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Farm production often involves family-owned agribusinesses where decisions are made by households or individuals, not corporate managers. As these decisions have important economic, environmental, and social implications, decision-making processes must be understood to foster sustainable agricultural production. Decision experiments, involving lotteries, targeting farmers in the Argentine Pampas were used to estimate prospect theory (PT) parameters. Results suggest that decisions under risk are better represented by prospect theory than by expected utility (EU) theory: Decision makers treat gains and losses differently and use subjective probabilities of outcomes; they are quite loss averse and are more likely to overweigh probabilities of infrequent events, such as large droughts or floods. Statistical testing revealed heterogeneity in the risk tied to land tenure (land owners vs. renters) and agribusiness roles (farmers vs. technical advisors). Perceptions of risk, probability, and outcomes played a large role in the sustainability of production. Due to a strong desire to avoid losses, decision makers have a greater short term focus: Immediate economic outcomes are more salient, and environmental and social investments are framed as costs rather than long-term gains. This research can help design policies, programs, and tools that assist agribusinesses in managing better contradictions across the triple bottom line to ensure greater sustainability.

With increasing fake news and polarizing politics, Americans have been exposed to false or misinterpreted scientific information. A disconnect between the scientific community and news outlets has perpetuated public uncertainty about climate change. With the widening of such disconnect, it is crucial to understand how youth, who mainly use digital sources for information, comprehend climate change, as such a demographic will be a vehicle for climate change mitigation. We aim to understand climate change knowledge and attitudes among college students and their trustworthiness of six news outlets as sources of information about climate change. Results from a survey show that students care and are aware of climate change. Moreover, students are hesitant about news sources for climate change information. While students trust more the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, local news sources to the college, they overall neither trust nor distrust CNN, The Washington Post, Fox News, and Breitbart. This hesitation to trust or distrust such contrasting news regarding climate change may be explained by the overabundance of misinformation, the usage of cognitive heuristics, the rise of anti-intellectualism, and the lack of digital literacy, which make processing information more challenging in this postdigital era. We conclude by emphasizing the need to develop different information literacies in higher education. As digital platforms continue to grow, it is important to understand how youth receive and process information about topics like climate change in a complex information ecosystem.

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