ARE AUTOMOBILE SAFETY REGULATIONS WORTH THE PRICE: EVIDENCE FROM USED CAR MARKETS

The value consumers place on automobile safety regulations can be determined by examining the instantaneous effects changes in these regulations have on used vehicle prices. If consumers value safety regulations more than their cost, used vehicle prices decrease in response to a change in safety regulations. If consumers place at least some value on the safety induced by safety regulations, a change in emission control regulations will have a greater positive impact on used automobile prices than a change in safety regulations. Empirical results strongly support the latter case and, surprisingly, offer some support for the former case. (JEL L51, L62)     

PAYOFF DOMINANCE VS. COGNITIVE TRANSPARENCY IN DECISION MAKING

This paper reports on three laboratory experiments designed to investigate the roles of decision costs and rewards on the accuracy of economic decisions. The experimental vehicle is a purchase decision employing the Becker-DeGroot-Marshak (BDM) mechanism. The first experiment verifies the incentive-compatibility of the BDM in a pure induced-value setting; the second tests its performance under different information regimes and payoff schedules; the third addresses the role of feedback information. Steep payoff schedules are found to be necessary to optimizing behavior only in cases where subjects must search out an optimal strategy rather than being able to deduce it from information provided. (JEL C91, D83)     

AN OBJECTIVE MEASURE OF SEARCH VERSUS EXPERIENCE GOODS

This paper proposes the use of product price as an empirically pliable measure of the expected benefits to consumers of acquiring information about product and vendor performance prior to purchase. As the purchase price of an item increases, so does the cost of making a disappointing purchase and, accordingly, the expected benefit from acquiring prepurchase information, ceteris paribus. A continuous price variable (a proxy for the cost of making a disappointing purchase) generates results similar to those obtained by Nelson [1970; 1974] for search versus experience goods, but can be applied to a broader range of goods and services.     

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND VEHICLE SAFETY: THE IMPACT OF GASOLINE TAXES

Policies to reduce carbon emissions by vehicles, such as fuel economy standards and gasoline taxes, have impacts on vehicle weight and thus on safety. This paper develops a model that separately identifies the impact of vehicle weight on mortality and selection effects that impact accident propensity. The main results are that (1) the safety externalities associated with heavy vehicles are greater than the environmental ones; (2) under fuel economy standards, vehicle weights have recently decreased with little likely effect on accident deaths; and (3) similar environmental benefits could be combined with substantial reductions in deaths by implementing higher gasoline taxes. (JEL H23, D62)     

Demand for gambling: development and assessment of a gambling purchase task

Self-report purchase tasks are a novel approach examining the reinforcing value of addictive behaviour relative to increasing monetary costs required to access the addictive behaviour (i.e. demand). These measures reveal a positive relationship between the indices of demand and addiction problem severity and can elucidate factors associated with motivation for substance use. Gambling is an addictive behaviour that has not been examined using this paradigm. This study seeks to adapt and examine the purchase task for gambling behaviour. A gambling purchase task was devised that asked individuals how often per month they would gamble at various cover charges. Participants were 73 adults from the community with either gambling disorder (n = 28) or alcohol use disorder (n = 24) or were a healthy control (n = 21). Both the alcohol and gambling purchase tasks were administered. Results demonstrate discriminant validity of the gambling purchase task, as individuals with gambling disorder have significantly greater demand for accessing gambling than other groups. The alcohol purchase task also evidenced discriminant validity in that individuals with alcohol use disorder have significantly greater demand for alcohol than other groups. These findings support the use of the gambling purchase task to assess the demand for gambling.     

Walking the Tightrope: Developing a Systems Approach to Balance Safety and Mobility for an Aging Society

In an aging population, safety and mobility are often viewed as being in conflict, when in fact they are two values that must be reflected equally in transportation policy. The challenge for policy makers and for society is to emphasize and optimize both. To achieve this, a comprehensive systems approach to driver health, personal decision-making and planning, community and transportation systems construction, vehicle design, and licensing regulations is needed. Such an approach requires crafting policies based on conceptualizing the issue as a continuum of resources facilitating safety and mobility regardless of driving status. The discussion that follows reviews components of the issue and suggestions for developing a comprehensive approach.     

Walking the tightrope: developing a systems approach to balance safety and mobility for an aging society

In an aging population, safety and mobility are often viewed as being in conflict, when in fact they are two values that must be reflected equally in transportation policy. The challenge for policy makers and for society is to emphasize and optimize both. To achieve this, a comprehensive systems approach to driver health, personal decision-making and planning, community and transportation systems construction, vehicle design, and licensing regulations is needed. Such an approach requires crafting policies based on conceptualizing the issue as a continuum of resources facilitating safety and mobility regardless of driving status. The discussion that follows reviews components of the issue and suggestions for developing a comprehensive approach.     

MARRIAGE MARKET MATCHING AND CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION IN CHINA

Visible expenditures which convey higher socioeconomic status may help individuals differentiate themselves in the marriage market when there is competition for partners and imperfect information. We examine a unique dataset of automobile purchasers in China to investigate the extent to which skewed sex ratios influence expenditure decisions for this highly visible commodity. Using a triple difference approach, we show that unmarried male consumers who face an unfavorable sex ratio purchase more expensive, luxury vehicles than their married peers. Lower income borrowers and those residing in regions with the worst sex ratios exhibit the largest relative degree of conspicuous consumption. In addition to the direct cost of consumption signaling, we demonstrate that this behavior generates negative externalities in the form of lower average fuel economy and higher average vehicle weight. As it has worsened sex ratios, status competition and the associated negative repercussions we identify represent unintended consequences of China's one child policy. (JEL O12, E21, J12)     

Effects on high school students of teaching a cross-age alcohol prevention program

This study examined the impact on high school students who taught elementary students MADD's Protecting You/Protecting Me (PY/PM), an alcohol use prevention and vehicle safety program. High school students (N = 188) enrolled in a peer helping course completed surveys before and after teaching PY/PM, and a comparison group of peer helper students (N = 141) from matched schools completed surveys at the same times. Results indicated that, relative to the comparison group, those exposed to PY/PM gained knowledge of alcohol's effects, increased their perceptions of the risks of high levels of alcohol use, gained teaching skills, and showed less frequent episodes of binge drinking. No effects were found for attitudes toward future drinking, perceptions of the risk of low levels of alcohol use, alcohol use, or vehicle safety. This cross-age prevention program may be successful in changing high school students' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding high levels, but not low levels, of alcohol use.     

‘Car Talk’: automobility and Chinese international students in Michigan

The apparent conspicuous consumption of luxury vehicles by Chinese international students attending a public Michigan University provides an opportunity to examine the convergence of different ideas about automobility. Upwardly mobile Chinese families send their children to Michigan, a state with a tradition of auto-production, for educational opportunities not available in China. The resulting ‘car talk’ of local residents about Chinese students and their cars speaks to broader anxieties about Michigan’s shifting relationship to the global economy. However, the paper focuses on the meanings of auto-owning created by Chinese students who make decisions about the purchase and use of their autos within a social world oriented primarily to other Chinese students and societal ideas about auto-owning circulating among friends, family and society in China. For Chinese students, car owning encompasses meanings of status, safety and sociability that are created within the context of study abroad.     

The Rise of Supermarkets in Africa: Implications for Agrifood Systems and the Rural Poor

The rise of supermarkets in Africa since the mid‐1990s is transforming the food retail sector. Supermarkets have spread fast in Southern and Eastern Africa, already proliferating beyond middle‐class big‐city markets into smaller towns and poorer areas. Supplying supermarkets presents both potentially large opportunities and big challenges for producers. Supermarkets' procurement systems involve purchase consolidation, a shift to specialised wholesalers, and tough quality and safety standards. To meet these requirements, producers have to make investments and adopt new practices. This is hardest for small producers, who risk exclusion from dynamic urban markets increasingly dominated by supermarkets. There is thus an urgent need for development programmes and policies to assist them in adopting the new practices that these procurement systems demand.     

Purchase deadline as a moderator of the effects of price uncertainty on search duration

A longstanding theoretical tenet in the economic psychology literature is that consumers respond to greater price uncertainty by increasing search. The generality of this tenet was investigated in the context of a moderating variable, purchase deadline. It was hypothesized that the effect of increased price uncertainty, as reflected by both cross-sectional price variability and longitudinal price variability, was moderated by temporal proximity to a purchase deadline. The hypothesis was tested by analyzing purchase data from a sample of consumers with known purchase deadlines searching for rental trucks. The results indicated that search increased in response to greater price uncertainty for distant deadlines but decreased in response to greater price uncertainty for proximal deadlines.     

Relationship management through social media influencers: Effects of followers’ awareness of paid endorsement

This study aimed to examine the effects of awareness of paid endorsements by social media influencers on followers’ cognitive persuasion knowledge (ad recognition), attitudinal persuasion knowledge (relationships with the influencer), and behavioral intentions, specifically eWOM intention and purchase intention. Employing an online survey (N = 269), this study found that awareness of paid endorsement relates to ad recognition, which is correlated with purchase and eWOM intentions. We also found that awareness of paid endorsement is correlated with influencer-follower relationship, which is associated with purchase and eWOM intentions. However, ad recognition does not affect influencer-follower relationship. Implications for public relations theory, practice, and policy are discussed.     

Standards for Development: Food Safety and Sustainability in Wal‐Mart's Honduran Produce Supply Chains

Public‐private partnerships between supermarket retailers and development agencies help small‐scale producers reach growing domestic markets in developing countries. Drawing on qualitative data that focuses on relationships between producers, development agencies, and Wal‐Mart‐owned supermarkets in Honduras, the research presented here demonstrates how, by introducing food safety standards to development agencies' outreach efforts, but without necessarily certifying producers or offering a price premium, Wal‐Mart uses these standards to simultaneously differentiate production practices by promoting quality, while maintaining a standardized market. As a result, the responsibility and costs for incentivizing growers to change their practices is shifted to nongovernmental organizations. Therefore, although an extensive body of literature describes standards and third‐party certification systems as the means for corporations to control production practices, this research indicates that public‐private partnerships are a new vehicle by which corporations can influence agricultural production practices. In addition, this article argues that the inclusion of food safety standards in development projects leads to the conflation of food safety and sustainability, without adequately interrogating which agroecological processes food safety standards include and exclude. Therefore, retailers' private food safety standards dominate how sustainability is perceived and practiced in the development context.     

Corporate Social Responsibility Practices,Corporate Identity,and Purchase Intention: A Dual-Process Model

The relationships among corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, corporate identity, and purchase intention were evaluated for 4 corporations: Microsoft, Nike, Philip Morris, and Wendy's. Discretionary CSR practices and moral/ethical CSR practices emerged as significant predictors of the corporate social values dimension of identity. Relational CSR practices, however, contributed mainly to the expertise dimension of corporate identity. Also, familiarity with CSR practices of a corporation had a significant effect on corporate identity, which in turn affected purchase intention. For 2 of the 4 companies, Nike and Wendy's, both corporate expertise and corporate social values were significant predictors of purchase intention. For Microsoft, only the expertise dimension was predictive of purchase intention, whereas for Philip Morris, only the corporate social values dimension was a significant predictor of purchase intention. The results are interpreted within a dual-process model of corporate identity.     

OFFSETTING BEHAVIOR EFFECTS OF THE CORPORATE AVERAGE FUEL ECONOMY STANDARDS

Research has concluded that regulatory attempts to improve fuel economy, such as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, lower the average weight of an automobile. Ceteris paribus , this reduction in weight is detrimental to the overall level of vehicle safety. However, this study attempts to explicitly measure possible behavioral responses on the part of drivers that could offset some of the loss in safety. The results indicate that CAFE, although increasing the vulnerability rate by approximately 20%, has reduced the accident rate by 26%. The net effect on the fatality rate is a decrease of approximately 6%.     

移动消费平台对大学生消费意愿的影响

移动消费平台即在移动互联网购买商品或服务并实现支付的平台的总称,具有良好的发展前景,大学生消费群体是移动消费平台发展不可忽视的关键群体。通过网络问卷调查发现,大学生生活费水平与其在移动消费平台消费意愿无相关,移动消费平台的便捷性、安全性、信息展示度、服务质量与大学生消费意愿显著正相关,移动消费平台的消费成本与大学生消费意愿显著负相关,消费平台开发大学生垂直服务具有必要性。     

The compelling urge to misbehave: Do impulse purchases instigate unethical consumer behavior?

The present research explores the relationship between impulse buying and unethical consumer behavior. This work is based on the surprising results of an unrelated study, during which we observed that participants shopping for impulse products were more likely to cheat to obtain a more expensive product than participants shopping for regular products. Based on these findings and building on previous research on the relationship between impulsiveness and delinquency, three studies were set up to test the impact of impulse buying on different forms of unethical consumer behavior. The results confirmed that consumers making an impulse purchase were more likely to behave unethically than consumers making a regular purchase. These findings illustrate there is a dark side to impulse buying for retailers.     

山区公路爬坡车道的设置条件与方法研究

山区公路长大纵坡路段是交通事故多发段,目前多集中于长大下坡的研究,却忽略了纵坡上坡路段行车安全研究。对于长大纵坡上坡路段,设置爬坡车道是降低事故率的有效途径之一,通过对上坡路段车辆运行现状分析,并参考国内外有关爬坡车道的研究成果,提出山区公路爬坡车道的设置条件和方法。