Nudging lifestyles for better health outcomes: crowdsourced data and persuasive technologies for behavioural change

For at least three decades, a Tsunami of preventable poor health has continued to threaten the future prosperity of our nations. Despite its effective destructive power, our collective predictive and preventive capacity remains remarkably under-developed This Tsunami is almost entirely mediated through the passive and unintended consequences of modernisation. The malignant spread of obesity in genetically stable populations dictates that gene disposition is not a significant contributor as populations, crowds or cohorts are all incapable of experiencing a new shipment of genes in only 2-3 decades. The authors elaborate on why a supply-side approach: advancing health care delivery cannot be expected to impact health outcomes effectively. Better care sets the stage for more care yet remains largely impotent in returning individuals to disease-free states. The authors urge an expedited paradigmatic shift in policy selection criterion towards using data intensive crowd-based evidence integrating insights from system thinking, networks and nudging. Collectively these will support emerging potentialities of ICT used in proactive policy modelling. Against this background the authors proposes a solution that stated in a most compact form consists of: the provision of mundane yet high yield data through light instrumentation of crowds enabling participative sensing, real time living epidemiology separating the per unit co-occurrences which are health promoting from those which are not, nudging through persuasive technologies, serious gaming to sustain individual health behaviour change and intuitive visualisation with reliable simulation to evaluate and direct public health investments and policies in evidence-based waysJRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

The Multisided Complexity of Fairness in Recommender Systems

Recommender systems are poised at the interface between stakeholders: for example, job applicants and employers in the case of recommendations of employment listings, or artists and listeners in the case of music recommendation. In such multisided platforms, recommender systems play a key role in enabling discovery of products and information at large scales. However, as they have become more and more pervasive in society, the equitable distribution of their benefits and harms have been increasingly under scrutiny, as is the case with machine learning generally. While recommender systems can exhibit many of the biases encountered in other machine learning settings, the intersection of personalization and multisidedness makes the question of fairness in recommender systems manifest itself quite differently. In this article, we discuss recent work in the area of multisided fairness in recommendation, starting with a brief introduction to core ideas in algorithmic fairness and multistakeholder recommendation. We describe techniques for measuring fairness and algorithmic approaches for enhancing fairness in recommendation outputs. We also discuss feedback and popularity effects that can lead to unfair recommendation outcomes. Finally, we introduce several promising directions for future research in this area

Developing Research and a Research Culture: Results from a Pilot Project in Pakistan

This paper argues that successful public policy requires engaged research developing ideas and evidence from diverse vantage points. Pakistan’s social science research remains fragmented, under-resourced and dependent on external agendas. We describe a five-year pilot programme to enhance Pakistan’s research culture. Seventy-two crowd-sourced and competitively-selected projects at 46 geographically dispersed institutions were supported. Provincial universities were empowered and networking with the better-placed metropolitan institutions proved mutually beneficial to scholarship. Substantial research outputs were completed in important areas of policy. We conclude that such multi-year commitments to review and network engagement are vital to strengthening policy capacity. Keywords: Pakistan; Research Community; Social Sciences; Networking; Competitive Grant

Capturing the City’s Heritage On-the-Go: Design Requirements for Mobile Crowdsourced Cultural Heritage

Intangible Cultural Heritage is at a continuous risk of extinction. Where historical artefacts engine the machinery of intercontinental mass-tourism, socio-technical changes are reshaping the anthropomorphic landscapes everywhere on the globe, at an unprecedented rate. There is an increasing urge to tap into the hidden semantics and the anecdotes surrounding people, memories and places. The vast cultural knowledge made of testimony, oral history and traditions constitutes a rich cultural ontology tying together human beings, times, and situations. Altogether, these complex, multidimensional features make the task of data-mapping of intangible cultural heritage a problem of sustainability and preservation. This paper addresses a suggested route for conceiving, designing and appraising a digital framework intended to support the conservation of the intangible experience, from a user and a collective-centred perspective. The framework is designed to help capture the intangible cultural value of all places exhibiting cultural-historical significance, supported by an extensive analysis of the literature. We present a set of design recommendations for designing mobile apps that are intended to converge crowdsourcing to Intangible Cultural Heritage

Crowdsourcing as a support to solving complex problems in entrepreneurial settings

1Dottorato di Ricerca in Management (XXVIII ciclo), LUISS Guido Carli, Roma, 2017. Relatori: Prof. Francesco Rullani, Prof. Marion Poetz (Copenhagen Business School).openCrowdsourcing is a newly-developed field that has helped a number of organizations to solved complex problems concerning quantities of information and resource accessibility. Many entrepreneurs have utilized crowdsourcing to their benefit, bypassing traditional forms of fundraising in order to increase their probability of success. Paper 1 will look specifically at the ways in which crowdsourcing can perform such a role, supporting the entrepreneur through each phase of the entrepreneurial process. Paper 2 will expand on this idea by exploring the effects that crowdsourcing can have on a company’s performance. Looking specifically at data provided by AngelList, a popular crowdsourcing platform, we’ll attempt to analyze the benefits that the technology has had on businesses by comparing crowdsourcing-based investment paths to those of traditional investors. Specifically, we measured the performance of both traditional and crowdsourcing-base business ventures over a 2-year period, using data extracted from Mattermark. We aim to shed light, here, on the ability of crowdsourcing to produce better performance in the medium-term. Paper 3 will investigate the effects that crowd size and diversity can have on the performance of a crowdsourced venture. AngelList’s data set will be useful in unpacking the relationship between the volume and diversity of a syndicate’s backers to see how these attributes can be beneficial or detrimental to a firm. While a significant amount of research has been undertaken around this topic, we have found that there are many gaps in the available literature. Where researchers have written extensively about the potential for crowdsourcing to support the discovery, exploitation and execution of entrepreneurial opportunities, much of this literature does not take into account the nature of currently-used crowdsourcing platforms. Throughout each of these papers, we’ll attempt to expand into the territory left unexplored by existing research, paying specific attention to the individual attributes phase of the entrepreneurial model.openDottorato di Ricerca in ManagementBALDELLI, FEDERICOBaldelli, Federic

Competition in financial services

In the financial services sector, the failure of a single institution can have a compounding effect on the sector, and on national and global economies. In particular, there is systemic risk from inter-institution lending, and this effect is more complex in Australia due to the small number of major players. In retail banking in Australia, following a similar practice in most developed countries, if an unsecured creditor is a retail depositor, their deposit is insured by the government. That is, if a retail bank fails, the Federal Government will make the depositors whole. The regulatory system, particularly the prudential regulatory system, is designed to protect depositors’ and borrowers’ interests, and this protects the interest of the government. The effect is that regulatory policy on banking has prioritised stability in consideration of the sovereign risk associated with the risk of retail bank failure. However, this approach also creates a policy dilemma. The dilemma concerns the extent to which the retail banking sector can attain the benefits of the vigorous rivalry from effective and efficient competition, without unduly risking stability and the potential of a devastating call on the public purse. Specifically, in the context of effective and efficient competition, there is limited competitiveness in retail banking in Australia. This is reflected in the static state of market share between the four major banks, and very slow and marginal improvements gains even by strong second tier competitors. Furthermore, the retail banking sector’s capacity for product and service innovation is limited. Although the absence of vigorous rivalry is conducive to stability within the retail banking sector, it is likely to detract from the welfare of retail banking consumers. Furthermore, the level of innovation may not be as high as is feasible and barriers, including prudential regulatory barriers to entry or expansion, mean that the extent of rivalry is unlikely to change without some form of promotion of competition. The paper consequently makes a four-point recommendation for the removal of the ‘four pillars’ policy:  The four major banks are protected by an implicit government guarantee that impacts market operation with little observable benefit to consumers, and may be a source of consumer disutility.  The four pillars policy has prompted increased vertical integration within the sector, particularly in the area of mortgage products.  There are sufficient merger protections provided by Part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth).  Competition and contestability arise when there are reasonably low barriers to entry and exit from the sector. It is not clear that low barriers to entry exist in Australia, and evidence to support this view comes from the failure of international banks to gain a significant toehold in the retail banking sector in Australia. One deterrent to entry is the regulatory focus on the four pillars. The authors recognise that this position is at odds with the view of the Financial System Inquiry. However, the rationale in the report of the Inquiry was to prevent mergers, and the current competition law achieves this objective. The paper recommends two specific policies to promote competition in retail banking without the structural intervention that would otherwise be required to improve the intensity of competition in the retail banking sector:  Introduce bank account number portability. This would use ‘know your customer’ and central database systems in a similar form to those that have been used for mobile number portability in Australia for the last decade and a half.  Introduce customer access to data held by banks to allow third parties to compare bank offerings across all banks.  Significantly, these two recommendations are consistent with the productivity proposals issued by the UK Government in July 2015. The research paper also examines crowd equity funding as a disruptive force in the banking sector, and recommends that crowd equity funding be permitted with the following safeguards:  ASIC should take an active role in monitoring crowd equity funding and be willing to sue in case of fraudulent action.  Any intermediary online platform should have a financial services licence with limited duty of care.  There should be a cap for business raisings through crowd equity funding of $2 million in a 12-month period.  Crowd equity funding is a social phenomenon. Through its use of social media, it has attracted people who have previously never been interested in investing in companies. Instead of being feared, this interest should be nurtured through the promotion of investors’ financial education

Effective Philanthropy: Towards a Research Agenda - A White Paper

Many people look at getting people to give more. Giving Evidence and the Social Enterprise Initiative at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business have been looking at getting donors to give better. Perhaps improving giving will achieve more than increasing it: For instance, the cost of raising capital for charities is about 20-40 per cent, against only about 3-5 per cent for companies, and charities turn away some donors who are fiddly to deal with. It may be easier to reduce that cost of capital than to raise the amount given. Plus, money doesn't always go where it's most needed: for example, about 90 per cent of global health spending goes on 10 percent of the disease burden -- maybe those donations can cheaply be re-directed. Our white paper looks at at (i)what good giving is, i.e., what donor behaviours produce the best outcomes, and (ii)how to persuade/enable/nudge donors to do those behaviours. It collates what is known on these topics, and lays out many unanswered questions which would form a strong research agenda. [The Chicago Booth School of Business was recently ranked by The Economist as the best business school in the world. And its leading centre on decision science is highly relevant since decisions are so integral to giving.] The white paper identifies questions which non-profits, funders and other practitioners want answered about making giving better, and aims to encourage researchers to address them