What drives sustainable student travel? Mode choice determinants in the Greater Toronto Area

Examination of mode choice behavior is an important step in accurately predicting future travel demand. Despite having somewhat unique travel needs and challenges, there is a lack of knowledge in understanding the mode use behavior of university student population. The existing studies on university populations relied on a relatively smaller sample in investigating the behavior. Therefore, using world's largest university student's travel database, this study examines the factors affecting the mode choice behavior of a diverse university student population with student samples from four universities and their seven campuses located across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada. Additionally, stratifying this diverse population using their attitudinal responses towards numerous travel modes, this study also estimates three additional mode choice models to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of how students in different markets, with different latent attitudes towards transportation, vary in terms of sustainable mode choice. A cluster analysis based on fourteen attitudinal responses, was conducted to stratify the sample whereas the popular multinomial logit approach was used to estimate the mode choice models. This study finds transit pass and bike ownership as important determinants that govern sustainable mode choice among the students in the region. The findings of this study could facilitate the sustainability offices at the four universities in making an informed policy decision in shifting the mode use behavior of students towards sustainable modes.     

THE ECONOMICS OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A FIRM‐LEVEL PERSPECTIVE SURVEY

This paper analyzes the economics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as a private response to market imperfections in order to satisfy social preferences. Depending on whether they affect regulation, competition or contracts, market imperfections driving CSR decisions are classified in three categories: public goods and bads and altruism; imperfect competition; and incomplete contracts. We successively present these drivers of CSR decisions and highlight the nature of incentives (external or internal) at work and the testable (and tested) hypotheses in the reviewed studies. We finally review the link between CSR and financial performance, as well as between CSR and social and environmental performance. A twofold discrepancy appears in the literature, opening future research paths: a disconnection between our understanding of CSR drivers and CSR impacts; and a knowledge gap between CSR financial and social consequences, the latter having received little attention.     

Medical malpractice: an empirical examination of the litigation process

New data on medical malpractice claims against a single hospital in which a direct measure of the quality of medical care is available are used to investigate the roles of the negligence rule and incomplete information in the dispute settlement process in medical malpractice. We find that the quality of medical care (negligence) is an extremely important determinant of defendants' medical malpractice liability. More generally, we find that the data are consistent with a model in which plaintiffs are poorly informed ex ante about whether there has been negligence, file suit to gather information, and either drop the case if they find that negligence was unlikely or settle for a positive payoff if they find that negligence was likely. We also find that the cases are resolved earlier in the litigation process when the parties are more certain, one way or the other, about the likelihood of negligence.     

Valuation and management of wetland ecosystems

We recently completed a study of wetland values in coastal Louisiana that employed both willingness-to-pay and energy analysis-based methodologies and were able to bracket a range of values within which we feel fairly confident the true value lies. However, a large amount of uncertainty remains. Our current estimates of the total prsent value of an average acre of natural wetlands in Louisiana are US$2429–6400 per acre (assuming an 8% discount rate) to $8977–17000 per acre (assuming a 3% discount rate). At the lowest value, the current annual rate of loss of Louisiana wetlands (50 sq miles per year) is worth about $77 million. At the largest value it is worth about $544 million.In this paper we (a) discuss the fundamental theoretical and practical problems underlying natural resources valuation; (b) summarize our methods and findings for Louisiana wetlands; and (c) elaborate on some of the more recalcitrant problems attending applied natural resource valuation, including discounting and dealing with uncertainty and imprecision.The discount rate makes more difference in the final result than any other one factor, and yet there is much disagreement about the appropriate approach to discounting natural resources. We discuss the discounting problem as applied to natural resources and argue for lower discount rates for valuing renewable natural resources than apply for other aspects of the economy.It now seems clear that no reasonable amount of effort will produce very precise estimates of wetland values, and we suspect this is also the case for several other classes of natural resources. We elaborate a Wetlands Asurance Bonding System to address these problems.     

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Defining and Conceptualizing Impact Investing: Attractive Nuisance or Catalyst?

Journal of Business Ethics - This introduction to the special issue on impact investing applies the attractive nuisance notion to impact investing. Social sector actors ‘trespassing’ on...