Free speech vs. harmful misinformation: How people resolve dilemmas in online content moderation

Study reveals key factors that affect people’s decisions to quash harmful misinformation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

The issue of content moderation on social media platforms came into sharp focus in 2021, when major platforms such as Facebook and Twitter suspended the accounts of then U.S. President Donald Trump. Debates continued as platforms confronted dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 and the vaccines, and after Elon Musk singlehandedly overturned Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy and reinstated previously suspended accounts.

“So far, social media platforms have been the ones making key decisions on moderating misinformation, which effectively puts them in the position of arbiters of free speech. Moreover, discussions about online content moderation often run hot, but are largely uninformed by empirical evidence,” says lead author of the study Anastasia Kozyreva, Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. “To deal adequately with conflicts between free speech and harmful misinformation, we need to know how people handle various forms of moral dilemmas when making decisions about content moderation,” adds Ralph Hertwig, Director at the Center for Adaptive Rationality of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

In the conjoint survey experiment, more than 2,500 U.S. respondents indicated whether they would remove social media posts spreading misinformation about democratic elections, vaccinations, the Holocaust, and climate change. They were also asked whether they would take punitive action against the accounts by issuing a warning or a temporary or indefinite suspension. Respondents were shown information about hypothetical accounts, including political leaning and number of followers, as well as the accounts’ posts and the consequences of the misinformation they contained.

The majority of respondents chose to take some action to prevent the spread of harmful misinformation. On average, 66 percent of respondents said they would delete the offending posts, and 78 percent would take some action against the account (of which 33 percent opted to “issue a warning” and 45 percent chose to indefinitely or temporarily suspend accounts spreading misinformation). Not all misinformation was penalized equally: Climate change denial was acted on the least (58%), whereas Holocaust denial (71%) and election denial (69%) were acted on most often, closely followed by anti-vaccination content (66%).

“Our results show that so-called free-speech absolutists such as Elon Musk are out of touch with public opinion. People by and large recognize that there should be limits to free speech, namely, when it can cause harm, and that content removal or even deplatforming can be appropriate in extreme circumstances, such as Holocaust denial,” says co-author Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol.

The study also sheds light on the factors that affect people’s decisions regarding content moderation online. The topic, the severity of the consequences of the misinformation, and whether it was a repeat offense had the strongest impact on decisions to remove posts and suspend accounts. Characteristics of the account itself—the person behind the account, their partisanship, and number of followers—had little to no effect on respondents’ decisions. 

Respondents were not more inclined to remove posts from an account with an opposing political stance, nor were they more likely to suspend accounts that did not match their political preferences. However, Republicans and Democrats tended to take different approaches to resolving the dilemma between protecting free speech and removing potentially harmful misinformation. Democrats preferred to prevent dangerous misinformation across all four scenarios, whereas Republicans preferred to protect free speech, imposing fewer restrictions.

“We hope our research can inform the design of transparent rules for content moderation of harmful misinformation. People's preferences are not the only benchmark for making important trade-offs on content moderation, but ignoring the fact that there is support for taking action against misinformation and the accounts that publish it risks undermining the public's trust in content moderation policies and regulations,” says co-author Professor Jason Reifler from the University of Exeter. “Effective and meaningful platform regulation requires not only clear and transparent rules for content moderation, but general acceptance of the rules as legitimate constraints on the fundamental right to free expression. This important research goes a long way to informing policy makers about what is and, more importantly, what is not acceptable user-generated content,” adds co-author Professor Mark Leiser from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2210666120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Resolving content moderation dilemmas between free speech and harmful misinformation.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Feb-2023

Reducing pesticide pollution and the intensity of harvesting can increase crop yield and contribute to climate change mitigation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TURKU

 

IMAGE: COMMON MEADOW AFTER HARVEST AT THE END OF JUNE. THE MEADOW PROVIDES AN EXAMPLE OF INTENSIVE MOWING CLOSE TO THE GROUND. view more 

CREDIT: BENJAMIN FUCHS

In two studies, researchers at the University of Turku in Finland have found that carbon sequestration and plant resilience as well as forage pasture yield can be increased through key adjustments in agricultural management. The results provide a roadmap for reducing pesticide loads in soils and the first steps towards increasing climate change mitigation while improving crop yield in grasslands.

Soil properties are an essential driver of plant quality, including resilience against climatic extremes and resistance against insect pests and pathogens.

The increasing food demand of the rising global population together with technological advancement and novel synthetic agrochemicals have resulted in agricultural intensification with the goal to maximise crop production.

“However, in recent decades, we have observed both a reduction in plant resilience and crop yields and the degradation of soil quality. This has resulted in an exponential need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides,” says Docent Benjamin Fuchs from the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku, Finland.

“Only in recent years, we have started to realise that intensive agriculture and agrochemical pollution in fact contribute to a reversal of the intended purpose. Soils are polluted with pesticides and at the same time, extreme weather events erode soil nutrients,” Dr Fuchs continues.

Intensive harvesting and pesticide residues in soil limit root growth

One key challenge in the research was to find practical and sustainable ways to improve plant resilience and elevate crop yield while mitigating the carbon (CO2) emissions caused by human activity by enhancing carbon sequestration in the soil.

The researchers conducted two independent experiments at the University of Turku’s research facilities at the Ruissalo Botanical Gardens in Turku, Finland. In the greenhouse and common garden studies, the research team showed that the intensity of mowing has a great impact on pastures. By reducing the intensity of the mowing and cutting the plant higher, the overall yield of the pasture increased and the plants developed bigger roots. This indicates a higher atmospheric carbon sequestration into belowground storage.

What was surprising, Fuchs emphasises, is that the researchers found a detrimental effect of herbicide residues in soil on root growth regardless of the intensity of the yield harvest.

“This demonstrates a tremendous limitation to the potential carbon binding and storage belowground when soils are polluted by pesticide. Considering the vast amount of pesticides applied to agricultural fields yearly, we can conclude that the impact on soil quality is a major driver of limited root growth, carbon sequestration, and consequently plant resilience and productivity,” Dr Fuchs says.

The authors propose additional field studies to extrapolate their findings onto a field scale. Both studies conclude that climate change mitigation via optimising carbon sequestration and storage in soil can be achieved by reducing pesticides, which will facilitate root growth and improve plant resilience.

All over the world, cultivated grasslands are used as grazing pasture as well as for growing fodder that is turned into hay and silage. They cover large parts of the world’s agricultural land and have a tremendous potential for climate change mitigation through carbon storage. The plants use carbon dioxide as they grow, and some of this atmospheric carbon becomes bound in the soils.

“Consequently, understanding how pesticide pollution in soil and intensive management limit plant productivity is the key to optimising intensive grassland-based agriculture in a sustainable and climate-friendly way,” Fuchs concludes.

Roots from study plants from herbicide-free soil representing intense mowing, with 5cm mowing height (left), less intense mowing with 15cm mowing height (middle) and no mowing (right). Roots are clearly smaller when the mowing intensity is higher.

CREDIT

Kalle Rainio

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JOURNAL

Journal of Sustainable Agriculture and Environment

DOI

10.1002/sae2.12035 

ARTICLE TITLE

Management practice and soil properties affect plant productivity and root biomass in endophyte-symbiotic and endophyte-free meadow fescue grasses

U.S. Study: abortion views closely tied to views on race, religion

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

A new study finds that public attitudes about abortion are closely tied to both religious beliefs and attitudes about race. The study provides the first empirical evidence of the strong relationship between racial attitudes and beliefs about abortion rights, and finds that this relationship has grown stronger in recent years.

“There’s been plenty of historical analysis of the relationship between the pro-life movement and racial attitudes, but this is the first effort to demonstrate the clear, empirical relationship between racial attitudes and abortion attitudes,” says Steven Green, co-author of the study and a professor of political science at North Carolina State University. “And we found that the strength of this relationship has increased considerably in the past decade.”

In other words, the researchers found that scoring highly on racial resentment is strongly associated with believing that abortion should be illegal. By the same token, people who had low scores on racial resentment were much less likely to believe abortion should be illegal.

Racial resentment is a well-established, standardized scale that is used to measure attitudes toward Black people in the United States. The higher the score on the racial resentment scale, the less an individual believes in systemic racism and the legacy of slavery.

“Some have argued that evangelicals oppose abortion not simply because of their views on the sanctity of life, but due to racial resentment against government policies and other cultural shifts related to a broader movement towards greater racial equality,” Greene says. “We wanted to explore this possible relationship, as it has only become more important to understand these attitudes in the wake of the Dobbs decision.”

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that abortion is not a constitutional right, allowing states to impose restrictions on abortion and access to related medical care.

For this study, researchers drew on data from two nationally representative surveys conducted in 2020: the American National Election Study (ANES) and the Public Religion Research Institute American Values Survey. Both surveys asked respondents questions related to their attitudes about abortion, racial resentment and religious beliefs, in addition to other demographic and political information.

“One of the things that really stood out to us was that the relationship between racial resentment and abortion attitudes was remarkably strong regardless of an individual’s partisan affiliation and political beliefs,” Greene says. “For example, conservative Republicans who had low racial resentment scores were substantially more likely to support abortion rights than their fellow conservative Republicans.”

To get a handle on how the relationship between racial resentment and abortion attitudes has changed over time, the researchers looked at ANES survey data from 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, as well as the 2020 data.

From 2000 through 2008, the researchers found no statistically significant relationship between racial resentment and abortion rights attitudes. The relationship first showed up in 2012, and grew significantly stronger through 2016 and 2020.

“Ultimately, we found that religious beliefs are absolutely a factor in whether people think abortion should be legal,” Greene says. “However, the evidence strongly suggests that racial attitudes are also closely tied to how people view abortion.

“In essence, the data tell us that beliefs about abortion rights are closely tied to beliefs about racial justice issues,” Greene says. “Understanding this relationship offers a lens through which to view the ongoing political debates about these issues both on the national stage and in state legislatures across the country.”

“It will be fascinating to see how the relationship between racial attitudes, religion and abortion continues to evolve in the post-Dobbs era,” says Laurel Elder, corresponding author of the paper and professor of political science at Hartwick College. “This is one of the things we hope to explore in our current book project, Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Roe America.”

The paper, “Abortion, religion, and racial resentment: Unpacking the underpinnings of contemporary abortion attitudes,” is published in Social Science Quarterly. The paper was co-authored by Melissa Deckman of the Public Religion Research Institute and by Mary-Kate Lizotte of Augusta University.

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JOURNAL

Social Science Quarterly

DOI

10.1111/ssqu.13237 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Abortion, religion, and racial resentment: Unpacking the underpinnings of contemporary abortion attitudes

Extreme earners are not extremely smart

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: MARC KEUSCHNIGG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AT THE INSTITUTE OF ANALYTICAL SOCIOLOGY AT LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AT LEIPZIG UNIVERSITY. view more 

CREDIT: VERENA KEUSCHNIGG

People with higher incomes also score higher on IQ-tests – up to a point. At high incomes the relationship plateaus and the top 1% score even slightly lower on the test than those whose incomes rank right below them. This suggests that one cannot infer high intelligence from high income, shows a new study from Linköping University published in the European Sociological Review.

The researchers combine wage data from Swedish population registers with scores from cognitive ability tests taken from military conscripts at age 18-19.

“This data trove permits us to test, for the first time, whether extremely high wages are indicative of extreme intelligence. To do so, we needed reliable income data that covers the entire wage spectrum. Survey data typically miss top incomes, but the registers offer full income data on all citizens,” says Marc Keuschnigg, associate professor at The Institute of Analytical Sociology at Linköping University and professor of sociology at Leipzig University.

The relationship between cognitive ability and wage is strong for most people across the wage spectrum. Above a threshold wage level, however, wage ceases to play a role in differentiating individuals of varying ability.

Above €60,000 annual wage, average ability plateaus at a modest level of +1 standard deviation. The top 1 percent earners even score slightly worse on cognitive ability than those in the income strata right below them. This is an important finding, because the top 1% earn exorbitant wages that are twice as high as the average wage among the top 2-3%, according to Marc Keuschnigg.

Recent years have seen much academic and public discussion of rising inequality. In debates about interventions against large wage discrepancies, a common defense of top earners is that their unique talents motivate the huge amounts of money they earn. However, along an important dimension of merit— cognitive ability—the study finds no evidence that those with top jobs that pay extraordinary wages are more deserving than those who earn only half those wages.

The bulk of citizens earn normal salaries that are clearly responsive to individual cognitive capabilities. But among top incomes, cognitive-ability levels do not differentiate wages. Similarly, differences in occupational prestige (an alternative measure of job success) between accountants, doctors, lawyers, professors, judges, and members of parliament are unrelated to their cognitive abilities. With relative incomes of top earners steadily growing in Western countries, an increasing share of aggregate earnings may be allocated in ways unrelated to cognitive capability, according to the researchers.

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JOURNAL

European Sociological Review

DOI

10.1093/esr/jcac076 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

Goethe University study: Investors also suffer in unregulated competitions for freely available resources

Game Theory Study by theoretical physicist Professor Claudius Gros

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR CLAUDIUS GROS, THEORETICAL PHYSICIST AT THE GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT view more 

CREDIT: UWE DETTMAR FOR GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT

FRANKFURT. Without regulations for their use, the condition of freely accessible resources such as fish stocks, water or air can deteriorate dramatically. In economics, this is referred to as the "Tragedy of the Commons". In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics for her studies on this topic. Ostrom's question of how to prevent this "tragedy" is just as relevant today as it was some 20 years ago.

Game theory deals with situations in which a number of agents compete with each other, with each participant trying to maximize his or her own profit individually. One speaks of a "Nash equilibrium" if players cannot increase their returns further. The "Tragedy of the Commons" is a game theoretical scenario in which the actors do not compete directly, but indirectly: If someone takes a piece of a common pie, there will be less for everybody else.

Instead of investigating how to avoid the "Tragedy of the Commons", Claudius Gros from Goethe University’s Institute for Theoretical Physics examined the resulting Nash equilibrium, with unexpected results: If a common good is divided more or less equally among N interested parties, then each receives a share of the order 1/N. However, the respective investment costs still need to be deducted. Gros' calculations show that, in equilibrium, the actors increase their engagement until the resulting investment costs almost reach the value of the resources the individual investor can secure for her- or himself. Mathematically, the theoretical physicist was able to show that the final profit of the individual investor scales as 1/N².

The original expectation, that investors each receive a proportional share from the resource, remains correct, as Gros' research shows. However, this does not translate into an overall return of the same proportion, which is smaller by a power in the number of investors. Gros denotes the dramatic deterioration of the net profit as "catastrophic poverty", as it implies that unregulated competition drives the individual actor close to the profitability limit, viz to the subsistence level. Similarly, Gros was able to show that catastrophic poverty can be avoided when the actors cooperate with each other. Cooperation leads to a net profit corresponding to the number of investors in simple power, the classical result.

The result of the investigations is therefore that the "Tragedy of the Commons" can cause substantially more damage than previously assumed. Uncontrolled access not only leads to a potentially excessive exploitation of the resource, a topic that has been the focus of many previous studies. In addition, investors suffer themselves when only maximizing their own profits. Mathematically, Gros was able to show that technological progress intensifies this process and that either all, or the vast majority of participating investors are ultimately affected by catastrophic poverty. If anything, only a few investors – the oligarchs – stand to gain more.

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JOURNAL

Royal Society Open Science

DOI

10.1098/rsos.221234 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Generic catastrophic poverty when selfish investors exploit a degradable common resource

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Feb-2023

Fish schools work a bit like the brain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN – SCIENCE OF INTELLIGENCE

 

IMAGE: SULPHUR MOLLIES view more 

CREDIT: JULIANE LUKAS

What do the brain and a school of fish have in common? They are both capable of efficient collective information processing, although each unit within them only has access to local information. In the brain, it is the stimuli from 86 billion neurons that form the basis for information processing; in the shoal, it is the decisions of each individual on how to move and interact with neighbors. However, little is known about how biological systems like the brain or a swarm of fish manage to optimally bring together a multitude of individual pieces of information from different locations. There is a hypothesis according to which the best performance of the brain lies at the border between order and chaos, in the state of so-called criticality. Researchers of the Cluster of Excellence "Science of Intelligence" from Humboldt-Universität (HU), the Technical University of Berlin (TU), and IGB have now been able to demonstrate this hypothesis on a large school of fish. The study was published in Nature Physics.

"Swarm behaviour is often about information spreading like an avalanche. In this state, the individuals react maximally quickly to external stimuli with maximally effective information transfer. We wanted to investigate whether the regularity of criticality, which has already been demonstrated for neuronal networks, describes this state," explained study leader Pawel Romanczuk, Professor in the Department of Biology at HU and a member of the Cluster of Excellence.

Criticality: The brain works most effectively at the threshold between order and chaos

Information processing in the brain is based on a network of around 86 billion neurons. They pass on information in the form of voltage impulses. According to a thesis in neurobiology called "the critical brain hypothesis", the reason why our brain is so efficient at processing information is that the brain is permanently at a critical point between two dynamic states, namely order and chaos, where order means neurons are active in a highly synchronized manner, and chaos means that the cells emit impulses independently of each other.

According to the critical brain hypothesis, transmission of information within the brain works best when neural connections are neither too weak nor too strong, i.e. at an intermediate state between order and chaos, known as criticality. In this state, the brain is maximally excitable and even small stimuli suddenly cause a multitude of neurons to fire and information spreads like an avalanche and can easily be transmitted, even to areas of the brain that are far away from the starting point.

Mexican wave for maximum alertness

Sulphur mollies, which are small fish living in sulphidic springs in Mexico, swim in shoals by the hundreds of thousands and show a typical and unusual behaviour: They dive up and down in waves; from a bird’s eye view, it looks like a huge Mexican wave that is repeated manifold. At first, as the team has already shown in a previous study, the small fish use the waving behavior to successfully confuse attacking birds. But this behaviour could also have a different function: it could be putting the swarm in a state of optimal alert – in a way that closely resembles a brain’s state of criticality described above. This last-second alertness is needed because the animals are exposed to high predator pressure.

However, the fish also perform their wave motions when there are no birds attacking. "For this reason, we wanted to find out whether this wave motion in the resting stage could be an analogy to the neuronal lockstep of the brain, as in, few surface waves when no birds attack, stronger and more waves when birds attack.  If so, the observed collective diving of the swarm would indeed happen at criticality, with the highest possible alertness," explained first author Luis Gómez-Nava, a researcher at the Cluster of Excellence.

The researchers combined empirical data from behavioural studies in the field with mathematical models, and were thus able to show that the spatio-temporal collective dynamics of large swarms of sulphur mollies actually do mimic an excitable system at criticality – in a way that is similar to the brain.

Maximum discrimination of environmental stimuli and maximum communication range

Being at a critical point allows the sulphur molly swarms to constantly watch out for disturbances in the environment, and to pass on information about the intensity of the cue, even over long distances. This was demonstrated in collaboration with other members of the Cluster of Excellence working in the field of artificial intelligence, Robert Lange and Professor Henning Sprekeler.  They used state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to test the response of the system to different intensities of disturbances in the environment and concluded that, indeed, the swarm is able to efficiently process the information of external stimuli  – like attacking birds – to their advantage.

"In the case of sulphur mollies, stimulus intensity correlates with danger, as hunting birds often enter the water with their bodies resulting in high-intensity visual, acoustic and hydrodynamic disturbances, whereas birds in overflight provide little visual cues. Therefore, information about the intensity of the stimulus is very important for fish to coordinate appropriate responses, which might even include repeated diving for several minutes. Moreover, this information can be transmitted over long distances so that fish can act even when they are not in the danger zone – as a prevention mechanism," explained first author Luis Gómez-Nava, a researcher at the Cluster of Excellence. “And this is similar to the way the brain works,” he concluded.

Nevertheless, there are also important differences between the fish swarm and neuronal systems. In neuronal systems, the structure of the interaction network between individual elements (neurons) changes at a much slower time scale than the dynamic behaviour in the school of fish. "The dynamical group structure and individual behavioural parameters such as individual speed or attention to conspecifics have strong effects on collective behaviour, and can lead to alternative mechanisms of self-organisation towards criticality by modulating individual behavior. Here, many questions remain open, and we continue to investigate," said co-author Jens Krause, Professor at HU, IGB and in the Cluster of Excellence.

The resemblance between the diving behavior of fish and the neuronal activity in the brain could provide insights into a better understanding of collective systems in nature, also giving clues as to how far the complex patterns displayed by groups of animals could be interpreted as a sort of “collective mind”.

Sulphur mollies

Sulphur mollies

CREDIT

© Juliane Lukas

Publication:

Gómez-Nava, L., Lange, R.T., Klamser, P.P. et al. Fish shoals resemble a stochastic excitable system driven by environmental perturbations. Nat. Phys. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01916-1

Fish shoals resemble a stochastic excitable system driven by environmental perturbations | Nature Physics

JOURNAL

Nature Physics

DOI

10.1038/s41567-022-01916-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Fish shoals resemble a stochastic excitable system driven by environmental perturbations.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Feb-2023

Phthalate exposure may increase diabetes risk in women

Further research needed on chemical’s impact in racial and ethnic groups

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE ENDOCRINE SOCIETY

WASHINGTON—Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plastics may contribute to diabetes risk in women, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Phthalates are chemicals widely used in plastics such as personal care products, children’s toys, and food and beverage packaging. Phthalate exposure is associated with reduced fertility, diabetes and other endocrine disorders.

"Our research found phthalates may contribute to a higher incidence of diabetes in women, especially White women, over a six-year period,” said Sung Kyun Park, Sc.D., M.P.H., of the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor, Mich. “People are exposed to phthalates daily increasing their risk of several metabolic diseases. It’s important that we address EDCs now as they are harmful to human health.”

The researchers studied 1,308 women from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation-(SWAN) over six years to see if phthalates contributed to incident diabetes in this population. About 5% of the women developed diabetes over six years. These women had concentrations of phthalates in their urine similar to middle-aged women in the U.S. in the early 2000s, when the urine samples were collected. White women exposed to high levels of some phthalates had a 30-63% higher chance of developing diabetes, while the harmful chemicals were not linked to diabetes in Black or Asian women.

The other authors of this study are Mia Q. Peng, Carrie A. Karvonen-Gutierrez and Bhramar Mukherjee of the University of Michigan School of Public Health; and William H. Herman of the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The study received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the SWAN Repository, the National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

“Our research is a step in the right direction towards better understanding phthalates’ effect on metabolic diseases, but further investigation is needed,” Park said.

The manuscript, “Phthalates and Incident Diabetes in Midlife Women: The Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN),” was published online, ahead of print.

# # #

Endocrinologists are at the core of solving the most pressing health problems of our time, from diabetes and obesity to infertility, bone health, and hormone-related cancers. The Endocrine Society is the world’s oldest and largest organization of scientists devoted to hormone research and physicians who care for people with hormone-related conditions.

The Society has more than 18,000 members, including scientists, physicians, educators, nurses and students in 122 countries. To learn more about the Society and the field of endocrinology, visit our site at www.endocrine.org. Follow us on Twitter at @TheEndoSociety and @EndoMedia.

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JOURNAL

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism

The environmental benefits of a food-sharing economy are highly dependent on how the money saved is then used

Researchers from Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University found:

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: DR. VERED BLASS view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY. (TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY GRANTS PERMISSION FOR THE USE OF THESE PHOTOS/IMAGES FOR STORIES ON TAU RESEARCH).

Does the digital sharing economy really reduce harm to the environment? The researchers found that food sharing has significant environmental advantages, but that a substantial part of the benefits of online sharing platforms are offset due to the use of the saved money for purposes that are not necessarily green.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University explored the true benefit of the digital food sharing economy (when people advertise and pass on surplus food items to others instead of throwing them away). Is this indeed a recommended environmentally-friendly practice that saves resources and significantly reduces harm to the environment? To answer this question, the researchers focused on the effectiveness of food sharing according to three environmental indicators: water depletion, land use, and global warming. They found that a significant proportion of the benefit to the environment is offset when the money saved as a result of sharing is used for purposes that have a negative environmental impact.

The study was led by Tamar Meshulam, under the guidance of Dr. Vered Blass of the Porter School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Tel Aviv University and Dr. Tamar Makov of Ben-Gurion University, and in collaboration with Dr. David Font-Vivanco, an expert on “rebound effect.” The article won the award for the “Best Article” at the PLATE (Product Lifetimes and the Environment) conference, and was published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

Tamar Meshulam explains: “food waste is a critical environmental problem. We all throw away food, from the farmer in the field to the consumer at home. In total, about a third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted. This wasted food is responsible for roughly 10 percent of GHG emissions, and the land area used to grow food that is then wasted is equal in size to the vast territory of Canada! That’s why it is so important to look for ways to reduce food waste, and examine their potential contribution to mitigating climate change”

Dr. Makov: “Internet platforms for sharing food are gaining popularity all over the world, and are seen as a natural solution that can help tackle both food waste and food insecurity at the same time. While there is nothing new about sharing food, digitalization has lowered transaction costs substantially, allowing food to be shared not only within social circles of family and friends but also with absolute strangers. At the same time, sharing platforms as well as other digitally enabled food waste reduction platforms (e.g. too good to go) can save users a lot of money, which raises the question what do people typically do with such savings? considering what people do with the money they save via sharing platforms is critical for evaluating environmental impacts”

Dr. Blass adds: “Is it possible that at least some of the money saved is then spent on carbon intensive products and services that negate the benefit of sharing? Here’s a small example to illustrate: Let’s say that for one month a young couple lives only on food they obtained for free through a sharing platform, and then decides to use the money they saved to fly abroad. In such a case, it’s obvious that the plane they will be flying in creates pollution that harms the environment more than all the benefits of sharing. In this study, we sought to examine this troubling issue in depth.”

The researchers chose to focus on the app OLIO, an international peer-to-peer food-sharing platform, and specifically on its activity in the United Kingdom between the years 2017 and 2019. Combining models from the fields of industrial ecology, economics and data science, they measured the benefits of sharing food using three environmental indicators: global warming, the depletion of water sources, and land use. To understand how OLIO users spend their savings they used     statistical data published by the UK Office for National Statistics on household spending by consumption purpose to as COICOP (classification of individual consumption according to purpose).

Tamar Meshulam: “The location in which the food-sharing took place allowed us to assign each collecting user to their UK income percentile. We found that about 60 percent of the app's users belong to the bottom five deciles, while about 40 percent of the shares were carried out by the top five deciles. We also found that the second and tenth deciles made up a relatively large number of shares, so we chose to focus on them, along with data on the general population – what they spend their money on, and what the significance of these consumption habits is with regard to the savings made possible by sharing.”

The researchers performed a variety of statistical analyses, which yielded fascinating findings. In many cases, there was a considerable gap, or “rebound effect” between the expected environmental benefit and the benefit that was actually attained. This rebound effect changed depending on the population and the environmental impact category. Tamar Meshulam cites several examples: For the general population, 68% of the benefit was offset in the global warming category, about 35% was offset in the water depletion category, and about 40% was offset in the land use category. Furthermore, in households that used half of their savings for food expenses, the rebound effect      in all categories increased to 80 to 95 percent.

The researchers sum up: “The conclusion from our research is that the actual environmental benefits from efficiency improvements often fall short of expectations.  This is because the infrastructures supporting human activities are still carbon intensive. As long as our savings are measured in money, and the money is used for additional expenses, the rebound effect will erode our ability to reduce environmental burdens through greater efficiency”.

“In this context, it is important to note that we also examined what the results would have been if the sharing had been conducted in 2011 (these results are not included in this article). A comparison with the findings of 2019 shows a significant improvement. The explanation for this is that in recent years, Britain has made great efforts to switch to renewable energies, and the impact of this is evident in the decrease of greenhouse gas emissions. The bottom line is, as our findings demonstrate, that we need to combine a transition to green infrastructure with green consumerism. Each of these individually will not achieve the desired and critical impact needed for humanity and the planet.”

Link to the article:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13319

 

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DOI

10.1111/jiec.13319