Opportunity Costs Surrounding Exercise and Dietary Behaviors: Quantifying Trade-offs Between Commuting Time and Health-Related Activities

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas James Christian
Keyword(s):  
Dietary Behaviors ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Commuting Time

Economics and efficiency

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Abel Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Production Function ◽  
Cost Efficiency ◽  
Indifference Curve ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Consumer Theory ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Know How ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Standard Production

This chapter, the longest in the book, explains the fundamentals of microeconomics and its application to the analysis of health and healthcare. The concepts of scarcity and opportunity costs lie at the heart of the economics discipline. Based on the standard production function with two input factors, the important concept of cost-efficiency is explained; and based on the premise of scarcity in the availability of input factors, the concept of opportunity costs is explained. An important insight from consumer theory is that people make trade-offs. Their preferences and income determine their chosen combination of goods, as illustrated by an indifference curve. An important piece of information for policymakers attempting to intervene in people’s demand for healthy, and unhealthy, goods is to know how sensitive demand is to changing prices and income. The chapter explains and defines elasticities of demand.

scholarly journals Sustainable electricity for sustainable health? A case study in North-western Zambia

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
Lizzie Caperon ◽  
Lina Brand-Correa
Keyword(s):  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
Hydropower Plant ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Impact

This study explores the under-researched link between clean energy and public health outcomes, and offers new insights into the link between wider access to clean energy and progress towards health outcomes, in particular the prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. This is the first study to consider the impact of a run-of-river hydropower plant (RORHP) in a remote rural community in Zambia in relation to health outcomes. Exploring this relationship establishes how the health benefits which renewable energy can bring can be capitalised upon to meet the health-related objectives of the United Nations sustainable development goals. Workshops and semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of stakeholders including community members, health workers, business owners, and key people involved with the plant, to establish health and social impacts of the introduction of electricity in the community of Ikelenge. Findings are used to establish both synergies and trade-offs of the RORHP on the health of the community, and recommendations are made for the continued improvement of health following the introduction of the RORHP, to achieve further progress towards meeting SDG targets.

Generating Competitive Advantages for the Polytechnic Universities in Mexico

2019 ◽  
pp. 477-507
Author(s):  
Lizbeth Vargas-Cabrera ◽  
Jesus Manuel Muñoz-Pacheco
Keyword(s):  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Educational Services ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Competitive Advantages ◽  
Sustainable Competitive Advantage ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Mexican Government

This chapter proposes an analytical framework to understand the trade-offs of a firm dedicated to educational services for creating and sustaining a superior performance respect to its competitors. The proposed approach focuses on polytechnic universities as the firm understudy. Based on a statistical data from Mexican government, the five forces of Porter methodology is applied to found the clients, suppliers, new entrants, substitutes, and rivalry of the Polytechnic University of Puebla (PUP). In this scenario, the existing strengths are detected and the target of the firm to get a sustainable competitive advantage is defined. Finally, the strategies to break the barriers are proposed. The authors argue that by using those strategies the wedge between willing to pay of the clients and the opportunity costs of the suppliers can be improved. Additionally, they argue that the positioning (consolidation and reputation) of the PUP is achieved by applying the proposed strategies.

Who really values healthy food?

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pilar Ester Arroyo ◽  
Javier Liñan ◽  
Jorge Vera Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Health ◽  
Food Choice ◽  
Food Preferences ◽  
Food Product ◽  
Food Products ◽  
Healthy Food ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Individual Traits ◽  
Health Related

PurposeWhen selecting manufactured foods, customers consider several product features. Given the contemporary trends of food consumption, the purpose of this paper is to determine the influence that some demographic and psychographic key variables have on the chances of a consumer belonging to a market segment characterised by health-related food preferences.Design/methodology/approachThe food choice scale is revised to develop a multidimensional measure of the factors underlying consumer food choices. Data of 288 sampled consumers were used to validate the scale and to group consumers into four segments based on the value assigned to several food-product meta-attributes. Depending on these food choice values, the study identified four dissimilar clusters: utilitarian, protecting, toning and highly demanding.FindingsConsumers use multiple attributes when choosing food products. However, emerging segments tend to prefer health-related attributes over utilitarian or conventional attributes, such as price, flavour or accessibility. The consumers of these segments tend to be older, more health conscious and more prone to psychological health risks.Originality/valueDemographic and psychographic traits tend to drive trade-offs between health- and non-health-related attributes when considering food products. Several multivariate methodologies were innovatively coupled to characterize consumers based on their healthy food preferences and individual traits.

scholarly journals Association Between Nutrition Resource Stress and Dietary Consumption: Results From a U.S. Nationally Representative Survey

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 524-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Grenen ◽  
Erin E. Kent ◽  
Erin Hennessy ◽  
Jada G. Hamilton ◽  
Rebecca A. Ferrer
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Vegetable Consumption ◽  
Dietary Behaviors ◽  
Healthy Foods ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
Nutritious Food ◽  
Resource Stress ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Soda Consumption

Background. There is little research on how affective reactions (e.g., stress) to perceptions of nutritious food accessibility contribute to dietary behaviors. Aims. This study explores whether stress associated with limited access to nutritious foods—termed nutrition resource stress (NRS)—contributes to diet outcomes, and whether these associations are mediated by health-related self-efficacy. Method. Using data from the cross-sectional National Cancer Institute’s Health Information National Trends Survey, analyses were conducted to examine whether reported NRS was associated with specific dietary behaviors (i.e., fewer servings of fruit/vegetables; more servings of sugar-sweetened soda; N = 3,112). Results. Analyses revealed a main association such that NRS was negatively associated with fruit/vegetable consumption (β = −0.08, p = .016). There was a negative association between NRS and self-efficacy (β = −0.11, p < .001). There was no significant association between NRS and soda consumption. Mediation analyses revealed a significant indirect association between NRS and fruit/vegetable consumption, mediated by perceived health-related self-efficacy (β = −0.03, 95% confidence interval [−.04, −.01], p < .0001). Given that self-efficacy (the mediator) was not significantly associated with soda consumption (β = 0.01, p = .912), mediation analyses were not conducted for this outcome. Conclusion. This study suggests that stress associated with perceptions of inability to access nutritious foods may influence dietary behaviors, and points to a psychological mechanism (i.e., self-efficacy) that may explain the association. In addition to improving objective barriers of access to healthy foods, future interventions might address ways of improving nutritious food–related self-efficacy or perceived stress related to obtaining healthy foods.

Updating Bayesian(s): A Critical Evaluation of Bayesian Process Tracing

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-74
Author(s):  
Sherry Zaks
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Current State ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

Given the increasing quantity and impressive placement of work on Bayesian process tracing, this approach has quickly become a frontier of qualitative research methods. Moreover, it has dominated the process-tracing modules at the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR) and the American Political Science Association (APSA) meetings for over five years, rendering its impact even greater. Proponents of qualitative Bayesianism make a series of strong claims about its contributions and scope of inferential validity. Four claims stand out: (1) it enables causal inference from iterative research, (2) the sequence in which we evaluate evidence is irrelevant to inference, (3) it enables scholars to fully engage rival explanations, and (4) it prevents ad hoc hypothesizing and confirmation bias. Notwithstanding the stakes of these claims and breadth of traction this method has received, no one has systematically evaluated the promises, trade-offs, and limitations that accompany Bayesian process tracing. This article evaluates the extent to which the method lives up to the mission. Despite offering a useful framework for conducting iterative research, the current state of the method introduces more bias than it corrects for on numerous dimensions. The article concludes with an examination of the opportunity costs of learning Bayesian process tracing and a set of recommendations about how to push the field forward.

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