farm crop storage on perceived stress and perceived coping in pregnant women-Evidence from a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Kenya.

Background: Food insecurity can be harmful to pregnant women, as pregnancy is a challenging period with increased maternal nutritional requirements to ensure optimal fetal development and health of the mother. Whether food insecurity negatively affects maternal health may depend on how stressful pregnant women perceive this food insecurity to be and how strongly they believe they can cope with it. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), pregnant women from smallholder households suffer from food insecurity due to post-harvest losses (PHL), i.

Trade policy announcements can increase price volatility in global food commodity markets.

Many countries use trade policy to insulate their domestic markets from price volatility. However, there is a widespread concern that such policies-particularly export restrictions-may amplify global price volatility, adversely affecting other countries. Here, using an original dataset on trade policy announcements on wheat and maize encompassing the food price crises of 2007-2008 and 2010-2011, we show that the announcement of trade policy changes can increase global price volatility.

Are actual and perceived environmental conditions associated with variation in mental health?

Objective: Empirical evidence on the relationship between environmental factors and mental health remains inconclusive. One reason is that there is only scant evidence on the association between mental health and subjective exposure to environmental stressors, relative to objective pollution. We thus focus on how the perceived and actual presence of noise, air pollution, and green spaces relates to mental health.

Policy framing, design and feedback can increase public support for costly food waste regulation.

Stricter regulation of food waste reduction is widely presumed to increase food prices, which could render its implementation politically unfeasible. Here we empirically tested whether specific policy framing, design and feedback could help ensure public support despite potential food price increases. We used survey experiments with 3,329 citizens from a high-income country, Switzerland.

Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.

Strong public support is a prerequisite for ambitious and thus costly climate change mitigation policy, and strong public concern over climate change is a prerequisite for policy support. Why, then, do most public opinion surveys indicate rather high levels of concern and rather strong policy support, while de facto mitigation efforts in most countries remain far from ambitious? One possibility is that survey measures for public concern fail to fully reveal the true attitudes of citizens due to social desirability bias. In this paper, we implemented list-experiments in representative surveys in Germany and the United States (N = 3620 and 3640 respectively) to assess such potential bias.

Could revenue recycling make effective carbon taxation politically feasible?

Carbon taxes are widely regarded as a potentially effective and economically efficient policy instrument for decarbonizing the global energy supply and thus limiting global warming. The main obstacle is political feasibility because of opposition from citizens and industry. Earmarking revenues from carbon taxation for spending that benefits citizens (i.

Salivary testosterone and cortisol are jointly related to pro-environmental behavior in men.

Recently, cortisol has been suggested to moderate the positive relationship between testosterone and antisocial behavior. More precisely, high testosterone levels have been found to be related to aggressive or dominant behavior especially when cortisol levels were low. In the present study, we aimed to extend these findings to pro-environmental behavior as an indicator of prosocial behavior.

Stress influences environmental donation behavior in men.

Stress has been found to have both positive and negative effects on prosocial behavior, suggesting the involvement of moderating factors such as context and underlying motives. In the present study, we investigated the conditions under which acute stress leads to an increase vs. decrease in environmental donation behavior as an indicator of prosocial behavior.

Are economically "kinder, gentler societies" also greener?

Several studies examining implications of the modern welfare state arrive at rather positive conclusions: generally, they find that economically "kinder, gentler societies", that is, countries providing stronger state-sponsored social-safety nets for their people, perform better on various accounts, such as social and political stability, or economic performance. Recent research suggests that benign implications also exist for the environment in the sense that investing more in social policies may contribute to stronger environmental protection and higher environmental quality. We present theoretical arguments in favor, but also against this hypothesis, and evaluate it empirically with cross-sectional data for 68 countries.

Government regulation and public opposition create high additional costs for field trials with GM crops in Switzerland.

Field trials with GM crops are not only plant science experiments. They are also social experiments concerning the implications of government imposed regulatory constraints and public opposition for scientific activity. We assess these implications by estimating additional costs due to government regulation and public opposition in a recent set of field trials in Switzerland.