Cash prizes and mail survey response rates: A threshold analysis

In a study involving the mailing of some 3,150 questionnaires, the ability of six kinds of incentives to augment survey responses was tested against a no-incentive control condition. Two of the incentives were small prepaid monetary amounts (25￠ and $1.00), while the remaining four consisted of the opportunity for respondents to win cash prizes valued at either $50, $100, $150, or $200. The use of such cash prizes enabled an approximate test of the just-noticeable-difference principle in terms of both its absolute and differential threshold hypotheses. The 25￠ and $1.00 incentives yielded response rates that were significantly larger than that of the control group. No confirmation of the differential threshold hypothesis was evidenced, at least over the range of cash prizes employed in the present study. In contrast, the absolute threshold hypothesis received support. Suggestions for further research in this area were also identified.     

A multifactor experiment on the generalizability of direct mail advertising response techniques to mail survey design

This field experiment support for the idea that response-enhancing techniques developed in the direct mail advertising field may be generalized to mail surveys of commercial populations. Significant response-speed techniques. It was also discovered that none of the three techniques tested significantly affected response-quality. The results of this study suggest that response-rate and-speed are stimulated by different factors which must be treated as distinct components when designing a mail survey. Finally, the findings imply that the experimental factors' effect on response-speed is an additive combination of factor interactions and main effects. This, in turn, suggests that the impact of the experimental manipulation on response-speed operates through a more complex process than the one generally found for the response-rate criterion. Acknowledgement The authors wish to express their appreciation to the funders of the study: The University of North Carolina Research Council and the Center for Applied Research at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.     

Inducing private wildfire risk mitigation: Experimental investigation of measures on adjacent public lands

Increasing private wildfire risk mitigation is an important part of the larger forest restoration policy challenge. Data from an economic experiment are used to evaluate the effectiveness of providing fuel reductions on public land adjacent to private land to induce private wildfire risk mitigation. Results show evidence of “crowding out” where public spending can decrease the level of private risk mitigation. Findings also indicate that spending on private mitigation efforts increase when information about individual expenditures are made available and spending on public land fuel reductions are conditional upon a threshold level of private mitigation effort being achieved.     

Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later: Alternative Mortgage Products and the Mortgage Crisis

Mortgage contract design has been identified as a contributory factor in the recent market crisis. Here we examine alternative mortgage products (including interest‐only and other deferred amortization structures) and develop a game theoretic model of contract choice given uncertain future income and house prices across different types of borrowers. Results imply that deferred amortization contracts are more likely to be selected in housing markets with greater expected price appreciation and by households with greater risk tolerance; moreover, such products necessarily entail greater default risk, especially among lower‐income households who are aggressive in housing consumption levels. Empirical tests of model predictions generally provide support for the theory.     

Health Among Leaders: Positive and Negative Affect, Engagement and Burnout, Forgiveness and Revenge

abstract    The health of an organization's leader has profound implications not only for the leader, but also for the organization itself and for its members. This study focused on three indicators (positive affect, engagement, forgiveness behaviours) of eustress, the positive stress response, and three indicators (negative affect, burnout, revenge behaviour) of distress, the negative stress response, in relation to the health of pastors, whose jobs closely parallel those of leaders in all types of organizations. Results indicated that both positive affect and revenge behaviour were significantly related to health. A post-hoc analysis indicated that work–family conflict was negatively related to revenge behaviour, while family–work conflict was positively related to revenge behaviour, and that engagement was negatively related to revenge behaviour. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for future studies of leader health, and their practical applications for promoting leader health while preventing distress.     

Peering and Settlement in the Internet: An Economic Analysis

This paper explores the implications of Internet peering in the context of a model of competing, vertically integrated Internet Access Providers. We show that if regulation forbids settlement payments between firms, there will be under-investment in capacity and under-pricing of usage, both of which lead to excessive congestion. To overcome these problems, firms that are net providers of Internet infrastructure should be allowed to charge firms that are net users. We characterize the efficient level of these access payments, assuming usage can be appropriately measured. We find that refusal to peer and the charging of settlement payments may well be efficiency enhancing.     

The Role of Home Equity Lending in the Recent Mortgage Crisis

Home equity lending grew rapidly from 2000 to 2008 with balances more than tripling. In this article, we examine the role this phenomenon may have played in increasing aggregate default risk during the mortgage crisis. We also document a relationship between growth in home equity lending and high house price depreciation and first mortgage default during the downturn of 2006–2009. Line of credit growth is shown to be associated with large increases in nonowner‐occupied property purchases, suggesting that home equity lines of credit were tapped to fund such investments, exacerbating default rates during the market downturn.