Unconditional care in academic emergency departments

Recent news stories have explicitly stated that patients with symptoms of COVID-19 were "turned away" from emergency departments. This commentary addresses these serious allegations, with an attempt to provide the perspective of academic emergency departments (EDs) around the Nation. The overarching point we wish to make is that academic EDs never deny emergency care to any person

A behavioral rebound effect

Pro-environmental behaviors are an important avenue for mitigating environmental impacts. Technological improvements are also a vital tool for reducing environmental damage from consumption. However, their benefits are partially offset by the direct rebound effect, whereby a consumer rationally responds to an increase in resource use efficiency by consuming more. This paper investigates whether technological improvement might also reduce behaviorally motivated mitigation of environmental damage. A behavioral rebound effect operates through two channels. First, pro-environmental effort is reduced after a decrease in marginal environmental damage. Second, moral licensing reduces pro-environmental effort further when technological change is endogenous. I develop a novel real effort laboratory experiment to identify these behaviors. I find a positive behavioral rebound effect. I also find evidence consistent with moral licensing, which is strongest among subjects with a higher degree of pro-environmental attitudes and beliefs. Subjects’ baseline level of pro-environmental effort is driven by beliefs about social norms

Three experiments exploring how preferences, motivations and incentives influence behaviour

We can make better choices with a deeper understanding of what drives our behaviours. This thesis uses economic experiments to shed light on health and environmental behaviours. The first paper identifies that risk averse people care about the security of supply of city water. The second paper finds that small monetary payments can work better than high monetary payments for motivating people because large incentives can significantly reduce intrinsic motivation. The third paper shows that more environmentally friendly technology can lead to people doing less for the environment, particularly when they have chosen to use the technology themselves

Busy road frontage influences on-farm adoption of visible good management practices

The agricultural sector faces increasing social pressure for its environmental impacts, potentially prompting farmers to uptake voluntary ‘good management practices’ (GMPs). While the existing literature posits that uptake of GMPs is prevalent in observable places such as along busy roads, there is a lack of quantitative empirical evidence. This study identifies whether perceived busy road frontage impacts farmers’ adoption of voluntary GMPs via a large-scale survey of dairy and sheep and beef farmers in New Zealand. We find that frontage on a busy road is associated with greater uptake of a GMP that is easily observed and recognised by the general public, but GMPs not visible from the road do not show greater uptake. We further find that the effect is amplified for dairy farmers vis-`a-vis sheep and beef farmers, consistent with the higher levels of public scrutiny of the dairy industry. We contribute to the social pressure literature by demonstrating how visible GMPs subject to scrutiny are likely to have higher uptake