What drives support for self-driving car technology in the United States?

Abstract

Recent advances in automotive technology have made fully automated self-driving cars technologically feasible. Despite offering many benefits such as increased safety, improved fuel efficiency, and greater disability access, public support for self-driving cars remains low. While previous studies find that demographic factors such as age and sex influence self-driving car support, limited research has examined variables that are well known to predict public attitudes toward emerging technology. Using self-report data from a quota sample of American adults (N?=?1008), we find that age and sex are not significantly associated with support for self-driving car policies when controlling for these other variables. Instead, significant predictors of support included trust in automotive institutions and regulatory bodies, recognition of self-driving car benefits, positive affect toward self-driving cars, and a greater perception that human-driven cars are riskier than self-driving cars. Importantly, we also find that individualism is negatively associated with support. That is, people who value personal autonomy and limited government regulation may perceive policies encouraging self-driving car use as threatening to their worldviews. Altogether, our results suggest strategies for encouraging greater public support of self-driving vehicles while also forecasting potential barriers as this technology emerges as a fixture in transportation policy.     

The South African Financial Cycle and its Relation to Household Deleveraging

This paper considers the extent to which South African households have deleveraged, since the global financial crisis of 2007/2008. We extend the official South African Reserve Bank business cycle methodology to date financial cycles, from which we identify the peaks and troughs of the South African financial cycle going back to 1966. Our composite financial cycle index peaks in April 1974, January 1984 and May 2007; it has bottomed out in July 1979 and February 1999. Thus, we still await the trough. We further compare and contrast the deleveraging process in the current downward phase to the experiences from previous financial cycles. We find that the average period of the financial cycle in South Africa is much longer (approximately 17.3 years) than that of the business cycle (approximately 5.8 years), and that deleveraging has not yet matched the degree of deleveraging seen in previous downward phases. Our results suggest that further deleveraging is necessary, before we can expect to turn the financial corner.     

Did a Public Campaign Influence Debit Card Usage? Evidence from the Netherlands

Did consumers change their payment behaviour after being exposed to a public campaign that encouraged them to use their debit cards more often? We analysed the impact of such a campaign that started in 2007, using debit card transaction data between 2005 and 2013. The overall results show positive effects of the national campaign to promote debit card usage, both in the short and in the long run. The results suggest that high campaign intensity aimed at consumers had a positive impact, as did a focus on certain large retail chains. Interventions aimed at increasing debit card acceptance by retailers were effective to some extent. Providing information to retailers about the benefits of debit card acceptance led to higher card acceptance, but no proof was found for the effectiveness of financial incentives for retailers.     

Audit Market Segmentation – The Impact of Mid-tier Firms on Competition

This analysis’ goal is to characterise the impact of mid-tier auditors on competition and average supplied audit quality. The major result of our analysis is the following: Auditors’ flexibilities with respect to clients’ complexity determine the offered audit quality levels and thus the average supplied audit quality. Defining a model-endogenous quality measure, we show that for some instances the mid-tier auditor improves average audit quality, but for other instances fails to do so. The result could be of special interest for standard setters, for example, the European Commission, which is currently revising EU audit regulation. Further, the analysis may serve as an instrument to analyse economic consequences of future changes of regulation.     

Tourism demand patterns in turbulent times: analysing Welsh accommodation occupancy data for 1998–2001

Different events in 2001, most notably an outbreak of foot and mouth disease and the 11 September terrorist attacks in the USA, caused many tourist businesses in the UK to experience significant changes in demand volumes. This paper examines the occupancy performance of serviced accommodation establishments in Wales from 1998 to 2001 and focuses especially on the changes in demand patterns in 2001. The approach is based on a combination of principal components and cluster analysis. The results are used to group establishments with similar performance profiles. Detailed conclusions are drawn about the temporal and spatial shifts in demand in 2001. ‘Winners’ and ‘losers’ are identified and several concrete implications for marketing and development policies are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional industry herding

We examine whether institutional investors follow each other into and out of the same industries. Our empirical results reveal strong evidence of institutional industry herding. The cross-sectional correlation between the fraction of institutional traders buying an industry this quarter and the fraction buying last quarter, for example, averages 40%. Additional tests suggest that correlated signals primarily drive institutional industry herding. Our results also provide empirical support for “style investing” models.     

Buffering and bridging as environmental strategies of firms

Companies are often confronted with important strategic issues, such as environmental concerns. Generally, they react in one of two basic ways: buffering the enterprise or bridging the issue. Insight into the factors determining the choice between those two generic strategies is important for managers. Three recent and mutually related analytical frameworks from corporate communication and management theory are discussed and exemplified by the Shell Brent Spar case. This case shows the development of two generic environmental strategies over time: initial buffering of the firm from external stakeholders, and later a shift towards a bridging strategy. On the basis of our theoretical and empirical analysis, it appears that top management's attitude regarding cooperation with external stakeholders plays a key role in choosing bridging versus buffering strategies. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Einkommensentstehung als Verteilungsfaktor

From the end of the Second World War onwards, a middle class emerged in Germany that was, by international standards, broadly based. The economic basis for this middle class was good pay and relatively low income differentiation, which was the result of collective agreement on a high coverage rate. Since the mid-1990s, however, the economic basis of middle-class prosperity and security has been crumbling. In the primary distribution, the share of households in the middle-income groups fell by almost ten percentage points, from 56.4 per cent to 48 per cent, between 1992 and 2013. The welfare state was no longer able to compensate fully for this unequal primary distribution. An increase in coverage by collective agreements, the re-regulation of atypical employment forms and the elimination of all incentives to take marginal, part-time jobs are the keys to strengthening the middle-income groups in Germany.