In this paper, we report ecological and environmental investigations on Pteris vittata in the As–Pb–Hg-polluted Bone River area, Gorontalo Province, Indonesia. The density distribution of P. vittata decreases from around the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) site to the lower reaches of the Bone River, and it is rarely found near Gorontalo City. The maximum concentrations of As, Hg, and Pb recorded in the soil samples were 401, 36, and 159 mg kg⁻¹, respectively, with their maximum concentrations in P. vittata recorded as 17,700, 5.2, and 39 mg kg⁻¹, respectively. Around the ASGM sites, the concentrations of As, Pb, and Hg in P. vittata were highest in the study area. These data suggest that P. vittata, a hyperaccumulator of As, may be useful as a bioindicator for assessing environmental pollution by Pb and Hg.

The mountainous hinterland in rural Nepal lacks a fundamental social infrastructure. For example, the lack of electricity causes water provision difficulties, especially in mountainous areas where villagers, especially women and children, often spend a considerable amount of time just conveying water to their homes. To overcome this challenge, a subsidy policy for the installation of a solar-photovoltaic water pumping system (SWPS) has recently been implemented nationwide in Nepal. The Nepali government’s tight financial constraints require that the installation process is both economically and technologically sound. However, the institutional design of the current subsidization policy is price-distortionary and potentially induces the installation of inefficient systems. By collecting original field data from 38 wards in all seven regions of Nepal, this paper measures the SWPS’s technical efficiencies and then identifies relevant economic policies that will enhance the performance of the SWPS. Our results show, inter alia, that a higher dependency on financial support from the government is associated with excessive investment in the SWPS.

This research empirically examines the preferences for job-related attributes among rural villagers living close to artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in Indonesia. Based on hypothetical scenarios in which a private company collaborates with the local government to establish a food processing industry in these villages, a questionnaire survey designed with best–worst scaling (BWS) was administered to households to determine their preferences. Additionally, the heterogeneity among the villagers was examined by applying a latent class logit (LCL) model. The main household survey was conducted in 2019 in Bone Bolango Regency, Gorontalo Province. The estimation results revealed that villagers are separated into four classes, and each class has different and unique preferences. Creating more job opportunities for society is a highly evaluated attribute; however, the preference for skill acquisition differs among groups. The results indicate that accounting for heterogeneous preferences regarding job opportunities is helpful to delink dependency on ASGM and health hazards and improve the livelihoods of rural villagers. The study yields key information to substantially reduce environmental and health hazards in the poverty-plagued ASGM community by facilitating job opportunities in Indonesia.

A generalized multinomial logit (G-MNL) model is proposed to alleviate the four challenges inherent to the conditional logit model, including (1) simultaneous unidentifiability, (2) the immediacy of decision-making, (3) the homogeneity of preferences in unobservable variables, and (4) the independence of irrelevant alternatives. However, the G-MNL model has some restrictions that are caused by the assumed logit scale of the lognormal distribution used in the G-MNL model. We propose a mixed logit with integrated Pareto-distributed scale (MIXL-iPS) model to address the restriction of the G-MNL model by introducing a logit scale in accordance with the Pareto distribution type I with an expected value of 1. We have clarified the mathematical properties and examined the distributional properties of the novel MIXL-iPS model. The results suggest that the MIXL-iPS model is a model in which the instability in the estimation of the G-MNL model is modified. Moreover, the apparent preference parameter was confirmed to have a skewed distribution in general in the MIXL-iPS model. In addition, we confirm that in the MIXL-iPS model, bounded rationality is reasonably well represented, as many individuals have below-average choice consistency.