Any analysis of how changing environmental hazards impact on public health is fundamentally constrained unless it recognizes the centrality of the social and behavioral dimensions of risk. This paper reports on a research project conducted among low-income peri-urban households in the Mekong...

Climate change scenarios predict an increase of extreme rain events, which will increase the risk of wastewater flooding and of missing legal water quality targets. This study elicits the willingness to pay to reduce ecological and health risks from combined sewer overflows (CSOs) in rivers and...

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of primary prevention and the social optimum. First, we analyze optimal decisions on primary prevention and savings when individuals face a health risk involving expenses that can not be covered by any insurance (private or public). To manage health...

High levels of nitrates in groundwater pose a risk to human health. In this study, we selected areas with typical agricultural nitrate pollution in northeast China as study sites. We then collected groundwater samples for nitrate nitrogen content analysis using the Four Step method developed by...

Research from across disciplines has demonstrated that social and political contextual factors at the national and subnational levels can impact the health and health behavior risks of individuals. This paper examines the impact of state-level social capital and ideology on individual-level...

Biogas produced from anaerobic fermentation of organic substances represents an alternative renewable energy source. Its utilization would contribute to substantial reduction of the solid waste volume in land-filling and incineration. Biogas so produced could be utilized on site or it could be...

The thesis consists of an introductory part and four self-contained papers. Paper [I] theoretically analyzes how the level and uncertainty of future prospects affect incentives to abstain from sexual risk taking in the presence of HIV. The results suggest that, for individuals with limited...

We conducted a randomized controlled trial in rural Bangladesh to examine how household drinking-water choices were affected by two different messages about risk from naturally occurring groundwater arsenic. Households in both randomized treatment arms were informed about the arsenic level in...

This paper analyzes the relationships between HIV/AIDS and education taking into account the appropriative nature of child income. We first build a simple theoretical model linking parental health risk, educational choice and appropriation of future children's income. We show that considering...

In this research, a simulation-based fuzzy possibilistic programming (SFPP) model was advanced through integrating California puff (CALPUFF), fuzzy sets theory and inexact optimization within a general framework. It has advantages in uncertainty reflection, pollutant dispersion modeling, and the...