How Sunday, price, and social norms influence donation behaviour

We describe a natural field experiment investigating donation behaviour. The setting was an art gallery where donations could be deposited into a transparent box in the foyer. Two aspects of the donation environment were manipulated: signs on the donation box and the initial contents of the box. We used three sign treatments: a control with no sign, a sign that thanked donors, and a sign that indicated donations would be matched. We used two initial contents treatments: one with relatively little money ($50) and one with four times as much. The average donation per donor was significantly larger in the $200 treatments but this was offset by a decrease in the propensity to donate. In the matching treatments donations were significantly larger both at the per donor and per visitor level. A control variable turned out to have the largest influence on donation behaviour: the day of the week. The average donation per visitor was 51% higher on Sundays, when compared to every other day of the week.     

Gender and social conformity: Do men and women respond differently to social pressure to vote?

In this paper, we re-analyze data from a large-scale field experiment (N = 344,084) on voter turnout in order to determine whether men and women respond differently to social pressure aimed at voter mobilization. To date, there have been mixed results regarding the interaction between a person’s gender and receptivity to social influence. On the whole, our analyses confirm prior findings that social pressure increases voter turnout but uncover little to no evidence of gender differences in receptivity to social pressure cues in the context of political participation.     

Governing Deviance in Public Space through Mayoral Orders: Fields Mismatch and Metropolitan Turbulence

This article addresses the issue of policy change and its consequences on the organizational field and institutional context, looking at the role of an instrument transfer process. We adopt a political sociology approach to policy instruments to account for the impact that the introduction of a securitarian instrument, the mayoral order, had on the implementation process of a social policy. Through a genealogy of the instrument we identify a constitutive, normative and cognitive dimension. Our aim is to explain the interaction between these institutional dimensions, the re‐definition of the organizational field of the policy, and the dynamics of metropolitan politics. Following a synthesis of the policy process and the institutional arrangements where the policy is implemented, we show how the instrument transfer triggered a division within the organizational field, and the rise of institutional tensions amongst local authorities. In the conclusion, we identify the institutional dimensions of the instruments and the policy implementation scale as elements that are to interact with public‐private relationships and institutional arrangements, and that have an impact on implementation process and policy outcome.     

An examination of student and provider perceptions of voluntary sector social work placements in Northern Ireland

Practice based learning in Northern Ireland is a core element of social work education and comprising 50% of the degree programme for undergraduate and postgraduate students. This article presents evidence about the perceptions of practice learning from voluntary sector/non-government organisation (NGO) placement providers and final year social work students on social work degree programmes in Northern Ireland in 2011. It draws on data from 121 respondents from189 final year students and focus group interviews with voluntary sector providers offering 16% (85) of the total placements available to students. The agencies who participated in the research study provide a total of 55 PLOs to social work students, and are therefore fairly representative in terms of voluntary sector (NGO) provision. The article locates these data in the context of practice learning pedagogy and the changes introduced by the Regional Strategy for Practice Learning Provision in Northern Ireland 2010–2015. Several themes emerged including; induction, support and guidance, practice educator/student relationship, professional identity and confidence in risk assessment and decision-making. Social work educators, placement providers and employers must be cognisant of newly qualified social workers’ needs in terms of consolidating knowledge within the formative stages of their professional development.     

循环式国家：转型中国的符号式劳动治理机制探析

抗争政治与国家建设之间的关系是社会运动研究中的一个经典问题。本文通过对一组国有企业退休工人为维护退休金权益所展开的十年抗争进行过程事件分析,来勾勒国家在劳动治理过程中逐步形成的官僚场域。这个官僚场域由三个相互交叉的圈子所构成：信访办圈子、信访办与法院之间的圈子、中央与地方之间的圈子。这些交叉的圈子所构成的国家场域一方面通过对抗争的制度化循环而拉长了工人的斗争时间,分散了抗争的空间,从而有效遏止了抗争的激进化,另一方面则通过抗争工人与国家代理人之间的叙事化互动促进了国家资本的激活与流通,从而实现了对抗争者的象征性支配。     

凌纯声先生的赫哲族田野调查--从现代中国实地调查研究的学术背景谈起

凌纯声先生1930年的赫哲族田野调查是中国民族学和人类学界一次科学的实地调查,具有开创性意义.本文从现代中国提倡和注重实地调查研究的学术背景来审视这次田野调查.上世纪20年代后,中国人文社会科学逐渐从吸收传播"西学"向研究中国历史、社会、民族文化转变,朝着"本土化"的方向努力,从而形成了提倡实地调查研究的学术风气,而且中国学者进行了多次学术实践.这次田野调查与那个时代的学术背景密切相关,并且体现出其学术背景.本文还论述了蔡元培先生与这次田野调查的密切关系.     

Relevance of Risk Predictions Derived from a Chronic Species Sensitivity Distribution with Cadmium to Aquatic Populations and Ecosystems

Criteria to protect aquatic life are intended to protect diverse ecosystems, but in practice are usually developed from compilations of single‐species toxicity tests using standard test organisms that were tested in laboratory environments. Species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) developed from these compilations are extrapolated to set aquatic ecosystem criteria. The protectiveness of the approach was critically reviewed with a chronic SSD for cadmium comprising 27 species within 21 genera. Within the data set, one genus had lower cadmium effects concentrations than the SSD fifth percentile‐based criterion, so in theory this genus, the amphipod Hyalella, could be lost or at least allowed some level of harm by this criteria approach. However, population matrix modeling projected only slightly increased extinction risks for a temperate Hyalella population under scenarios similar to the SSD fifth percentile criterion. The criterion value was further compared to cadmium effects concentrations in ecosystem experiments and field studies. Generally, few adverse effects were inferred from ecosystem experiments at concentrations less than the SSD fifth percentile criterion. Exceptions were behavioral impairments in simplified food web studies. No adverse effects were apparent in field studies under conditions that seldom exceeded the criterion. At concentrations greater than the SSD fifth percentile, the magnitudes of adverse effects in the field studies were roughly proportional to the laboratory‐based fraction of species with adverse effects in the SSD. Overall, the modeling and field validation comparisons of the chronic criterion values generally supported the relevance and protectiveness of the SSD fifth percentile approach with cadmium.     

Incentives to Exercise

Can incentives be effective in encouraging the development of good habits? We investigate the post‐intervention effects of paying people to attend a gym a number of times during one month. In two studies we find marked attendance increases after the intervention relative to attendance changes for the respective control groups. This is entirely driven by people who did not previously attend the gym on a regular basis. In our second study, we find improvements on health indicators such as weight, waist size, and pulse rate, suggesting the intervention led to a net increase in total physical activity rather than to a substitution away from nonincentivized ones. We argue that there is scope for financial intervention in habit formation, particularly in the area of health.     

Focusing on Customer Time in Field Service: A Normative Approach

Although customer convenience should be rightfully considered a central element in field services, the customer experience suggests that service enterprises rarely take the customer's preferred time into account in making operational and scheduling decisions. In this paper we present the results of our exploratory research into two interrelated topics: the explicit inclusion of customer time in nonemergency field service delivery decisions and the analysis of trade‐off between the customer's convenience and field service provider's cost. Based on prior research in service quality we identify and illustrate two time‐based performance metrics that are particularly appropriate for assessing service quality in nonemergency field services: performance and conformance quality. To determine vehicle routes, we develop a hybrid heuristic derived from the existing and proven heuristic methods. A numerical example closely patterned after real‐life data is generated and used within a computational experiment to investigate alternate policies for promise time windows. Our experiment shows that over a reasonable range of customer cost parameters the policy of shorter promise time windows reduces the combined total cost incurred by the provider and the customers and should be considered a preferred policy by the field service provider. Managerial implications of this result are discussed.     

Understanding Mechanisms Underlying Peer Effects: Evidence From a Field Experiment on Financial Decisions

Using a high‐stakes field experiment conducted with a financial brokerage, we implement a novel design to separately identify two channels of social influence in financial decisions, both widely studied theoretically. When someone purchases an asset, his peers may also want to purchase it, both because they learn from his choice (“social learning”) and because his possession of the asset directly affects others' utility of owning the same asset (“social utility”). We randomize whether one member of a peer pair who chose to purchase an asset has that choice implemented, thus randomizing his ability to possess the asset. Then, we randomize whether the second member of the pair: (i) receives no information about the first member, or (ii) is informed of the first member's desire to purchase the asset and the result of the randomization that determined possession. This allows us to estimate the effects of learning plus possession, and learning alone, relative to a (no information) control group. We find that both social learning and social utility channels have statistically and economically significant effects on investment decisions. Evidence from a follow‐up survey reveals that social learning effects are greatest when the first (second) investor is financially sophisticated (financially unsophisticated); investors report updating their beliefs about asset quality after learning about their peer's revealed preference; and, they report motivations consistent with “keeping up with the Joneses” when learning about their peer's possession of the asset. These results can help shed light on the mechanisms underlying herding behavior in financial markets and peer effects in consumption and investment decisions.