Risk Perceptions, Risk Preferences, Risk Ambiguity, and Flood Insurance

This thesis presents an analysis of subjective risk information and participation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Data are taken from a survey of residents in flood-prone coastal regions in the southeastern U.S. Regression models are constructed to better understand factors affecting individuals’ perceived risk ambiguity related to flood risk and the role of risk preferences, risk perceptions, and especially risk ambiguity, on the decision to purchase flood insurance. This is the first study not only of the influence of risk ambiguity on NFIP participation, but also of the impact of using different risk perception measures. Results indicate that NFIP participation is significantly affected by mean perceived risk, but the influence of range/variance of perceived risk, which presents one’s perceived ambiguity, is mixed

Risk Perceptions, Risk Preferences, Risk Ambiguity, and Flood Insurance

This thesis presents an analysis of subjective risk information and participation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Data are taken from a survey of residents in flood-prone coastal regions in the southeastern U.S. Regression models are constructed to better understand factors affecting individuals’ perceived risk ambiguity related to flood risk and the role of risk preferences, risk perceptions, and especially risk ambiguity, on the decision to purchase flood insurance. This is the first study not only of the influence of risk ambiguity on NFIP participation, but also of the impact of using different risk perception measures. Results indicate that NFIP participation is significantly affected by mean perceived risk, but the influence of range/variance of perceived risk, which presents one’s perceived ambiguity, is mixed

DEBT, PAYBACK, AND THE SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH THE VEGETAL IMAGINATION: ATWOOD’S PAYBACK AND HAN KANG’S THE VEGETARIAN

This paper is a close reading of Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’ centrally in relation to the author’s notion of ‘innocence’ and to Margaret Atwood’s notion of ‘debt’ and ‘payback’. Building upon this foundation, Gaston Bachelard’s concept of the ‘vegetal imagination’ will then be incorporated into the paper’s broader psychoanalytic context as a means of explaining the protagonist, Yeong- hye’s relationship to moral debt. What is important to understand for this paper is that the vegetal imagination embraces contradiction. In this respect, the vegetal imagination can be seen as sympathetic towards both human beings and nature, aiming for sustainability. Actually, Han portrays Yeong-hye as the epitome of someone trying to embrace the victims of a violent history, symbolized in the novel as uprooted trees

Going global? International students, UK higher education and the pursuit of an international career

This thesis explores the extent to which international student mobility reinforces existing social inequalities by providing differentiated access to global higher education and, subsequently, a global labour market. Based on case studies of three universities in the UK, this research draws on interviews with 55 international students from outside of the European Union (non-EU) who were enrolled in or had recently completed postgraduate studies as well as three career staff to examine the following issues. Firstly, this thesis investigates the process by which international students make higher education choices. The study demonstrates the socially and spatially differentiated flow of international students across the case universities in the UK. Students’ experiences of choice-making are qualitatively different by access to the range of resources obtained from various spheres of their lives. This decision-making process is further complicated by their class, age, gender and race/ethnicity, as well as the intersections of these social divisions. In addition, this thesis examines the institutional contexts which generate a divergent field of possibilities and choices for international students after graduation. It identifies variations in the effects of attending three different UK universities, whilst highlighting the ways in which individual institutions shape students’ aspirations and transitions after graduation. It also finds that the institutional effects are mediated differently by students’ social characteristics, indicating the complexity of post-study aspirations and pathways through UK higher education. Lastly, this thesis analyses whether international higher education confers positional advantage in the global labour market by facilitating an international career. By looking at how an international career is understood and experienced by international students in the UK, this research empirically contests the dominant conception of an international career that centres on transnational mobility and illuminates the multiple ways of pursuing an international career which take on a circumventive or subversive potential

Exploring the Front Touch Interface for Virtual Reality Headsets

In this paper, we propose a new interface for virtual reality headset: a touchpad in front of the headset. To demonstrate the feasibility of the front touch interface, we built a prototype device, explored VR UI design space expansion, and performed various user studies. We started with preliminary tests to see how intuitively and accurately people can interact with the front touchpad. Then, we further experimented various user interfaces such as a binary selection, a typical menu layout, and a keyboard. Two-Finger and Drag-n-Tap were also explored to find the appropriate selection technique. As a low-cost, light-weight, and in low power budget technology, a touch sensor can make an ideal interface for mobile headset. Also, front touch area can be large enough to allow wide range of interaction types such as multi-finger interactions. With this novel front touch interface, we paved a way to new virtual reality interaction methods

SF-DST: Few-Shot Self-Feeding Reading Comprehension Dialogue State Tracking with Auxiliary Task

Few-shot dialogue state tracking (DST) model tracks user requests in dialogue with reliable accuracy even with a small amount of data. In this paper, we introduce an ontology-free few-shot DST with self-feeding belief state input. The self-feeding belief state input increases the accuracy in multi-turn dialogue by summarizing previous dialogue. Also, we newly developed a slot-gate auxiliary task. This new auxiliary task helps classify whether a slot is mentioned in the dialogue. Our model achieved the best score in a few-shot setting for four domains on multiWOZ 2.0.Comment: Accepted in INTERSPEECH 202

Flood Insurance Demand along the Gulf and Florida Coast

The objective of this research is to identify factors that influence both the decision (yes or no) and level of flood insurance among coastal homeowners in the southeast U.S. Recently flood damage has dramatically increased (Flood), and Crossett et al. (2004) report that coastal populations are growing. And in spite of rising costs of living in coastal areas, people are willing to pay more for access to ocean views and other natural amenities associated with coastal living (Bin and Kruse, 2006). Although the federal government provides flood insurance programs and encourages at-risk residents to insure their property from flood, rates of uptake remain low (Burby, 2001; Kunreuther, 2006; Landry and Jahan-Parvar, 2009). The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created to provide often subsidized premiums to cover losses which private insurance markets failed to offer. However, as Kunreuther et al.(1978) argue, many people do not bother to prepare, and have a low willingness to pay for coverage, even if subsidized (Kunreuther 1996). However, of those who have previously experienced flooding, they tend to insure their properties more (McClelland, Schulze, and Coursey 1993). Based on previous literature, we identified key factors to establish testable hypotheses regarding effect on flood insurance demand. These include: income, previous flood experience, the presence of a mortgage, home location (both flood zone status and distance from the shore), participation in CRS, the distance from the coast, the house construction year as well as measures of respondent risk preferences and perceptions. Data on flood coverage level and the above explanatory variables were obtained via revealed-preference online survey method, contracted through Knowledge Networks (KN) during August-September 2010. We chose to contract with KN for several reasons. First, they are, to our knowledge, the only survey firm that can legitimately say they have a true probability based sample for an online survey because they recruit by phone and/or mail (randomly selected using random-digit dialing (RDD) or by using address-based sampling); additionally they provide internet access to households that do not have it. KN was also contracted to overcome the typical of low response rate when surveying the general public. KN uses an online panel (called the “Knowledge Panel”). KN Panel members that were homeowners were sampled from 95 counties in Gulf Coast and Florida Atlantic Coast counties in AL, FL, LA, MS, and TX, with an 47% response rate (720 observations), with 67% from FL, 24% from TX, 5% from LA, and 4% collectively from AL and MS. As expected, insurance purchase is positively affected by the individual’s risk perception, their risk preference, whether or not they have a mortgage, flood zone residence, their income, CRS, previous flood experience, and the year of construction of house. Coefficients of mortgage and risk perception, income, flood zone are significant at 0.05 the level. Additionally, the coefficient of distance from the coast is only significant at the 0.1 level.Flood Insurance, Risk, Insurance Demand, Environmental Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,