Natural land cover positively correlates with COVID-19 health outcomes.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses special challenges for societies, as the disease causes millions of deaths. Although the direct prevention measures affect the prevalence and mortality the most, the other indirect factors, including natural environments and economics, could not be neglected. Evaluating the effect of natural land cover on COVID-19 health outcomes is an urgent and crucial public health topic. METHODS: Here, we examine the relationships between natural land cover and the prevalence and mortality of COVID-19 in the United States. To probe the effects of long-term living with natural land cover, we extract county-level land cover data from 2001 to 2019. Based on statistically spatial tests, we employ the Spatial Simultaneous Autoregressive (SAC) Model to estimate natural land cover's impact and monetary values on COVID-19 health outcomes. To examine the short-term effects of natural environments, we build a seasonal panel data set about the greenery index and COVID-19 health outcomes. The panel SAC model is used to detect the relationship between the greenery index and seasonal COVID-19 health outcomes. RESULTS: A 1% increase in open water or deciduous forest is associated with a 0.004-death and 0.163-conformed-case, or 0.006-death and 0.099-confirmed-case decrease in every 1,000 people. Converting them into monetary value, for the mortality, a 1% increase in open water, deciduous forest, or evergreen forest in a county is equivalent to a 212-, 313-, or 219-USD increase in household income in the long term. Moreover, for the prevalence, a 1% change in open water, deciduous forest, or mixed forest is worth a 382-, 230-, or 650-USD increase in household income. Furthermore, a rational development intensity is also critical to reduce the risk of the COVID-19 pandemic. More greenery in the short term is also linked to lower prevalence and mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Our study underscores the importance of incorporating natural land cover as a means of mitigating the risks and negative consequences of future pandemics like COVID-19 and promoting overall public health.

COVID-19, stigma, and habituation: evidence from mobility data.

BACKGROUND: The Japanese government has restricted people's going-out behavior by declaring a non-punitive state of emergency several times under COVID-19. This study aims to analyze how multiple policy interventions that impose non-legally binding restrictions on behavior associate with people's going-out. THEORY: This study models the stigma model of self-restraint behavior under the pandemic with habituation effects. The theoretical result indicates that the state of emergency's self-restraint effects weaken with the number of times. METHODS: The empirical analysis examines the impact of emergency declarations on going-out behavior using a prefecture-level daily panel dataset. The dataset includes Google's going-out behavior data, the Japanese government's policy interventions based on emergency declarations, and covariates that affect going-out behavior, such as weather and holidays. RESULTS: First, for multiple emergency declarations from the beginning of the pandemic to 2021, the negative association between emergency declarations and mobility was confirmed in a model that did not distinguish the number of emergency declarations. Second, in the model that considers the number of declarations, the negative association was found to decrease with the number of declarations. CONCLUSION: These empirical analyses are consistent with the results of theoretical analyses, which show that the negative association between people's going-out behavior and emergency declarations decreases in magnitude as the number of declarations increases.

Effects of information provision on willingness to pay for conservation of alpine plants in Japan.

Information provision is essential for obtaining the cooperation of the general public for the conservation of unfamiliar ecosystems towards a sustainable (e.g. carbon-neutral and nature-positive) society. The purpose of this study is to identify effective ways of raising public awareness for ecosystem conservation. We explored the interaction between the manner of information provision (i.e. the medium through which and how much information is provided) and the personal attributes (e.g. environmental attitude) of the recipients on their willingness to pay (WTP) for conservation using Japanese alpine plants as the subject. Discrete choice experiments using an online survey were conducted with public citizens aged 20-69 years across Japan, and data from 8457 respondents were analysed. The data analysis was performed in two steps: 1) estimating individual WTP and 2) exploring factors affecting WTP. The results demonstrated that individual WTP was 135,798 ± 82,840 (mean ± standard deviation) JPY per person for a lifetime. The WTP increased when information was provided in the form of short texts and graphics for those proactive about nature conservation, but increased more when video information was provided to those reactive about nature conservation. The study shows that ecosystem conservation groups need to adapt the amount and format of information for target audiences (e.g. Generation Z youth, who are more sustainability-oriented and prefer to accomplish more in less time).

Improvement impact of nudges incorporated in environmental education on students' environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.

This study conducted randomized controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of an environmental education class and the impacts of nudges and boosts implemented in this program on high school students' basic knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding environmental issues in Japan. This environmental education class consisted of a lecture on reducing the use of plastic products for energy conservation in daily life, a board game for learning how to reduce plastic waste, and a worksheet for reflection. Four types of worksheets were randomly distributed: nudges, in which students were asked to set a goal regarding their level of effort in not throwing away plastic products such as plastic bags, wet wipes, and plastic bottles; boosts, in which participants were asked to write an essay to help increase their empathy for the parties impacted by environmental issues; both nudges and boosts; and none (neither nudges nor boosts). After environmental education, an end-line survey was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this class. This study found that the environmental education class significantly improved students' basic environmental knowledge and promoted their concerns about plastic waste. Although there was no evidence that nudges and boosts amplify the effects of the environmental education class on the students' knowledge, nudges were successful in making them more concerned about plastic waste. The results showed that students who received nudges or boosts were more likely to refuse free wet wipes offered at convenience stores but were not more likely to refuse plastic bottles. These results also indicated that interventions through environmental education can change students' pro-environmental behaviors only if the cost of behavioral change is low. The environmental education class not only increased students' environmental knowledge and attitudes, but the use of worksheets in administering nudges and boosts ensured the effectiveness of environmental education.

Global malaria infection risk from climate change.

As a long-standing public health issue, malaria still severely affects many parts of the world, especially Africa. With greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures continue to rise. Based on diverse shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), future temperatures can be estimated. However, the impacts of climate change on malaria infection rates in all epidemic regions are unknown. Here, we estimate the differences in global malaria infection rates predicted under different SSPs during several periods as well as malaria infection case changes (MICCs) resulting from those differences. Our results indicate that the global MICCs resulting from the conversion from SSP1-2.6 to SSP2-4.5, to SSP3-7.0, and to SSP5-8.5 are 6.506 (with a 95% uncertainty interval [UI] of 6.150-6.861) million, 3.655 (3.416-3.894) million, and 2.823 (2.635-3.012) million, respectively, from 2021 to 2040; these values represent increases of 2.699%, 1.517%, and 1.171%, respectively, compared to the 241 million infection cases reported in 2020. Temperatures increases will adversely affect malaria the most in Africa during the 2021-2040 period. From 2081 to 2100, the MICCs obtained for the three scenario shifts listed above are -79.109 (-83.626 to -74.591) million, -238.337 (-251.920 to -0.141) million, and -162.692 (-174.628 to -150.757) million, corresponding to increases of -32.825%, -98.895%, and -67.507%, respectively. Climate change will increase the danger and risks associated with malaria in the most vulnerable regions in the near term, thus aggravating the difficulty of eliminating malaria. Reducing GHG emissions is a potential pathway to protecting people from malaria.

Evaluation of employee occupational stress by estimating the loss of human capital in Japan.

BACKGROUND: Human capital is thought to be a crucial factor that drives economic growth. This study aims to understand the evaluation of the loss of human capital caused by employees' occupational stress. METHODS: In total, 1,021,178 observations for employee occupational stress were collected from 390 companies from 2017 to 2019 in Japan. The original cross-sectional survey contains 11,167 employees with occupational stress and their socioeconomic information in 2015. The relationship between stress and annual income is estimated with polynomial regression, and accumulated human capital loss is estimated. Matching approaches are applied for corporate human capital loss. RESULTS: The negative association between annual income and employee stress is derived, which indicates that the worse the employees' stress is, the greater the human capital losses. Importantly, we confirmed that most employees have human capital loss, and on average, for male employees aged 25, the accumulated human capital loss will reach approximately $0.6 million USD by retirement. CONCLUSION: For corporations, human capital loss is highly correlated with the number of employees, suggesting that reducing the occupational stress of employees can lead to greater corporate performance.

Environmental, social, and corporate governance activities with employee psychological well-being improvement.

BACKGROUND: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) engagement is expected to benefit corporations in terms of their efficiency and sustainability. The transformative change in management practices would not only provide support for employees but also bring about additional workload, which may affect employee psychological well-being. However, the examination of the relationship between corporate ESG activities and occupational stress is scarce; hence, this study aims to fill this knowledge gap. METHODS: In total, 110,351 observations were collected from 41,998 employees regarding occupational stress to reflect employee psychological well-being. The data were derived from 11 corporations in Japan from 2017 to 2019. Data on ESG activities were collected from the MSCI ESG database from 2015 to 2017. The effect of 1-year lagged corporate ESG activities on employee psychological well-being was investigated using a lagged variable linear regression model. RESULTS: Positive and negative relationships were found between corporate environmental activities and occupational stress. Activities that reduce water stress during operation and adopt clean technology were found to benefit employees' psychological well-being. On the contrary, the program for reducing toxic emissions and waste lowered employees' occupational stress levels significantly. Regarding corporate social activities, the improvement of job satisfaction or work-life balance was associated with occupational stress. However, corporate governance activities were found to have unfavorable effects on employees' psychological well-being. CONCLUSION: The effects of corporate ESG activities on employees' psychological well-being are found. The managerial implications suggest that caring for employees' occupational stress during the implementation of environmental activities is necessary, and the adoption of social activities could enhance employees' psychological well-being. Notably, corporate governance activities are a stressor for employees; top management teams should pay attention to it.

Occupational stress: evidence from industries affected by COVID-19 in Japan.

BACKGROUND: This study provides objective evidence on the impact of COVID-19 based on employee occupational stress reported from 13 different industries, and examines the determinants of employee psychological well-being. As the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue, governments should consider industry-level differences when making support decisions concerning public resource allocation to corporations. However, little evidence exists regarding the differences in occupational stress across industries. METHODS: Employee occupational stress data (N = 673,071) was derived from workers in Japan from 2018 to 2020. The sample comprises workers from 13 industries, including civil services, service industry (other), real estate, medical/welfare, wholesale/retail, academic research, and accommodation/restaurant business. A logit model is employed to investigate the differences in employees' psychological well-being before and during the pandemic. RESULTS: In 2020, 11 out of 12 industries had significantly worse occupational stress compared to employees engaged in civil services. Over 23% of employees from the wholesale/retail and accommodation/restaurant industries were observed as high-stress employees. Improved compensation policies supporting these industries are suggested. In contrast, reduced occupational stress was found among employees in the transportation/postal and information/communication industries. Among the 13 industries, aside from high job demands, tough inter-person relationships in the workplace became the most significant stressors during the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm that the pandemic has had a heterogeneous effect on employee occupational stress across industries, thus suggesting that the level of compensation given to different industries during the COVID-19 pandemic should be discussed and approved by the Japanese government. Additionally, support for the wholesale/retail and accommodation/restaurant industries during the pandemic should be improved.

Children mirror adults for the worse: evidence of suicide rates due to air pollution and unemployment.

BACKGROUND: Every year, more than 700,000 people die due to suicide, one of the most common reasons for youth death. While many studies have revealed two main factors for suicidal behavior: impulsive suicidal behavior due to mental illness and financial stress, it is not clear what happens if individuals face deterioration of mental health and economic recession. This paper attempts to answer this question and how suicide rates are correlated with these factors. METHODS: We empirically investigate whether economic recessions and air pollution trigger suicides by examining Japan, a country with one of the highest suicide rates, from 2014 to 2021. We take advantage of the characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic and the periods before the pandemic, when both economic recessions and reductions in air pollution occurred simultaneously. Using monthly and municipal- level data, we construct a triple difference model that takes air pollution and unemployment as treatments. RESULTS: Our findings show that high (upper half of each period) levels of air pollution and unemployment have substantial impacts on the suicide rates of adults (22.9% in the short term) and children (42.7% in the short term, 36.0% in the long term), indicating that the increase in suicide rates among children is almost twice as high as that among adults. Our study finds that unemployment and air pollution alone are not associated with increased suicide rates but their simultaneous occurrence triggers suicides during the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Our study urges suicide prevention, particularly among children, as an essential consideration for public health. Furthermore, our results indicate the need for the government to allocate resources to recover air quality and the economy simultaneously during a recession to reduce suicide mortality of both child and adults.

Business case complexity and environmental sustainability: Nonlinearity and optimality from an efficiency perspective.

The question of whether it is possible to "do well by going green" has been debated at length in the literature on environmental sustainability, but no consensus has been reached to date. Building on stakeholder theory in that a firm's environmental sustainability can improve its competitive advantage, this study investigates the impacts of sustainable environmental practices on the competitiveness of 28 international airlines over 2010-2018. First, we use dynamic network data envelopment analysis to estimate airline operational efficiency as a measure of competitiveness. Second, we use a panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model to test for nonlinearities and regime-switching behaviors between variables. Then, to account for endogeneity bias, we develop and estimate an instrumental variable PSTR (IV-PSTR) model. The empirical results indicate that the relationship between environmental sustainability and competitiveness has an inverted U shape, meaning there is an optimal level of environmental sustainability beyond which competitiveness decreases. Therefore, it is important for airline managers to understand that very high levels of investment in sustainable practices can have more negative effects compared to very little investment. The study concludes by providing implications for theory and practice.

The role of social capital in COVID-19 deaths.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has shown a continuously increasing trend with a large variation in the number of COVID-19 deaths across countries. In response, many countries have implemented non pharmaceutical methods of intervention, such as social distancing and lockdowns. This study aims to investigate the relationship of four dimensions of social capital (community attachment, social trust, family bond, and security) and several control variables with COVID-19 deaths. METHODS: We retrieved data from open access databases and a survey. COVID-19 death-related data were collected from the website "Centre for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University". Social capital-related data were collected from a large-scale survey that included web-based and face-to-face surveys covering 100,956 respondents across all regions/provinces/states of 37 countries in 2017. Data regarding population density, number of hospital beds, and population aged 65 or older were retrieved from the World Development Indicators (WDIs). Data on country lockdowns were obtained from the website "National responses to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic". Linear regressions were applied to identify the relationship between social capital and COVID-19 deaths. RESULTS: We found that COVID-19 deaths were associated with social capital both positively and negatively. Community attachment and social trust were associated with more COVID-19 deaths, and family bond and security were associated with fewer deaths. COVID-19 deaths were positively associated with population density, ageing population, and interactions between four dimensions of social capital-related factors and the ageing population. Furthermore, the number of hospital beds and early lockdown policy were negatively associated with COVID-19 deaths. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that the role of social capital in dynamically evolving threats, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, is not always negative or positive. Therefore, people's behaviour should be changed to support countries' response to the COVID-19 threat.

Does sustainability activities performance matter during financial crises? Investigating the case of COVID-19.

As a market for sustainability investing is growing rapidly, understanding the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities on firms' financial performance is becoming increasingly important. In this study, we examine the effect of ESG performance on stock returns and volatility during the financial crisis resulting from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To quantify the impact, we use company-level daily ESG score data and United Nations Global Compact (GC) score data. In our dataset, ESG scores indicate ESG performance that is deemed important to financial materiality, and the GC score indicates the firm reputation for following UN rules. Our results indicate that during the pandemic, an increase in the ESG score, especially the E score component, is related to higher returns and lower volatility. Conversely, increasing GC scores is correlated with lower stock returns and higher volatility. In addition, we find that firms in lower return groups benefit more than other firms. Focusing on energy sector impacts, we show that although the non-energy sector benefits more than the energy sector from increasing E scores, energy sector firms can still reduce their stock price volatility by increasing these scores. Our study offers significant implications for ESG investment strategies during financial crises.

Supply Constraint from Earthquakes in Japan in Input-Output Analysis.

Disasters often cause exogenous flow damage (i.e., the [hypothetical] difference in economic scale with and without a disaster in a certain period) to production ("supply constraint"). However, input-output (IO) analysis (IOA) cannot usually consider it, because the Leontief quantity model (LQM) assumes that production is endogenous; the Ghosh quantity model (GQM) is considered implausible; and the Leontief price model (LPM) and the Ghosh price model (GPM) assume that quantity is fixed. This study proposes to consider a supply constraint in the LPM, introducing the price elasticity of demand. This study uses the loss of social surplus (SS) as a damage estimation because production (sales) is less informative as a damage index than profit (margin); that is, production can be any amount if without considering profit, and it does not tell exactly how much profit is lost for each supplier (upstream sector) and buyer (downstream sector). As a model application, this study examines Japan's largest five earthquakes from 1995 to 2017 and the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) in March 2011. The worst earthquake at the peak tends to increase price by 10-20% and decrease SS by 20-30%, when compared with the initial month's prices/production. The worst damage tends to last eight months at most, accumulating 0.5-month-production damage (i.e., the sum of [hypothetical] differences in SS with and without an earthquake [for eight months] is 50% of the initial month production). Meanwhile, the GEJE in the five prefectures had cumulatively, a 25-month-production damage until the temporal recovery at the 37th month.

Measuring inclusive wealth of China: Advances in sustainable use of resources.

The inclusive wealth approach is increasingly common to measure the sustainable development of the countries. It comprised the natural, human and produced capital of nations to measure social wellbeing. We measure the inclusive wealth of the provinces in China from 2000 to 2015 and reports the sustainable use of the resources. We identify that three types of capital have increased to varying degrees, with produced capital increasing by 615.6%, natural capital increasing by 33.8%, and human capital increased by 337.0%. The total amount of inclusive wealth has increased by 300.4% in the past 15 years. However, the provinces in China are still facing unbalanced development across the country compared to developed nations. The use of the natural capital, more specifically now-renewable resources, has been restricting the wealth growth in some provinces. Although ecological services account for a small proportion of the total inclusive wealth, more attention is essential for sustainable development. Meanwhile, the rapid growth of carbon damages posed threat to future wealth accumulation. Innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development are the goals of China 13th and 14th five-year plan and our inclusive wealth of China will be key measurement tool of this achievement.

Global mortality benefits of COVID-19 action.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 motivated countries worldwide to mitigate mortality through actions including social distancing, home quarantine, school closures, and case isolation. We estimate the global mortality benefits of these actions. We use county-level data on COVID-19 from January 2020, project the number of mortalities until September 2020, and calculate the global mortality benefits using the age- and country-specific value of a statistical life (VSL). Implementing all four types of actions above would save approximately 40.76 trillion USD globally, with social distancing accounting for 55% of the benefits. The monetary benefit would be the largest in the US, Japan and China. Our findings indicate that global actions during COVID-19 have substantial economic benefits and must be implemented in response to COVID-19.

Airport risk of importation and exportation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 11, 2020, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized the spread of the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, as a pandemic on the basis of "alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction." Hence, it is urgent and imperative to evaluate the risk of COVID-19 for as many global locations as possible. This study calculates the relative risk of the importation and exportation of the COVID-19 virus. The study's most important contribution is the calculation of the overall relative risk of the importation and exportation of COVID-19 from every airport in local municipalities around the world, based on global spatial and mapping information. Three scenarios of air travel restriction are considered, and the change in the risk of importation and exportation of COVID-19 is calculated. The relative risk of importation and exportation of COVID-19 clearly shows that not only China, Europe, Middle East, and East Asia, but also the U.S., Australia, and countries in northeast Asia and Latin America are subject to risk. Further, a larger reduction in air travel through airports in a large part of the cumulative incidence area would lead to a gradual decrease in the risk flow. Importantly, the exportation risk of the disease from some airports in China, Iran, and European countries has a higher global spread than the importation risk during the pandemic stage. Therefore, every airport, or government with airports in their jurisdiction, should implement strict countermeasures. It is also indispensable for these countries to undertake countermeasures for COVID-19, such as home quarantine within each country and restricting infected or suspected individuals from flying on airplanes.

Inequality of health stock and the relation to national wealth.

BACKGROUND: The decline in global and between-country health inequality is a major challenge to overcome. However, few studies have systematically investigated the relationship between inequality of health stock and national wealth. From an economic perspective, health can be viewed as a durable capital stock that produces an output of healthy time. Therefore, in this paper, we focused on health capital to investigate the relationship between inequalities of national health and national wealth. METHODS: Based on health stock data from 1990 to 2015 for 140 countries, we estimated Gini coefficients of health stock to investigate associations with a well-known economic flow indicator, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), stock-based national wealth indicator, Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI), and firm-level net income. RESULTS: The estimated Gini coefficient of global health stock shows that health stock has experienced a global decline. The Gini coefficient for low-income countries (LICs) showed the fastest decline in health stock, dropping from 0.69 to 0.66 in 25 years. Next, rapid population growth and the rise in the youth share of the working-age population in LICs were most likely contributing factors to the decline in inequality. Most countries that experienced positive health stock growth also indicated a strong positive relationship with GDP and IWI. However, some countries showed a negative relationship with natural capital, which is a part of IWI. In addition, firm-level net income showed no obvious associations with health stock, GDP and IWI. CONCLUSIONS: We argue that a negative relationship between health stock and natural capital is a sign of unstable development because sustainable development involves maintaining not only GDP but also IWI, as it is a collective set of assets or wealth comprising human, produced and natural capital. Moreover, in our analysis of firm-level income data, we also discuss that income will be influenced by other factors, such as innovations, human resources, organization culture and strategy. Therefore, the paper concludes that health stock is a vital component in measuring health inequality and health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus, IWI is more comprehensive in measuring national wealth and can complement GDP in measuring progress toward sustainable development.

Impacts of productive efficiency improvement in the global metal industry on CO2 emissions.

This study focused on 14 metal sectors of the 40 countries that are the largest CO2 emitters and developed a new analysis framework to estimate CO2 reduction potentials based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol through efficiency improvement of the inefficient metal sector of these countries. The analysis framework was developed by combining a multi-regional input-output database with data envelopment analysis. We found that there were 20 inefficient countries in the basic iron and steel sector, which is the largest CO2 emitter among 14 metal sectors, and their efficiency improvements can contribute to reducing CO2 emissions by 354 Mt, accounting for 1.4% of the global CO2 emissions. We further proposed efficiency improvement schemes targeting the inefficient countries in order to help those countries to effectively reduce CO2 emissions according to their sectoral and national characteristics.