A De-biased Direct Question Approach to Measuring Consumers' Willingness to Pay

Knowledge of consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) is a prerequisite to profitable price-setting. To gauge consumers' WTP, practitioners often rely on a direct single question approach in which consumers are asked to explicitly state their WTP for a product. Despite its popularity among practitioners, this approach has been found to suffer from hypothetical bias. In this paper, we propose a rigorous method that improves the accuracy of the direct single question approach. Specifically, we systematically assess the hypothetical biases associated with the direct single question approach and explore ways to de-bias it. Our results show that by using the de-biasing procedures we propose, we can generate a de-biased direct single question approach that is accu-rate enough to be useful for managerial decision-making. We validate this approach with two studies in this paper.Comment: Market Research, Pricing, Demand Estimation, Direct Estimation, Single Question Approach, Choice Experiments, Willingness to Pay, Hypothetical Bia

Generative AI in Idea Development: The Role of Numeric and Visual Feedback

Human creativity is a crucial factor in developing innovative ideas. Many ideas are being generated, but only a few receive feedback, as creating feedback is a costly and time-consuming effort in innovation. While feedback promises higher idea quality, previous work requires human experts with domain expertise. Generative AI could provide automated feedback and is expected to transform creative work. This short paper presents an experimental series in which we let humans collaborate with generative AI to develop ideas. Based on dual-coding and media synchronicity theory, we conceptualize numerical and visual feedback to overcome cognitive barriers. We manipulate feedback modalities and timing to personalize the interaction. Our contributions provide evidence on when and why specific co-creative arrangements between humans and generative AI are favorable

Temporary sharing prompts unrestrained disclosures that leave lasting negative impressions

With the advent of social media, the impressions people make on others are based increasingly on their digital disclosures. However, digital disclosures can come back to haunt, making it challenging for people to manage the impressions they make. In field and online experiments in which participants take, share, and evaluate self-photographs (“selfies”), we show that, paradoxically, these challenges can be exacerbated by temporary-sharing media—technologies that prevent content from being stored permanently. Relative to permanent sharing, temporary sharing affects both whether and what people reveal. Specifically, temporary sharing increases compliance with the request to take a selfie (study 1) and induces greater disclosure risks (i.e., people exhibit greater disinhibition in their selfies, studies 1 and 2). This increased disclosure is driven by reduced privacy concerns (study 2). However, observers’ impressions of sharers are insensitive to permanence (i.e., whether the selfie was shared temporarily versus permanently) and are instead driven by the disinhibition exhibited in the selfie (studies 4–7). As a result, induced by the promise of temporary sharing, sharers of uninhibited selfies come across as having worse judgment than those who share relatively discreet selfies (studies 1, 2, and 4–7)—an attributional pattern that is unanticipated by sharers (study 3), that persists days after the selfie has disappeared (study 5), is robust to personal experience with temporary sharing (studies 6A and 6B), and holds even among friends (studies 7A and 7B). Temporary sharing may bring back forgetting, but not without introducing new (self-presentational) challenges

A DFT study of permanganate oxidation of toluene and its ortho -nitroderivatives

Calculations of alternative oxidationpathways of toluene and its ortho-substituted nitro derivatives by permanganate anion have been performed. The competition between methyl group and ring oxidation has been addressed. Acceptable results have been obtained using IEFPCM/B3LYP/6-31+G(d,p) calculations with zero-point (ZPC) and thermal corrections, as validated by comparison with the experimental data. It has been shown that ring oxidation reactions proceed via relatively early transition states that become quite unsymmetrical for reactions involving ortho-nitrosubstituted derivatives. Transition states for the hydrogen atom abstraction reactions, on the other hand, are late. All favored reactions are characterized by the Gibbs free energy of activation, ΔG≠, of about 25kcal mol−1. Methyl group oxidations are exothermic by about 20kcal mol−1 while ring oxidations are around thermoneutrality. Figure Oxidation of toluene and its ortho-nitroderivative

Social Ties and User Generated Content: Evidence from an Online Social Network

We use variation in wind speeds at surfing locations in Switzerland as exogenous shifters of users' propensity to post content about their surfing activity onto an online social network. We exploit this variation to test whether users' social ties on the network have a causal effect on their content generation, and whether conent generation in turn has a similar causal effect on the users' abilty to form social ties. Economically significant causal effects of this kind can produce positive feedback that generate multiplier e¤ects to interventions that subsidize tie formation. We argue these interventions can therefore be the basis of a strategy by the rm to indirectly faciliate content generation on the site. The exogenous variation provided by wind speeds enable us to measure this feedback empirically and to assess the return on investment from such policies. We use a detailed dataset from an online social network that comprises the complete details of social tie formation and content generation on the site. The richness of he data enable us to control for several spurious confounds that have typically plagued empirical analysis of social interactions. Our results show evidence for significant positive feedback in user generated content. We discuss the implications of the estimates for the management of the content and the growth of the network

Social Ties and User Generated Content: Evidence from an Online Social Network

We use variation in wind speeds at surfing locations in Switzerland as exogenous shifters of users' propensity to post content about their surfing activity onto an online social network. We exploit this variation to test whether users' social ties on the network have a causal effect on their content generation, and whether conent generation in turn has a similar causal effect on the users' abilty to form social ties. Economically significant causal effects of this kind can produce positive feedback that generate multiplier e¤ects to interventions that subsidize tie formation. We argue these interventions can therefore be the basis of a strategy by the rm to indirectly faciliate content generation on the site. The exogenous variation provided by wind speeds enable us to measure this feedback empirically and to assess the return on investment from such policies. We use a detailed dataset from an online social network that comprises the complete details of social tie formation and content generation on the site. The richness of he data enable us to control for several spurious confounds that have typically plagued empirical analysis of social interactions. Our results show evidence for significant positive feedback in user generated content. We discuss the implications of the estimates for the management of the content and the growth of the network