Browsing by Author "Roberts, Anthony, advisor"
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Item Open Access Determinants of deforestation in Vietnam, 2008 – 2015(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Tran, Thai Binh, author; Roberts, Anthony, advisor; Mao, Kuoray, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee memberNew methods including satellite data, geographic information systems (GIS), and remote sensing processing have discovered human expansion over forest areas referred as forest degradation. This study acknowledges these findings but insists on using official data to address some drawbacks of previous studies. These drawbacks include (1) the focusing on limited areas, Central Highlands areas, instead of a national scale, (2) exclusion of resources trade from the analysis, (3) lacking consideration of the spatial and longitudinal autocorrelation, which is overlooked in panel analysis; and (4) the inconsistency of the relation between poverty and deforestation. This research investigated the effects of land-use change from agricultural expansion and timber extraction, resources trade, and community poverty on province-level forest coverage in Vietnam from 2008 to 2015 using panel and spatial autoregressive modelling. After accounting for resources trade, effect of agricultural expansion as well as forest extraction disappear. In addition, panel analysis suggests no covariate along poverty rate affects forest coverage while the spatial analysis suggests literacy rate and agricultural land are also have significant effects.Item Open Access Tiny house communities: a model for sustainability(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Mangold, Severin, author; Roberts, Anthony, advisor; Mahoney, Patrick, committee member; Cafaro, Philip, committee memberAt a time when the human population faces extreme environmental risks from the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, a search for environmentally sustainable solutions is necessary. A recent iteration of the cohousing movement in the United States is pushing for more sustainable lifestyles by developing communities of 'tiny houses'. Tiny house communities offer a plausible solution to climate change due to their reduced carbon footprint, increased focus on living with less, and overall escape from debt. More importantly, recent research shows tiny house enthusiasts embody environmentalist tenets within their drive to live with less in a smaller space. However, little research examines how living in these communities promotes pro-environmental behaviors and attitudes. This study addresses this gap using two original surveys to examine (1) the motivations, philosophies, and socio-demographics of tiny communities and (2) the effect of community integration on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in these communities. I argue that community integration plays a key role in increasing the environmentalism of tiny house community residents. Tiny house community members' levels of pro-environmental behaviors increase as a result of being highly integrated into their communities. While members tend to already exhibit high levels of environmentalism prior to joining a tiny house community, being in the presence of others and forming relationships with other community members creates a synergistic effect that specifically increases levels of pro-environmental behaviors. The more socially integrated members are the more exposed they are to new pro-environmental behaviors that they might not been aware of prior to joining the community. The first survey identifies the motivations, philosophical influences, and socio-demographics of tiny house enthusiasts. Sociodemographic questions included questions about respondents age, income, education level, race, and gender. The second survey asked participants to rate their levels of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, in addition to questions about community attachment, community integration, community impact, and basic sociodemographic about their age, income, education level, race, and gender. Most important was the measure of community integration; this was measured by asking participants to name at most 10 people who they interact with regularly. Through the use of multivariate OLS regressions, I find that community integration is positively associated with pro-environmental behaviors net of prior pro-environmental behaviors, age, community impact, and religion. I also find that age exhibits a marginally significant negative association with pro-environmental attitudes. Thereby this thesis provides initial evidence for the pro-environmental nature of tiny house communities as a result of community integration. While community integration was found to be a key predictor pro-environmental behavior, the same could not be said for the pro-environmental attitudes. Furthermore, community attachment did not exhibit any significant associations with behaviors or attitudes.Item Open Access Types of foreign direct investment and the informal economy: a cross-national assessment(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Li, Ang, author; Roberts, Anthony, advisor; Hastings, Orestes 'Pat', committee member; Weiler, Stephan, committee memberHow does foreign direct investment (FDI) affect the size of the informal economy? Some argue FDI reduces the size of the informal economy by promoting formal employment, while others contend that it facilitates a 'race to the bottom' and leads to the informalization of work. However, the empirical evidence on the effects of FDI is inconclusive. I suggest that this is attributed to previous studies overlooking the sector-specific effects of FDI on the informal economy. Using panel data of 76 countries between 2000 and 2018, this study examines how FDI inflow into the primary, secondary, and tertiary sector, affects the size of the informal economy and whether these effects are moderated by the development and institutional quality of the recipient countries. It shows that primary-sector FDI reduces informal economy in the Developed Countries while increasing informal economy in the Less Developed Countries. This could potentially be explained by the finding that institutional quality suppresses the positive effect of primary-sector FDI. Although I did not find statistically significant results of the impact of secondary- and tertiary-sector FDI, this limitation might be resolved in future study when industry-level FDI data becomes available. Overall, my findings suggest that the impact of FDI on the size of informal economy are heterogenous and can be better explained by the structure rather than the overall magnitude of FDI.