Risk Perception,Risk Attitude,and Decision: A Rank-Dependent Analysis

The classical expected utility model of decision under risk has been criticized from an experimental point of view (Allais’ paradox) as well as for its restrictive lack of explanatory power. The Rank-Dependent Expected Utility model answers some of these criticisms. The decision maker is characterized by two functions: a utility function on consequences measuring preferences over sure outcomes and a probability weighting function measuring the subjective weighting of probabilities. The model allows for more diversified types of behavior: it is consistent with the behavior revealed by the Allais paradox; the decision maker could dislike risk (prefer its expectation to any lottery) without necessarily avoiding any increase in risk; diminishing marginal utility may coexist with “weak” risk-seeking attitudes; decision makers with the same utility function may differ in their choices between lotteries when they have different probability weighting functions; furthermore, the same decision maker may have different, context-dependent, subjective beliefs on events.     

Major Natural Catastrophes, 1950–2001

The organizations with most interest in recording worldwide disaster statistics are humani‐tarian agencies such as the International Red Cross (see its annual World Disasters Report) and the large reinsurance companies. The latter are likely to be more meticulous. The data and the brief text below come from an annual report on natural disasters, Topics 2001, issued in March 2002 by Munich Reinsurance Company (more familiarly known as Munich Re), and are reproduced by permission. The trend in economic losses from “great catastrophes” (those requiring interregional or international assistance) over the last 50 years is strongly upward, as shown in the annual statistics and decadal comparisons. Both total losses and insured losses have been rising, the latter more sharply. An implication is that insurance premiums calculated on the basis of historical experience will underestimate future risks. The trend in disasters mainly results from greater exposure to risk through thegrowth of economies and populations rather than from changes in natural hazards themselves. One exception noted in the report is an increasing likelihood of “extreme precipitation” during hurricanes and other windstorms, which may be associated with global warming‐a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor. (There is no consensus on whether the frequency or intensity of storms is increasing, but there is evidence that they are getting wetter.) Greater allowance will have to be made for flood damage: Hurricane Andrew in the United States in 1992, causing a record $30 billion in estimated total losses, was a relatively “dry” storm‐ and it missed Miami and New Orleans. Munich Re describes 2001 as an “average year” for natural disasters, with an estimated 25,000 fatalities worldwide and total economic losses of some $36 billion. The four events during the year classed as great catastrophes were an earthquake and landslides in El Salvador in January, killing 845 persons; a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Gujarat in the same month, killing more than 14,000; a hailstorm in Kansas City in April, killing no one but costing the insurance industry $2 billion; and Tropical Storm Allison in June, in which 72 m of rain over 12 hoursjlooded Houston, Texas, causing about $6 billion in total losses‐ “the costliest non‐hurricane of all time.” A recurrent concern of Topics 2001 is the problem of what are termed unidentified loss potentials. These are low‐risk but high‐loss events, exemplified by the 1999 Taiwan earth‐quake, which had an estimated return period of 10,000–100.000 years (or, more exotically, by the remote chance but catastrophic eflect o f a large meteorite impact‐the subject of one section of the report). Other kinds of hard‐to‐calculate loss potentials are related to unanticipated chains of events leading to or following from a disaster. The September terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center, although unambiguously man‐made and thus not treated in the report, has been a further stimulus to wide‐angled thinking on loss potentials. It demonstrates the broad scope of worst‐case scenarios that now have to be considered by under‐writers who must seek to eliminate “the ‘bare patches’ on the ‘risk landscape.’” The full report is available online at http://www.munichre.com/pdf/topics~2001‐e.pdf     

HIV diffusion patterns and mobility: Gender differences among drug users

Researchers have recently expanded the scope of study of transmission patterns of AIDS to incorporate spatial and geographical questions. United States diffusion patterns of this disease appear to indicate that it may emanate from urban area epicenters to areas of low and moderate prevalence. The travel patterns of injecting drug users (IDUs) and the extent to which they engage in high risk drug and sexual activities was examined as an explanation of diffusion of the HIV virus from one community to another. The study population of 49,621 was comprised of subjects recruited from approximately 60 sites nationwide from 1988–1991. While the data are limited in some ways, they partially support a diffusion explanation of HIV transmission for males and females. The analysis demonstrates that low prevalence cities were significantly more likely to have been the destinations of both men and women who engaged in high risk drug and sexual activities. In addition, HIV seropositive drug users who engaged in high risk drug and sexual behaviors in destination cities were more likely than seronegatives to travel to high or low seroprevalence areas than to moderate prevalence areas. The findings suggest a need for effective HIV prevention educational messages about the risks of traveling and participating in high risk activities.     

Community-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility: Evidence From North Carolina

Using North Carolina data for the period 1990–2010, we estimate the effects of economic downturns on the birthrates of 15- to 19-year-olds, using county-level business closings and layoffs as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the strength of the local economy. We find little effect of job losses on the white teen birthrate. For black teens, however, job losses to 1 % of the working-age population decrease the birthrate by around 2 %. Birth declines start five months after the job loss and then last for more than one year. Linking the timing of job losses and conceptions suggests that black teen births decline because of increased terminations and perhaps also because of changes in prepregnancy behaviors. National data on risk behaviors also provide evidence that black teens reduce sexual activity and increase contraception use in response to job losses. Job losses seven to nine months after conception do not affect teen birthrates, indicating that teens do not anticipate job losses and lending confidence that job losses are “shocks” that can be viewed as quasi-experimental variation. We also find evidence that relatively advantaged black teens disproportionately abort after job losses, implying that the average child born to a black teen in the wake of job loss is relatively more disadvantaged.     

Inspired by Eruptions? Eyjafjallajökull and Icelandic Tourism

Abstract

The paper deals with the complex meaning of risk for tourism mobilities. The impact of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption on tourism in Iceland is outlined, as well as the response of Icelandic tourist authorities. A survey in June and July 2010 among international tourists in the country revealed that for many the eruption had added considerable depth to their travel experiences. The sense of risk affects the relation between mobile travellers and their destination. The paper also analyses how events such as the eruption can facilitate new paths towards being sensitive to the natural world.     

Information and Communication Technology and International Business Travel: Mobility Allies?

Abstract

Like forecasts about the paperless office, technological solutions to the problem of international business travel continue to be deferred. As with the increased use of office paper, international business travel is defying predictions of its decline. There is growing evidence to suggest that business sectors which seem ideally placed to substitute information and communication technology (ICT) for travel, are actually generating more physical travel than other sectors. This paper develops a case study of the Irish software industry to exemplify why international travel is not diminishing in importance how and the ICT and business travel relationship is changing in this sector. The paper presents research findings that suggest that a cycle of substitution, generation and modification relationships have occurred as mobility interdependencies have developed.     

Altruism and the macroeconomic effects of demographic changes

In this paper we show that the macroeconomic effects of demographic changes strongly depend on the degree of altruism and on the specification of the intertemporal utility function. We allow for agents either to be altruistic in the sense of Barro (1974) or non-altruistic. In the latter case, generations are heterogeneous like in the „unloved children” model of Weil (1989). In the former case, where the model is a standard Ramsey model with identical agents, we distinguish a Millian and a Benthamite intertemporal utility function. For each of these models, we study the effects of an anticipated and unanticipated permanent decline in population growth as well as the consequences of a baby-boom/baby-bust scenario. Received April 17, 1996/Accepted December 10, 1996     

A Fiasco of Volcanic Proportions? Eyjafjallajökull and the Closure of European Airspace

Abstract

The unprecedented and recurrent closure of much of UK and northern European airspace from 14 April 2010, following the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, caused the cancellation of 108,000 flights, disrupted the travel plans of 10.5 million passengers, and cost the airline industry in excess of $1.7 billion in lost revenue. The airspace closures highlighted the inherent riskiness of aviation and destabilised dominant cultural discourses of the ‘superiority’ and capability of aviation technology. It also brought issues of risk acceptability and our socio‐economic reliance on air travel into sharp relief. This paper explores how the political and media framing of the response to the airspace closures as a human ‘policy fiasco’ served to obfuscate the inherent dangers of aviation and ‘get Europe flying’ again. Thus, this paper contends that this particular fiasco was ‘necessary’ in that it served to highlight the fragility of air travel and the vulnerabilities of the mobile citizen.     

Time Use on Trains: Media Use/Non-use and Complex Shifts in Activities

This study explores how travel time is used and how passengers conceptualise travel time in Danish intercity trains and intercity fast trains. The new contribution to the literature this study can offer is in the inclusion of all kinds of passengers in the different compartments to understand train travel as a dynamic act of moving with shifts in activities. A mixed-method approach is used with self-completed questionnaires, frequency observations, shadowing observations and interviews. The findings reveal that the train passengers’ acts on the move are framed by both macro- and microstructures. The passengers create a travel space in which they make dynamic shifts in different kinds of activities: media use, media non-use, social interactions and non-social interactions. Passengers expect the train operator to provide the travel space for different activities (including the possibility of mobile communication), and passengers can be frustrated and have anxiety if these needs are not fulfilled. The mobile phone is heavily used during train travel, and it appears that passengers are not typically annoyed by phone conversations during travel but may refer to previous experiences with annoyances.     

Older Women and Grief: A New Direction for Research

ABSTRACT

While the grief of older women is often assumed to result from recent losses associated with the aging process, the grief reaction of many older women may be influenced by much earlier losses which are unique to women. We propose the effect of these unique losses may complicate the grief process by intensifying both the emotional and physical reaction to recent losses. We encourage researchers to consider losses which are unique to women in the research on grieving in the later stages of life, so that we may understand the impact of such losses.     

Business Travel from the Traveller’s Perspective: Stress,Stimulation and Normalization

For growing numbers of businesspeople, managers and public officials, work involves travel. This study investigates what business travel means to travellers. What are their experiences of travel and what are the consequences of travel for their professional and personal lives? Qualitative interviews with frequent business travellers and corporate travel managers show that travel may be both stressful and stimulating. It may be associated with physical and psychological strain, increased workloads and difficulties in balancing work and private life, but also with enriching experiences, social and professional status and a cosmopolitan identity. It may also promote travellers’ professional careers. However, in some respects, an ongoing normalization of travel seems to have moderating effects on both stress and stimulation among travellers. This normalization occurs on three different levels: the societal, organizational and individual.     

Mobilising patients towards transnational healthcare markets – insights into the mobilising work of medical travel facilitators in Delhi

ABSTRACT

Medical travel facilitators play an important role in mobilising patients towards transnational healthcare markets. However, little is known about the actual mobilising work of medical travel facilitators located at destination sites, such as Delhi, India. The following ethnographic study suggests conceptualising medical travel facilitators as brokers who are productive of a mobility infrastructure. This allows categorising three mobilisation strategies: direct patient mobilisation, channel partner mobilisation and patient testimonial mobilisation. These strategies draw attention to practices that build trust over distance, the power of word-of-mouth and the importance of nurturing personal relationships that translate into transnational channels that direct people to particular destinations.     

I Want to Pretend I'm Eleven Years Younger: Subjective Age and Seniors' Motives for Vacation Travel

Subjective age–as distinct from chronologicalAge–is a relatively recent area of scientificinquiry within quality-of-life studies. Thepurpose of this empirical study was to seewhether the size of the gap between actual andself-perceived age could be predicted from aknowledge of a senior's reasons for wanting totravel on vacation, and his or her valuepriorities and sense of physical well-being. Asurvey of 356 Australian seniors ranging in agebetween 56 and 93 yielded data on theirsubjective age, measured in terms of (a) howold they felt; (b) the activities they wouldchoose to experience or enjoy while on avacation; and (c) the age they wished to betreated and recognized as–as well as theirpsychological motives for vacation travel,personal values, and self-rated health. Theresults of multivariate analyses indicate thatthe gap between actual age and subjective ageis a function of seniors' particular motivesfor travel and what they value in life, and,for certain aspects of subjective age, howhealthy they feel and their gender.     

Shadow mobilities: regulating migrant bicyclists in rural Ontario,Canada

This article explores bicycling practices among migrant farmworkers in rural southwestern Ontario, Canada. Migrant farmworkers are legally authorized to work in Canada for designated farm operations for up to eight months a year. Migrants lack access to cars in rural regions where motorized travel predominates. Consequently, bicycling is an essential yet inadequate and unsafe means of transportation for migrants, part of everyday geographies of what Tim Cresswell calls ‘shadow citizenship’. I use shadow citizenship to refer to the overlapping regulatory and geographical exclusions from mobility rights that create risk and stigma for migrants in Canadian communities. Migrants have become subjects of bike safety education in rural communities. I argue that bike safety regulates and orders migrants’ bicycling conduct rather than addressing the roots of unsafe bicycling conditions. Overall, the article complicates the conventional view of bicycling as a universally healthy and progressive travel mode. Racial and economic forms of exploitation as well as socio-spatial exclusions inflect actually existing bicycling geographies.     

延迟退休对职工效用最大化的影响——基于“S”型效用函数的分析

"十四五"规划提出"实施渐进式延迟法定退休年龄",如何使延迟退休政策被大众广泛接受是我国养老保险制度改革的重点问题。基于个人效用最大化原理,结合我国现行养老保险制度和前景价值函数中的"S"型效用函数,构建关于工资收入、养老保险缴纳费用、养老金财富和闲暇时间的综合效用模型,从性别、闲暇偏好、工资收入水平、利率、参保年龄、养老金个人缴费率六个方面确定个人效用最大化的退休年龄,并结合我国当前国情,对延迟退休政策提出针对性的建议。研究结果表明:不同退休年龄下的个人效用函数是关于退休年龄的"先大幅上升,后缓慢下降"曲线。男性参保职工于63岁退休获得效用最大值,而女性参保职工于60岁退休获得效用最大值,且二者最优退休年龄并不会随工资收入水平的改变而改变,工资收入水平只会对参保职工获得的效用绝对值产生影响,工资收入水平越高,参保职工获得效用值越大。此外,若闲暇偏好越低、利率越低、参保年龄越大、养老保险个人缴费率越低,则参保职工的最优退休年龄就越大。总体而言,只有考虑性别因素、给予延迟退休政策适当的弹性操作空间、改进养老保险计发办法、创造更好的老年就业环境,才能使延迟退休政策更好地推行。     

Introduction: Experience and Emotion in Northern Mobilities

Abstract

This introduction opens a special section on emotional and experiential aspects of travel in Northern and Siberian landscapes. Conventional representations of the Arctic as a frontier have foregrounded the difficulties and risks of travel. The collection of articles presented here serves to complement this perspective, exploring both negative and positive connotations of travel. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork in Greenland and Siberia, authors discuss the joy of movement along with moments of frustration and tension. Time and seasonality, companionship and imagination, and anticipated and unexpected encounters all bear particular significance in the Far North; simultaneously, they are key to a more nuanced understanding of the emotional qualities of travel in general.     

Happiness Inequality: How Much is Reasonable?

We compute the Gini indexes for income, happiness and various simulated utility levels. Due to decreasing marginal utility of income, happiness inequality should be lower than income inequality. We find that happiness inequality is about half that of income inequality. To compute the utility levels we need to assume values for a key parameter that can be interpreted as a measure of relative risk aversion. If this coefficient is above one, as many economists believe, then a large part of happiness inequality is not related to pecuniary dimensions of life.     

Flows and Pauses in the Urban Logistics Landscape: The Municipal Regulation of Shipping Container Mobilities

Abstract

The mobilities turn has demonstrated the importance of the social, cultural and political implications of travel for a variety of modes, though largely focused on people and vehicles, not freight. The transport of goods by shipping container has become the predominant means of freight transport since the 1960s, shaping places from port cities to rural distribution centers. This paper uses two North American case studies to explore temporary immobilities or pauses in the flows of shipping containers, showing that the problems containers pose to the places they pass through are not a function of the objects themselves, but their state of mobility. Pauses are important as a category of mobility because of the consequences of regulations that attempt to eliminate or redirect them.

     

Variability of Travel Time,Congestion, and the Cost of Travel

The variability of travel time modifies the rush hour traffic and the cost of commuting. The bottleneck model of road congestion with fixed peak-load demand is augmented of an additive random delay. When individuals have (α-β-γ) preferences, there exists a unique Nash equilibrium. The variability of travel time leads to departure rates that are spread more evenly over the rush hour than when travel times are deterministic. This equilibrium mechanism mitigates both congestion and the cost of unreliability. This implies that “single-traveler models,” which treat congestion as an exogenous phenomenon, overestimate the value of reliability for the rush hour. The application with the uniform or with the exponential distribution helps appraise the overestimation.     

Hidden information problems in the design of family allowances

We consider the optimal determination of family allowances in a model where some of the parents have higher ability to raise children than others. First-best policy gives both types of parents the same level of utility. If neither parental ability nor parental actions are fully observable, however, the policy maker has to take into account the incentive-compatibility constraint that more able parents should not find it profitable to mis-represent their true ability by investing less in their children, and having a lower number of children. The second-best policy induces more able parents to have the first-best number of children, and to invest in each child at the first-best level. Less able parents are induced to have fewer children than in first best, and will underinvest in each child. Whether the government should subsidize more the more able parents, or the less able ones, depends on the properties of the cost function. In second best, however, less able parents will end up with lower utility than more able parents whatever the cost function.All correspondence to Annalisa Luporini. The paper has benefitted from comments by three anonymous referees. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.