Platinum-Rhodium Alloy Electrocatalyst Activities in the Methanol Oxidation Reaction

This study evaluates the electrochemical activity of several compositions of platinum-rhodium alloys on carbon support to identify potential replacements for the expensive platinum electrocatalysts currently used in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). The electrochemical active surface areas (ECSAs) of each sample were determined using cyclic voltammetry (CV) in a 0.5 M H2SO4 solution to normalize CV currents generated in the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). The activity of five compositions was tested; Pt3Rh, Pt2Rh, PtRh, Pt2Rh, and Pt3Rh. 100 mg of each catalyst was synthesized at 10% by weight platinum loading using a surfactant-free impregnation technique. TEM images were taken of one sample to examine morphology and confirm alloying of the two metals. A volcano-like relationship was found between decreasing platinum loading and electrochemical activity, with a peak seen with the Pt2Rh sample at 0.66 mA/cm2. This value is higher than a similarly prepared commercial platinum catalyst which had an activity of 0.6 mA/cm2. These findings indicate that Pt2Rh has the potential to be better suited for use in DMFCs than commercial platinum, and could be used to bring down the cost of DMFCs and make green energy one step closer to reality

Did You Miss Something? Inattentive Respondents in Discrete Choice Experiments

Stated preference practitioners are increasingly relying on internet panels to gather data, but emerging evidence suggests potential limitations with respect to respondent and response quality in such panels. We identify groups of inattentive respondents who have failed to watch information videos provided in the survey to completion. Our results show that inattentive respondents have a higher cost sensitivity, are more likely to have a small scale parameter, and are more likely to ignore the non-cost attributes. These results are largely driven by respondents failing to watch the information video about the discrete choice experiment, attributes and levels, which underlines the importance of information provision and highlights possible implications of inattentiveness. We develop a modeling framework to simultaneously address preference, scale and attribute processing heterogeneity. We find that when we consider attribute non-attendance—scale differences disappear, which suggests that the type of heterogeneity detected in a model could be the result of un-modeled heterogeneity of a different kind. We discuss implications of our results

Is North Carolina Ready for Community-Based Corrections?

The concept of rehabilitation of criminal offenders in prisons seems to be an unrealistic ideal based on simplistic assumptions about causes of crime and a view of crime as a symptom of illness under the medical model that calls for diagnosis and treatment. In summary, there seems little hope for rehabilitation within any prison program because of the influences of the prison environment on the offender. The prospect for rehabilitation may be better outside the prison setting if more careful planning, greater commitment to realistic rehabilitation approaches, and perhaps a greater willingness to take calculated risks on behalf of convicted offenders are part of the rehabilitation effort. The crucial question is who cares about rehabilitating criminals. Traditionally, society's primary concern has been to separate the offender from the community for the protection of ourselves and our property. In general, society does not care about convicted criminals and has been unwilling to invest funds in appropriate facilities or in modern programs

Disentangling the influence of knowledge on attribute non-attendance

The data from the cold-water coral survey was collected as part of the project “Habitat-Fisheries interactions – Valuation and Bio-Economic Modeling of Cold-Water Coral”, funded by the Research Council of Norway (Grant no. 216485). We also thank the Marine Alliance Science and Technology (MASTS, www.masts.ac.uk, Scot­tish Fund­ing Coun­cil, Grant no. HR09011) for part funding this research.We seek to disentangle the effect of knowledge about an environmental good on respondents' propensity to ignore one or more attributes on the choice cards in a discrete choice experiment eliciting people's preferences for increased protection of cold-water corals in Norway. We hypothesize that a respondent's level of knowledge influences the degree to which she ignores attributes. Respondents participated in a quiz on cold-water coral prior to the valuation task and we use the result of the quiz as an ex-ante measure of their knowledge. Our results suggests that a high level of knowledge, measured by a high quiz score, is associated with higher probabilities of attendance to the three non-cost attributes, although this effect is only significant for one of them. A higher quiz score is also associated with a significantly lower probability of attending to the cost attribute. Furthermore, although being told your score has mixed directional effects on attribute non-attendance, it does not significantly affect the probability of attending to any of the attributes. Finally, allowing for attribute non-attendance leads to substantially lower conditional willingness-to-pay estimates. This highlights the importance of measuring how much people know about the goods over which they are choosing, and underlines that more research is needed to understand how information influences the degree to which respondents ignore attributes.PostprintPeer reviewe

Ponderous, Proficient or Professional? Survey Experience and Smartphone Effects in Stated Preference Research

New parenthood causes large decreases in labor market incomes for mothers but not fathers, a stylized fact known as the “child penalty.” We combine a simple household model with estimates of child penalties in heterosexual nonadopting, adopting, and same-sex couples to better understand what causes the child penalty in heterosexual nonadopting couples. Our results largely rule out giving birth and the father’s advantage in the labor market as mechanisms, leaving preferences, gender norms, and discrimination as the main explanations. In addition, our paper provides novel evidence on the impact of children on labor market outcomes of adopting and same-sex couples.publishedVersio

The use of latent variable models in policy: A road fraught with peril?

This paper explores the potential usefulness and possible pitfalls of using integrated choice and latent variable models (hybrid choice models) on stated choice data to inform policy. Using a series of Monte-Carlo simulations, we consider how model selection depends on the strength of relationship between the latent variable and preferences and the strength of relationship between the latent variable and the indicator. Our findings show that integrated choice and latent variable models are difficult to estimate, even when the data generating process is known. Ultimately, we show that their use should be driven by the analyst’s belief about the strength of correlations between preferences, the latent variable and indicator. We discuss the implications of our results for policy

Accommodating satisficing behaviour in stated choice experiments

Accumulating evidence suggests that respondents in stated choice experiments use simplifying strategies. Such behavior is a deviation from random utility theory and can lead to wrong inferences regarding preferences. This is a first attempt to systematically explore satisficing in stated choice experiments. We consider 944 satisficing rules and allow respondents to revise the rules adopted throughout the choice sequence. Only a minority of respondents used the same satisficing rule across the entire sequence. Allowing for updating reveals that the use of the heuristic changes over the choice sequence. Considering satisficing behavior leads to improved model fits and different marginal willingness-to-pay estimates

Civil War Impacts on Youth Business Groups in Tigray: A Pre-Analysis Plan and Documentation for Ethical Approval by Institutional Review Board at NMBU

This is a revised plan for the finalization of the “Youth Groups for Sustainable Development: Lessons from the Ethiopian Model” (Researcher project under NORGLOBAL2, funded by the Research Council of Norway). The project started in 2019 and was planned to last for four years. A civil war broke out in the study areas in November 2020 and made it impossible to continue the project according to the initial plan. A lot of survey and experimental data had already been collected by this time and the project was in the process of implementing a number of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) on business group training, leadership, and women’s empowerment. These RCTs were planned implemented and analyzed in collaboration with a number of international partners. We were unfortunately unable to do this. The civil war lasted for two years and a substantial share of the project funds were locked into local banks and the local collaborating university (Mekelle University) that were closed down during the civil war. We asked for an extension of the project to the end of 2023 and was granted this by the Research Council of Norway – to enable us to do a final assessment what has happened to the youth groups, their members, and families during the civil war and to assess the youth (business) groups’ role in the recreation of the members’ livelihoods after the civil war. We were informed on June 15th, 2023, that the project funds that have been locked in the bank in Mekelle since the civil war started can be accessed through Mekelle University for the continuation of the project fieldwork. We submitted this plan and application for ethical approval at NMBU on June 16th, 2023. Approval was received on August 3rd, 2023. Some minor revisions were implemented based on the review and further preparation of baseline data from 2019. Training of the field team and programming of final survey instruments with translation into the local language Tigrinya started immediately. The training and pilot testing of the instruments were completed by August 19th, 2023. The actual fieldwork started on August 22nd after some final editing of the experiments. This report thus presents the final instruments

Potential for Sustainable Aquaculture: Insights from Discrete Choice Experiments

The growth in global aquaculture production may address the lack of sustainability in wild fisheries, alleviate poverty in rural and coastal areas, and help meet the worldwide increase in demand for animal protein. However, there is an ongoing debate about the severity of the environmental impact of aquaculture production. Investing in new high-tech production systems can address both productivity growth and the environmental externalities, but high investment costs hinder adoption of high-tech production methods. We investigate the potential of a payment for environmental services program easing access to capital for producers to increase willingness-to-invest in more sustainable aquaculture practices in Vietnam. We conducted two discrete choice experiments to explore the supply and demand side of the policy. First, we elicited the public’s willingness-to-pay to reduce the environmental impact of conventional shrimp aquaculture, and second, we elicited farmers willingness-to-accept a credit subsidy to invest in high-tech production methods. Our results show that the public care about reduced environmental impacts, while farmers strongly prefer increased productivity. Furthermore, the public’s willingness-to-pay for reduced environmental impacts exceeds producer’s willingness-to-accept a subsidy to invest under most scenarios. This implies a potential for more sustainable aquaculture production in Vietnam