Willingness to Pay for Biodiesel in Diesel Engines: A Stochastic Double Bounded Contingent Valuation Survey

The double bounded dichotomous choice format has been proven to improve efficiency in contingent valuation models. However, this format has been criticized due to lack of behavioral and statistical consistencies between the first and the second responses. In this study a split sampling methodology was used to determine whether allowing respondents to express uncertainty in the follow-up question would alleviate such inconsistencies. Results indicate that allowing respondents to express uncertainty in the follow-up question was effective at reducing both types of inconsistencies while efficiency gain is maintained.Biodiesel, diesel, environmental benefits, contingent valuation, willingness to pay, double bounded model, and statistical and behavioral inconsistencies, Demand and Price Analysis, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, I18, L91, Q42, Q51, Q53,

Effect of Tuned Parameters on a LSA MCQ Answering Model

This paper presents the current state of a work in progress, whose objective is to better understand the effects of factors that significantly influence the performance of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). A difficult task, which consists in answering (French) biology Multiple Choice Questions, is used to test the semantic properties of the truncated singular space and to study the relative influence of main parameters. A dedicated software has been designed to fine tune the LSA semantic space for the Multiple Choice Questions task. With optimal parameters, the performances of our simple model are quite surprisingly equal or superior to those of 7th and 8th grades students. This indicates that semantic spaces were quite good despite their low dimensions and the small sizes of training data sets. Besides, we present an original entropy global weighting of answers' terms of each question of the Multiple Choice Questions which was necessary to achieve the model's success.Comment: 9 page

Memory for prices and the euro cash changeover: An analysis for cinema prices in Italy

The question addressed by this study is whether consumers remember past prices correctly. We test Italian citizensÂ’ memory for cinema prices with questionnaires distributed to moviegoers. The analysis concentrates on the memory of pre-euro prices, but the recall for a more recent period is also investigated. The results show that only a small percentage of respondents recalled the correct price, and that the average prices recalled were much lower than the actual pre-euro prices and dated back to years before the changeover. Price recall is less accurate for the respondents who perceive higher and more persistent inflation; it is also worse for the older respondents and for the less frequent movie-goers.prices, memory, perceptions, euro

DEMAND FOR CREDENCE CHARACTERISTICS IN BEEF

The recent food crises in Europe have raised public concerns about the quality and safety of food. The growing concern among the consumers towards food safety issues has increased the demand for quality attributes. Most quality properties of food products can be considered as credence characteristics, quality of which cannot be inferred before the purchase, and sometimes not even after the purchase. The aim of this study is to evaluate, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the value of new information about and the information systems set for credence characteristics of beef. Economics of information is the theoretical framework. The quantitative approach focuses to measure the ex ante value of credence characteristics, and the method of contingent valuation is applied for this purpose. In the beef supply chain there are two parallel information-based policies in Finland, which will increase the credence characteristics of beef quality and safety. First, the National Quality Strategy was drawn up by all parties involved in foodstuffs production to express the competitive advantages and strengths of Finnish food products relating to quality, safety, ethics, and ecology. Secondly, a beef identification and labelling system of the European Union was developed primarily to secure the safety of beef products and to increase the transparency and traceability of beef products in the supply chain. Through these systems more information about the credence characteristics of beef safety and quality will be made available to consumers. Results indicate that 59 % of Finnish consumers are willing to pay more to get information about safety and quality of beef products. Consumers are most concerned with diseases caused by food of animal origin. In addition, consumers desire more information about the use of GMOs in livestock production, the country of origin, and use of hormones in livestock production. Key words: beef, information, credence attributes, contingent valuation, willingness to paybeef, information, credence attributes, contingent valuation, willingness to pay, Demand and Price Analysis,

Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Additional Information on Food Quality and Safety

Most quality properties of food products can be considered as credence characteristics, quality of which cannot be inferred before the purchase, and sometimes not even after the purchase. Our objective is to assess how much consumers are willing to pay (WTP) for meat products, of which e.g. origins and production practices are known, especially with regard to safety issues. Results indicate that 59 % of Finnish consumers are willing to pay more to get information about safety and quality of beef products. Consumers are most concerned with diseases caused by food of animal origin.beef, information, credence attributes, willingness to pay, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Influence of Context on Decision Making during Requirements Elicitation

Requirements engineers should strive to get a better insight into decision making processes. During elicitation of requirements, decision making influences how stakeholders communicate with engineers, thereby affecting the engineers' understanding of requirements for the future information system. Empirical studies issued from Artificial Intelligence offer an adequate groundwork to understand how decision making is influenced by some particular contextual factors. However, no research has gone into the validation of such empirical studies in the process of collecting needs of the future system's users. As an answer, the paper empirically studies factors, initially identified by AI literature, that influence decision making and communication during requirements elicitation. We argue that the context's structure of the decision should be considered as a cornerstone to adequately study how stakeholders decide to communicate or not a requirement. The paper proposes a context framework to categorize former factors into specific families, and support the engineers during the elicitation process.Comment: appears in Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Acquisition, Representation and Reasoning with Contextualized Knowledge (ARCOE), 2012, Montpellier, France, held at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-12

Do Quasi-Hyperbolic Preferences Explain Academic Procrastination? An Empirical Evaluation

Traditional neoclassical thought fails to explain questions such as problems of self-control. Behavioural economics have explained these matters on the basis of the intertemporal preferences of individuals and, specifically, the so-called (β, δ) model which emphasises present bias. This opens the way to the analysis of new situations in which people can adopt incorrect indecisions that make it necessary for the government to intervene. The literature which has developed the (β, δ) model and its implications has generated a categorisation of people that is widely used but which lacks a systematic empirical evaluation. It is important to value the need for this public action. In this article, we develop a method which makes it possible to verify the main implications that this model has to explain the procrastination of university students. Using an experimental time discount task with real monetary incentives, we estimate the students’ β and δ parameters and we analyse their correlation with their answers to a series of questions concerning how they plan to study for an exam. The results are ambiguous given that they back some of the model’s conclusions but reject others, including a number of the most basic ones, such as the relation between present biases and some of the categories of people, these being essential to predict their behaviour

IMPACT OF INFORMATION ON THE DEMAND FOR CREDENCE CHARACTERISTICS

Most quality properties of food products can be considered as credence characteristics, quality of which cannot be inferred before the purchase, and sometimes not even after the purchase. Our objectives are: (1) To assess how much consumers are willing to pay (WTP) for meat products, of which e.g. origins and production practices are known, especially with regard to safety issues; (2) To compare the applicability, reliability, and efficiency of safety information provided by either private companies or public institutions, and (3) to explore the possibility of the so-called information paradox: is more information always better – or more beneficial – information?Demand and Price Analysis,

Acquiring and Using Limited User Models in NLG

It is a truism of NLG that good knowledge of the reader can improve the quality of generated texts, and many NLG systems have been developed that exploit detailed user models when generating texts. Unfortunately, it is very difficult in practice to obtain detailed information about users. In this paper we describe our experiences in acquiring and using limited user models for NLG in four different systems, each of which took a different approach to this issue. One general conclusion is that it is useful if imperfect user models are understandable to users or domain experts, and indeed perhaps can be directly edited by them; this agrees with recent thinking about user models in other applications such as intelligent tutoring systems (Kay, 2001)

Demand for and Value of Credence Characteristics: Case Beef

The aim of this study is to evaluate both qualitatively and quantitatively the value of new information about and the information systems set for credence characteristics of beef. Economics of information is our theoretical framework. The quantitative approach focuses to measure the ex ante value of credence characteristics, and the method of contingent valuation is applied for this purpose. Results indicate that 59 % of Finnish consumers are willing to pay more to get information about safety and quality of beef products. Consumers are most concerned with diseases caused by food of animal origin. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not considered as the mosthazardous risk factor in food products. However, if the beef products contain GMOs used in animals, then consumers also start requiring additional information.beef, information, credence attributes, contingent valuation, willingness to pay, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,