The (In)Effectiveness of Incentives - A Field Experiment on the Adoption of Personal Electronic Health Records

Medication errors are the third-leading cause of death in the US; however, a large number of these cases could be prevented through better medication management. The aging population and the associated high number of individuals taking multiple medications regularly makes medication management even more important. Personal electronic health records (PHRs) can improve medication management significantly and thus increase patient safety. Despite unequivocal benefits for individuals, healthcare professionals, governments, insurers, and employers, the adoption rate of PHRs remains low. Therefore, we seek to identify measures that motivate individuals to adopt PHRs. Drawing on justice theory, we show that incentives in terms of personalization, as well as the signal of fair information practices, increase the adoption rate of PHRs. These effects are mediated by perceived benefits and privacy concerns, respectively. Based on counterintuitive findings on the effects of monetary compensation we start a discussion on the complexity and context-dependency of different incentives

Chatbot or Human？The Impact of Chatbot Service Strategies on Recovery Satisfaction

Nowadays, more and more enterprises use chatbots in customer service, but a customer survey shows that most users prefer to choose human service employee rather than chatbots. What scenario can chatbots play a better role than human customer service, bringing better customer service satisfaction has become an issue of concern for enterprises. From the perspective of service recovery, this study explores what circumstances does customer service provide chatbots better service than human service employee? To this end, we proposed a matching effect model between the service recovery entity and customer requirement type, and on this basis, the moderating effect brought by different remedy schemes and communication styles of customer service is discussed. We plan to design mixed design vignette experiments to test our research model. The findings of this study are intended to give new insights for researchers and practitioners

Pain and Suffering Guidelines: A Cure for Damages Measurement Anomie

This Note argues that adapting the criminal sentencing guidelines systems in use in several states to the personal injury context would provide appropriate standards for measuring pain and suffering damages. Part I explores why present methods for measuring pain and suffering are objectionable. A description of the proposed method for developing guidelines is provided in Part II. Part II explores the use of guidelines in criminal sentencing and the analogy between sentencing decisions and assessment of damages for nonpecuniary loss. Part II also describes how to develop and implement guidelines for assessing pain and suffering damages. Part III examines why the proposed guidelines are a solution to the problems identified in Part I. Finally, Part IV responds to possible criticisms of the proposed reform

Ambiguity of Social Networks in Post-Communist Contexts

The paper discusses three hypotheses. First, it introduces four ideal types of networks which are combined in the category of networks as used by social scientists. Four types result from the intersection of two implicit choices made about networks – networks are assumed to be either personal or impersonal, and are viewed either internally or externally. Thus, networks are understood in terms of sociability, access to resources, enabling structure, or social capital. Second, I argue that networks function in a fundamentally ambiguous way. They operate in their capacity of a safety net or survival kit, provide a ‘beating the system’ capacity or compensate for the system’s defects. At the same time networks provide constraints such as high costs of informal contract, limits on individual action, lock-in effects and the handicaps of social capital. Third, I illustrate differences between networks serving the economy of favors in Russia and networks serving the purposes of ‘network society.

Telecommunication Economics — Summary on the Dagstuhl Perspectives Seminar No. 08043

The telecommunications sector and the Internet section of Internet Service Providers (ISP) have become a dynamic key area for the economic development of industrialized nations in the world. It is in constant evolution. Because of intense competition, telecommunications companies and ISPs are forced to diversify their offers and thus to propose an increasing number of services. However, economic analysis often ignores important technical aspects of telecommunications and is not aware of new developments. Engineering models often ignore economic factors. Thus, the design and deployment of future networks that incorporate new services are subject to uncertainties such as equipment and capacity prices (due to technological innovation), demand and supply for services (due to competition). Seeing leading researchers bringing together with various backgrounds, all working on innovative aspects of technical, techno-economic, social, and regulatory issues, lead to the following four main areas that have been partially tackled in an integrated manner: Architectural side, Social side, Economic and business side, and Regulatory side

The Economics of Social Data

We propose a model of data intermediation to analyze the incentives for sharing individual data in the presence of informational externalities. A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers can tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data-whereby an individual's data are predictive of the behavior of others -- generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary's cost of acquiring the information. We derive the intermediary's optimal data policy and establish that it preserves the privacy of consumer identities while providing precise information about market demand to the firms. This policy enables the intermediary to capture the total value of the information as the number of consumers becomes large

The interplay between food knowledge, nudges, and preference elicitation methods determines the evaluation of a recipe recommender system

Domain knowledge can affect how a user evaluates different aspects of a recommender system. Recipe recommendations might be difficult to understand, as some health aspects are implicit. The appropriateness of a recommender’s preference elicitation (PE) method, whether users rate individual items or item attributes, may depend on the user’s knowledge level. We present an online recipe recommender experiment. Users (𝑁=360) with varying levels of subjective food knowledge faced different cognitive digital nudges (i.e., food labels) and PE methods. In a 3 (recipes annotated with no labels, Multiple Traffic Light (MTL) labels, or full nutrition labels) x2 (PE method : content-based PE or knowledge-based) between-subjects design. We observed a main effect of knowledge-based PE on the healthiness of chosen recipes, while MTL label only helped marginally. A Structural Equation Model analysis revealed that the interplay between user knowledge and the PE method reduced the perceived effort of using the system and in turn, affected choice difficulty and satisfaction. Moreover, the evaluation of health labels depends on a user’s level of food knowledge. Our findings emphasize the importance of user characteristics in the evaluation of food recommenders and the merit of interface and inter action aspects

Is bonded labor voluntary? A framework against forced work

UN estimate that 20 million are held in bonded labor. Several economic analyses assert that bonded laborers accept these contracts voluntarily, which could imply that a ban would make such laborers worse off. We question the voluntariness of bonded labor, and present a mechanism that keeps workers trapped. With different types of landlords not revealed to the laborer, we show how some landlords manipulate contract terms so that the laborer becomes bonded. Enforcement mechanisms and the monopolistic market for credit thus play a joint role. Providing alternative sources of credit, offer proper conflict resolution institutions over labor-contract disputes and banning could emancipate bonded labor, which would make them better off.Coercion Debt slavery Power Bonded labor Nepal Asia