Our possessions are a major contributor to and reflection of our identities A variety of evidence is presented supporting this simple and compelling premise Related streams of research are identified and drawn upon in developing this concept and implications are derived for consumer behavior Because the construct of extended self involves consumer behavior rather than buyer behavior, it appears to be a much richer construct than previous formulations positing a relationship between self-concept and consumer brand choice

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2489522.pdf

Possessions and the extended self.

1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Detecting Influential Observations and Outliers. 3. Detecting and Assessing Collinearity. 4. Applications and Remedies. 5. Research Issues and Directions for Extensions. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.

Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

Communities have the potential to function effectively and adapt successfully in the aftermath of disasters. Drawing upon literatures in several disciplines, we present a theory of resilience that encompasses contemporary understandings of stress, adaptation, wellness, and resource dynamics. Community resilience is a process linking a network of adaptive capacities (resources with dynamic attributes) to adaptation after a disturbance or adversity. Community adaptation is manifest in population wellness, defined as high and non-disparate levels of mental and behavioral health, functioning, and quality of life. Community resilience emerges from four primary sets of adaptive capacities—Economic Development, Social Capital, Information and Communication, and Community Competence—that together provide a strategy for disaster readiness. To build collective resilience, communities must reduce risk and resource inequities, engage local people in mitigation, create organizational linkages, boost and protect social supports, and plan for not having a plan, which requires flexibility, decision-making skills, and trusted sources of information that function in the face of unknowns.

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Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides access to information on a variety of topics related to the environment and strives to inform citizens of health risks. The EPA also has an extensive library network that consists of 26 libraries throughout the United States, which provide access to a plethora of information to EPA employees, scientists, and researchers. The EPA implemented a reorganization project to digitize their materials so they would be more accessible to a wider range of users, but this plan was drastically accelerated when the EPA was threatened with a budget cut. It chose to close and reduce the hours and services of some of their libraries. As a result, the agency was accused of denying users the “right to know” by making information unavailable, not providing an adequate strategic plan, and discarding vital materials. This case study explores the background of the digitization project, the practices implemented, and the critiques of the project.

/pdf/the-environmental-protection-agency-3gx4opzrjm.pdf

The Environmental Protection Agency

New Urbanists believe that front porches, along with narrow streets, back-alley garages, shallow setbacks, and street trees, may promote small town neighborliness of the 1920s. Critics dismiss such...

Neighbors, Households, and Front Porches: New Urbanist Community Tool or Mere Nostalgia?

In this chapter, the authors propose strengths-based community development as a community-level antidote to the economic, political, social, and physical environmental challenges facing communities. Community development initiatives that encompass multiple cummunity domains, build and sustain local community capacity, and bring together the public and private sectors are central to this approach. Special importance is placed on meaningful grassroots (citizen) participation in such community development efforts. An array of strengths-based public policies at the local (e.g., community land trusts), state (e.g., "smart growthJJ), and federal (e.g., community development block grants) levels are presented. This chapter illustrates the value of recognizingand building on existing community strengths, building new

/pdf/community-development-as-a-response-to-community-level-38vku49jan.pdf

Community development as a response to community-level adversity: ecological theory and research and strengths- based policy

Because of the financial incentives of prepaid care, the quality of care for Medicare enrollees in Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) is a concern. Therefore, the care in 150 newly diagnosed cases of colorectal cancer in eight HMOs was compared with that in 180 similar fee-for-service (FFS) cases. As part of the diagnostic workup, HMO patients were more likely to have bad fecal occult blood tests (74% vs 52%, p<0.01) and endoscopy or barium enemas (97% vs 90%, p<0.05). FFS patients were more likely to have had preoperative imaging studies (54% vs 38%, p<0.01). Although there were longer diagnostic delays for HMO enrollees with gastrointestinal bleeding, there were no significant differences in disease stage or clinical status, and postoperative follow-up was similar. The authors conclude that enrollees in Medicare HMOs with colorectal cancer receive medical and surgical care at least equal to that received in FFS settings.

Management of colorectal cancer in Medicare health maintenance organizations.

Obesity is a growing epidemic in the United States. Walkable neighborhoods, characterized as having the 3Ds of walkability (population Density, land use Diversity, and pedestrian-friendly Design), have been identified as a potentially promising factor to prevent obesity for their residents. Past studies examining the relationship between obesity and walkability vary in geographic scales of neighborhood definitions and methods of measuring the 3Ds. To better understand potential influences of these sometimes arbitrary choices, we test how four types of alternative measures of land use diversity measured at three geographic scales relate to body mass index for 4960 Salt Lake County adults. Generalized estimation equation models demonstrate that optimal diversity measures differed by gender and geographic scale and that integrating walkability measures at different scales improved the overall performance of models.

/pdf/mixed-land-use-and-obesity-an-empirical-comparison-of-2z30gfbqk7.pdf

Barbara B. Brown

Papers

Neighbors, Households, and Front Porches: New Urbanist Community Tool or Mere Nostalgia?

Community development as a response to community-level adversity: ecological theory and research and strengths- based policy

Management of colorectal cancer in Medicare health maintenance organizations.

Mixed land use and obesity: an empirical comparison of alternative land use measures and geographic scales.

A post-occupancy evaluation of wayfinding in a pediatric hospital: Research findings and implications for instruction