Smoking hot portfolios? Trading behavior,investment biases,and self-control failure

Self-control is a personality trait that explains undersaving and nonparticipation decisions. We show that self-control failure also affects trading behavior among individuals on capital markets. We use smoking as the most socially accepted example of self-control failure among 13,644 German brokerage clients and compare the trading behavior of 3,553 smokers and 10,091 nonsmokers. Smokers are associated with a higher portfolio turnover unexplained by financial sophistication or wealth effects. Self-control failure also exacerbates overconfidence, social contagion, sensation seeking, and attention grabbing. Overall, self-control failure is costly because it increases the gap between gross and net returns of smokers relative to nonsmokers.     

农户行为层面生态环境问题研究进展与述评

采用文献回顾法和归纳法,从研究内容、研究视角、研究区域、研究方法和手段、数据获取等方面对农户层面生态环境问题的相关研究进行梳理与分析,最后总结了现有研究存在的问题,并探讨了未来农户层面生态环境问题研究发展的方向。主要结论如下:(1)研究内容涉及农户行为引起的农业环境问题类型、农户行为的生态环境效应、农户环境保护行为与生态建设行为、农业环境保护政策创新等方面;(2)研究视角主要包括以农业生产行为决策者农户为中心内生视角和以农户需求与以农户行为为出发点的外部视角,研究区域主要集中在经济发达地区;(3)在研究方法方面,早期主要是采用一般描述、定性分析和"事前"估计法,近年来"事后"计量模型的研究逐步增多,趋于多样化和综合性;(4)数据获取主要是农户问卷调查和参与式农村评估方法;(5)今后研究应加强农户行为对环境影响的定量评价与跟踪研究、农户环境保护响应决策机制、基于农户行为的环境政策设计等方面的研究,在数据获取方面,应将地理空间信息与问卷调查、社会经济状况结合起来,并进行农户行为与生态环境变化的长期跟踪。     

我国乡村生态旅游发展中的政府行为研究

乡村生态旅游作为一种新的旅游业态,在乡村旅游中注重生态环境与产业的可持续发展,对农民增收与农村环境保护有重要的促进作用。但目前国内大部分地区对于乡村生态旅游,从概念上到操作上仍然是十分模糊的,这在很大程度上限制了政府对旅游项目有效管理。文章研究认为,乡村生态旅游具有一定公共物品属性,完全依靠市场调节是远远不够的,在不同地区和不同阶段都需要政府介入,但政府行为应当结合具体阶段特征采取适宜策略。政府应通过乡村旅游试点项目的实施,对其有效性、效率、影响和可持续性进行科学的监测和评价;将能力建设同具体的项目操作有机地结合起来,促进乡村生态旅游项目实施效果和效率的提高;应尽量减少行政干预,通过经济宏观调控,强化规划引领、市场监管和公共服务提供。总之,在乡村生态旅游发展中,政府应该有所为有所不为,扮演好主导、扶持与服务的角色。     

Fear of climate change consequences and predictors of intentions to alter meat consumption

Reducing or altering meat consumption has the potential to significantly lower the impact humans have on climate change. Consumers, however, are unlikely to break their food habits unless they are aware of the problem and motivated by the solutions. Fear appeals are often used to overcome this, however, their effectiveness in the context of meat reduction and climate change is unclear. Given the widespread use of fear appeals in information policy, it is important to understand more. The aim of this study was to explore fear—or more specifically—the danger control process in a climate change—food context in order to understand the factors which motivate consumers to reduce or alter their meat consumption. Using a stratified random sample of 222 respondents in Southern Sweden, we develop a model for predicting intentions to adopt specific and general actions to reduce or alter meat consumption. Our results suggest that the general key to motivating consumers is through increasing their self-efficacy towards adopting meat alternatives and educating them on the importance their actions have in reducing the threat. We also found that appraising the threat to self (or those close) was significant, but surprisingly the effect size was greater when the threat concerned others (e.g. others in impoverished nations, animals).     

Leveraging Intercollegiate Athletics to Support Academic Giving at NCAA Division I Institutions

On average, National Collegiate Athletic Association Football Bowl Division (top-level of U.S. Intercollegiate athletics) schools raise 15% of their athletic budget from private fundraising. Key questions remain as to how increased emphasis on athletic fundraising influences academic giving. Some authors claim symbiotic effects while others assert that athletic gifts “crowd out” academic giving. The current study analyzes the largest single-institution set of individual donor data available to date. First time donors were more than twice as likely to give to athletics as academics. Fifty-one percent of donors making gifts to both athletics and academics (SPLIT donors) made their initial gift to athletics. Problematically, the conversion rate of athletic-only to split donors has fallen to less than 1%. On three different retention measures split donors have higher retention rates than athletic-only donors, who have higher retention rates than academic-only donors. Among split donors, 41.67% give their largest gift to support an academic program. Rather than competing, development officers would be better advised to systematically cultivating donors to support both athletics and academics.     

When Ethical Transgressions of Customers Have Beneficial Long-Term Effects in Retailing: An Empirical Investigation

The conventional wisdom, grounded in deontological ethics, is that retailers should extinguish unethical customer behavior. However, there exists an opposing teleological view that unethical behavior may be tolerated if its ultimate consequences are beneficial for all stakeholders. This is supported by a survey of retail managers conducted by the authors that revealed over 80% of the respondents are inclined to tolerate unethical customers whose actions have beneficial effects. The primary goal of this research is to investigate the boundaries of this teleological perspective, that is, whether ethical transgressions that appear to have negative short-term consequences for the retailer and other ethical customers can have beneficial longer-term consequences for all parties. We examine this question empirically with a longitudinal dataset, covering seventy weeks and over 48,000 accounts, from a popular Swiss online retailer. We focus on increased revenues and customer engagement as the benefit for the retailer. Our results show that customers registering multiple accounts in violation of the retailer’s policy comprise fewer than 11.5% of accounts, yet generate more than 27.6% of the retailer’s revenue. Specifically, their behavior leads to higher retailer revenues and greater engagement by other customers in the long-run. We discuss the implications of this insight for retailing managers as well as scholars.     

Sunk costs and travel cancellation: Focusing on temporal cost

Tourism products differ from ordinary retail products in terms of the spatial and temporal separation between the purchase and experiencing the product. Despite its importance, temporal separation has not drawn much attention in tourism research. The main objective of this study is to understand the effects of temporal sunk costs on potential travelers' cancellation intentions, in addition to monetary sunk costs. The results of this study suggested the possibility that temporal costs can be converted into monetary costs, but the conversion relationship may not be linear. This study also indicated that travelers' intentions to cancel a travel product decreased as the temporal and monetary sunk costs increased. Further, prior experience moderated the relationship when temporal sunk costs were involved, suggesting that repeat visitors' intentions to cancel their reservations are more influenced by temporal sunk costs than first-time visitors. Further discussion and implications are provided in the main body of this paper.     

Refining e-shoppers’ perceived risks: Development and validation of new measurement scale

Due to the rapid expansion of perceived e-shopping risks, and highly isolated and inconsistent presentation of literature about this concept, understanding e-shopper's behavior has become more difficult. In this regard, this study brings together different views, evidences and facts about perceived e-shopping risks from both scholars and practitioners of South-East Asian and Western countries. It then interprets the information in the form of a new scale which offers more adequacy, assemblage and uniformity than the existing models of perceived risks of e-shoppers. The new scale of construct has 11 dimensions comprising a pool of 38 items, which has been empirically validated through the data collected from 537 Malaysian e-shoppers. The dimensions are: high price risk, deception risk, transaction failure risk, dissimilar product risk, incapable service risk, illegitimate product risk, isolation risk, unease risk, displeasure risk, prior-purchase time delays risk, and post-purchase time delays risk. The theoretical and managerial implications and research limitations have also been discussed.     

Auction winning,social dynamics and non-compliance in a payment for ecosystem services scheme in Indonesia

Conservation auctions for payment for ecosystem services (PES) are useful to identify the levels of incentives that will cover the opportunity costs of farmers supplying ecosystem services. Although auctions are increasingly used for allocation in PES schemes, the factors that lead to their successful implementation and eventual environmental outcomes are poorly understood in developing countries. We investigated the socio-economic and institutional contexts that led to smallholders' auction winning and eventual compliance using linear mixed-effects models, and post-auction and post-contract surveys. We employed a case study of a conservation contract preceded by a sealed-bid, multiple round, uniform price auction for watershed services from coffee farmers in Lampung, Indonesia. The auction participants presented low education levels, low asset endowments and small plot sizes. The study obtained evidence that farmers with larger plot areas were more likely to win the contracts, suggesting economies of scale. Most farmers considered the auction a fair self-selection mechanism to allocate contracts where allocation was not influenced by power or social rank. Non-compliance was associated with labor availability constraints, short duration of land ownership and existence of previous conservation applications, suggesting lax of capability to invest in applying conservation agriculture. Final bids were however not good predictors of compliance, among other factors, calling into question the potential of auctions to elicit the actual incentive from the farmers. Ensuring that farmers understand the purposes of auctions for effective contract allocation beyond a mere game and identifying farmers that might encounter difficulties fulfilling the contract could increase the likelihood that such a PES scheme would be successful.     

基于通勤行为的小城镇土地利用与格局优化对策研究——以扬中市为例

研究目的:从居民的通勤行为特征中寻求小城镇土地利用格局优化路径,为产城融合的实现提供理论支持。研究方法:构建通勤流矩阵,运用Arc GIS路径分析测算通勤距离,并通过缓冲区分析通勤距离在空间上的特征,并与土地利用类型进行对比分析,同时建立通勤距离与社会经济因素的回归方程,分析通勤距离的影响因素。研究结果:小城镇通勤方式以便捷型工具为主,通勤高峰集中于上下班,通勤距离随着城镇化和工业化水平的提高,短距离占比增大。主要结论:在城镇化和工业化发展较快的区域,短距离通勤集聚更具有"同心圆"特征,核心力更强。工业化带动的聚集结构呈现出"条带形"态势,与区域工业布局结构有较密切的关系,也与城镇化和工业化扩增融合有关。短距离通勤集聚区会随着城镇化水平的提高而由"双核"向"单核"结构发展,并针对以上问题提出了相应的对策。