Economics - Doctoral Theses
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Item Motivations, incentives, and commitments: financial benefits and citizen participation in onshore wind energy in Ireland(University College Cork, 2023) le Maitre, Julia; Ryan, Geraldine; Power, Bernadette; Horizon 2020; Irish Research Council; Sustainable Energy Authority of IrelandSocial acceptance of onshore wind energy is a fundamental constraint for the delivery of sustainable electricity supply (Wüstenhagen et al., 2007). For a country such as the Republic of Ireland, this is a significant impediment to the decarbonisation of the energy sector (Brennan et al., 2017; Hallan and González, 2020; Van Rensburg et al., 2015), since onshore wind energy is expected to increase from approximately a third of the electricity mix to 80% by 2030 (SEAI, 2023). In 2019, Ireland introduced the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme with the aim of quadrupling its supply of onshore wind energy. The policy introduced a variety of financial benefits directed towards local communities to facilitate social acceptance, including community benefit funding and incentives focused on households closest to the wind farm, in the form of ‘near-neighbour’ compensation (DECC, 2021). The scheme also opened consideration for a new mechanism to encourage citizen investment into wind farms (DCCAE, 2020). The novelty, scope, and value of these mechanisms underscore the need for detailed research to identify how they could be designed and implemented to enhance their fairness, benefit, and acceptance. This thesis asks how specific attributes of financial participation mechanisms aimed at enhancing social acceptance influence citizens' willingness to accept, or to invest in, wind farms in their community. This thesis is based on two specialised surveys to examine how Irish citizens trade-off between different features of wind farm developments and their associated financial benefits. The research provides detailed insights into the preferences of supporters, conditional supporters, and non-supporters for wind farm developments in the community and presents recommendations concerning distributive and procedural issues across each phase of project development. Firstly, the findings show that citizens’ preferences for the distribution of financial benefits from wind farms are affected by procedural factors over planning, construction, and operation. Community participation in the governance of the community benefit fund and in the ownership of the wind farm have particularly high relative importance for strong supporters of wind farms. In addition, the developer and the proximity of the wind farm strongly influence willingness to accept. Secondly, the thesis contributes new evidence towards the design of citizen wind energy investments, and reveals a strong relationship between community acceptance, the proximity of the wind farm, and citizen investment preferences. Overall, financial attributes including the level of risk and expected return on investment have the greatest influence on citizen investment. However, the structure of voting rights, ownership and administration of the investment are generally regarded as having a higher relative importance if the wind farm is within 2km of the community, or a respondent is supportive of wind energy development. Thirdly, familiarity with a wind farm, whether a result of its proximity or phase of development, is a significant determinant of residents’ willingness to accept further development in the community. Critical points for local support of wind farms are at the earliest pre-planning / planning phases of development, as well as for households within the 2km radius of a wind farm. Other latent factors, such as attitudes towards wind electricity, trust in information provided by a developer, or awareness of community energy initiatives significantly affect community acceptance. Lastly, a comparative case study analyses the design of financial benefits, citizen investment and near-neighbour incentives in Ireland with corresponding mechanisms introduced by Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Based on a critical assessment of the design and adaptation of policy mechanisms over time, the findings suggest that it is becoming more common for these governments to endorse the development of community trusts or municipality community benefit funds. It also suggests that community-led wind farms experience difficulties related to the competitive nature of the auction regime. The chapter recommends that when defining eligibility or boundaries on citizen financial participation, policymakers could use a phased approach, first prioritising residents closest to a wind farm, and then opening opportunities across a wider geography in the second instance. The research is relevant for policy and practice. It enhances the understanding of citizens’ preferences for financial participation mechanisms in onshore wind farms, which is conducive to social acceptance and fairer local energy transitions. It would be valuable for future studies to develop on this evidence in the context of offshore wind energy and demand-side response which are increasingly important for the Irish energy transition. The diffusion of these innovative technologies similarly depends on citizen participation, fairness, and ultimately social acceptance.Item Urban sprawl: land-use, travel behaviours, and emissions in Ireland(University College Cork, 2023) O'Driscoll, Conor; Doran, Justin; Crowley, Frank; McCarthy, NoirinLand-use configurations determine the distribution and intensities of human activities across space while transport infrastructure determines the ability of goods, services, and people to travel across this space. Considering this relationship, it is important to understand how these mechanisms interact, but also how they can contribute to efforts to achieve sustainability in regional development while also positively benefitting local economies and social fabrics. By directly influencing regional time-space geographies, land-use configurations influence the efficiency with which finite resources, like land, are used while also defining local and regional connectivity, considerations which are directly related to economic, environmental, and social outcomes. In this regard, land-use developments in the Republic of Ireland have historically been characterised by urban sprawl, a developmental form which creates spatially segregated human settlements characterised by car-centric transport networks. Evidence suggests that these patterns inefficiently (and therefore unsustainably) use natural resources, like land, but also increase regional time-space geographies, characteristics known to influence economic, environmental, and social outcomes for individuals, households, and regions. Using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), econometric techniques, and network analysis methods, this research investigates the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of regional development across Ireland and Europe. Using refined built and social environment data, nationally comprehensive Census data, and highly disaggregated spatial scales, this thesis provides substantial contributions to regional science by undertaking six empirical analyses. These investigations focus on four principal research questions, namely: 1) How do land-use configurations contribute to efforts to achieve sustainability in regional development across Ireland and Europe? 2) Can the incorporation of opensource data improve our understanding of land-use configurations and their ability to contribute to sustainability efforts? 3) What is the relationship between built and social environments, individual socio-demographics, trip-specific concerns, and travel mode choices when commuting and during school-runs? 4) How do land-use configurations and transport infrastructure provision impact the environmental degradation attributable to travelling when shopping? From a land-use perspective, I show that regions which minimise time-space geographies and incorporate higher levels of land-use mixing utilise land, infrastructure, and natural resources, like space, more efficiently than alternative regions. This is because more people and human activities are accommodated within smaller spatial scales, thereby reducing the spatial extents of developments, and by extension, the levels of natural landscape destruction attributable to human settlements. In addition to this, more compact developmental forms face lower development costs, increased market/amenity accessibility, and strengthened social fabrics – producing positive economic and social outcomes. From a transport perspective, these areas reduce the implicit costs associated with regular public and active transport use by reducing required travel times and distances, heightening the competitiveness and convenience associated with these modes. I argue that these characteristics positively contribute to altering regional transport hierarchies away from excessive car-use, and therefore prompt reductions in travel-related environmental degradation. I conclude this research by highlighting how land-use and transport policies can be coordinated around environmental goals whilst not compromising economic and social objectives within regional development. In this regard, I provide specific policymaking recommendations surrounding the use of these instruments to increase the efficiency and sustainability of land-use configurations while also catalysing shifts away from excessive car-use in favour of more sustainable alternatives. Of these, the principal recommendation is that future developmental proposals should prioritise maximizing the efficiency of existing man-made settlements and infrastructure prior to outward expansion. In urban areas, this relates to prioritising greater land-use mixing and vertical expansion, while in rural areas, this more so relates to reducing time-space geographies through multi-modal transport investment, initiatives which may stimulate the emergence of polycentric developmental patterns. Similarly, initiatives which alter regional transport hierarchies by reducing the implicit costs of public and active transport relative to cars are recommended. I end by highlighting the limitations of this work while also providing directions for future research.Item The constructive developmental impact of effectuation on practice(University College Cork, 2020-06) Lyons Coakley, Maria; Doyle, EleanorEffectuation is a non-predictive decision-making logic of control in uncertain situations, that begins with given means and is a set of techniques, principles and criteria to generate and select between possible outcomes that can be created with the means (Sarasvathy 2001, 2008). This Portfolio focuses on the constructive developmental impact of effectuation on practice, where constructive development was utilised as an apparatus of thought. Research was conducted through first-person action research to address the research question, which focused on the growth in complexity of meaning-making and impact on lived experience through effectuation. Merging the concepts of effectuation and constructive development is novel. The combination represents a contribution linking personal and professional development to action and practice. Through understanding the adaptive challenges of transitioning to effectuation, insight is generated on how the transition was made and its impact on practice. Impact is identified by analysing changes across four domains i.e. cognitive, inter-personal, affective and intra-personal (psychological quadrants). The Portfolio is organised into three essays, reflecting phases in the action research cycles and professional development journey. Essay One is a professional development review and is the pre-step and construction phase of the action research, which defines the research question and reveals the developmental focus. This essay demonstrates the forming and dominance of a causal and reductionist way of knowing. A developmental agenda of challenging and expanding meaning-making through exploring the perspectives of effectuation and systems-thinking is identified. Essay Two reports on the planning and observation phase of the action-research. It demonstrates how actively engaging with complexity, uncertainty theories and effectuation through the lens of systems-thinking challenged meaning-making. Engaging with these perspectives recognises the limitations of causal logic, particularly in a VUCA world. It identifies the strength of the practitioner attachment to goal-orientation such that practicing effectuation was a developmental challenge. Essay Three reports on the transforming practice phase of the action-research inquiry, which involved challenging assumptions, goal-orientation and domination of internal and external authorities. Through practicing effectuation, Essay Three demonstrates constructive-developmental and phenomenological differences between operating and being effectual. The Portfolio concludes with key findings for practitioners, including how being effectual supports development of mental complexity in modern and post-modern VUCA environments. It reports on how practitioners may underestimate how self-created constructs, external influences and the intra-personal quadrant are lenses impacting on their view of the world. Those interested in professional development may think that the external authority is the one to focus on, to develop an independent way-of-knowing, however this research found the subjective internal authority was also restrictive. The research has implications for organisations, such that liberating leaders and teams to be effectual could have an impact on developing a culture of innovation, adaptability, exploration and creativity.Item Practising critical pedagogy through the lens of constructive-developmental theory(University College Cork, 2018) Butler, Sheila; Doyle, EleanorThe research question addressed here is ‘How to identify and effectively implement a developmental pedagogy that contributes solutions to, rather than causes of, inequality’. The research is conducted using first person, educational emancipatory action research. Both the research method and objective targeted transformation, required cultivation of a rich understanding and rationality of practice, and provided an opportunity to examine tacit beliefs and assumptions as a process to improve self-awareness. Uniquely synthesizing the fields of critical pedagogy and constructive-developmental theory, this study provides a living account of a transformative journey from a goals-oriented, instrumental pedagogue to a reflective practitioner. Multiple methods for data collection included reflective journals as well as feedback loops from multiple perspectives of students, colleagues and doctoral cohort. These were used in planning changes to practice, the justification and rationale behind the changes, as well as in gathering evidence of meaningful change and achievement of goals. The Portfolio is organised into three Essays. Essay One is a Professional Development Review highlighting tension between what is taught in Management and HRM and growing inequality. Recognising the author as both a subject and an agent of business management education, an understanding of the contribution of business education to inequality was sought. Essay Two investigates the causes of inequality. Economic and administrative systems within capitalism are questioned, as well as the business values that are developed and honed through education and business experience. The research identifies that an overemphasis on instrumental reason and objectivity, and decoupling values from seemingly objective managerial decisions, results in an erosion of fairness and equity within organisations and society. The propositional theory of critical pedagogy was identified as a means to contribute to the solutions rather than the causes of inequality. Essay Three analyses the implementation of a critical pedagogy, highlighting the gap between the propositional theory and the lived experience. The research reveals a hidden developmental expectation that those implementing critical pedagogy possess fourth order development complexity as it requires resisting normative notions of the teacher role and the teacher/student relationship to disseminate power for learning and knowledge creation. The research concludes to indicate that addressing inequality in society is possible, but requires addressing at the individual level through constructive development maturity. Economic and political systems within societies are merely a reflection of the individuals within it. Circularly, individuals who operate at lower developmental levels internalise the dominant ideology and enact behaviours and identities ascribed by culture generally. Individuals can effect change in social structures, but only if they operate at a higher developmental order where they are less susceptible to external influences, discourses and narratives which can be accepted or rejected based on an integrated, unified and aligned identity.Item The performance of Chinese equity securities investment funds(University College Cork, 2017) Gao, Jun; O'Sullivan, Niall; Sherman, MeadhbhUsing a dataset of all surviving and non-surviving Chinese equity securities investment funds between May 2003 – May 2014, this study examines numerous risk-adjusted performance models in three classes: (i) unconditional models, (ii) conditional beta models and (iii) conditional alpha-beta models. Findings from all performance measures suggest no evidence of statistically significant stock selection skills on average. Higher frequency weekly data are employed to improve statistical estimation – a difficulty with much of the extant work in Chinese securities investment funds. Based on the statistical significance of the individual parameters and the Schwartz Information Criterion (SIC), a single ‘best-fit’ model from each of the classes is selected This study also evaluates the performance of funds using a bootstrap methodology to distinguish skill from luck in performance. Unconditional, conditional beta and conditional alpha-beta performance models are considered. This study also examines the performance persistence of Chinese funds by applying the recursive portfolio formation methodology of Carhart (1997). The results from sorting funds either by past 4-factor alphas or by t-statistics of past alphas suggest that the top ranked decile portfolio yields statistically and economically significant forwarding looking alphas. In addition, this study applies the recursive portfolio formation methodology for alternative ‘smaller’ portfolios of a fixed size and finds that almost all the smaller portfolios of past winning funds produce positive and statistically significant forward looking alphas. Hence an active portfolio strategy of selecting a small number of past outperforming funds may earn positive abnormal returns. This study also examines the market timing performance of Chinese funds using the parametric tests of Treynor-Mazuy and Henriksson-Merton as well as the Jiang (2003) non-parametric test. Based on the non-parametric approach, the study finds that most funds do not time the market. This conclusion is robust when controlling for publicly available information in evaluating ‘private’ timing ability.