The premium as informational cue in insurance decision-making

Often in insurance decision making, there are risk factors on which the insurer has an informational advantage over the consumer. But when the insurer sets and posts a premium for the consumer to consider, the consumer can potentially use the premium as an informational cue for the loss probability, and thereby to reduce the insurer’s informational advantage. We study, by means of a behavioral model, how consumers would use the premium as an informational cue in such contexts. The belief formation process in our model assumes that both prior knowledge and the premium (as a proportion of the compensation) might have an impact on the consumer’s estimate of the loss probability. Moreover, the premium impacts the estimate through an anchoring-and-adjustment process. The model potentially leads to violations of rational expectations, with which the consumer overestimates the loss probability beyond what could be inferred from the premium, given the premise that the insurer must seek to break even or earn an expected profit. Our model analysis moreover implies that the frequency of such violations is non-increasing as the premium increases. Lastly, the model implies a generally inverted-U relationship between insurance demand and the premium, so that the demand is upward sloping at low premium levels and downward sloping at high premium levels. A pilot field study and a laboratory experiment provide robust evidence for our model implications and calibrations for its parameters

Social Cognitive Role of Schizophrenia Candidate Gene GABRB2

10.1371/journal.pone.0062322PLoS ONE84

A Survey of Experimental Research on Contests, All-Pay Auctions and Tournaments

Many economic, political and social environments can be described as contests in which agents exert costly efforts while competing over the distribution of a scarce resource. These environments have been studied using Tullock contests, all-pay auctions and rankorder tournaments. This survey provides a review of experimental research on these three canonical contests. First, we review studies investigating the basic structure of contests, including the contest success function, number of players and prizes, spillovers and externalities, heterogeneity, and incomplete information. Second, we discuss dynamic contests and multi-battle contests. Then we review research on sabotage, feedback, bias, collusion, alliances, and contests between groups, as well as real-effort and field experiments. Finally, we discuss applications of contests to the study of legal systems, political competition, war, conflict avoidance, sales, and charities, and suggest directions for future research. (author's abstract

Loss aversion in hotel choice : psychophysiological evidence

202206 bckwAccepted ManuscriptOthersUniversity of Macau; Higher Education Fund of the Government of Macao SARPublishe

The effect of physical possession on preference for product warranty

10.1016/j.ijresmar.2013.07.004International Journal of Research in Marketing304424-425IJRM

The journey from episodes to evaluations : how travelers arrive at summary evaluations

202206 bckwAccepted ManuscriptOthersUniversity of Macau; Higher Education FundPublishe

Imaging genetics for utility of risks over gains and losses

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.07.031NeuroImage591540-546NEIM

A review of research into neuroscience in tourism: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on neuroscience in tourism

The growth of neuroscience studies within tourism has been relatively slow, with limited well-executed studies and little interdisciplinarity. The aim of this review is to stimulate the use of neuroscience within tourism research. It first discusses the synergies to be gained by combining neuroscience with social science, exploring the usefulness and suitability of using neuroscience within tourism. An evaluation of review articles that have critiqued individual applications of neuroscience in tourism is presented, followed by a comprehensive overview of neuroscience methods. We discuss the theoretical relevance of neuroscience and its potential themes for a tourism neuroscience research agenda. This discussion is based on a selective review of wider neuroscience of relevance to tourism, including affective neuroscience, neuromarketing, neuroeconomics and neuromanagement