Browsing by Author "Weible, Christopher"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Comparing Formal and Informal Institutions with the Institutional Grammar Tool
    (2010) Siddiki, Saba; Basurto, Xavier; Weible, Christopher
    "While the role of formal and informal institutions has been long recognized among common-pool resources scholars working under the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD), not much attention has been devoted to disentangling the relative influence of each one on social behavior. We explore this issue through the application of the grammar of institutions, semi-structured interviews, and Q-sort methods. The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, the paper seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the interplay between formal and informal institutions on policy compliance. We do so in the context of aquaculture policies in the State of Colorado, USA. Second, this paper seeks to continue to develop Crawford and Ostrom’s grammar of institutions as an analytical tool for systematic institutional analysis. The results from the case study are mixed. We found some respondents reporting strong alignment between informal and the formal institutions but others reporting weak alignment. Additionally, feelings of personal guilt or shame and fear of social disapproval, together, were cited as being more influential in shaping individuals’ decision making regarding compliance with formal institutions than was fear of monetary sanctioning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the unexpected relationships among different syntactic elements of the grammar thereby deepening the understanding of how the grammar of institutions can help in the examination of policy documents and explain human behavior."
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    Dissecting Policy Designs: An Application of the Institutional Grammar Tool
    (Wiley, 2011-02-01) Siddiki, Saba; Weible, Christopher; Basurto, Xavier; Calanni, John
    An enduring challenge for the policy and political sciences is valid and reliable depiction of policy designs. One emerging approach for dissecting policy designs is the application of Sue Crawford and Elinor Ostrom's institutional grammar tool. The grammar tool offers a method to identify, systematically, the core elements that comprise policies, including target audiences, expected patterns of behavior, and formal modes of sanctioning for noncompliance. This article provides three contributions to the study of policy designs by developing and applying the institutional grammar tool. First, we provide revised guidelines for applying the institutional grammar tool to the study of policy design. Second, an additional component to the grammar, called the oBject, is introduced. Third, we apply the modified grammar tool to four policies that shape Colorado State Aquaculture to demonstrate its effectiveness and utility in illuminating institutional linkages across levels of analysis. The conclusion summarizes the contributions of the article as well as points to future research and applications of the institutional grammar tool.
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    Measuring Impacts of Marine Aquaculture Partnerships
    (2012-11) Calanni, John; Siddiki, Saba; Weible, Christopher; Leach, William; Vince, Scott
    The authors performed a survey of aquaculture partnership participants to understand their perceptions of problems associated with the expansion of U.S. marine aquaculture, as well as the impacts of partnerships on these problems. The partnerships indicated positive impacts on such important problems as dissemination of misinformation as well as insufficient policies regarding leases, licenses and permits. They reported little to no impacts on issues such as financing of startup operations and research.
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    Organizations and Emergency Management: Information, Trust, and Preparedness
    (Journal of Emergency Management, 2012) Huss, Sheila; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem; Weible, Christopher
    In what ways do information and trust relate to the level of organizational preparedness for disasters? Interview and survey data on 227 organizations in Memphis/Shelby County, TN, were analyzed to assess the extent to which organizations use disaster-related information for decision making, and report the information as adequate and relevant. Organizations were also asked to identify their sources for disaster-related information, whom they trust for helping them prepare for disasters, and their level of preparedness for disasters. The results show that more than half of the organizations in Memphis/Shelby County relied on information for disaster management, and of these organizations, the overwhelming majority agreed that the information was both adequate and relevant. The police and fire departments, Memphis/Shelby County Emergency Management Agency, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention were identified by responding organizations as major sources of information and as organizations that they trust the most to help them prepare for disasters. Organizations that rely on the Memphis City Government for information are more likely than other organizations to report that they are prepared for disasters. Finally, organizations that rely on the media as one of their top three information sources are less likely than other organizations to report that they are prepared for disasters.
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    A Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems Framework for Interdisciplinary Study of Sustainable City Systems
    (Wiley, 2012-12-01) Ramaswami, Anu; Weible, Christopher; Main, Deborah; Heikkila, Tanya; Siddiki, Saba; Duvall, Andrew; Pattison, Andrew; Bernard, Meghan
    Cities are embedded within larger-scale engineered infrastructures (e.g., electric power, water supply, and transportation networks) that convey natural resources over large distances for use by people in cities. The sustainability of city systems therefore depends upon complex, cross-scale interactions between the natural system, the transboundary engineered infrastructures, and the multiple social actors and institutions that govern these infrastructures. These elements, we argue, are best studied in an integrated manner using a novel social-ecological-infrastructural systems (SEIS) framework. In the biophysical subsystem, the SEIS framework integrates urban metabolism with life cycle assessment to articulate transboundary infrastructure supply chain water, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission footprints of cities. These infrastructure footprints make visible multiple resources (water, energy, materials) used directly or indirectly (embodied) to support human activities in cities. They inform cross-scale and cross-infrastructure sector strategies for mitigating environmental pollution, public health risks and supply chain risks posed to cities. In the social subsystem, multiple theories drawn from the social sciences explore interactions between three actor categories—individual resource users, infrastructure designers and operators, and policy actors—who interact with each other and with infrastructures to shape cities toward sustainability outcomes. Linking of the two subsystems occurs by integrating concepts, theories, laws, and models across environmental sciences/climatology, infrastructure engineering, industrial ecology, architecture, urban planning, behavioral sciences, public health, and public affairs. Such integration identifies high-impact leverage points in the urban SEIS. An interdisciplinary SEIS-based curriculum on sustainable cities is described and evaluated for its efficacy in promoting systems thinking and interdisciplinary vocabulary development, both of which are measures of effective frameworks.
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    Using the IAD's Institutional Grammar to Understand Policy Design: An Application to Colorado Aquaculture
    (2009) Siddiki, Saba; Weible, Christopher; Basurto, Xavier; Calanni, John
    This draft offers a preliminary analysis of an on-going project to develop guidelines for applying the IAD's Institutional Grammar to understand the content of policy design. We seek to understand the foundational elements of policy design by examining the individual institutional statements that constitute policies. The Institutional Grammar offered by the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is a valuable tool with which to systematically identify the institutions-in-form that govern behavior of people in collective action situations. Understanding how these statements are modified over time may be indicative of broader changes regarding how policy issues are framed, altered contextual factors, and new actors and sources of information entering the policy arena. In this study, we adapt the IAD's Institutional Grammar to code the major laws and regulations of Colorado State aquaculture, through which we identify the institutions-in-form that guide aquaculture activities in the State. We focus our discussion on offering insights regarding the applicability of the IAD's Institutional Grammar as it is currently presented, including theoretical limitations and suggestions for improved applications.
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    Using the institutional grammar tool to understand regulatory compliance: The case of Colorado aquaculture
    (Wiley, 2012) Siddiki, Saba; Basurto, Xavier; Weible, Christopher
    What is the relationship between the design of regulations and levels of individual compliance? To answer this question, Crawford and Ostrom's institutional grammar tool is used to deconstruct regulations governing the aquaculture industry in Colorado, USA. Compliance with the deconstructed regulatory components is then assessed based on the perceptions of the appropriateness of the regulations, involvement in designing the regulations, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The findings suggest that levels of compliance with regulations vary across and within individuals regarding various aspects of the regulatory components. As expected, the level of compliance is affected by the perceived appropriateness of regulations, participation in designing the regulations, and feelings of guilt and fear of social disapproval. Furthermore, there is a strong degree of interdependence among the written components, as identified by the institutional grammar tool, in affecting compliance levels. The paper contributes to the regulation and compliance literature by illustrating the utility of the institutional grammar tool in understanding regulatory content, applying a new Q-Sort technique for measuring individual levels of compliance, and providing a rare exploration into feelings of guilt and fear outside of the laboratory setting.