Browsing by Subject "subjective norms"
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Item Identifying Socio-ecological Factors Influencing the Use of Prescribed Fire to Maintain and Restore Ecosystem Health in Texas, USA and Northern Chihuahua, Mexico(2013-01-10) Toledo, DavidThere is a critical need for more studies to identify socio-ecological drivers that affect conservation and management of fire adapted ecosystems, yet studies that identify such variables and explore their interaction in specific systems are not only scarce but limited to only a few systems. Although information on the socio-ecological effects of prescribed fire application exists, there is no integrative framework that simultaneously considers the interplay between social and ecological factors affecting the use of prescribed fires. Fire suppression, together with other human and natural disturbances in grassland systems that are adapted to episodic fire, are the major factors that have contributed to the recruitment of woody species into grasslands worldwide. Even though the ecology of restoring these fire prone systems back to a grassland state is becoming clearer, the major hurdle to reintroducing historic fire at a landscape scale is its social acceptability. To address these deficiencies, I studied the socio-ecological factors influencing the use of prescribed fire in Texas, USA and Chihuahua, Mexico using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine how social and ecological factors affect ecosystem conservation and management of semi-arid grassland systems. For the Texas case study I used quantitative survey data analyzed using logistic regression models and structural equation models. For the Mexico case study I used qualitative interviews gathered using a snowball network sampling approach and coded them based on the analytic themes of land cover change, institutional failure, market drivers, and population dynamics. Results from the Texas case study suggest that risk taking orientation and especially, perceived support from others when implementing prescribed burns, play important roles in determining attitudes towards the use of high-intensity prescribed fires, which are sometimes needed to restore ecosystems. Results from the Texas case study also highlight how membership in Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) influence land manager decisions regarding the use of prescribed fire by reducing concerns over lack of skills, knowledge and resources. Results emphasize the potential for PBAs to reduce risk concerns regarding the application of prescribed fire and are relevant to management of brush encroached areas. Through PBAs, effective landscape-scale solutions to the brush encroachment problem can be achieved in Texas. Results from the Mexico case study show how fire stopped effectively being a driving factor on this system decades ago. Socio-political and ecological changes at the national, and international level produced changes in land use disrupting historical fire patterns and contributing to the ecological deterioration of the area. Droughts combined with poor management practices have depleted the fuel needed to carry a fire. Landowners also face safety and legal concerns but in most cases, even if a landowner decided to implement a prescribed burn, an ecological threshold has been crossed and current fine fuel loads (grass) are insufficient to carry a fire that is sufficiently intense to reduce brush cover and restore grassland and savanna ecosystems. Based on my findings I can conclude that ecologically sound adaptive management and social capital are fundamental components of the livelihoods of landowners and land managers in both case studies. Work and investment that is focused on strengthening this social capital will have the most profound effects in maintaining the integrity of grassland systems at a landscape scale.Item Waiting to learn a new use of technology: motivation source and its impact on anticipated effect, time pressure and subjective norms(Texas A&M University, 2005-11-01) Loraas, Tina MarieThis research investigated the decision process surrounding the self-regulated learning of new uses of existing technology. With firms investing up to 50% of their capital budgets on information technology (in excess of 1 trillion dollars in aggregate), understanding what factors motivate or inhibit more encompassing use of technology is of practical concern (Bowen 1986; Nambisan et al. 1999; Mahmood et a. 2001). I introduced a dynamic element to the technology adoption/acceptance literature by using a framework based upon deferral option theory. This framework allows for the decision to learn a new use of technology to occur over time. I found that potential users chose to defer learning new uses of technology even when usefulness was evident and ease of learning was not prohibitive. Further, an additional benefit to using the deferral option framework was its inclusion of both rewards and penalties; I found that not only do potential users consider what can be gained by learning, but also what can be lost by trying to learn and failing. In addition to using a framework premised on deferral option theory, I investigated the properties of time pressure and subjective norms on the decision to learn new uses of technology. As time pressure offered a possible alternate explanation for why potential users defer learning, I controlled for it experimentally and determined that time pressure did affect deferral choice. Further, as subjective norms have had limited success as a predictor of intent to use technology in prior literature, I investigated the separate pieces of the theoretical construct, referent group perceptions and the motivation to comply with those perceptions. By manipulating environment between work and play settings, different motivational sources were enacted by the potential users. Specifically, I found that when potential users were externally motivated subjective norms did influence deferral, and when internally motivated, subjective norms did not influence a potential user??s decision to defer learning a new use of technology.