Category Archives: Sociology

How to offset the lower gas tax revenues from electric car drivers

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With more electric cars coming to market, more state governments are discussing how to offset the loss of gas tax revenues from electric car drivers:

After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee — what would be the nation’s first electric car fee.

State lawmakers grappling with a $5 billion deficit are facing declining gas tax revenue, which means less money to maintain or improve roads.

“Electric vehicles put just as much wear and tear on our roads as gas vehicles,” said Democratic state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, the bill’s lead sponsor. “This simply ensures that they contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads.”

Other states are trying to find solutions to the same problem, as cars become more fuel-efficient and, now, don’t use any gas at all.

The two main options for this are either to impose an annual fee or to base payment on how far the car travels. But the cost-per-mile approach seems to have several disadvantages (including a good amount of opposition) even though it seems like it would be the closest to the gas tax (the more you drive, the more you pay).

The last paragraphs in the article seem to hold the key: this is another instance when government is trying to catch up to the newest technology. On one hand, governments don’t want to discourage the purchase and use of electric vehicles. On the other hand, roads still need to be built and maintained. Additionally, most states are facing large deficits and can’t be going about taking in less revenue.

Regardless of what route is taken, it seems like it would be better to make decisions like these sooner rather than later so that future electric car drivers know what they are getting into.

Negative emotions in the workplace

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A recent Time magazine piece discusses the role, or lack of a role, of negative emotions in the workplace:

In the binary shorthand we use to compartmentalize modern life, we think of home as the realm of emotion and work as the place where rationality rules — a tidy distinction that crumbles in the face of experience. As management scholar Blake Ashforth has written, it is a “convenient fiction that organizations are cool arenas for dispassionate thought and action.” In fact, in the workplace we are bombarded by emotions — our own and everyone else’s. Neuroscientists have demonstrated over and over in empirical ways just how integral emotion is in all aspects of our lives, including our work. But since companies have generally avoided the subject, there are no clear protocols about emotional expression in the office.

The only instance in which we acknowledge emotion is when doing so is seen as obviously beneficial, both personally and professionally…

But we’re still largely clueless about how to display and react to more commonplace emotions such as anger, fear and anxiety, so we handicap ourselves, trying to check our human side at the office door.

As the last paragraph of the article suggests, not being able to express these emotions leaves employees as less than human. It is one thing to be able to act professional or courteous in the workplace but another to suggest that people have to bottle emotions that we all have from time to time. In high stress environments where the personal identity of employees is often closely tied to job performance, negative emotions are bound to come up.

This reminds me of Arlie Hochschild’s concept of “emotion work.” While there are certain professions that require a public performance of cheerfulness (such as a flight attendant or waitress), this article suggests that most employees have to do some form of this. Just as Hochschild suggests, this is also a gendered issue: women are judged differently when expressing emotion.

So how could companies allow employees to express these emotions in positive ways?

The future of McMansions: torn down for smaller homes?

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In a typical teardown situation, an older home, often in a pleasant neighborhood, is torn down and replaced by a larger, modern home. One Greenwich, Connecticut realtor suggests this pattern might be reversed in the future:

Pruner is also detecting a trend away from “McMansions” with massive square footage to smaller-scale well-built homes.

“I can foresee the newspaper headline: ‘McMansion taken down for more modest house,'” he said.

It is not bold to suggest that Americans want smaller homes: a number of sources, including the National Association of Home Builders, have noted this. But to suggest that larger homes will be torn down and replaced with smaller homes seems more unlikely. In order for this to happen, the McMansion would have to be relatively cheap and the property really desirable. Even after the drop in housing values, a big house is going to be relatively expensive and with many critics suggesting McMansions are also built in terrible suburban neighborhoods often made up of a lot of McMansion, I’m not sure there are many locations that fit this bill. And building a “more modest house” doesn’t necessarily mean a cheaper house – small homes can have a lot of features that drive up the price. But to tear down a larger space, whether it is a McMansion or a big box store, it seems like the conditions would have to be perfect and then it would be difficult for this to be a trend.

High fences indicative of a lack of community in suburbs?

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Suburbs are often criticized for a lack of community: residents drive in and out of garages with little interaction. In searching for a missing girl in Cairns, Australia, several people suggest that the search is made harder by the high fences that separate suburban yards:

Cairns is losing its sense of community and neighbourhood spirit, with residents only finding time to help each other in times of natural disasters.

That’s the verdict of sociologists, politicians and police, who believe people in the Far North are living more isolated lives than ever before.

Fewer people know much about residents in their street, which potentially leads to an increased risk of crime.

And they say this trend can be most clearly demonstrated in, of all places, the proliferation of high fences in the suburbs.

At no time has this been more apparent than with the dilemma facing authorities as they seek information on the disappearance for teenager Declan Crouch and the murder of Erica Liddy.

Despite many pleas for help, vital clues from the public – the eyes and ears of Cairns – are yet to come.

A few decades ago, high fences in the suburbs were extremely rare, with neighbours often the best of friends, talking regularly over small mesh wire side fences in the backyard.

But experts say the fast pace of modern life mixed with a blend of fear, apathy and population growth is keeping residents hidden away from each other, behind those all-pervasive six-foot high fences.

I would suspect that the problem involves more than just fences. The fences are just a symptom of bigger issues – get rid of the fences and neighbors won’t necessarily know each other any better. And if there is a lot of media attention about these sort of stories (abductions, murder, etc.), why wouldn’t more suburbanites build fences to keep their yards and kids safe?

This story itself is illustrative of a larger question regarding suburbs: if they were simply designed a little differently, would there be stronger communities? This is a key claim of New Urbanists: moving cars and garages to a back alley, making streets more pedestrian friendly, and reintroducing porches to the front of houses will lead to more community. And with recent data suggesting that Americans do want to live in more walkable communities but still want to remain private, the verdict is still out on such design changes.

Conclusions about PC vs. Mac users based on an unscientific web survey

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Based on the headline, this looks like an interesting story: “Mac vs. PC: The stereotypes may be true.” But there is a problem:

An unscientific survey by Hunch, a site that makes recommendations based on detailed user preferences, found that Mac users tend to be younger, more liberal, more fashion-conscious and more likely to live in cities than people who prefer PCs.

While the first part of this paragraph is treated as a clause that barely affects the rest of the text, it really is the key to the story. Hunch’s survey respondents identify as 52% PC users and 25% Mac users with 23% percent identifying with neither (and what do we do this category?). This compares to PC vs. Mac world market share of 89% to 11%. This is evidence that the online sample doesn’t quite match up with what computer users are actually buying. Voluntary web surveys are difficult to work with for this reason: even if there are a lot of respondents, we don’t know whether these respondents are representative of larger populations.

Perhaps CNN does cover themselves. The headline does suggest that these stereotypes “may” be correct and the second paragraph suggests the stereotypes may contain “some truth.” But a more cynical take regarding both CNN and Hunch is that they simply want more web visits from devoted PC or Mac defenders. Perhaps the fact that all of this is based on an unscientific survey is less important than driving visitors to one’s site and asking people to comment at the bottom of both stories.

Tim Horton’s as “a place where Canadian values are articulated”

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Politicians are well-known for visiting local restaurants and meeting with potential voters. In Canada, this means that politicians head to Tim Horton’s:

As we enter the home stretch of the election, the most dangerous place to be is between a politician and a Tim Hortons photo-op.

In recent weeks, the doughnut chain has become the parties’ preferred shorthand for patriotism, with leaders battling to sell their image as the Everyman with each double-double…

“It’s not just a coffee shop; it’s a place where Canadian values are articulated,” explained Patricia Cormack, associate professor of sociology at St. Francis Xavier University. “Tim Hortons is connected (through marketing) to community and sacrifice and immigration and family — all those themes that politicians want to attach themselves to.”

The restaurant, in a way, has become the Canadian equivalent of what former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin called “Main Street USA.” Only in this case, it’s a $2.5-billion multinational personifying the people — an irony not lost on those following the campaign online.

This sociologist makes it sounds like politicians want to ride the coattails of Tim Horton’s effective marketing campaigns. As one might imagine, this close identification with a particular large corporation rubs some people the wrong way. The story cites one citizen that suggests more candidates visit Starbucks. There is only one problem: Tim Horton’s is much more popular than Starbucks in Canada.

A 2009 Harris-Decima survey found Tim Hortons people outnumbered Starbucks people by a ratio of 4-1 in Canada, with the former brand traversing age, class, gender and even political philosophy.

So Starbucks is not the answer, at least not for the politician that wants to connect with the “average Canadian voter.” The American equivalent might be going to McDonald’s or Walmart but I don’t think these companies have the popularity that Tim Horton’s has in Canada.

In thinking about this, are there other countries that have something like a “national corporation”?

(I have had one Tim Horton’s experience: it is the only time I have had a combo meal with an apple and a donut.)

An argument for moving beyond cities/suburbs to walkable/unwalkable areas

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A demographer makes an argument for moving beyond comparing cities and suburbs to looking at walkable and unwalkable areas which are not necessarily concentrated in either cities or suburbs:

Unfortunately, the census shines the light on the terms “city” and “suburb”–neither of which are the keys to understanding today’s built environment.

Core cities are comprised of pedestrian-oriented urban places, how Jerry Seinfeld lived, but they also include auto-centric suburban places, like the San Fernando Valley in the city of Los Angeles or the Palisades in the District of Columbia. Likewise, the suburbs of those core cities include classic subdivisions and McMansions, like the home of Tony Soprano, but they also include booming places like Old Town Pasadena, Reston Town Center near Dulles Airport outside D.C., and revitalized Jersey City and Hoboken, NJ, on the other side of the Hudson River from Manhattan.

The issue is where are walkable urban places being built, and they are being built in both central cities and the suburbs surrounding them. My 2007 survey of the walkable urban places in the top 30 metros showed 50 percent of them were in central cities and 50 percent were in the suburbs. In the metro area with the most walkable urban places, the Washington region, 70 percent of the walkable urban places were in the suburbs. These included Bethesda and Silver Spring in suburban Montgomery County, nine places in suburban Arlington County (like Ballston and Crystal City), and the newly built Washington Harbor in suburban Prince George’s County.

I haven’t looked at this 2007 survey data but it sounds interesting. Is there an easy way to demarcate walkable vs. unwalkable areas through publicly available data? While the Census definitions of and boundaries between cities and suburbs might be frustrating, the data is easy to understand and available to all.

At the same time, this argument is broader: it is about comparing denser versus less dense areas. Walkable areas work because residents can easily walk to or access essential needs like grocery stores, public spaces, eateries, and more. At stake here is whether less dense urban areas, like the north side of Chicago with its many single-family homes, are more similar to suburban areas (which range from inner-ring suburbs to very sparse communities on the suburban fringe) or to more central districts like the Chicago Loop.

I would think that suburban areas are more similar to each other in design and culture than to large portions of large cities. But if more suburban areas become more dense (and this may be what Americans want) and the importance of the core of metropolitan areas decline, perhaps this will change.

The lack of variation in ordinal scales: color-coded terror alerts plus employee surveys and ratings

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In the last few days, I ran into a few stories that are related in unusual ways: they both concern a lack of variation in an ordinal scale. First, let’s start with the announcement from the Department of Homeland Security regarding the color-coded terror alert scale:

A government review determined that the five-tiered color-coded system instituted in 2002 had suffered from a lack of credibility and eroded public confidence. The color has not been changed since 2006 and has never gone below yellow, or “elevated,” risk. Setting the risk level to green, or “low,” was never even considered.

In the long run, the problem was that the scale didn’t change. Theoretically, there were five options but the alert was generally in the same place. Since the alert was always “elevated” or above, this was not helpful. (This also seems related to the argument some have made that a multi-decade “war on drugs” or “war on poverty” doesn’t make much sense because wars are supposed to have an end. Always being at war or on alert for terror erodes the sense of urgency.)

I also came across a human resources website that recommended businesses avoid five point scales regarding certain questions asked of employees:

A typical ranking, called a Likert scale, runs from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. And it’s fine for many psychological and sociological surveys. When you’re asking for ratings from 1,000 random people, you’ll get a wide variety of answers.

“But inside an organization, a 5-point scale loses its effectiveness,” Murphy says. “If you ask a group of employees at Acme Inc. to rate the statement, ‘Acme is a good place to work,’ you’re not going to get very many low responses (i.e., 1s and 2s). That’s because if you truly thought Acme was an awful place to work, you probably would have quit already.”…

But as with employee surveys, we don’t think 5-point scales are effective for performance evaluations. Many HR pros tell managers that only a very small percentage of their subordinates, say 10 percent, can be awarded the highest rating. And, managers are understandably reluctant to rate anyone as unsatisfactory—even when that’s the rating he or she deserves.

This is not just a hypothetical situation: I remember reading recently about the extremely high percent of teachers in a large district that were given satisfactory or higher ratings. (One group suggests that 91% of Chicago teachers in 2007-2008 were rated “superior or excellent”.) If the ratings mean anything and are actually measuring performance, it is difficult to believe that such a high figure is true.

The lesson to be learned here from these two cases? Be sure that there will be variation in responses if using an ordinal scale. Otherwise, the scale is quite unhelpful.

Another article on declining homeownership rates

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Bloomberg Businessweek highlights how American’s view of home ownership has changed in the last few years:

The most affordable real estate in a generation is failing to lure buyers as Americans like Pauli sour on the idea of home ownership. At the end of 2010, the fourth year of the housing collapse, the share of people who said a home was a safe investment dropped to 64 percent from 70 percent in the first quarter. The December figure was the lowest in a survey that goes back to 2003, when it was 83 percent.

“The magnitude of the housing crash caused permanent changes in the way some people view home ownership,” said Michael Lea, a finance professor at San Diego State University. “Even as the economy improves, there are some who will never buy a home because their confidence in real estate is gone.”…

“If we’ve learned anything from this mess, it’s that housing is not a risk-free investment,” said Michelle Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research in New York. “Everyone knows someone underwater in their mortgage or struggling to sell a home.”…

The U.S. home ownership rate dropped to 66.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the lowest in more than a decade, according to the Census Department. The rate probably will retreat another percentage point by 2013, according to Meyer, of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Lea, the finance professor. That would put it back to a 1997 level.

“People will still aspire to own their own homes,” Lea said. “They’ll just be a lot more practical about it.”

This article tends to focus on the money side of things (housing as less of an investment, tighter credit, lots of people with underwater mortgages, a future with a reduced or no involvement from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc.) but I think the key (or exciting) information is in the last two paragraphs I cited above:

1. The homeownership rate has dipped but not a whole lot. Even in the housing boom of roughly the mid 1990s to the mid 2000s, the US homeownership rate increased from 63.6% in early 1993 to 69.2% in late 2004. So over an eleven year stretch of relative prosperity and increasing home values, homeownership rose about 6.5 percentage points. From this peak in late 2004 (69.2%), the homeownership rate had dropped to 66.5% for the fourth quarter in 2010. In a six year stretch, the rate had dropped 2.7%. If you look at the historical data since 1965 (all of these figures are from an Excel table on the Census website – Table 14 on this page), before the 1990s, the homeownership rate moved fairly slowly either up or down. Perhaps what is not so unusual about homeownership is not that it has fallen in recent years but rather that it rose so much between 1993 to 2004.

2. Additionally, this is all tied to American aspirations: do they still aspire to own their own home? While this article (and many others) highlight how this might now be more difficult, this key part of the American Dream still seems to be intact. Even if future neighborhoods or suburbs look different (like this article suggests they might), the interest in owning one’s property still appears to be high. While there is no guarantee that more and more Americans will be able to own their own homes (how high might the American homeownership rate realistically go anyway?), it will likely take more than this what has happened in this particular economic crisis to cast a new vision of American fulfillment that doesn’t include a single-family home or space.

A basic sociological take on The Smurfs

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In a piece that could be a  Sociology 101 analysis, here is the conclusion regarding Smurf society:

The Smurfs society is unusually strong. Many times their status quo has been challenged, most notably with the introduction of Smurfette, with the community prevailing. The identity roles of each member of the society are well-defined which creates a symbiotic bond between each member and their chosen paths. In relation to humanity and childhood, this translates into cooperative theory and play. When a group of kids gets together on a “mission” they choose a leader (or usually the strongest personality volunteers him or herself) and from there roles are assigned.

Where other cartoons focused on individual efforts, The Smurfs focused on the society functioning as a whole, with individual roles each playing a part in the machine. This is a great example of a small society functioning effectively, even if they lived in mushrooms.

Just invoke the name of Durkheim and perhaps we have a functionalist analysis.

Before the start of the analysis, here is how the author describes sociology:

In Part One of the Psychology of cartoons, I focused more on the individual psychology of certain cartoon characters. This is something that I will return to, but for the purpose of this post I’m switching gears and instead focusing on a large scale (or small scale) sociological study. As you may or may not know — the implication is in its name — sociology is the study of society. It’s a very broad psychological discipline, and there are many conflicting theories surrounding any hypothesis. Since I have no degree in psychology or sociology, and I’m just a geek that likes to pretend I know what I’m talking about, this is going to be one of the broader studies performed.

This could use some work, particularly the bit about sociology being a “very broad psychological discipline.”