Browsing by Author "Yoder, Landon"

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Exploring Farmer Best Management Practices and Collective Action to Reduce Nonpoint Source Pollution
(2013) Yoder, Landon
"Pollution that degrades water quality has been a longstanding challenge in the United States. Environmental legislation in the 1970s, especially the Clean Water Act, substantially improved water quality. However, much of the success has come from restricting pollution that occurs at a fixed location, defined under the Clean Water Act as a point source. Pollution occurring from dispersed, or nonpoint source (NPS), locations has become a central concern because agriculture NPS pollution—surface runoff from excess fertilizers, pesticides, and sediments—is 'the primary source of water quality impairment in the United States'. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists 'some 40,000 water bodies as impaired'. While NPS pollution comes from both urban and rural areas, this paper will focus on efforts to deal with the agricultural context."
Formalizing the Theory of Planned Behavior in Agent-Based Models, Literature review
(2024) Taraghi , Mahdi; Yoder, Landon
The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) offers a valuable framework for understanding humans decision-making. This paper explores how Agent-Based Models (ABMs) utilize TPB to investigate the interplay between social interactions, individual perceptions, and feedback from the environment in shaping behavior. We reviewed a collection of studies that utilize TPB within ABMs, focusing on how they formalize and operationalize this statistical model in a dynamic form. Our analysis reveals a diversity in approaches, which researchers implemented to handle this issue based on their research questions and available data. In most of the reviewed models, the dynamic nature emanates from evolution of SN or ATT. To account for social influence of agents and internal dynamics of the ATT or SN, researchers used Relative Agreement Model of opinion dynamics. Additionally, the review highlights various methods for translating intention into behavior within ABMs, ranging from threshold-based approaches to regression-based model. We conclude by proposing future directions for research, including incorporating dynamic updates for TPB constructs and exploring the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior. By addressing these considerations, researchers can develop more powerful ABMs for understanding complex social dynamics and decision-making processes.