Wesley Wehde - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Wesley Wehde

Energy Research & Social Science

International Review of Public Policy

Until recently for advocacy groups, influencing public opinion meant press releases, newspaper ar... more Until recently for advocacy groups, influencing public opinion meant press releases, newspaper articles and emails. Now, social media gives such groups the ability to advocate much more widely and at lower cost. In new research, Kuhika Gupta, Joseph T. Ripberger, and Wesley Wehde look at how opposing advocacy groups construct narratives via social media. They find that pro and anti-nuclear groups used individual tweets to construct policy narratives featuring heroes, villains and victims.

Natural Hazards Review, 2021

Investments in new weather forecasting technologies and communication products can be costly and ... more Investments in new weather forecasting technologies and communication products can be costly and serve the ultimate purpose of protecting life and property. The Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) paradigm attempts to improve technology and communication through the provision of probabilistic hazard information (PHI). The research and technology necessary to produce this information requires a substantial resource investment, but the societal value of the information may outweigh the costs. This study provides an initial estimate of this value by exploring public willingness to pay (WTP) for an app that provides continuously updated, geographically situated PHI that could be utilized during a tornado event. Findings indicate that the mean WTP, in a one-time payment, for this precise hazard information product is 7.53perperson.AggregatedtotheUSpopulation,theestimatedvalueisbetween7.53 per person. Aggregated to the US population, the estimated value is between 7.53perperson.AggregatedtotheUSpopulation,theestimatedvalueisbetween901 million and $1.56 billion. These findings indicate that federal agencies and private companies are likely to generate a substantial surplus by developing these products and will contribute to improving informed decision-making and protecting lives and property.

Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2020

Using survey data collected from residents of counties along the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts o... more Using survey data collected from residents of counties along the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States, we use innovative compositional data analysis techniques to examine individuals’ assignment of responsibility for hurricane preparedness across federal, state, and local officials as well as among household residents and their community. We find that the public assigns limited responsibility for hurricane preparedness to governments. Rather, respondents, especially conservatives and those with low trust in government, view individuals themselves as responsible for preparedness. Our results emphasize the role of ideology and the individualistic culture of American politics. These results also have implications for scholars who study individual attribution responsibility in multi-level systems and who may assume that individuals will assign responsibility to one of the various levels of government; however, focusing on disaster preparation in particular, our study show...

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2021

Abstract Social capital — resources that are available as a result of social relationships and co... more Abstract Social capital — resources that are available as a result of social relationships and connections — has been shown to be an important component across the various stages of a natural disaster, such as a hurricane. Additionally, research has shown that the importance of the different types of social capital — bonding, bridging, and linking — can vary as the disaster progresses from preparation, to the immediate aftermath, to long-term recovery. Yet, findings are not consistent regarding the impact of social capital on taking protective action (e.g., evacuation, shelter in home or community) following a hurricane warning. In this paper, we leverage an original survey of 1450 residents living in coastal communities in the Southeast and Gulf Coast regions of the United States to examine the role of social capital in stated behaviors in response to a hurricane warning. Additionally, we examine the stated likelihood of evacuating if advised to by close contacts (friends, family, and co-workers) and elite sources (emergency management officials, elected officials, and the media). We find that bonding social capital is associated with an increased likelihood to evacuate and shelter in home as well as an increased likelihood to listen to close contacts that encourage evacuation. In addition, we find that linking social capital is associated with an increased likelihood of evacuation if encouraged to by elite sources.

Natural Hazards, 2020

When the National Weather Service (NWS) issues a tornado warning, the alert is rapidly and widely... more When the National Weather Service (NWS) issues a tornado warning, the alert is rapidly and widely disseminated to individuals in the general area of the warning. Historically, the assumption has been that a false-negative warning perception (i.e., when someone located within a warning polygon does not believe they have received a tornado warning) carries a higher cost than a false-positive warning perception (i.e., when someone located outside the warning area believes they have received a warning). While many studies investigate tornado warning false alarms (i.e., when the NWS issues a tornado warning, but a tornado does not actually occur), less work focuses on studying individuals outside of the warning polygon bounds who believe they received a warning (i.e., false-positive perceptions). This work attempts to quantify the occurrence of false-positive perceptions and possible factors associated with the rate of occurrence. Following two separate storm events, Oklahomans were asked whether they perceived a tornado warning. Their geolocated responses were then compared to issued warning polygons. Individuals closer to tornado warnings or within a different type of warning (e.g., a severe thunderstorm warning) are more likely to report a false-positive perception than those farther away or outside of other hazard warnings. Further work is needed to understand the rate of false-positive perceptions across different hazards and how this may influence warning response and trust in the National Weather Service.

Public Administration Review, 2020

Risk Analysis, 2020

Weather and climate disasters pose an increasing risk to life and property in the United States. ... more Weather and climate disasters pose an increasing risk to life and property in the United States. Managing this risk requires objective information about the nature of the threat and subjective information about how people perceive it. Meteorologists and climatologists have a relatively firm grasp of the historical objective risk. For example, we know which parts of the United States are most likely to experience drought, heat waves, flooding, snow or ice storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. We know less about the geographic distribution of the perceived risks of meteorological events and trends. Do subjective perceptions align with exposure to weather risks? This question is difficult to answer because analysts have yet to develop a comprehensive and spatially consistent methodology for measuring risk perceptions across geographic areas in the United States. In this project, we propose a methodology that uses multilevel regression and poststratification to estimate extreme weather and climate risk perceptions by geographic area (i.e., region, state, forecast area, and county). Then we apply the methodology using data from three national surveys (n = 9,542). This enables us to measure, map, and compare perceptions of risk from multiple weather hazards in geographic areas across the country.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2020

Effective risk communication in the weather enterprise requires deep knowledge about the communit... more Effective risk communication in the weather enterprise requires deep knowledge about the communities that enterprise members serve. This includes knowledge of the atmospheric and climate conditions in these communities as well as knowledge about the characteristics of the people living in these communities. Enterprise members often have access to data that facilitate the first type of knowledge, but relatively little social or behavioral data on the populations they serve. This article introduces an effort to overcome these challenges by developing a database of community statistics and an interactive platform that provides dynamic access to the database. Specific emphasis is given to one set of statistics in the community database: estimates of tornado warning reception, comprehension, and response by county warning area in the contiguous United States. Exploration of these estimates indicates significant variation in reception and comprehension across communities. This variation b...

Education Finance and Policy, 2018

In the wake of declining state support for higher education, many state leaders have adopted lott... more In the wake of declining state support for higher education, many state leaders have adopted lottery earmark policies, which designate lottery revenue to higher education budgets as an alternative funding mechanism. However, despite the ubiquity of lottery earmarks for higher education, it remains unclear whether this new source of revenue serves to supplement or supplant state funding for higher education. In this paper, we use a difference-in-differences design for the years 1990–2009 to estimate the impact on state appropriations and state financial aid levels of designating lottery earmark funding to higher education. Main findings indicate that lottery earmark policies are associated with a 5 percent increase in higher education appropriations, and a 135 percent increase in merit-based financial aid. However, lottery earmarks are also associated with a decrease in need-based financial aid of approximately 12 percent. These findings have serious distributional implications that ...

Energy Economics, 2018

Hydroelectric dams have social, cultural, and environmental impacts on society through both alter... more Hydroelectric dams have social, cultural, and environmental impacts on society through both alterations of riverine effects (both downstream and in reservoirs) and the production and distribution of hydropower in a broader geographical area. Management of complex dam, hydroelectric, and river systems frequently requires tradeoffs between alternative operational profiles, each with its own set of heterogeneous external effects. Substantial evidence suggests that segments of the public hold non-market values, including non-use values, for both riverine environmental effects and a wide array of external effects of hydropower production and distribution. However, non-market non-use valuation exercises related to re-purposing dam operations continue to focus exclusively on downstream external effects, calling into question their usefulness in decision-making processes. Focusing on the Glen Canyon Dam (GCD), a critical source of hydropower and peaking capacity on the Colorado River, US, we measure non-market values, expected to be significantly composed of non-use values, using the contingent valuation (CV) method for two proposed management options inclusive of multiple social, cultural, and environmental effects of both downstream riverine effects and hydropower production and distribution in the broader basin. To provide a defensible basis for inclusion of relevant external effects in the valuation exercise, we undertook a multi-year study of the GCD policy domain. Using a nationally-representative, address-based CV internet survey, results from an advisory referendum voting format suggest that the average US household has a median net willingness to pay

Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, 2019

Methods for identifying relevant policy impacts for valuation in benefit-cost analyses (BCAs) hav... more Methods for identifying relevant policy impacts for valuation in benefit-cost analyses (BCAs) have received relatively little attention in academic research, applied policy analyses, and guidance documents. In this paper, we develop a systematic, transparent, and replicable process that draws upon information contained in records of Congressional hearings to identify relevant policy impacts for valuation in a BCA. Our approach involves classifying – and subsequently analyzing – statements from witnesses testifying in Congressional hearings on the topic of the BCA. By using Congressional hearings as the basis for our approach, we are identifying potential policy impacts from information provided during the very process the BCA is intended to inform. However, because this approach is quite resource-intensive and would be somewhat burdensome for agencies to implement, it may be best applied in the academic realm, with identified impacts resulting from such applications then made availa...

Empirical research, as outlined in this book, is based on the scientific method. Science is a par... more Empirical research, as outlined in this book, is based on the scientific method. Science is a particular way that some epistemologists believe we can understand the world around us. Science, as a method, relies on both logic, as captured by theory, and empirical observation of the world to determine whether the theory we have developed conforms to what we actually observe. We seek to explain the world with our theories, and we test our theories by deducing and testing hypotheses. When a working hypothesis is supported, we have more confidence in our theory. When the null hypothesis is supported, it undermines our proposed theory. Science seeks a particular kind of knowledge and has certain biases. When we are engaging in scientific research we are interested in reaching generalizations. Rather than wanting to explain why President Trump's approval dropped, we are interested in explaining why presidential approval drops across various presidents, or, better yet, how economic conditions a↵ect presidential approval. These generalizations should be logical (which is nothing more than saying they should be grounded in a strong theory) and they should be empirically verified (which, we will see means that we have tested hypotheses deduced from our theory). We also look for generalizations that are causal in nature. Scientists actively seek explanations grounded in causation rather than correlation. Scientific knowledge should be replicable-meaning that other scholars should be able to reach the same conclusions that you do. There should be inter-subjective agreement on scientific findings-meaning that people, with di↵erent personal experiences and biases, should still reach the same conclusion. Scientists also tend to prefer simple explanations to complex ones. They have a bias that says the world is pretty simple and that our theories should reflect that belief. Of course, people are complex, so in the social sciences it can be dangerous to look only for the simplest explanation as most concepts we consider have multiple causes.

Policy & Politics

Can experience with one set of policies result in support for a set of different, but related, po... more Can experience with one set of policies result in support for a set of different, but related, policies? To show how this is possible, we develop a new dimension of policy feedback effects missing from prior studies – outcome distance. We then examine what we call a middle-distance outcome and apply this concept to the case of welfare attitudes in the United States. A novel counterfactual survey design is used to estimate the within-subject effects of experience with pandemic-related relief efforts (that is, stimulus checks, unemployment assistance) on attitudes towards broader welfare programmes like TANF, SNAP, SSI and Medicaid. The evidence suggests that attitudes towards broader welfare initiatives may have become more supportive as a result of the pandemic and associated policies, implying that specific policies and events can have feedback effects on outcomes that are some medium-distance away, such as other policies of a similar type. Future research ought to further explore ...

Social Policy & Administration

How does the public decide who is deserving of welfare benefits? To shed light on this question, ... more How does the public decide who is deserving of welfare benefits? To shed light on this question, we investigate whether the CARIN principles of deservingnessspecifically the ideas of control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need-impact the public's perception of American welfare target groups. We draw contrast between traditional welfare programs and pandemicrelated programs to gain a more comparative understanding of the principles' effects as well as to determine what role the pandemic may play in shaping welfare perceptions. We report that positive, deserving social constructions exist for recipients of both traditional and pandemic-related welfare programs, and we find evidence that the distinction between traditional and pandemic-related programs is important for deservingness perceptions in the US. Overall, these results suggest the importance of the CARIN criteria in an American context.

Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2021

arXiv: Other Statistics, 2020

Given the importance of public support for policy change and implementation, public policymakers ... more Given the importance of public support for policy change and implementation, public policymakers and researchers have attempted to understand the factors associated with this support for climate change mitigation policy. In this article, we compare the feasibility of using different supervised learning methods for regression using a novel socio-economic data set which measures public support for potential climate change mitigation policies. Following this model selection, we utilize gradient boosting regression, a well-known technique in the machine learning community, but relatively uncommon in public policy and public opinion research, and seek to understand what factors among the several examined in previous studies are most central to shaping public support for mitigation policies in climate change studies. The use of this method provides novel insights into the most important factors for public support for climate change mitigation policies. Using national survey data, we find ...