Previous research has indicated that the success of the directional model of issue voting depends on levels of political sophistication and how party position is measured. Using 1991 and 1995 Belgian Election Surveys, the predictive power of proximity and directional measures are compared controlling for both variables. It is shown that when one uses overall mean placements, instead of mean placements by level of political sophistication, the proximity effect declines most among the highly sophisticated voters. The article also compares the performance of the proximity and directional measures across party systems. Contrary to theoretical expectations, party-system differences between Flanders and Wallonia do not affect the explanatory power of either of these measures. It is only in the cases of the liberal, socialist and extreme right parties that the directional measure is clearly superior. A closer analysis of this result indicates that the relative success of the directional measure is due to the limited number of issues from which those parties draw support. The proximity versus the directional modelAlthough political scientists generally agree that the impact of issues on voting behaviour has increased since the 1960s, the way in which voters are influenced by issues remains a matter of considerable controversy. This debate is now mainly focused on the opposition between the traditional proximity approach to issue voting (Downs 1957) and the directional approach, proposed by Rabinowitz & Macdonald (1989) and Macdonald et al. (1991Macdonald et al. ( , 1995. The traditional proximity approach assumes that the issue stances of parties and voters can be presented as positions in a one or multi-dimensional space. The smaller the proximity between a voter and a party, the larger the utility of the party for the voter, the more positive the voter's evaluation of that party and hence the larger the odds that the voter will prefer that party to the others. Proponents of directional theory criticise those assumptions on two grounds. Firstly, they point to recent insights from cognitive psychology, which suggest that the largely uninformed voter does not grasp the overall issue picture, but makes a decision on the basis of the few issues that are salient at the moment of decision. Moreover, the voter is unable to think in terms of specific policy proposals, but has at best a general idea of the policy
IntroductionEnvironmental awareness has become part of everyday life: both ordinary people and science are more sensitive to pollution. Related disciplines examine in detail the effects of different damage caused by particular pollution sources on the population, the environment and the economy. However, scientific attention has not yet turned towards the real estate sector. The effects of pollution sources on the market value of surrounding real estate have not yet been explored. Presently, no suitable set of methods is available for experts in Central Europe to obtain reliable estimates of the effects of a given pollution on real estate value. Unfortunately, land value impairment factors are excluded in environmental impact studies on the remediation of pollution sources, while, contradictory, and more often, excessive valuations are published in ensuing legal disputes.The matter is not only topical because of the enforcement of environmental awareness; not only because new developments are necessarily established in already damaged environments, but also because real estate owners have realised the negative influence of different pollution sources on its market value, and have many of them have claimed for indemnity or compensation 1 . Quantifying the amount of impairment of real estate is an important task even at the national economic level, as without such information there is no basis for making responsible decisions.International real estate practice provides numerous methods for the valuation of contaminated or impacted real estate. These methods are to be chosen and applied according to such factors as the form and site of the pollution, as well as available data and other factors. In their article, Throupe and his co-writers believe that a general real estate appraiser is a professional akin to a general medical practitioner, while ascertaining the value of contaminated property is like brain surgery (Throupe et al, 2007).1 In the newest edition of the game of Monopoly, residential houses lose their value because of poisonous land improvements built on neighbouring properties, which models the spread of the problem into public awareness.
One of the most prominent tourist attractions in Budapest is the ruin pub district. Here, in ruined, rundown buildings, clubs that are mainly aimed at young foreigners, participants in party tourism, have sprung up like mushrooms. In Inner Erzsébetváros, the housing prices have significantly risen, since investors see the short- or long-term renting of the apartments as a good opportunity. Those who live in the district, however, find the noise of parties to be too loud, while the crowd and the dirt reduces their quality of life. The apartments located near these pubs are so-called “stigmatized properties”, since their value is shaped by the - positive or negative - opinion of the community. Using the method of hedonic analysis, this article examines the question of whether ruin pubs are a blessing or a curse to surrounding apartments, whether their effect increases or, on the contrary, decreases the apartments’ values.
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