Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Empowering Voices: Exploring The Career Trajectories Of Women Of Color Hr Professionals Amid Disruptive Change, Brandi R. Muñoz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated strategies to enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives in organizational leadership, focusing on supporting women of color in the workplace. The specific problem addressed was the underrepresentation and barriers faced by women of color in leadership positions despite their potential contributions to organizational success. The study employed a qualitative approach, combining qualitative interviews with socioeconomic data analysis. Data collection methods included semistructured interviews with women of color and a survey to gather demographic and employment information. The sample consisted of 16 women of color human resource professionals working in various industries and organizational settings across the …

The Influence Of Framing And Recent Experience On Farmer Choices In Experimental Games Depicting Risk-Reducing Agricultural Technologies, Ana Maria Ospina Tobar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is a major threat to food security, particularly in low and middle-income countries that are highly dependent on staple crops for subsistence. The vulnerability of staple crops, like maize, in the face of climate change, is increasing due to the increasing frequency of droughts. This thesis aims to evaluate two mechanisms through which farmers may be more willing to adopt new technologies that increase their resilience to climate change: First, I evaluate the effectiveness of a new virtual maize farming game as a learning tool to teach farmers about the outcomes they could obtain under different weather events …

The Role Food Security, Financial Literacy, And Nutrition Literacy Play On The Diet Quality Of College Students, Amelia Sullivan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research aimed to explore the roles of food security status (FSS), financial literacy (FL), and nutrition literacy (NL) on the diet quality (DQ) of college students at the University of Maine. This research additionally sought to understand mediational relationships among these factors that could impact DQ.

A cross-sectional convenience sample of college students completed an online questionnaire assessing sociodemographic factors, short healthy eating index (sHEI)-score, FSS, FL, and NL. Participants' continuous data were analyzed using a Pearson correlation. Differences between interactive NL and sHEI-score while controlling for gender and meal plan differences were analyzed using a MANCOVA. Additionally, differences …

Perceptions Of Student Loan Debt: A Phenomenological Study Exploring Black Undergraduate Students' Experiences., Pilar Prather

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rising cost of higher education concerns many families in the United States, especially those from historically underrepresented backgrounds. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of Black students' perception of their student loan debt and how their financial knowledge influences their decisions at a public institution. This qualitative research provides space to empower individuals to share their stories through semi-structured interviews to get an account of their experiences. Grounded in Yosso's (2005) Community Cultural Wealth Theory, the study seeks to capture the unique ways Black students make financial decisions. The dissertation is divided into five chapters: …

Adaptive Learning Gain In Asset Pricing, Sedealy Juste Lokossou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper delves into the complexities of asset pricing, emphasizing the need to go beyond prevailing paradigms and constant learning gain assumptions. We examine the influence of personal experiences, adaptive learning processes, and subjective return expectations on asset pricing. By incorporating the concept of time-varying learning gain, we provide a more realistic portrayal of asset pricing. Empirical analysis reveals a consistent negative correlation between experienced real payout growth and subsequent returns, indicating counter-cyclical behavior. Our findings also support the mean-reversion hypothesis in stock returns, although caution is needed due to some scenarios lacking statistical significance. Theoretical exploration uncovers that higher …

How An Abusive Supervision Climate Impacts Business-To-Business (B2b) Sales Performance, And The Roles Of Leader–Members Interdependence And Team Psychological Safety, Matthew J. Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sales supervisors can tremendously influence the sales teams they manage, and their behaviors can influence a team’s engagement and sales performance. Because of the supervisor’s influential role, their behavior, positive or negative, can ripple throughout the organization. As a result, a supervisor who role models abusive behavior within their organization also promotes a climate of abuse and incivility that can contribute to a toxic workplace. Abusive supervision (AS) is a significant problem in many business-to-business (B2B) sales organizations that negatively impacts the financial welfare and subjective well-being of organizations and their employees. This quantitative correlational study aimed to examine how …

The Organizational Evolution Of Small Food Buying Clubs, Taylor Lange

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organizations are pervasive in modern society and the factors of their evolution are the subject of considerable scholarship. Most literature on organizational evolution focuses on the role of leaders and entrepreneurs, specifically their decision making interacts with market forces. However, the behavior and interactions of regular organization members, such as nonmanagerial employees or club members, is surprisingly overlooked. Specifically, examinations of social dilemmas between co-workers and the role of learning are often discounted in the current literature. This dissertation explores how the dynamics of cooperation and the learning of preferences as cultural traits become consequential in the evolution and longevity …

Socioeconomic Factors And Mass Shootings, 1982-2016, Taylor Petkovich

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an examination and investigation of the relationship between socioeconomic factors and mass shootings. The objective of this paper was to see if economic policy making could be an effective tool for reducing the level of mass gun violence that America has been experiencing. This paper highlights the known relationship between violent crime and economics and tries to bridge that connection to mass shootings specifically through literature review and econometric testing. The ultimate takeaway from this paper’s results and analysis is the need for a universal definition and governing body for data on mass shootings in order to …

The Effect Of Magnitude And Probability On Plea Bargain Decision-Making, Megan L. Small

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Decision-making is studied in various aspects of life and can be especially vital in the context of the criminal justice system, such as plea bargains. Previous research in this area used a less commonly used task (fill-in-the-blank) in addition to a student sample (Falligant & Pence, 2019). The current study uses probability discounting to study the choice between accepting a plea bargain for a shorter incarceration sentence or risking a trial with a longer sentence on a sample of adults with experience in the criminal justice system. Three sentence durations, or magnitudes, were used (1 year, 5 years, and 25 …

The Effects Of Recent Minimum Wage Increases On Self-Reported Health In The United States, Liam Sigaud

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A sharp income-health gradient exists in the United States. Lower levels of income are associated with higher rates of mortality, morbidity, and risky health behaviors, as well as decreased access to health care. Growing evidence of a causal link between income and health suggests that government income-support policies may be an effective strategy for improving health outcomes among poor Americans. One such policy – the minimum wage – has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years. In 2019, twenty-five states and the District of Columbia increased their minimum wage, up from only eight states in 2011. Yet the literature …

U.S. Consumers' Acceptance And Willingness To Pay For Genetically Modified And Genome-Edited Foods, Bindu Paudel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Even though genetically modified (GM) crops have a lot of economic potential for producers and consumers, they have not been widely accepted due to increasing concerns related to food safety, human, animal, and environmental health. Unlike GM technology, genome-editing technology does not involve the transfer of genetic materials. It is simpler, cheaper, more precise, and faster relative to GM technology and has immense potential for incorporating producer and consumer traits. Genome-editing technology, as a novel process, not has been explored much from the consumer’s side. This study uses a nationally representative survey of 1,573 U.S. consumers to examine their acceptance …

Using Behavior Economic Nudges To Facilitate Client Follow-Through In Financial Coaching, Charlene Hurst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While benevolence-based programs have been a large part of meeting immediate financial needs of the poor, they lack the relational aspect needed to facilitate long-term behavior change. Recently many social service organizations have adopted financial coaching as a promising replacement for benevolence programming. The field of coaching has dealt with its own challenges. Most coaching practitioners surveyed in 2016 and 2019 acknowledged lack of client follow-through as their number one challenge. Behavior economics offered nudges as a solution. Nudges are cues placed within the physical environment to prod clients toward behavior change. A quantitative field study was conducted to evaluate …

Examining Citizens' Preferences For Aquaculture Using Discrete Choice Experiments, Olga Bredikhina

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over the last few decades, discrete choice experiments (DCEs) have become increasingly popular across different subfields of economics as a way to elicit citizens‟ stated preferences for product and service attributes as well as various environmental and infrastructure features. The DCE framework could be seen as a time- and cost-effective alternative to the revealed preferences framework that is based on data obtained using transactions observed in real-world markets. DCEs offer the advantage over revealed preferences data because they allow learning about consumer preferences for hypothetical products or product attributes without bearing the costs of introducing new products to the market. …

Local Food Policy & Consumer Food Cooperatives: Evolutionary Case Studies, Afton Hupper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Darwin’s theory of natural selection has played a central role in the development of the biological sciences, but evolution can also explain change in human culture. Institutions, mechanisms that govern behavior and social order, are important subjects of cultural evolution. Institutions can help stabilize cooperation, defined as behavior that benefits others, often at a personal cost. Cooperation is important for solving social dilemmas, scenarios in which the interests of the individual conflict with those of the group. A number of mechanisms by which institutions evolve to support cooperation have been identified, yet theoretical models of institutional change have rarely been …

Behaviors And Perceptions Of Environmental Decision Making: The Role Of Information Dissemination Through Public Disclosures And Labels, Jordan R. Anthony

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmental decision making may be influenced by information and how this information has been disseminated. By recognizing that information needs to be salient to the individual (Cash et al., 2003, 2006), tailored and framed to the individual (Pelletier & Sharp, 2008), and recognizing that the information must be presented in a way that the individual is ready and able to accept the information (Teisl, Rubin, & Noblet, 2008) all serve as a means to improve the effect information has on environmental decision making. Through this work, two studies of contextual examples of how information dissemination affects environmental decision making are …

Assessing Economic Performance Of Maine's Lobster Fleet Under Changing Ecosystem Conditions In The Gulf Of Maine, Alexa M. Dayton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research evaluates lobster producer efficiency and considers fleet wide economics and policy implications in support of changing marine ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine. We conducted a comprehensive lobster industry survey to assess costs and effort expended at the producer level for a representative fishing year, and establish a series of production function performance baselines for future comparison. The demographic data, attitudes and valuations collected allow us to characterize the fishing effort and regional dependency on the resource. We look at the Maine Lobster limited entry licensing system, to understand how the future participation in the fishery might change, …

Determinants Of Tipping Behavior: Evidence From Us Restaurants, Nusrat Jahan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to analyze people’s tipping behavior to assess the factors that determine both the likelihood of leaving a tip and tip size in US restaurants. A total 2,334 away from home eating events are considered in this study based on the nationally representative National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) dataset. Two different tipping scenarios are considered for full-service restaurants to examine differences in customers’ behavior under two different situations. Considering that households’ tipping decisions and tip sizes are functions of the demand for personal interest (D"#, ) and the demand for social interest (D&#), different socio-demographic, …

Assessing Consumer Preferences For Seafood Labels, William C. Brayden Iii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coastal communities are host to a suite of economic, cultural, and natural resources, and are often focused around a core such as tourism, beaches, fisheries, or processing. In nearly all cases, coastal communities survive based upon the resources in the surrounding coastal areas and water. As wild fisheries begin to stagnate, many traditional fishing communities are forced to look elsewhere for economic sustenance. While tourism or real estate may provide relief, residents often require a more stable, year-round income. Some coastal communities have begun to transition away from wild fisheries and towards marine aquaculture, or, the cultivation of marine animals …

A Cross-Sectional Exploration Of Household Financial Reactions And Homebuyer Awareness Of Registered Sex Offenders In A Rural, Suburban, And Urban County., John Charles Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As stigmatized persons, registered sex offenders betoken instability in communities. Depressed home sale values are associated with the presence of registered sex offenders even though the public is largely unaware of the presence of registered sex offenders. Using a spatial multilevel approach, the current study examines the role registered sex offenders influence sale values of homes sold in 2015 for three U.S. counties (rural, suburban, and urban) located in Illinois and Kentucky within the social disorganization framework. Homebuyers were surveyed to examine whether awareness of local registered sex offenders and the homebuyer’s community type operate as moderators between home selling …

Governing The Urban Water Commons : Essays On Collaborative Policy Networks In A Polycentric Ecology Of Urban Water Policy Games., Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Governing social-ecological systems, such as the urban water commons, is a multi-scale and multi-sector (polycentric) human-environment process. This dissertation interrogates this process by situating itself within the Ecology of Games Framework by Norton Long (and updated by Mark Lubell) and the literature on polycentric governance by the Bloomington School of Political Economy. The dissertation’s three essays 1) offer both theoretical and methodological means to enact polycentric public economies within the ecology of games framework, and 2) explicate the conditions under which interoganizational collaboration is fostered within a polycentric ecology of policy games in governing the Middle Rio Grande urban watershed. …

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 …

Sperner's Lemma, The Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem, The Kakutani Fixed Point Theorem, And Their Applications In Social Sciences, Ayesha Maliwal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Can a cake be divided amongst people in such a manner that each individual is content with their share? In a game, is there a combination of strategies where no player is motivated to change their approach? Is there a price where the demand for goods is entirely met by the supply in the economy and there is no tendency for anything to change? In this paper, we will prove the existence of envy-free cake divisions, equilibrium game strategies and equilibrium prices in the economy, as well as discuss what brings them together under one heading.

This paper examines three …

Exchange Patterns And Relations In Collaborative Governance., Charles Wharton Kaye-Essien

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collaborative governance has received considerable attention in recent years. From environmental resource management to public safety, collaborative governance continues to play a vital role in regional problem solving. In spite of this increasing popularity previous attempts to model the political, economic, and demographic determinants of collaboration have in most cases produced inconsistent results, thereby undermining the ability to generalize from such findings. Additionally, our understanding of the relational patterns that emanate from collaborative agreements remains fairly rudimentary. The main objective of this research is to address some of the gaps in the literature and improve our understanding of collaborative governance …

Sustainable Farming Versus Ethanol: A Comparison Of Energy Use, Brandon John Weiland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The subsidization of corn-ethanol has proven to not live up to the original promises made when it was promoted as gasoline additive. With research pointing to ethanol as a source of increased greenhouse gases emissions and other pollution while merely changing energy consumption, not decreasing it, an alternative that achieves the original goals of is sought. I propose that sustainable farming practices have the ability to decrease the United States’ dependence on fossil fuels while decreasing emissions and pollution related to farming. By looking at the adoption of 3 year rotations, fertilizer banding, and zero tillage farming in Iowa, Illinois, …

Examining The Low Volatility Anomaly In Stock Prices, Munish Malhotra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern portfolio theory states that investments with greater beta, a common measure of risk, require greater returns from investors in order to compensate them for taking greater risk. Therefore, under the premise that market participants act rationally and therefore markets run efficiently, investments with higher beta should generate higher returns vis-à-vis investments with lower beta over the long run. In fact, many studies suggest that investments with lower beta actually generate equal to or higher returns relative to investments with higher beta. In looking at data for the S&P 500 going back 22 years between 1990 and 2012, this study …

Park Aid Systems: Factors That Affect Consumer Purchase Decisions, Nadeesha Kushlanie Surasinha Thewarapperuma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Backover crashes in the United States result in at least 300 fatalities and 17,000 injuries every year. Backover crashes occur when a non-occupant of a vehicle is struck by a vehicle moving in reverse. Children are particularly vulnerable. Of the 300 fatalities, at least 100 deaths are children under the age of five. Limited visibility is one factor behind these deaths. The deaths are especially tragic, since the availability of a simple park aid device can expand a driver’s field of vision during a reversal maneuver. Park aid devices include a rearview camera or a sensory system.

This project is …

The Role Of Private International Financial Capital Flows In Support Of Development For Emerging Market Countries, Jason Victor Reuter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Economic growth and development are critical issues for emerging market economies as they seek increase their standards of living. Financial globalization, innovation and international financial capital flows are prominent factors influencing macroeconomic stability and the pace of growth and development around the globe. This dynamic has become even more pronounced since the Asian Financial Crisis at the end of the 1990s and the Global Financial Crisis starting in 2008. In the wake of these two global economic events, the need for reflection on the drivers of growth and development as well as impediments to these activities is warranted. This thesis …