Risk Compensation or Risk Reduction? Seatbelts,State Laws,and Traffic Fatalities*

Objective. The risk compensation hypothesis suggests that drivers enjoying greater safety will drive more recklessly and thereby impose greater risks on nonoccupants. We provide a test of the risk compensation hypothesis in the context of state seatbelt laws and belt use rates. Methods. Fixed‐effects models with policy and demographic variables are estimated using annual state data from 1985 to 2002 to test the effect of seatbelt laws and seatbelt use rates on logged fatality rates for occupants, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and all nonoccupants in separate models. Results. Contrary to the risk compensation hypothesis, the results indicate that both occupants and nonoccupants enjoy greater safety due to state mandatory use laws and increased safety belt use rates. Conclusion. Overall, seatbelt laws and the higher belt use these laws induce do not increase nonoccupant risk exposure. If anything, these laws and the accompanying increase in belt use result in safer driving behavior.     

The Peltzman hypothesis revisited: An isolated evaluation of offsetting driver behavior

Nearly all of the previous investigations of driver behavior under varying safety conditions have only been able to evaluate the issue of offsetting driver behavior indirectly. Some studies note that engineering estimates of the aggregate improvements of automobile safety enhancements are substantively larger than economic estimates of the same effects. Others have found that non-occupants such as motorcyclists and pedestrians are under greater risk of incurring accidents when automobiles are made safer. Although these observations are consistent with the hypothesis that drivers respond to safety enhancements by driving less safely (having been instilled with a sense of greater protection provided by the safety improvements), they do not provide a direct evaluation of the relationship between driving environment and driver behavior. Thus, factors other than offsetting behavior may be generating these observed results. A few studies have tested the offsetting behavior hypothesis more directly, but only under highly specific safety conditions and narrow measures of driver behavior. This article undertakes an isolated analysis of driver behavior under varying safety conditions, with data which allows for more general changes to safety conditions and broader measures of driver behavior. Estimates obtained from the evaluation of individual accident reports lend support to the offsetting behavior hypothesis and imply that both aggressive behavior and nonaggressive (inattentive) driving behavior are likely to increase as the driving environment becomes safer.     

Satisfaction and preferences in a legality social dilemma: Does corporate social responsibility impact consumers’ behaviour?

We investigate players’ preferences in a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma by comparing results from satisfaction-based and a choice-based approach by means of a laboratory experiment. The experimental design tests the effects of the legality rating frame on consumers’ choice between products from producers labeled by the legality rating and products by unlabeled producers. Both approaches provide strong evidence of preference heterogeneity, with players who cooperate above median being less affected in their choice by monetary payoffs vis-à-vis the public good component. The empirical findings support the hypothesis of our theoretical model that (part of the) players have, in addition to the standard self-interest component, an other-regarding preference argument that is further satisfied in the legality frame plus conformity design.A policy suggestion stemming from our experiment is based on the fact that corporate social responsibility legality frames and culture have a significant effect on an important portion of consumers. These consumers reveal that the often-declared willingness to pay for socially, environmentally and legally responsible features of products is confirmed by actual purchases of more expensive responsible products. Governments should therefore promote the creation of legality rating schemes with well-defined pre-established rules such as in the Italian case.     

Older Adults’ Expectations about Mortality,Driving Life and Years Left without Driving

ABSTRACT

People are living and driving longer than ever before, with little preparation for transitioning to being non-drivers. We investigated driving expectations among drivers age 65 and older, including sociodemographic and driving context predictors. Cross-sectional data from 349 older drivers were explored to determine variation in how many years they expected to continue driving. General linear models examined predictors of both expectations. In this predominantly Black/African American sample, 76% of older drivers (mean age = 73 ± 5.7 years) expected a non-driving future, forecasting living an average of 5.75 ± 7.29 years after driving cessation. Regression models on years left of driving life and years left to live post-driving cessation predicted nearly half of the variance in older drivers’ expectations with five significant predictors: income, current age, age expected to live to, self-limiting driving to nearby places and difficulty, visualizing being a non-driver. Many older drivers expect to stop driving before end of life.     

The Effects of Housing Costs on Nursing Home Diversion

Abstract

This article examines the effect of the housing market on nursing home diversion and/or transition. Prior evaluations of federally funded diversion/transition efforts indicate that lack of housing may be a significant impediment to diversion policy efforts. We test this charge by examining the transition rates in all 351 municipalities in Massachusetts, using a data set of over 15,000 individuals seeking to remain or transition home between 2010 and 2014 through Massachusetts' Options Counseling program and their relation to key indicators of housing quality and affordability, including housing burden, crowding, and incomplete kitchen and plumbing facilities. We also control for demographic indicators identified in previous findings, which are age, level of frailty, and whether seniors live alone. We do not find a significant relationship between housing affordability or quality and successful nursing home diversion. This fact suggests that consumers are not as sensitive to housing costs and conditions as previously expected. Future research should continue to investigate the economic and social conditions behind this fact in the context of home value appreciation, incidence of home ownership, and the ability of seniors to offset nursing home costs through accumulated home equity.     

Does product complexity matter for competition in experimental retail markets?

We describe a first experiment on whether product complexity affects competition and consumers in retail markets. We are unable to detect a significant effect of product complexity on prices, except insofar as the demand elasticity for complex products is higher. However, there is qualified evidence that complex products have the potential to induce consumers to buy more than they would otherwise. In this sense, consumer exploitability in quantities cannot be ruled out. We also find evidence for shaping effects: consumers’ preferences are shaped by past experience with prices, and firms may in principle exploit this to sell more.     

The Value of Safety as Revealed in the Swedish Car Market: An Application of the Hedonic Pricing Approach

In this article the hedonic regression technique is used to estimate the value of traffic safety, using information from the Swedish market for automobiles. The results from the study show that the market price of an automobile is negatively correlated with its inherent risk level, i.e. Swedish car consumers pay a safety premium for safer cars. In comparison to previous Swedish stated-preference studies, this study reveals a lower willingness to pay for additional car safety, which might be a result of the interaction between government interventions and individual self-insurance and self-protection.JEL Classification: C51, D61, J28     

Macroeconomic and financing determinants of out of pocket payments in health care: Evidence from selected OECD countries

In this paper, we examine the impact of macroeconomic, as well public and private health insurance financing (PHI) factors on out of pocket (OOP) healthcare expenditures, by using fixed/random effects and dynamic panel data methodology to a dataset of 26 EU and OECD countries for a period lasting from 1995 to 2013. The existing empirical literature has focused on testing the hypothesis that several macroeconomic and health financing determinants have an effect on OOP healthcare expenditures. Nevertheless, the related articles have not well tested the hypothesis concerning the potential impact of PHI financing on OOP spending. We find that public and PHI financing have a significant countervailing effect on OOP spending. Moreover, we show that unemployment rate has a significant positive impact on OOP expenditures. Sensitivity tests with variation of specifications and samples show that our findings are robust. We argue that policy-makers should give serious consideration to PHI institution; our results indicate that there is an inverse effect on OOP spending. We suggest that our examined countries have to provide financial risk protection to their citizens against OOP payments, rather than only attending health budgetary retrenchments in order to adjust public finances.     

公民社会消费文化的培育与食品消费安全

当前,我国食品消费安全保障措施缺失,除了经营者不法经营与监管者监管不力外,未充分发挥消费者对经营者的制衡也是其重要原因。我国传统消费文化所蕴涵的某些消费审美、消费心理等消极因素极易诱发不安全食品的生产和供给,公民社会的消费文化的缺失是食品安全隐患产生的重要诱因。食品安全保障体系的构建,应加强公民社会的消费文化的培育,消费者应树立为自己的食品消费安全承担责任的意识,培养强烈的主体意识和良好的参与意识,增强防范不安全食品的忧患意识,营造公民社会的消费文化氛围,筑牢消费者自身安全防线,推动食品消费安全。     

Consumer Direction in Community-Based Long-Term Care

Abstract

Recently, a growing number of community-based long term care programs have been incorporating a concept of consumer direction (CD). Consumer Direction allows long-term care consumers to take more active roles in their care management, by hiring, training, supervising, and firing care providers. A limited number of existing studies show that CD consumers indeed feel they have more choice and control over their care compared to those under the traditional model. However, other studies show problematic working conditions for care providers under CD. Questions also remain unanswered regarding how CD effects different important stakeholders, including family caregivers, formal paid caregivers, and governments. More research, administrative, and practice efforts are needed to ensure CD can benefit all sectors of communities.     

The Price Effects of Family Caps on Fertility Decisions of Poor Women

ABSTRACT

Family Caps have been a popular welfare reform policy designed to discourage women on welfare from bearing additional children. It has been thought that the principal mechanism through which a Cap achieves its objective of lower birth rates is the financial pressure placed on women by the denial of cash benefits. Our study uses instrumental variables Probit modeling to directly measure the contribution that price makes to Cap impact on births. We reexamine data from the New Jersey Family Development Program (n = 8,393) experiment and find that only a very small percentage (about 2.5%) of the overall Family Cap effect reported in earlier studies can be attributed to price. Moreover, the price effect holds only for short-term Black welfare recipients. We speculate that much of the unexplained Family Cap treatment effect stems from a message of social pressure and disapproval toward welfare receipt and childbearing on welfare. We offer a possible direction for future research which would directly measure the social disapproval component.     

Psychosocial factors influencing aggressive driving among commercial and private automobile drivers in Lagos metropolis

Using 300 purposively selected private and commercial automobile drivers in Lagos, Nigeria as participants, and with a combination of FGD, interview and questionnaire, the study investigated the influence of psychosocial factors such as (locus of control, age, years of driving experience, marital status and educational status) on aggressive behavior among the drivers based on the frustration – aggression hypothesis. Given the chaotic traffic situation in Lagos, premise was that the aggressive instincts in human beings would be more pronounced among the drivers thereby negatively affecting their behavior. Result showed that commercial drivers were significantly higher on aggressive driving behavior. Younger drivers were more aggressive than older ones. Aggressiveness was attributed to other factors in the environment other than the drivers themselves. The need for training of drivers in proper and acceptable way of driving within their cultural context was emphasized.     

The Effect of Legal Rules on the Value of Economic and Non-Economic Damages and the Decision to File

This study focuses on the economic consequences of tort reform. In particular, we address two issues. First, we test the relationship between tort reforms and claim severity for an automobile liability incident while controlling for a variety of cost drivers including the presence of no-fault rules, and the impact of a plaintiff's attorney. In addition to examining the effect of tort reforms on total claim severity, we also test their effect on economic and non-economic damages separately. Second, we test the proposition that tort reforms, by reducing the damages available at trial, have reduced the likelihood that an injured party will seek legal remedy. Both aspects of this study are examined with individual data from a large sample of insurance claims from 61 insurers. Our results suggest that many of the reforms have had a statistically significantly effect on total damages, non-economic damages and economic damages. Caps on non-economic damages, collateral source rule reforms, and minor reforms impacting prejudgment interest, frivolous suits, and provisions for periodic payments are negatively related to the value of non-economic claims, while joint and several reform is positively related to the value of non-economic claims. We find collateral source rule reforms and minor reforms are negatively related to the value of economic claims. We find that caps on non-economic damages and minor reforms are associated with a decreased probability to file. We do not find any evidence that joint and several or collateral source rule reform is associated with the decision to file.     

The Effects of Mandatory Seat Belt Laws on Motor Vehicle Fatalities in the United States

Objective . This article assesses the effectiveness of mandated seat belt usage. The theory of offsetting behavior asserts that when drivers feel safer, they compensate by driving less cautiously. As a consequence, any lifesaving effects from mandated safety devices such as seat belts could be significantly diminished or entirely offset. Methods . This article uses regression analysis and two years (1988 and 1997) of state-level data to test for the presence of offsetting behavior by estimating models explaining total and nonoccupant motor vehicle deaths. In addition to accounting for several factors generally acknowledged as being determinants of highway deaths, the models control for the impact of primary and secondary seat belt laws. Results . The findings suggest the existence of offsetting behavior by drivers of motor vehicles. Conclusions . We need to recognize the probability of such compensatory behavior and direct our efforts at ways of ameliorating the adverse effects.     

Hypothesis Testing of CNA Perceptions of Organizational Culture in Long Term Care

This commentary for the special issue on research that went wrong describes a study that explored factors that contribute to variability within Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) on organizational safety culture. We know from previous research that CNAs provide most direct care in nursing homes and that direct care workers often experience agency culture differently from agency management (Wolf et al., 2014). We were looking for factors that nursing homes could alter to improve the culture for CNAs, and thus, residents. We conducted a secondary analysis of data collected via a multi-component paper survey of CNAs employed in long term care. We used results from the Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture and primary shift, type of unit, and years as a CNA to identify modifiable characteristics that would explain variability in the perceptions of patient safety culture. The final sample included n = 106 from three nursing homes. Dimension scores were compared using bivariate tests appropriate to the scale and ordinal logistic regression. Despite support in the literature for the hypothesis, we found few significant differences on the total scale within groups. Differences in perceptions have implications for quality of care and the experiences of residents within nursing homes.     

Are people overoptimistic about the effects of heavy drinking?

We test whether heavy or binge drinkers are overly optimistic about probabilities of adverse consequences from these activities or are relatively accurate about these probabilities. Using data from a survey in eight cities, we evaluate the relationship between subjective beliefs and drinking. We assess accuracy of beliefs about several outcomes of heavy/binge drinking: reduced longevity, liver disease onset, link between alcohol consumption and Driving While Intoxicated (DWI), probability of an accident after drinking, accuracy of beliefs about encountering intoxicated drivers on the road, and legal consequences of DWI—ranging from being stopped to receiving fines and jail terms. Overall, there is no empirical support for the optimism bias hypothesis. We do find that persons consuming a lot of alcohol tend to be more overconfident about their driving abilities and ability to handle alcohol. However, such overconfidence does not translate into over-optimism about consequences of high levels of alcohol consumption.     

The relationships between organisational networking,quality of life,and community integration among people with mental illnesses in South Korea: a multi-level analysis

This study investigated the relationships between organisational networking and the outcomes of people with mental illnesses (MI) and the extent to which the relationships are mediated by availability of services. Two levels of data were collected: organisational-level data from 22 community-based mental health service agencies and consumer-level data from 431 consumers. A multi-level analysis found that organisational networking increased the availability of services. However, service availability was not found to have a mediating effect on the relationship between organisational networking and client outcomes. Service coordination in the same mental health sector should be addressed.     

Guinea Pigs on the payroll: The ethics of paying research subjects

Regulatory bodies and scholars have traditionally conceptualized biomedical research on healthy subjects in the same way as research on patients. Guidelines and regulations have portrayed payment to a healthy subject as a potential constraint, or “undue influence,”; on the subject's free consent. In this essay we suggest an alternative way of conceptualizing research on healthy subjects, which sees the basic issue not as one of undue influence but as one of justice. Healthy subjects generally enroll in research protocols not for humanitarian reasons but for the money they will receive. Many of these protocols are conducted by profit‐driven corporations. Yet current guidelines and regulations prohibit subjects from negotiating for fair payment for the risks, discomforts and inconveniences they undergo, and IRBs are not staffed adequately to monitor the subject's safety. We propose to remedy the situation by regulating payment to healthy subjects as a labor relation.     

Central Ethical Dilemmas in Research Involving Children

We are obligated to protect individual child subjects of research, yet it is also necessary to investigate the safety and efficacy of medical treatments that benefit children as a class. The federal regulations on research with children have provided ethical guidance since 1983, but divergent interpretations persist. Since varying interpretations can lead to confusion and abuses, efforts are underway to clarify the criteria. Clarity is needed to protect individual child subjects from harm while enabling ethical research to proceed. The "pediatric rule" and the "pediatric exclusivity" incentive are important policy initiatives for promoting sound research on the medical treatment of children.     

Acoustic Cocooning

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s, car manufacturers increasingly underline their cars' interior tranquility. Both this acoustic condition and the availability of car audio sets enable drivers to transform their car into a highly personal, controlled and relaxing sonic bubble.

Yet how could the car, once a noisy contraction, evolve into such a space for acoustic cocooning? This article studies the introduction of car radio and interior car sound design in Europe between the 1920s and the 1990s. The car radio's meaning shifted from an artifact that brought companionship to lonely drivers, to an instrument that helped drivers to mentally block out their fellows on the road. At the same time, listening to engine sounds changed from a drivers' skill to a practice drivers had to de-learn. Moreover, car sound construction shifted from reducing noise to creating target sounds for specific consumer groups.

This article employs three forms of cultural analysis to understand these shifts: an “archeology of corporate culturology,” the symbolism of sound, and Gerhard schulze's theory on the experience society. Finally, by analyzing the rise of acoustic cocooning in the car, it aims to contribute to the study of “techno-cocooning”: the use of technology for creating sensory privacy.