Socialize More, Pay Less: Randomized Field Experiments on Social Pricing

Information Systems Research ◽

10.1287/isre.2021.1089 ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

Haibing Gao ◽

Subodha Kumar ◽

Yinliang (Ricky) Tan ◽

Huazhong Zhao

Keyword(s):

Social Interactions ◽

Price Discrimination ◽

Field Experiments ◽

Social Cost ◽

Customer Acquisition ◽

Price Differentiation ◽

Fresh Food ◽

Food Retailer ◽

Underlying Mechanisms

We propose social pricing, a novel pricing framework under which consumers with higher social capital enjoy a better price. Conceptually, social pricing enables firms to achieve price discrimination based on a consumer’s social value. This is in sharp contrast with traditional price discrimination strategies where price differentiation typically hinges on consumers’ personal value. We design and conduct two randomized field experiments on a leading online fresh food retailer to understand the value of social pricing. Social pricing has been commonly credited for its effectiveness in new customer acquisition. Interestingly, our study reveals that it is also highly effective on existing consumers. Our analysis shows that social pricing can increase an online retailer’s profit by 40% solely from existing consumers, compared with regular firm-offered discounts. Exploration of the underlying mechanisms reveals that perceived engagement and social cost are the main drivers, which not only help to increase purchasing frequency but also induce higher order value per purchase. In a follow-up experiment, we vary the rules of social interactions by requiring heterogeneity in consumers’ purchasing frequencies. The results suggest that a heterogeneity-based strategy can further amplify the benefits of social pricing.

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Approaches to Anti-Ageism Interventions

Innovation in Aging ◽

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2333 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. 672-672

Author(s):

Tracey Gendron ◽

Jennifer Inker

Keyword(s):

Social Interactions ◽

Self Esteem ◽

Older Individuals ◽

Staff Members ◽

Self Development ◽

And Behaviors ◽

Aging Anxiety ◽

Negative Impacts ◽

Systemic Nature

Abstract Ageism, a multidimensional construct, is also understood as a relational process whereby perceptions and behaviors toward older individuals by younger individuals not only damage the self-esteem of elders, but also create a hostile environment for their own future social interactions and their own future self-development as elders. Anti-ageism interventions have the hefty task of improving attitudes and behaviors toward aging within all of these contexts. This presentation will discuss findings from two different anti-ageism interventions both designed to mitigate the negative impacts of ageism. Results from a study on an intergenerational arts-based program found that after participation students demonstrated a positive change in their attitudes toward older adults. Findings from a video-based ageism intervention among a sample of 265 staff members in 15 senior living communities demonstrated decreased internalized aging anxiety as well as decreased ageist behaviors directly after the training and at three month post follow-up. Given the complex and systemic nature of ageism, diversity is necessary in scope and type of intervention in order to reach the broadest audience.

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Promoting recovery in daily life: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BMC Psychology ◽

10.1186/s40359-021-00591-w ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Dorota Reis ◽

Alexander Hart ◽

Dirk Lehr ◽

Malte Friese

Keyword(s):

Training Programs ◽

Controlled Trial ◽

Online Training ◽

Cognitive Behavioral ◽

Main Mechanism ◽

Work Related Stress ◽

Work Related ◽

Related Stress ◽

Underlying Mechanisms

Abstract Background Work-related stress shows steadily increasing prevalence rates and has tangible consequences for individual workers, their organizations, and society as a whole. One mechanism that may help offset the negative outcomes of work-related stress on employees’ well-being is recovery. Recovery refers to the experience of unwinding from one's job when not at work. However, employees who experience high levels of work-related stress and are thus particularly in need of recovery tend to struggle to switch-off. Due to the detrimental effects of this prolonged and sustained mental representation of job stressors, interventions promoting recovery may contribute to improvements in employees' mental health. Methods In this randomized, waitlist controlled trial, we will investigate the effectiveness of two 6-week online training programs (cognitive behavioral and mindfulness-based). The sample will include employees working at least part-time during regular work hours. Besides the pre-post-follow-up assessments, the trial will include measurement bursts with the goal of examining the underlying mechanisms. We expect that both interventions will reduce work-related perseverative thinking (PT) compared with the waitlist control groups (primary outcome). Also, we expect that both interventions will result in similar improvements, but the underlying mechanisms will differ (process outcomes). In the cognitive-behavioral intervention group, we expect that the main mechanism responsible for lower PT levels will be an increase in recovery experiences across time. In the mindfulness-based group, we expect that the main mechanism responsible for lower PT levels will be an increase in facets of mindfulness across time. Discussion In the present study, we will investigate mechanisms underlying assumed changes in work-related PT in great detail. Besides evaluating the overall effectiveness of the two interventions in terms of pre-post-follow-up changes, we will look at the underlying processes at different levels—that is, within days, within weeks, across weeks, and between individuals. Accordingly, our study will offer a fine-grained approach to investigating potential determinants, mediators, and moderators of the processes that may, in the end, be responsible for work-related strain. From a public health perspective, if effective, the online training programs may offer valuable, low-threshold, and low-intensity interventions for a broad range of occupations. Trial registration German Clinical Trials Registration: DRKS00024933. Registered prospectively 7 April 2021. https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00024933

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A Dual Experiment in Intensive Community Supervision: Minnesota's Prison Diversion and Enhanced Supervised Release Programs

The Prison Journal ◽

10.1177/0032855595075003005 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 75 (3) ◽

pp. 330-356 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

ELIZABETH PIPER DESCHENES ◽

SUSAN TURNER ◽

JOAN PETERSILIA

Keyword(s):

Public Safety ◽

Field Experiments ◽

Community Supervision ◽

Diversion Program ◽

Intensive Supervision ◽

National Institute Of Justice ◽

Supervised Release

In 1990, Minnesota enacted legislation to implement an intensive community supervision program as an alternative both to prison and to routine parole. The National Institute of Justice funded RAND to evaluate the program. This article reports on two randomized field experiments designed to measure the implementation and impact of the programs. Detailed information on offender background, services received, and 1-year outcomes was collected for 300 participants. Results showed that the programs were fairly well implemented. Two-year follow-up results indicated that prison-diversion offenders under intensive community supervision posed no greater risk to public safety than those initially sentenced to prison. The prison-diversion program resulted in savings of about $5,000 per offender per year, but these savings were offset by the greater cost of intensive supervision for parolees.

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Metalearners for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects using machine learning

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1804597116 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 116 (10) ◽

pp. 4156-4165 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Sören R. Künzel ◽

Jasjeet S. Sekhon ◽

Peter J. Bickel ◽

Bin Yu

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Treatment Effects ◽

Field Experiments ◽

Average Treatment Effect ◽

Regularity Conditions ◽

Heterogeneous Treatment Effects ◽

Lipschitz Continuous ◽

Additive Regression ◽

Underlying Mechanisms ◽

And Control

There is growing interest in estimating and analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects in experimental and observational studies. We describe a number of metaalgorithms that can take advantage of any supervised learning or regression method in machine learning and statistics to estimate the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) function. Metaalgorithms build on base algorithms—such as random forests (RFs), Bayesian additive regression trees (BARTs), or neural networks—to estimate the CATE, a function that the base algorithms are not designed to estimate directly. We introduce a metaalgorithm, the X-learner, that is provably efficient when the number of units in one treatment group is much larger than in the other and can exploit structural properties of the CATE function. For example, if the CATE function is linear and the response functions in treatment and control are Lipschitz-continuous, the X-learner can still achieve the parametric rate under regularity conditions. We then introduce versions of the X-learner that use RF and BART as base learners. In extensive simulation studies, the X-learner performs favorably, although none of the metalearners is uniformly the best. In two persuasion field experiments from political science, we demonstrate how our X-learner can be used to target treatment regimes and to shed light on underlying mechanisms. A software package is provided that implements our methods.

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Social interactions in traffic: The effect of external factors

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting ◽

10.1177/1541931218621022 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 62 (1) ◽

pp. 97-101 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Tanja Stoll ◽

Nadine-Rebecca Strelau ◽

Martin Baumann

Keyword(s):

Social Interactions ◽

Cooperative Behavior ◽

Lane Change ◽

Lane Changing ◽

Vehicle To Vehicle ◽

Driving Task ◽

Vehicle To Infrastructure ◽

Underlying Mechanisms ◽

Intention To Change ◽

Vehicle To Infrastructure Communication

Social interactions were always part of the driving task, but the introduction of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication opens up new possibilities for cooperative interactive driving. It enables drivers to coordinate their maneuvers cooperatively with other involved traffic users. To ensure drivers’ acceptance of such automated systems it is necessary to understand the underlying mechanisms of human cooperation in traffic. In this experiment, we investigate potential influencing factors on the willingness to behave cooperatively in a lane change situation on a highway. In a video-based study, we manipulated the costs of cooperation, the situation’s criticality for the lane-changing vehicle and the way in which the intention to change the lane was indicated. Cooperative behavior is influenced by lower costs, a higher situation’s criticality and by signaling the intention to lane change. These results offer insights that may be used in the developing process of Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) for cooperatively interacting vehicles

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The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being

Current Directions in Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0963721419847200 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 347-352 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Kostadin Kushlev ◽

Ryan Dwyer ◽

Elizabeth W. Dunn

Keyword(s):

Social Interactions ◽

Social Environment ◽

Mobile Technology ◽

Field Experiments ◽

Well Being ◽

Sampling Studies ◽

Face To Face ◽

Social Lives ◽

The Social ◽

Smartphone Use

Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.

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The Effect of the Chorion on Size-Dependent Acute Toxicity and Underlying Mechanisms of Amine-Modified Silver Nanoparticles in Zebrafish Embryos

International Journal of Molecular Sciences ◽

10.3390/ijms21082864 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 21 (8) ◽

pp. 2864 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Zi-Yu Chen ◽

Nian-Jhen Li ◽

Fong-Yu Cheng ◽

Jian-Feng Hsueh ◽

Chiao-Ching Huang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Particle Size ◽

Silver Nanoparticles ◽

Time Course ◽

Zebrafish Embryo ◽

Toxic Effects ◽

Size Dependent ◽

Underlying Mechanisms ◽

Nanoscale Particle Size ◽

Toxic Reactions

As the worldwide application of nanomaterials in commercial products increases every year, various nanoparticles from industry might present possible risks to aquatic systems and human health. Presently, there are many unknowns about the toxic effects of nanomaterials, especially because the unique physicochemical properties of nanomaterials affect functional and toxic reactions. In our research, we sought to identify the targets and mechanisms for the deleterious effects of two different sizes (~10 and ~50 nm) of amine-modified silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in a zebrafish embryo model. Fluorescently labeled AgNPs were taken up into embryos via the chorion. The larger-sized AgNPs (LAS) were distributed throughout developing zebrafish tissues to a greater extent than small-sized AgNPs (SAS), which led to an enlarged chorion pore size. Time-course survivorship revealed dose- and particle size-responsive effects, and consequently triggered abnormal phenotypes. LAS exposure led to lysosomal activity changes and higher number of apoptotic cells distributed among the developmental organs of the zebrafish embryo. Overall, AgNPs of ~50 nm in diameter exhibited different behavior from the ~10-nm-diameter AgNPs. The specific toxic effects caused by these differences in nanoscale particle size may result from the different mechanisms, which remain to be further investigated in a follow-up study.

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Exploring the dual effects of perceived waiting on healthcare service satisfaction among outpatients

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics ◽

10.1108/apjml-03-2018-0119 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 495-518

Author(s):

Yi-Fen Liu ◽

Jun-Fang Liao ◽

Jacob Jou

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Waiting Time ◽

Healthcare Service ◽

Design Methodology ◽

Qualitative Interviews ◽

Healthcare Quality ◽

Content Type ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Underlying Mechanisms

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore healthcare waiting time and the negative and positive effects (i.e. the dual effects) it has on outpatient satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach Self-administered surveys with 334 outpatients and follow-up interviews with 20 outpatients in three large hospitals in Taiwan were conducted to collect data. Findings Quantitative surveys demonstrated that perceived waiting time correlated with satisfaction negatively first but then positively. Satisfaction also correlated with doctor reputation and patient sociability. Follow-up qualitative interviews further revealed that, for some patients, waiting contributed positively to patient evaluations through signaling better healthcare quality and facilitating social interaction. Originality/value This research demonstrated the possibility that waiting might have positive effects on healthcare satisfaction. It also identified variables that could produce greater positive perceptions during hospital waiting and underlying mechanisms that could explain how the positive effects work. This research may potentially help hospitals with a better understanding of how they can improve patients’ waiting experiences and increase satisfaction.

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