Increasing public transport provision in metropolitan areas can be of great benefit for wages and employment density

Increasing the provision of public transport is not only desirable in a time of concern over climate change and high fuel prices, it may also have important effects on employment and wages. Using current and historic data from over 360 U.S. metropolitan areas, Daniel G. Chatman and Robert B. Noland argue that public transport increases employment in central city areas, whilst also leading to higher wages in these areas totaling from between $1.5 million and$1.8 billion yearly depending on the city

Exploring Bicycle and Public Transit Use by Low-Income Latino Immigrants: A Mixed-Methods Study in the San Francisco Bay Area

Latin American immigrants will continue to make up a large share of transit ridership, bicycling and walking in the United States for the foreseeable future, but there is relatively little research about them. This mixed-methods study compares the travel patterns of low-income immigrants living in the San Francisco Bay Area with that of other groups and investigates the barriers and constraints faced by low-income immigrants when taking transit and bicycling. Much of the previous work on immigrant travel has relied on national surveys and qualitative analysis, which underrepresent disadvantaged population groups and slower modes of travel, or are unable to speak to broader patterns in the population. We conducted interviews with 14 low-income immigrants and a paper-based intercept survey of 2,078 adults. Interviewees revealed five major barriers that made public transit use difficult for them, including safety, transit fare affordability, discrimination, system legibility, and reliability. Although crime was the most prominent issue in interviews, the survey results suggest transit cost is the most pressing concern for low-income immigrants. Low-income immigrants were less likely than those with higher-incomes to have access to a motor vehicle, and were less likely than higher-income immigrants or the U.S.-born of any income to have access to a bicycle or bus pass. Finally, although most barriers to public transit use were the same regardless of nativity or household income, low-income immigrants were much less willing to take public transit when they had the option to drive and less willing to bicycle for any purpose. The prevalence of concerns about transit affordability, crime, and reliability suggest transit agencies should consider income-based fare reductions, coordinated crime prevention with local law enforcement, and improved scheduling

The Role of Behavioral Economics in Residential Choice: A Pilot Study Of Travel Patterns, Housing Characteristics, Social Connections, and Subjective Well-Being

Do people make imperfect decisions about where to live and how to travel? There is some evidence that people may overvalue privacy and material goods like housing and undervalue time for activities and social connections. We surveyed 84 individuals, almost all of them university students, before and after a planned move between homes. Respondents answered questions at two points in time about six months apart, before and after moving. They reported ratings of subjective well-being, information on travel patterns, characteristics of homes and neighborhoods, the number and type of social connections, demographics, and significant life events. This working paper describes the survey design and data collection process, and reports on survey results

Tracking the State and Behavior of People in Response to COVID-1 19 Through the Fusion of Multiple Longitudinal Data Streams

The changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of comprehensively considering its impacts and considering changes over time. Most COVID-19 related research addresses narrowly focused research questions and is therefore limited in addressing the complexities created by the interrelated impacts of the pandemic. Such research generally makes use of only one of either 1) actively collected data such as surveys, or 2) passively collected data. While a few studies make use of both actively and passively collected data, only one other study collects it longitudinally. Here we describe a rich panel dataset of active and passive data from U.S. residents collected between August 2020 and July 2021. Active data includes a repeated survey measuring travel behavior, compliance with COVID-19 mandates, physical health, economic well-being, vaccination status, and other factors. Passively collected data consists of all locations visited by study participants, taken from smartphone GPS data. We also closely tracked COVID-19 policies across counties of residence throughout the study period. Such a dataset allows important research questions to be answered; for example, to determine the factors underlying the heterogeneous behavioral responses to COVID-19 restrictions imposed by local governments. Better information about such responses is critical to our ability to understand the societal and economic impacts of this and future pandemics. The development of this data infrastructure can also help researchers explore new frontiers in behavioral science. The article explains how this approach fills gaps in COVID-19 related data collection; describes the study design and data collection procedures; presents key demographic characteristics of study participants; and shows how fusing different data streams helps uncover behavioral insights

Assessing the Quantification Methodology for the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program

Do affordable housing projects in high-quality transit-oriented development areas reduce auto use? By how much? Under what conditions? These questions are complex but highly relevant for the state of California. Its Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program estimates reductions in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) associated with project applications, and scores applications partly on this basis. Building on a large set of existing empirical literature, we carried out a new analysis of how the built environment affects travel in California. We relied on several data sources including movement data from cell phones purchased from a private firm; travel diary data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (the most recent household travel survey for the state); data on housing characteristics and commuting from the 2017 American Housing Survey; and neighborhood, community, and regional built environment and public transportation data from Federal and local sources. Consistent with previous literature, we did not find evidence that parcel-level characteristics influenced auto use, but our study reinforced the evidence in existing empirical literature about the importance of larger-scale built environment factors influencing VMT, from the scale of the Census block group up to the radius of a 45-minute drive from home. We recommend that the AHSC calculator be modified to take these factors into account, in addition to including the availability of off-street parking, when calculating VMT reductions. We also recommend that the calculator use a counterfactual assumption about alternative development locations using our quantitative estimates and based on a more appropriate spatial scale

Facing differences with an open mind: Openness to Experience, salience of intra-group differences, and performance of diverse groups.

This study examined how the performance of diverse teams is affected by member openness to experience and the extent to which team reward structure emphasizes intragroup differences. Fifty-eight heterogeneous four-person teams engaged in an interactive task. Teams in which reward structure converged with diversity (i.e., "faultline" teams) performed more poorly than teams in which reward structure cut across differences between group members or pointed to a "superordinate identity." High openness to experience positively influenced teams in which differences were salient (i.e., faultline and "cross-categorized" teams) but not teams with a superordinate identity. This effect was mediated by information elaboration

Research Brief: The Changing Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Individuals and Households in the U.S.

This brief describes findings from a research effort to understand the changing impacts of the pandemic upon households from different places and backgrounds living in the United States. We investigated the effects of the pandemic along with pandemic-based restrictions and rules on people’s behavior along with their mental and emotional health, social relations, and livelihoods. Unlike other research efforts, as far as we are aware this effort is the only one to join passive data from cell phones with survey information collected from the same individuals over time. We combined these data with a county-by-county inventory of pandemic rules and regulations regarding shelter-in-place, and mask wearing

Neuroendocrine–immune disequilibrium and endometriosis: an interdisciplinary approach

Endometriosis, a chronic disease characterized by endometrial tissue located outside the uterine cavity, affects one fourth of young women and is associated with chronic pelvic pain and infertility. However, an in-depth understanding of the pathophysiology and effective treatment strategies of endometriosis is still largely elusive. Inadequate immune and neuroendocrine responses are significantly involved in the pathophysiology of endometriosis, and key findings are summarized in the present review. We discuss here the role of different immune mechanisms particularly adhesion molecules, protein–glycan interactions, and pro-angiogenic mediators in the development and progression of the disease. Finally, we introduce the concept of endometrial dissemination as result of a neuroendocrine-immune disequilibrium in response to high levels of perceived stress caused by cardinal clinical symptoms of endometriosis

Crowdsourcing Controls: A Review and Research Agenda for Crowdsourcing Controls Used for Macro-tasks

Crowdsourcing—the employment of ad hoc online labor to perform various tasks—has become a popular outsourcing vehicle. Our current approach to crowdsourcing—focusing on micro-tasks—fails to leverage the potential of crowds to tackle more complex problems. To leverage crowds to tackle more complex macro tasks requires a better comprehension of crowdsourcing controls. Crowdsourcing controls are mechanisms used to align crowd workers’ actions with predefined standards to achieve a set of goals and objectives. Unfortunately, we know very little about the topic of crowdsourcing controls directed at accomplishing complex macro tasks. To address issues associated with crowdsourcing controls formacro-tasks, this chapter has several objectives. First, it presents and discusses the literature on control theory. Second, this chapter presents a scoping literature review of crowdsourcing controls. Finally, the chapter identifies gaps and puts forth a research agenda to address these shortcomings. The research agenda focuses on understanding how to employ the controls needed to perform macro-tasking in crowds and the implications for crowdsourcing system designers.National Science Foundation grant CHS-1617820Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150493/1/Robert 2019 Preprint Chapter 3.pdfDescription of Robert 2019 Preprint Chapter 3.pdf : PrePrint Versio