Behavioral Economics Commons^™

The Covid-19 Pandemic And Religious Travel: Present And Future Trends, Daniel H. Olsen, Dallen Timothy

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has had dramatic effects on both the health and economic stability of countries around the world. While several scholars and media commentators have suggested that the pandemic would be a good time to reset an unsustainable tourism system, left out of these discussions has been the impacts on religion and religious travel. The purpose of this paper is to review the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on religion and religious travel, including the tensions that have arisen between religious communities, governments and health officials. The paper then discusses potential futures regarding religious travel in a …

Covid-19, Lockdown, And The Dynamics Of Subjective Well-Being, Terence C. Cheng, Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide novel evidence on how the COVID-19 global health and economic crisis is affecting overall life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction using data from a monthly longitudinal survey of middle-aged and older Singaporeans. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we document large declines in overall life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction during the COVID-19 outbreak, except satisfaction with health. These declines coincide with the introduction of a nationwide lockdown, with life satisfaction remaining below its pre-pandemic levels even after the lockdown is lifted. We also find that individuals who report a drop in household income during the COVID-19 outbreak experience a decline in …

Spending Impact Of Covid-19 Stimulus Payments: Evidence From Card Transaction Data In South Korea, Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Wonjun Lyou

Research Collection School Of Economics

Various countries have implemented transfer programs to individuals since the Covid-19 outbreaks. However, the extent to which such transfers alleviate economic recessions is unclear. This paper analyzes a South Korean program, which provided vouchers redeemable only at small local businesses. We find that, due to the program, over 30% of households across all income groups increased their food and overall household spending, but the usage restriction may have affected consumer choice, distorting business competition. While the employment and sales of small businesses improved, the program’s fiscal sustainability is in question because of the large tax exemption.

Attitudes, Behaviours, And The Well-Being Of Older Singaporeans In The Time Of Covid-19: Perspectives From The Singapore Life Panel, Paulin T. Straughan, William Tov, Seonghoon Kim, Terence Cheng, Stephen Hoskins, Micah Tan

ROSA Research Briefs

COVID-19 has affected all Singaporeans, regardless of age and socioeconomic status (SES). Many measures have been implemented by the government to control the spread of this disease, including restrictions on social gatherings, restrictions on overseas travel, and making it compulsory to wear a mask. Measures have also included a partial lockdown – known as the ‘circuit breaker’ – which began in April 2020. This forced Singaporeans to quickly adapt to a new normal with some doing better than others. This research brief provides an overview of how COVID-19 and its related measures have affected seniors in Singapore using data from …

Impacts Of Rift Valley Fever Virus: A One Health Approach To Assess Burden And Inform Prevention And Control Options, Catherine Machalaba

Dissertations and Theses

Background: Rift Valley Fever (RVF) is a climate-sensitive emerging zoonotic disease associated with large-scale livestock production losses and human disease burden in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. While recognized as a key One Health issue based on its transmission dynamics involving human, animal and environmental determinants, there has been poor coordination between sectors to reduce the risk and impact of RVF. Efforts to counter the disease remain largely reactive, presenting an ongoing threat to local and global health security. The intent of this dissertation was to improve understanding of the burden of RVF across society and to identify entry …

Measuring The Chinese Economic Impact Of Covid-19, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The COVID-19 outbreak currently sweeping around the globe with deadly results will create hardships for a good proportion of businesses in China while generating new opportunities for others, says Jing Wu, Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics.

Mechanisms Of Value-Biased Prioritization In Fast Sensorimotor Decision Making, Kivilcim Afacan-Seref

Dissertations and Theses

In dynamic environments, split-second sensorimotor decisions must be prioritized according to potential payoffs to maximize overall rewards. The impact of relative value on deliberative perceptual judgments has been examined extensively, but relatively little is known about value-biasing mechanisms in the common situation where physical evidence is strong but the time to act is severely limited. This research examines the behavioral and electrophysiological indices of how value biases split-second perceptual decisions and the possible mechanisms underlying the process. In prominent decision models, a noisy but statistically stationary representation of sensory evidence is integrated over time to an action-triggering bound, and value-biases …

Australian Consumers Are Willing To Pay For The Health Star Rating Front-Of-Pack Nutrition Label, Sheri L. Cooper, Lucy M. Butcher, Simone D. Scagnelli, Johnny Lo, Maria M. Ryan, Amanda Devine, Therese A. O’Sullivan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation has supported the recommendations set out in the 2019 Health Star Rating System Five Year Review Report. Specifically, the forum supported, in principle, Recommendation 9, to mandate the Health Star Rating if clear uptake targets were not achieved while the system is voluntary. Given that mandatory labelling is being considered, it is important to investigate how much consumers value the Health Star Rating in order to understand potential consumer uptake and inform industry. The aim of this study was to assess …

Three Essays On Health Economics And Policy Evaluation, Shishir Shakya

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation consists of three essays on the U.S. Health care policy. Each paragraph below refers to the three abstracts for the three chapters in this dissertation, respectively. I provide quantitative evidence on how much Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) affects the retail opioid prescribing behaviors. Using the American Community Survey (ACS), I retrieve county-level high dimensional panel data set from 2010 to 2017. I employ three separate identification strategies: difference-in-difference, double selection post-LASSO, and spatial difference-in-difference. I compare how the retail opioid prescribing behaviors of counties, that are mandatory for prescribers to check the PDMP before prescribing controlled substances …

Quality Over Quantity: A Comparative Analysis Of The Quality Measures And Performance Between Switzerland And The United States, Lexi Farina

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Even in the best health systems, poor quality of care continues to cause harm to patients and prevent them from receiving the best treatment possible. Thus, it is important to record and report quality of care measures because they can help inform policy changes and improve performance. In this paper, a comparative analysis between the United States and Switzerland is conducted to understand the process for defining and assessing quality indicators in each country as well as compare their quality of care performance results. The methods for this study include a literature review of relevant background information relating to quality …

The Anonymity Heuristic: How Surnames Stop Identifying People When They Become Trademarks, Russell W. Jacobs

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This Article explores the following question central to trademark law: if a homograph has both a surname and a trademark interpretation will consumers consider those interpretations as intrinsically overlapping or the surname and trademark as completely separate and unrelated words? While trademark jurisprudence typically has approached this question from a legal perspective or with assumptions about consumer behavior, this Article builds on the Law and Behavioral Science approach to legal scholarship by drawing from the fields of psychology, linguistics, economics, anthropology, sociology, and marketing.

The Article concludes that consumers will regard the two interpretations as separate and unrelated, processing surname …

Patient-Centered Medical Homes And Hospital Value-Based Purchasing: Investigating Provider Responses To Incentives, Lauryn Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Provider incentives are a commonly used policy tool to mold provider behaviors.¹ However, while we frequently measure the change in patient outcomes, failure to consistently produce changes in outcomes does not mean that providers are not changing their behavior. This paper focuses on two programs with null or inconsistent quality outcomes to try to identify why such inconsistency occurs. The two programs, both ratified in the Affordable Care Act, are 1) patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), and 2) the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program.

Chapter 1: Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel survey (MEPS), I match provider characteristic …

Examining The Utility Of Behavioral Economic Demand In Addiction Science, Justin Charles Strickland

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

The marriage of perspectives from behavioral economic theory and learning theory has the potential to advance an understanding of substance use and substance use disorder. Behavioral economic demand is a central concept to this interdisciplinary approach. Evaluating demand in the laboratory and clinic can improve previous research on the relative reinforcing effects of drugs by accounting for the multi-dimensional nature of reinforcement rather than viewing reinforcement as a unitary construct. Recent advances in the commodity purchase task methodology have further simplified the measurement of demand values in human participants. This dissertation project presents a programmatic series of studies designed to …

Neurobehavioral Measurements Of Natural And Opioid Reward Value, Aaron Paul Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

In the last decade, (non)prescription opioid abuse, opioid use disorder (OUD) diagnoses, and opioid-related overdoses have risen and represent a significant public health concern. One method of understanding OUD is as a disorder of choice that requires choosing opioid rewards at the expense of other nondrug rewards. The characterization of OUD as a disorder of choice is important as it implicates decision- making processes as therapeutic targets, such as the valuation of opioid rewards. However, reward-value measurement and interpretation are traditionally different in substance abuse research compared to related fields such as economics, animal behavior, and neuroeconomics and may be …

Differences In Sexual Delay Discounting Among In-Treatment Adults With Opioid Use Disorder, Jonathan J.K. Stoltman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Previous research has found impulsive decision-making to be a core component of addiction (Moody, Franck, Hatz, & Bickel, 2016). One way to measure impulsive choice is through the use of a delay discounting task. The delay discounting task provides a way to measure choice of immediate, smaller rewards compared to delayed, larger rewards (Odum, 2011b). An emerging area of research in addiction science is the intersection of addiction and sexual health. Previous sexual delay discounting research has focused on whether attractiveness or STD risk can shift the likelihood of waiting until a condom was available (Johnson & Bruner, 2012). This …

"Integrated Science 3002a: Big Bike Giveaway: Changing London's Environment, Health, And Economy One Bike At A Time", Jermiah Joseph, Katelyn Melo, Devanshi Shukla, Tony Nguyen, Katherine Teeter

Community Engaged Learning Final Projects

There are significant benefits that manifest when an individual chooses to ride a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation. To investigate these benefits, the environmental, health, economic, and social impacts of biking were evaluated through research and data analyses. This revealed that numerous advantages can be obtained at an individual and local scale through citizens choosing to adopt a biking lifestyle. However, it was found that many Londoners are deterred from biking due to poor biking infrastructure. This paper calls into question the current cycling framework in London and it’s limitations on achieving the numerous benefits that biking offers. …

The Onset, Spread, And Prevention Of Mass Atrocities: Perspectives From Network Models, Charles H. Anderton, Jurgen Brauer

Economics Department Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Efficacy Of Technology-Based And In-Person Health Education For Behavior Change In College-Aged Women, Madeline Bremel

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether an in-person or technology based bone health intervention improved bone health knowledge and behaviors in college-aged women. Methods: 30 college-aged women were randomly divided into three groups: personal intervention (n = 10), technological intervention (n = 10), and control (n = 10). Both intervention groups received identical information regarding the importance of bone health and the appropriate behaviors for maintaining strong bones including weight-bearing exercise, calcium consumption, and vitamin D consumption. The technology group received the information via an online video, and the personal group via a one-on-one …

A Systematic Review Of Consumer Preference For E-Cigarette Attributes: Flavor, Nicotine Strength, And Type, Samane Zare, Mehdi Nemati, Yuqing Zheng

Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Objective

Systematic review of research examining consumer preference for the main electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) attributes namely flavor, nicotine strength, and type.

Method

A systematic search of peer-reviewed articles resulted in a pool of 12,933 articles. We included only articles that meet all the selection criteria: (1) peer-reviewed, (2) written in English, and (3) addressed consumer preference for one or more of the e-cigarette attributes including flavor, strength, and type.

Results

66 articles met the inclusion criteria for this review. Consumers preferred flavored e-cigarettes, and such preference varied with age groups and smoking status. We also found that several flavors were …

The Effect Of Fast Food Restaurants On Type 2 Diabetes Rates, Grace Bailey

CMC Senior Theses

This paper conducts an analysis of county level data to determine the effect of fast food restaurants on type 2 diabetes rates. Due to endogeneity concerns with respect to the location of fast food restaurants, this paper follows the work of Dunn (2010) and uses the number of interstate exits in a given county to serve as an instrument for fast food restaurants. The strength of the instrument, which is theoretically and empirically tested in this paper, imposes some restraints on the interpretation of the findings. Using the Two-Stage Least Squares estimation method, I find that the presence of fast …

The Efficacy Of Public Health Interventions Aimed At Curbing Gun Violence: An Integrative Review, Brian Cook

Grace Peterson Nursing Research Colloquium

Abstract

Background: Gun violence is a pressing public health issue in the United States. Homicide is the second-leading cause of death for 15 to 24 year-old Americans, and the third-leading cause of death for 25 to 34 year-old Americans, and 80% of these homicides are committed via firearm. In recent years, the field of criminology has studied the efficacy of a variety of policing, public health, and public policy interventions that aim to reduce the incidence of gun violence, but many of their findings have yet to be incorporated into the body of nursing literature.

Objective: This project’s objective was …

Incentives And Ethics In The Economics Of Body Parts, Nicola Lacetera

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Research shows that properly devised economic incentives increase the supply of blood without hampering its safety; similar effects may be expected also for other body parts such as bone marrow and organs. These positive effects alone, however, do not necessarily justify the introduction of payments for supplying body parts, because these activities concern contested commodities or repugnant transactions. Societies may want to prevent these transactions even if they increase supply, because of ethical concerns. When transactions involve contested commodities, therefore, there often is tension between the efficiency-enhancing effects of trades mediated by a monetary price and the moral opposition to …

Do Marketing Strategies Impact Condom Sales In Uganda?, Meyhar Mohammed

Master's Theses

What attracts people to buy condoms? HIV/AIDS remain one of the biggest health dangers of the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. A lot of efforts have been pursued in the past two decades to drastically reduce prevalence of HIV and increase awareness about preventive mechanisms. In order to prevent relapse of success achieved so far, it is important to recognize transformation of consumer behavior due to growth in social networks, education and awareness over time. There are a lot of behavioral triggers captured by social marketing interventions in the field of public health. In an attempt to investigate the role …

To Nudge Or Not To Nudge: Promoting Environmentally Beneficial Behaviors, Emma Jean Cooper

Bard Center for Environmental Policy

In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, humans need to change how they act toward the environment. Unfortunately, as much as we may want to act in ways that would be best for us and for the environment, we often struggle to do just that due to cognitive biases. Nudge theory attempts to remedy this problem by helping us make the decision that would be in our best interests. To explore this issue, I conduct an extended review of the literature to examine how well nudge theory can be applied to the realm of environmental policy. Specifically, I …

Emotions, Intuitions And Risk Perception In Critical Care, Oleksandr Dubov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The theory of decision-making as it applies to bioethics and healthcare assumes a rational decision maker: someone who knows all his alternatives, has clear preferences, can rank and weigh risks and benefits of an intervention, and always acts in his own best interests. However, the growing body of research from the field of decision science shows that, in reality, such a purely rational decision maker does not exist. Instead, patients are rational within personal or environmental constraints such as uncertainty or ambiguity in which non-rational approaches such as emotion and intuition are instrumental. This issue is particularly important in critical …

The Economics Of Lotto, Ian Walker, Robert E. Pryce, Rhys Wheeler, Nick Powdathvee

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

No abstract provided.

Variation In Restaurant Sanitary Scores In New York City, Kyle Gregory

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether restaurants that are homogenous in nature would exhibit substantially different hygiene scores based on the underlying consumer learning behaviors present in the neighborhoods in which the restaurants are located.

Your Brain: Unconscious Decision-Making And How It Affects Your Life And Learning, James Stellar

Campus Conversations in Standish

No abstract provided.

Development And Pilot-Testing Of A Patient Decision Aid For Left Ventricular Assist Device Placement, Kristin Kostick, Estevan D. Delgado, Lidija A. Wilhelms, Courtenay R. Bruce, Jerry D. Estep, Matthias Loebe, Charles Minard, Jennifer S. Blumenthal-Barby

The VAD Journal

Objectives: This paper describes the development methodology and pilot-testing of a decision aid for Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) placement, combining traditional needs-assessment with a novel user-centered approach.

Background: Studies indicate suboptimal patient understanding of the capabilities, lifestyle implications, and risks of LVAD therapy.

Methods and Results: We developed the decision aid in line with the Ottawa Decision Support Framework (ODSF) and the International Patient Decision Aids Standards (IPDAS) for ensuring quality, patient-centered content. Structured interviews were conducted with patients, caregivers, candidates for LVAD treatment, and expert clinicians (n=71) to generate content based on patient values and …

Loss Aversion In Cocaine Users: Influence Of Risk And Commodity Type, Justin Charles Strickland

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Numerous studies in behavioral economics have demonstrated that individuals are more sensitive to the prospect of a loss than a gain (i.e., loss aversion). Although loss aversion has been well described in healthy populations, little research exists in individuals with substance use disorders. The purpose of this study was to comprehensively evaluate loss aversion in cocaine users. Participants completed measures designed to assess loss aversion for drug and non-drug commodities under varying risk conditions. Cocaine demand was determined using a cocaine purchase task. Cocaine users showed a loss aversion score that was consistent across commodity and risk conditions. Compared to …