• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: The role of digital media in shaping youth planetary health interests in the global economy
  • Contributor: Niankara, Ibrahim [Author]; Al adwan, Muhammad Noor [Author]; Niankara, Aminata [Author]
  • Published: Basel: MDPI, 2020
  • Language: English
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc6030049
  • ISSN: 2199-8531
  • Keywords: COVID-19 ; sustainable development ; ecosystem services ; digital media ; bayesian methods ; planetary health ; adolescents health
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  • Description: Despite revolutionizing the work of practicing economists by providing a direct link between neo-classical economic theory and revealed market preference data, Random Utility Theory has yet to guide research applications in global market sustainability. With the worldwide adverse socio-economic effects of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), such application now becomes timely. Therefore, relying on a Random Utility theoretic formulation of youths' preferences for the biosphere (ecosystem services, sustainability) and science-based disease prevention to characterize their planetary health interests, this paper adopts a micro-based planetary view of markets to retrospectively analyze the health and ecological implications of digital media consumption among youths in the global economy. Empirically, we rely on a mixed bivariate ordered probit specification, which is estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Our findings reveal a strong, positive correlation coefficient (0.835) between youths' interests in the biosphere and science-based disease prevention. Moreover, digital media consumption in the form of increased frequency of ecological website visits, news blogs visits, and web-browsing on broad science, significantly reduce youths' interests in the biosphere. A similar reduction in youths' interest in science-based disease prevention is observed, from news blogs visits and web-browsing on broad science. Conversely, ecological website visits appear to raise youths' interests in science-based disease prevention. Furthermore, we find a gender-based gradient in youths' planetary health interest, in favor of the female gender. Overall, our findings confirm the appropriateness of a holistic view of health, and suggests a couple of policy implications for the long-term sustainability of our planet.
  • Access State: Open Access
  • Rights information: Attribution (CC BY)