VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE AND EARNINGS EXPECTATIONS IN MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING

Multi-level marketing (MLM) firms recruit individuals into a business opportunity but are not required to disclose the earnings of past participants. Some MLMs voluntarily create income disclosures, which may serve both marketing and risk-management functions. We create an economic experiment to explore the impact of MLM income disclosure on consumer interest and expectations. Results suggest that disclosure does not significantly alter interest in the business opportunity but does reduce expectations, on average, when subjects are asked to estimate annual income in a lab environment. We discuss findings in the context of current regulatory policy. (JEL D18, D82, M38)     

Queering Menstruation: Trans and Non-Binary Identity and Body Politics

Menstruation has been historically known as a function of the female body that affects women. Trans and non-binary people face this biological function as a potential social signal of gender/sex identity. This research involves virtual ethnographic content analysis of menstruation discourse written by or informed by trans and non-binary people in addition to 19 interviews with trans and non-binary participants. The research yields analysis within three gendered/sexed social spheres that trans and non-binary bodies contest: (1) the gendering of menstrual products; (2) men’s restrooms; and (3) health care. The findings depict the variety of strategies trans and non-binary people employ when navigating and interpreting menstruation in relationship to their gender/sex identities.     

Legacy Volunteering: A Test of Two Theories of Intergenerational Transmission

Sociological theory suggests two reasons that volunteering runs in families. The first is that parents act as role models. The second is that parents who volunteer pass on the socioeconomic resources needed to do volunteer work. Panel data from two generations of women (N = 1,848) are analyzed to see how much influence family socioeconomic status and mother's volunteering have on daughter's volunteer careers. More highly educated women and women whose mothers volunteered donate more hours initially, but only family socioeconomic status increases volunteering over the life course.     

Sexualizing the Organization,Lesbianizing the Women: Gender,Sexuality and ‘Flat’ Organizations

This article draws upon research with men and women workers in ‘flat’ organizations, namely mixed-sex and all-women's worker co-operatives and collectives in the voluntary sector. It argues that the denial of sales, contracts and grants to women's co-operatives and collectives in particular, can be connected to discourses of sexuality generally and to the assumptions surrounding lesbianism and separatism in particular. Such discourses are often used to marginalize women workers and their co-operatives and collectives, irrespective of whether the women in such organizations are lesbians or not. It is argued that when women workers organize in ways which challenge male-dominated hierarchy, their marginalization necessarily takes a sexualized form because organizations, whether hierarchical or less/non-hierarchical, are not only gendered but are also sexualized. This analysis thus offers an important additional dimension to the view that the marginalization of co-operatives and collectives is due to their small size, lack of capital, location in certain sectors of the economy, or assumptions concerning the ‘alternative’ or ‘fringe’ nature of employment in such settings. This article also argues that sexuality can attach at the level of the organization, and not simply at the level of individual bodies or life-styles, an argument often unacknowledged both in the literature on lesbians in the workplace, and in the literature on co-operative businesses and less or non-hierarchical voluntary sector organizations generally.     

Probabilistic Connotations of Carcinogen Hazard Classifications: Analysis of Survey Data for Anchoring Effects

A study was undertaken to test for anchoring effects when numerical probabilities were elicited for carcinogen hazard designations. Subjects were asked to assign probabilities to both probable and possible. The sequence was randomly varied so that half of the subjects evaluated probable first and half evaluated possible first. While there was no consensus on the numerical probabilistic meanings assigned to these verbal expressions, in general, probable was assigned a higher probability than possible and there were specific values that were assigned frequently, indicating some consistency in interpretation. There appeared to be a fairly constant scaling factor between the probabilities assigned to the designations. Anchoring was manifested in two ways: a smaller difference between the designations when they were evaluated in sequence than when they were evaluated in isolation, and assignment of readily accessible "benchmark" values such as 50% and 75%.     

Examining the 100‐Year Floodplain as a Metric of Risk,Loss, and Household Adjustment

An understudied, but central aspect in understanding flood impacts is the way we conceptualize, identify, and delineate risk. The 100‐year floodplain is the longstanding metric in the United States for determining and acting upon the possibility of an area being inundated. This spatial delineation guides local planning and development decisions, triggers insurance purchases and other household adjustments, and serves as the fundamental indicator for whether it is safe to build a structure on a particular site. However, increasing evidence suggests that the 100‐year floodplain is neither accurate nor sufficient in guiding communities and household decisions to mitigate the adverse economic impacts of floods. In this perspective, we examine the effectiveness of the 100‐year floodplain as an appropriate marker of risk. First, we review existing studies on location and flood damage. Next, we apply these concepts to repetitive flood losses data in Harris County, Texas. We conclude that the apparent inability of the floodplain designation to effectively capture the likelihood of property damage and potential loss of human life in coastal areas has left potentially millions of property owners unaware of the flood risk and unprepared to mitigate their adverse impacts. Relying on traditional 100‐year floodplain boundaries, local decision makers are hampered in their ability to ensure community development occurs in a resilient manner. Finally, we set forth an agenda for future research to better capture the conditions associated with flood risk and account for the large percentage of damage outside the designated floodplain.     

A psychometric evaluation of a Dutch version of the Job Content Questionnaire and of a short direct questioning procedure

Using the demand-control-support perspective on job stress, a Dutch translation of an adapted version of the Job Content Questionnaire (AJCQ) was administered to a large population ( N = 3638) of Flemish workers in a variety of jobs, together with the General Health Questionnaire, and a negative affectivity scale. Overall, the AJCQ was shown to be a solid measurement instrument as indicated by several estimated reliability indices and validity of the subscales. A factor analysis largely reproduced the a priori structure of the AJCQ. A short 10-item direct questioning procedure was constructed to measure the 10 subscales of the AJCQ and the results of this procedure were compared with the AJCQ in a subsample ( N = 660). The correlations with six criterion variables showed that single questions were equally predictive than the much longer version of the AJCQ.