Big data is decision science: The case of COVID-19 vaccination

Data science has been proven to be an important asset to support better decision making in a variety of settings, whether it is for a scientist to better predict climate change for a company to better predict sales or for a government to anticipate voting preferences. In this research, the authors leverage random forest (RF) as one of the most effective machine learning techniques using big data to predict vaccine intent in five European countries. The findings support the idea that outside of vaccine features, building adequate perception of the risk of contamination, and securing institutional and peer trust are key nudges to convert skeptics to get vaccinated against COVID-19. What machine learning techniques further add beyond traditional regression techniques is some extra granularity in factors affecting vaccine preferences (twice more factors than logistic regression). Other factors that emerge as predictors of vaccine intent are compliance appetite with non-pharmaceutical protective measures as well as perception of the crisis duration.SCOPUS: ch.binfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Big Data is Decision Science: the Case of Covid-19 Vaccination

Data science has been proven to be an important asset to support better decision-making in a variety of settings, whether it is for a scientist to better predict climate change, for a company to better predict sales, or for a government to anticipate voting preferences. In this research, we leverage Random Forest (RF) as one of the most effective machine learning techniques using big data to predict vaccine intent in five European countries. The findings support the idea that outside of vaccine features, building adequate perception of the risk of contamination, as well securing institutional and peer trust are key nudges to convert skeptics to get vaccinated against the covid-19. What machine learning techniques further add beyond traditional regression techniques, is some extra granularity in factors affecting vaccine preferences (twice more factors than logistic regression). Other factors that emerge as predictors of vaccine intent are compliance appetite with non-pharmaceutical protective measures, as well as perception of the crisis duration.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Application of frontal EEG asymmetry to advertising research

The aim of the study was to identify frontal cortex activation in reaction to TV advertisements. We compared three consecutive creative executions of the world-famous Sony Bravia ads ("Balls", "Paints", and "Play-Doh"). We were looking for left hemispheric dominance, which according to the adopted theoretical model, indicated approach reactions of respondents to incoming stimulation. We have found that dominant reactions were present only in response to one of the tested ads - "Balls". Target group respondents reacted in such way to emotional part of the ad, as well as to its informational part (including product-benefit, product, and brand exposure scenes). No similar pattern was found for the remaining two ads. It yields a conclusion that frontal asymmetry measure may be a diagnostic tool in examining the potential of advertisements to generate approach related tendencies. We believe that methodologies based on measuring brain waves activity would soon significantly enrich marketing research portfolio and help marketers to go beyond verbal declarations of their consumers.Biometric consumer research Frontal asymmetry EEG Advertising Copy testing Brain waves Neuromarketing

Covid-19 Endemism and the Control Skeptics

This paper analyses the widespread difference in Covid-19 vaccination and Non-Pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) acceptance by the European population and finds that this difference can be clustered in nine archetype clusters. Calibrating a SIR model with control acceptance on Covid-19 pandemics, it is also estimated that three anti-control segments (standing in aggregate for 15% of the population) may be contributing to the entire bulk of the endemism of the Covid-19. While poorly compliant segments have lower risk perception than others, tend to be younger, and less educated, or are more self-centric, trust with respect to media, governmental, and healthcare institutions are significantly shaping control acceptance by the population. In particular, the way to overturn a large set of vaccination “hesitant” (20% of the population), must pass by rebuilding much higher trust in how the current crisis is managed by the government and healthcare systeminfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Perceptive Risk Clusters of European Citizens and NPI Compliance in face of the Covid-19 Pandemics

Despite promising announcements on an effective vaccine, the control of the covid-19 pandemic is critically dependent on the maximal compliance of citizens to a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI for short). We use statistical clustering to partition European citizens with regards to their perceptive risks and social attitudes during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic and find ten segments to predict, both the extent and mix of protective behaviors adopted. Those segments demonstrate a clear divide in the population, with on one extreme, a segment (standing for 8% of the population) that is self-centered and exhibits low self-risk perception as well as low NPI compliance. The other extreme is composed of a segment (11% of the population) that is more socially oriented, and quite responsive to all protective measures. As data are survey-based, we adjust responses based on information gap (by reaction time, RT, measurement) of both worry expression and NPI compliance, to confirm the robustness of our results. Further, we extend the notion of worries to be not only health-related but to include financial risk (like losing a job) as well as psychological worries (e.g. feeling alone, or being unable to meet with family and friends), as they prove to drive different NPI behaviors among the population.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Perceptive risk clusters of European citizens and NPI compliance in face of the covid-19 pandemics

Despite promising announcements on an effective vaccine, the control of the covid-19 pandemic is critically dependent on the maximal compliance of citizens to a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI for short). We use statistical clustering to partition European citizens with regards to their perceptive risks and social attitudes during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic and find ten segments to predict, both the extent and mix of protective behaviors adopted. Those segments demonstrate a clear divide in the population, with on one extreme, a segment (standing for 8% of the population) that is self-centered and exhibits low self-risk perception as well as low NPI compliance. The other extreme is composed of a segment (11% of the population) that is more socially oriented, and quite responsive to all protective measures.As data are survey-based, we adjust responses based on information gap (by reaction time, RT, measurement) of both worry expression and NPI compliance, to confirm the robustness of our results. Further, we extend the notion of worries to be not only health-related but to include financial risk (like losing a job) as well as psychological worries (e.g. feeling alone, or being unable to meet with family and friends), as they prove to drive different NPI behaviors among the population.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The Great Employee Divide: Clustering Employee « Well-being » Challenge during Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented levels of disruption and stress for workers. Still, little is relatively known about the state of mind of the workforce, even if its well-being is increasingly recognized as a driver of productivity. This paper encompasses multiple forms of stress - health, economic, social, and psychological – faced by the workforce, and demonstrates that not only have workers been facing large levels of stress during the Covid-19 pandemic beyond health issues, but that stress is not uniformly distributed among workers. While it is known that Covid-19 has been building a divide between remote and on-site workers, we uncover a much larger divide than the ones induced by work location alone, with the divide being due to different perceptions of mix and level of worries. Human resources practices may have to be much more personalized and include all forms of stress to diagnose the level of workers’ state of fragility if they wish to create a much more resilient and productive workforce.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Make it or Break it: Vaccination Intention at the Time of Covid-19

This research updates early studies on the intention to be vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus among a representative sample of adults in 6 European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) and differentiated by groups of “acceptors”, “refusers”, and “ hesitant”. The research relies on a set of traditional logistic and more complex classification techniques such as Neural Networks and Random Forest techniques to determine common predictors of vaccination preferences. The findings highlight that socio-demographics are not a reliable measure of vaccination propensity, after one controls for different risk perceptions, and illustrate the key role of institutional and peer trust for vaccination success. Policymakers must build vaccine promotion techniques differentiated according to “acceptors”, “refusers”, and “ hesitant”, while restoring much larger trust in their actions upfront since the pandemics if one wishes the vaccination coverage to close part of the gap to the level of herd immunity.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe