Public Versus Private Mobility for the Poor: Transit Improvements Versus Increased Car Ownership in the Sacramento Region, MTI Research Report 08-02

Whether to aid welfare recipients in overcoming transportation barriers with increased car ownership or better transit became an issue after the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was signed into law. Empirical studies pointed out that welfare recipients owning a car had a high probability of moving from welfare to work. In this study, the authors examined the impacts of car ownership promotion versus transit improvements on job accessibility, work trips, and traveler´s economic welfare by running a travel demand model adopted by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG). In the car scenario, the zero-car households who were assigned a car had higher job accessibility and larger traveler benefits than in the Base Case scenario. The other households had lower traveler benefits, compared to the Base Case, due to slight increases in congestion. In the transit scenario, all households had gains in traveler benefits and the households without a car gained more than those with a car. The households without a car gained more in traveler benefits in the transit scenario than in the car scenario. The total gain in traveler benefits was higher in the transit scenario. In both scenarios, the changes in total travel time, congestion, and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) were small, but mode shares changed substantially

Perceived ability and actual recognition accuracy for unfamiliar and famous faces

In forensic person recognition tasks, mistakes in the identification of unfamiliar faces occur frequently. This study explored whether these errors might arise because observers are poor at judging their ability to recognize unfamiliar faces, and also whether they might conflate the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Across two experiments, we found that observers could predict their ability to recognize famous but not unfamiliar faces. Moreover, observers seemed to partially conflate these abilities by adjusting ability judgements for famous faces after a test of unfamiliar face recognition (Experiment 1) and vice versa (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that observers have limited insight into their ability to identify unfamiliar faces. These experiments also show that judgements of recognition abilities are malleable and can generalize across different face categories

A Battle of Taste and Environmental Convictions for Ecolabeled Seafood: A Choice Experiment

This paper describes a choice experiment addressing preferences for ecolabeled seafood, in which the experimental design allows for choices among various fresh seafood products. The primary emphasis is the potential trade-off between taste (i.e., a favored species) and the presence of an ecolabel, when multiple seafood products are available.Consumer/Household Economics,

Applying an Integrated Model to the Evaluation of Travel Demand Management Policies in the Sacramento Region, MTI Report 01-03

The Mineta Transportation Institute at San José State University conducted this study to review the issues and implications involved in the project in question. The primary objective of this study was to use an advanced integrated land use and transportation model to evaluate transit and supportive land use and pricing policies; the Sacramento MEPLAN model was used to simulate these policies. The model represents the effect of changes in the transportation system on land use. If the land use and transportation interaction is not represented, then the analysis of transit and highway alternatives may be biased. For example, if the land used induced travel effect is not represented in a transit alternative, then vehicle miles traveled (VMT), congestion, and emissions may be overestimated and VMT, congestion, and emissions may be underestimated in a highway alternative. Moreover, the more comprehensive representation of induced travel effects in the Sacramento MEPLAN model increases sensitivity to policies such as transit, land use measures, and pricing policies

Applying an Integrated Urban Model in the Evaluation of Travel Demand Management Policies in the Sacramento Region: Year Two, MTI Report 01-08

In this study, the authors apply an integrated land use and transportation model, the Sacramento MEPLAN model, to evaluate transit investment alternatives combines with supportive land use policies and pricing policies in the Sacramento region. The current study builds upon the year-one study (Johnson et. al., 2000) in two important respects. First, the study employs a second version of the Sacramento MEPLAN model that explicitly represents floorspace consumption in the land use component of the model. Second, the transit, land use and pricing policies evaluated in the year-two project as expanded and refined in this study in response to the recommendations of local interest groups and the results of the year-one report. Finally, the evaluation of the scenarios is expanded to include total benefit and equity measures

Tobacco Farmer Interest and Success in Diversification

As U.S. farm income from tobacco production has declined in recent years, there has been increased interest in developing alternative sources of farm revenue to replace lost tobacco income, particularly in tobacco-dependent communities of the southeastern United States. The recent end of the tobacco quota program is expected to accelerate the exit of tobacco farmers and has heightened concern regarding the availability of profitable substitutes for tobacco. In this study, we examine the impact of farm, household, and market characteristics on tobacco farmer interest and success in on-farm and off-farm income diversification. Using survey data collected from a panel of North Carolina tobacco farmers in 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2004 combined with market data collected from secondary sources, we evaluate the influence of farmer preferences, resource endowments, market incentives, risk, and biophysical factors on tobacco farmers' attitudes regarding diversification into non-tobacco products, the extent to which they reallocated resources towards non-tobacco products, and their success in identifying profitable alternatives to tobacco production. Our research contributes empirical findings to the public dialogue concerning the ability of tobacco farmers and tobacco-dependent communities to adjust to structural changes taking place in the tobacco market.Tobacco, farm diversification, household model, quota buyout., Farm Management,

MEASURING CONSUMER PREFERENCES FOR ECOLABELED SEAFOOD: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

An analysis of consumer preferences for seafood labeled with information about environmental production attributes is introduced into the food labeling literature. International seafood ecolabeling programs have proposed to create market-based incentives for fisheries managers to promote sustainable fisheries. We investigate differences in consumer preferences for ecolabeled seafood across the United States and Norway. Using a contingent-choice telephone survey of random households in each nation, a wide range of factors is found to influence consumers' likelihood of purchasing ecolabeled seafood. Consumer preferences differ by price premium, species, consumer group, and certifying agency. The effect of these factors often differs between the United States and Norway, suggesting heterogeneity in international reactions to seafood ecolabels.Consumer/Household Economics,

CONTINGENT VALUATION FOCUS GROUPS: INSIGHTS FROM ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES

Despite the many important uses (and potential abuses) of focus groups in survey design, the CV literature presents few guidelines to aid moderators in their interaction with focus group participants. This paper draws on the theory and practice of ethnographic interviewing to introduce general guidelines that can improve focus groups as an aid to CV research. The proposed guidelines illustrate types of questions that should reduce speculation and moderator-introduced bias in focus group responses, and improve the correspondence between focus group responses and actual behavior. The paper illustrates these ethnographic guidelines through a CV application concerning watershed resources.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

A Battle of Taste and Environmental Convictions for Ecolabeled Seafood: A Contingent Ranking Experiment

Consumers face pressure from environmental groups to modify their seafood purchase decisions based on concerns about fisheries\u27 production practices. Existing research provides little information indicating whether seafood consumers are willing to change purchasing behavior based on a product\u27s environmental attributes, to the exclusion of other attributes. We describe a contingent ranking experiment addressing preferences for fresh seafood, allowing for choices among different species, some displaying an ecolabel. Results suggest consumers consider overfishing sufficiently important to contemplate changing the species of fish they buy; however, they are unwilling to choose a less-favored species based solely on the presence of an ecolabel