Social cognition and personality traits related to risky driving in a Turkish sample

Aims: The aim of the study was to make a theoretical contribution by investigating social cognitive factors and personality traits related to risky driver behaviour in a Turkish sample. The study tested three theoretical models by Structural Equation Modelling: (1) a model using risk perception and attitudes towards traffic safety to predict driver behaviour, (2) a model which used normlessness and sensation-seeking traits to predict such behaviour and (3) a model which used both the social cognitive factors and personality traits to predict driver behaviour. Methods: A questionnaire survey with validated measurement instruments was conducted in a sample of Turkish drivers (n?=?213). The response rate was 61%. Results: A combined social cognitive and personality trait model had tolerable fit and explained 24% of the variance in driver behaviour. The relations between personality traits and risk perception with driver behaviour were mediated through attitudes towards traffic safety. Risk-taking personality traits had relatively strong relations to unsafe driver behaviour, whereas risk perception had a relatively weak relation to such behaviour. Conclusions: A combined social cognitive and trait approach may be efficient in human factor campaigns aimed to reduce risky driver behaviour in Turkey. Personality traits may be important for driver behaviour because they influence the attitudinal determinants of such behaviour. Increased police enforcement of road traffic regulations may reduce risky driving among individuals with normlessness and sensation-seeking traits. Personality traits may also guide efforts aimed at early identification of risky drivers and campaigns could be tailored to specific personality characteristics.     

The Shocking Origins of Political Transitions: Evidence from Earthquakes

Do earthquakes trigger political transitions? Using a rich panel dataset of 160 countries observed over 1950–2007, we find that earthquake shocks, measured in terms of the effect of ground‐motion amplitude on death toll, have two contradicting effects on political change. On the one hand, earthquakes drive transitions into democracy due to an affective shock, which we interpret to be the reaction of citizens by which they hold the incumbent government responsible for earthquake damages. On the other hand, earthquakes indirectly hasten transitions into a less democratic regime because they increase the income level contemporaneously, possibly due to short‐term emergency response and recovery expenditures, and thus, raising the opportunity cost of contesting the incumbent government. Overall, we show that, while not leading to a full‐fledged regime transition, earthquake shocks open a new democratic window of opportunity, but this window is narrowed by improved economic conditions.     

Nash Equilibrium and Decentralized Negotiation in Auctioning Divisible Resources

We consider the problem of software agents being used as proxies for the procurement of computational and network resources. Mechanisms such as single-good auctions and combinatorial auctions are not applicable for the management of these services, as assigning an entire resource to a single agent is often undesirable and appropriate bund sizes are difficult to determine. We investigate a divisible auction that is proportionally fair. By introducing the notion of price and demand functions that characterize optimal response functions of the bidders, we are able to prove that this mechanism has a unique Nash equilibrium for an arbitrary number of agents with heterogeneous quasilinear utilities. We also describe decentralized negotiation strategies which, with approrpate relaxation, converge locally to the equilibrium point. Given an agent with a sequence of jobs, we show how our analysis holds for a wide variety of objectives.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Risk-Taking Channel of Monetary Policy in Turkey

This article investigates the bank-specific characteristics of risk-taking behavior of the Turkish banking sector as well as the existence of risk-taking channel of monetary policy in Turkey. Using bank-level quarterly data over the period 2002–2012 a dynamic panel model is estimated. We find evidence that low short-term interest rates reduce the risk of outstanding loans; however short-term interest rates below a theoretical benchmark increase risk-taking of banks. This result holds for macroeconomic controls and external factors as well. Furthermore, in terms of bank-specific characteristics, our analysis suggests that large, liquid, and well-capitalized banks are less prone to risk-taking.     

Environmental governance for sustainable tourism development: Collaborative networks and organisation building in the Antalya tourism region

For more than two decades the attainment of sustainable environmental quality and the protection of environmental assets have been at the forefront of central policy issues in global tourism development. Recently, it has been argued that collaborative and associative forms of governance among tourism companies and other related agents are growing in importance in the drive for sustainable and environmentally sensitive tourism. Despite the increasing number of debates on the role of networking on tourism they are not well supported by empirical studies, and still far from explain how such networks can contribute to the sustainable development of territories. This paper aims to contribute to previous literature by analysing together governance networks and literature on sustainable development, and by providing empirical findings that highlight the importance of governance networks in sustainable tourism development, the importance of different scales of collaborative governance networks and the role of organisation building for environmentally sustainable tourism development in Antalya. The paper offers analytical findings on the networks of environmental governance among different types of tourism organisations based on a company-level survey, which reveals an increase in local collaboration and self-help networking based on local concerns and endogenous dynamics among the different actors in tourism. Unfortunately, the findings show that environmental motivations fall far behind economic considerations in networking practices.     

Spatial differentiation in the supermarket industry: The role of common information

In this paper, I investigate the geographic location decisions of supermarkets to infer their tradeoffs between locating close to favorable demand conditions and differentiating themselves geographically from rivals. The model is based on a discrete-choice game between two types of supermarkets, and incorporates firm uncertainty arising from firm- and location-level private information as well as researcher uncertainty arising from location-level common information. Thus the model addresses the concern that firms’ actions may be based on factors that are unobservable to the researcher, thus correlated conditional on observables. The estimates reflect a significant level of common information. Importantly, I find that ignoring unobserved location heterogeneity results in biased estimates of both the competitive effects and the effects of location-specific observables on profits. Counterfactual predictions are therefore misleading if unobserved location heterogeneity is unaccounted for.