http://hdl.handle.net/1957/4129 2013-05-21T16:14:45Z http://hdl.handle.net/1957/38612 Food Fight: The Effect of Food Availability on the Probability of Violent Conflict Onset Olson, Jarrod In the past decade, scholars have increasingly turned to quantitative analysis to understand the complex interplay of factors driving intrastate conflict. International agencies, nonprofits and governments have maintained that food insecurity is a significant driver of violent conflict. This paper tests this popular assumption with a model drawn from Azar’s Theory of Protracted Social Conflict and a fixed effects logistic regression and finds that food availability has no significant effect on the probability of violent civil conflict onset. However, other factors such as a country’s level of integration into the international system of states and economic growth are likely to be more effective at maintaining global stability. The policy implications are that efforts to promote peace can be more effective by focusing on integration into the world community and economic growth than by focusing exclusively on food availability. Graduation date: 2013 2013-05-04T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1957/36402 Looking at the Relationship between Household Electricity Consumption and Annual Household Income Using an Agent-Based Integrated Framework Sorce, Evan C. Electricity is a vital energy source for modern life, and is used in almost every aspect of daily life. United States electricity consumption totaled nearly 3,886,403 gigawatt hours in 2011. Residential electricity consumption accounts for 37 percent of total electricity consumption in the United States. Between 1990 and 2007, the total volume of electricity sold in the United States grew at an average annual rate of 1.9%. The growth rate in residential energy usage was even higher, growing at an annual rate of 2.4% The oil shocks of the 1970s and major blackouts in 1965, 1977, and 2003 raised energy supply and security concerns. This paper uses the United States Energy Information Agencies Residential Energy Consumption Survey from 1997, 2001, and 2005 and an integrated framework of residential energy consumption to examine the relationship between annual household income and household electricity consumption. Even when controlling for various aspects of household electricity consumption, household annual income is found to be a significant factor in determining residential electricity consumption. Graduation date: 2012 2012-09-20T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1957/35838 Gender Inequality in Food Insecurity: An Examination of Single Adults without Children in the United States Osborne, Megan Using Current Population Survey data from 2008, 2009 and 2010 this paper explores the extent to which there is gender inequality in food insecurity among employed single adults without children. Gender inequality in the U.S. is well documented in a wide variety of spheres from the home to the world economy and is built and reinforced through the institutions of marriage and the family, work and the economy, politics, religion and many other cultural productions (Lorber 2010). This paper focuses on one kind of gender inequality of material hardship – food insecurity – examining its links to unequal and segregated economic opportunity. This study is unique as it examines how, when controlling for the influences of some of these structures ( e.g., marriage, and the dynamics of family with children) there remains evidence of gender inequality in food insecurity. Using ordinal logistic regression, results indicate a persistent presence of gender inequality in food insecurity with women showing consistently higher likelihoods of being food insecure when compared to men. This study both contributes to and expands on the existing literature on both gender inequality and food insecurity, linking occupational sex segregation and a gender income gap to higher likelihoods of food insecurity among women. Graduation date: 2012 2012-11-16T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1957/35072 Evaluating the EWEB Model: Institutional Structure as a Determinant in the Success of a Voluntary Landowner Incentive Program Fishler, Hillary Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) located in Eugene, Lane County, Oregon, is developing a voluntary landowner incentive program that will provide monetary incentives to non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners in the McKenzie River Watershed, EWEB’s drinking water source for the metropolitan area of Eugene, to promote good stewardship of riparian areas. This research examines the potential for implementing an effective incentive program, by reviewing best practices of past and existing incentive program targeting NIPF owners, and evaluating primary data from focus groups and interviews with official at other public utilities to investigate foreseen benefits and barriers to implementation of an incentive program through the public drinking water utility to achieve environmental protection sans regulation. Barriers and benefits have been analyzed according to Elinor Ostrom’s framework for Institutional Analysis and Design to identify policy recommendation for upcoming implementation of the proposed program. 2012 2012-11-14T00:00:00Z