Testing a Three Stage Model of Institutional Confidence Summary: Public trust in institutions has been the subject of a great deal of research.
Researchers from disciplines like law, psychology, political science, and sociology have investigated constructs like legitimacy, loyalty, trustworthiness and cynicism in the context of institutions like the courts, government, and natural resource regulation. Problematically however, researchers do not always clearly delineate the constructs and rarely discuss their interrelationships. The current project aims to propose and validate a model which incorporates a number of public trust in institutions constructs and hypothesizes their interrelationships in a water regulation context.
Project Goals:
To test a model of institutional confidence that incorporates a number of constructs related to public trust in institutions generally in a water regulation context.
Project Status:
Selection and evaluation of construct measures
Trevor Hefley
Statistical Indicators of Decreasing Resilience in Population Monitoring Data Summary: Ecosystems have the potential to change abruptly and unpredictably.
Although non-linear changes have been known for a considerable amount of time current research focuses on bifurcations in ecological systems capable of showing alternative stable states. Of interest to conservation biology is the transcritical bifurcation. The transcritical bifurcation occurs when a population crosses a threshold from one that will persist to one that will necessarily go extinct. Indicators including coefficient of variation, skewness, auto correlation, and spatial correlation have been shown to predict transcritical bifurcations up to 8 generations before the bifurcation actually occurred in microcosm experiments, however, my research will focus on assessing the utility of such indicators in population monitoring data.
Project Goals:
Develop statistical methods to search population monitoring data to determine if a transcritical bifurcation occurred and if any prior warning signals (i.e. indicators) are present.
Platter River Basin Water Allocation: Stakeholder Views
For a portion of my dissertation research, I will be conducting a qualitative case study that will explore Nebraska's water allocation system as seen by stakeholders in the Platte River Basin. Interviews will be either in person or over the phone. In following good practices for qualitative research, interviews should be recorded and transcribed.
Project Goals:
One of the goals of the research project is to see how successful Nebraska's current water allocation system is, as viewed by the stakeholders. Stakeholder interviews will provide valuable information on how stakeholders think the current management system is working, especially given the numerous changes that have occurred over the past years (the creation of NRD's and Integrated Management Planning efforts). The theoretical framework used for this research is Elinor Ostrom's 8 Design Principles for successful common-pool resource management.
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