Recovering costs through price and service differentiation: Accounting for exogenous information on attribute processing strategies in airline choice

The entry of low cost airlines has thrown out a challenge to all airlines to find ways of attracting passengers, through a mix of fare discounting, greater frequency, improved flight times and no-frill’s levels of on-board service. All of these competitive strategies have an impact on cost recovery. As airlines seek business in an increasingly heterogeneous passenger market, a greater understanding of what matters to potential passengers in choosing an airline grows in importance. Which attributes really do matter to specific classes of passengers? Traditional studies of passenger airline choice assume that all attributes matter, but some to a lesser extent. What happens to the empirical evidence on willingness to pay when specific attributes are totally ignored by particular passengers? In this paper, we examine the impact of individual-specific attribute processing strategies (APS) on the inclusion/exclusion of attributes on the parameter estimates and behavioural outputs of models of airline service and fare level choice. Current modelling practice assumes that whilst respondents may exhibit preference heterogeneity, they employ a homogenous APS with regards to how they process the presence/absence of attributes of stated choice (SC) experiments. We demonstrate how information collected exogenous of the SC experiment on whether respondents either ignored or considered each attribute of the SC task may be used in the estimation process, and how such information may be used to provide outputs that are APS segment specific. Accounting for the inclusion/exclusion of attributes has important implications on the willingness to pay for varying levels of service

Science teachers' transformations of the use of computer modeling in the classroom: using research to inform training

This paper, from the UK group in the STTIS (Science Teacher Training in an Information Society) project, describes research into the nature of teachers' transformations of computer modeling, and the development of related teacher training materials. Eight teacher case studies help to identify factors that favor or hinder the take-up of innovative computer tools in science classes, and to show how teachers incorporate these tools in the curriculum. The training materials use the results to provide activities enabling teachers to learn about the tools and about the outcomes of the research into their implementation, and help them to take account of these ideas in their own implementation of the innovations

Modelling the role of inter-cultural contact in the motivation of learning English as a foreign language.

The research reported in this paper explores the effect of direct and indirect cross-cultural contact on Hungarian school children's attitudes and motivated behaviour by means of structural equation modelling. Our data are based on a national representative survey of 1,777 13/14-year-old learners of English and German in Hungary; 237 of the students learning English with the highest level of inter-cultural contact were selected for analysis. Our model indicates that for our participants, motivated behaviour is determined not only by language-related attitudes but also by the views the students hold about the perceived importance of contact with foreigners. The results of our study also reveal that the perceived importance of contact was not related to students’ direct contact experiences with target language speakers but was influenced by the students’ milieu and indirect contact. Among the contact variables, it was only contact through media products that had an important position in our model, whereas direct contact with L2 speakers played an insignificant role in affecting motivated behaviour and attitudes

The mathematical components of engineering expertise: the relationship between doing and understanding mathematics

this paper are extracts from our interviews with engineers.) Where, then, is the complex mathematics that certainly exists in modern engineering? Throughout all aspects of engineering design, computer software has an overwhelming presence. Also, in the particular firm that we visited, there a small number of analytical specialists (a few per cent of the professional engineers employed) who act as consultants for the mathematical/analytical problems which the general design engineers cannot readily solve. (In general in structural engineering, such specialist work is often carried out by external consultants, eg. academic researchers

Trust, regulatory processes and NICE decision-making: Appraising cost-effectiveness models through appraising people and systems.

This article presents an ethnographic study of regulatory decision-making regarding the cost-effectiveness of expensive medicines at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England. We explored trust as one important mechanism by which problems of complexity and uncertainty were resolved. Existing studies note the salience of trust for regulatory decisions, by which the appraisal of people becomes a proxy for appraising technologies themselves. Although such (dis)trust in manufacturers was one important influence, we describe a more intricate web of (dis)trust relations also involving various expert advisors, fellow committee members and committee Chairs. Within these complex chains of relations, we found examples of both more blind-acquiescent and more critical-investigative forms of trust as well as, at times, pronounced distrust. Difficulties in overcoming uncertainty through other means obliged trust in some contexts, although not in others. (Dis)trust was constructed through inferences involving abstract systems alongside actors’ oral and written presentations-of-self. Systemic features and ‘forced options’ to trust indicate potential insidious processes of regulatory capture

GHOST: experimenting countermeasures for conflicts in the pilot's activity

An approach for designing countermeasures to cure conflict in aircraft pilots’ activities is presented, both based on Artificial Intelligence and Human Factors concepts. The first step is to track the pilot’s activity, i.e. to reconstruct what he has actually done thanks to the flight parameters and reference models describing the mission and procedures. The second step is to detect conflict in the pilot’s activity, and this is linked to what really matters to the achievement of the mission. The third step is to design accu- rate countermeasures which are likely to do bet- ter than the existing onboard devices. The three steps are presented and supported by experimental results obtained from private and professional pi- lots

Visualising the invisible: a network approach to reveal the informal social side of student learning

World-wide, universities in health sciences have transformed their curriculum to include collaborative learning and facilitate the students’ learning process. Interaction has been acknowledged to be the synergistic element in this learning context. However, students spend the majority of their time outside their classroom and interaction does not stop outside the classroom. Therefore we studied how informal social interaction influences student learning. Moreover, to explore what really matters in the students learning process, a model was tested how the generally known important constructs—prior performance, motivation and social integration—relate to informal social interaction and student learning. 301 undergraduate medical students participated in this cross-sectional quantitative study. Informal social interaction was assessed using self-reported surveys following the network approach. Students’ individual motivation, social integration and prior performance were assessed by the Academic Motivation Scale, the College Adaption Questionnaire and students’ GPA respectively. A factual knowledge test represented student’ learning. All social networks were positively associated with student learning significantly: friendships (β = 0.11), providing information to other students (β = 0.16), receiving information from other students (β = 0.25). Structural equation modelling revealed a model in which social networks increased student learning (r = 0.43), followed by prior performance (r = 0.31). In contrast to prior literature, students’ academic motivation and social integration were not associated with students’ learning. Students’ informal social interaction is strongly associated with students’ learning. These findings underline the need to change our focus from the formal context (classroom) to the informal context to optimize student learning and deliver modern medics

Evolution: Complexity, uncertainty and innovation

Complexity science provides a general mathematical basis for evolutionary thinking. It makes us face the inherent, irreducible nature of uncertainty and the limits to knowledge and prediction. Complex, evolutionary systems work on the basis of on-going, continuous internal processes of exploration, experimentation and innovation at their underlying levels. This is acted upon by the level above, leading to a selection process on the lower levels and a probing of the stability of the level above. This could either be an organizational level above, or the potential market place. Models aimed at predicting system behaviour therefore consist of assumptions of constraints on the micro-level – and because of inertia or conformity may be approximately true for some unspecified time. However, systems without strong mechanisms of repression and conformity will evolve, innovate and change, creating new emergent structures, capabilities and characteristics. Systems with no individual freedom at their lower levels will have predictable behaviour in the short term – but will not survive in the long term. Creative, innovative, evolving systems, on the other hand, will more probably survive over longer times, but will not have predictable characteristics or behaviour. These minimal mechanisms are all that are required to explain (though not predict) the co-evolutionary processes occurring in markets, organizations, and indeed in emergent, evolutionary communities of practice. Some examples will be presented briefly