Responsibility through Anticipation? The ‘Future Talk’ and the Quest for Plausibility in the Governance of Emerging Technologies

In anticipatory governance (AG) and responsible innovation (RI), anticipation is a key theoretical and practical dimension for promoting a more responsible governance of new and emerging sciences and technologies. Yet, anticipation has been subjected to a range of criticisms, such that many now see it as unnecessary for AG and RI. According to Alfred Nordmann, practices engaging with ‘the future’, when performed under certain conditions, may reify the future, diminish our ability to see what is happening, and/or reproduce the illusion of control over the future. Several authors have stressed that these critiques fail to capture the heterogeneous character of anticipatory practices, and yet research on the question of what particular kind of socio-epistemic engagements with ‘the future’ AG and RI aim to enact through anticipation remains fragmentary and their underlying rationale under-theorised. This article aims to advance the theoretical characterisation and problematisation of anticipation as key interventive tools for AG and RI. By distinguishing between four modes of anticipation and heuristically testing them against Nordmann’s critiques, the article argues that despite his assessment failing to recognise the heterogeneity of anticipatory practices considered valuable for AG and RI, it reinforces the relevance of performing certain modes of anticipatory exercises, namely critical-hermeneutic ones. Thus, anticipation continues to be a necessary heuristic dimension for AG and RI. More concretely, the article maintains that such anticipatory heuristics may find their radical constructive and critical-reflective character in the dynamics of inclusive scrutiny and negotiation about the (im)plausibility and (un)desirability of the envisioned or (co-)created futures.

Pengaruh Behavioral Finance Terhadap Pengambilan Keputusan Hutang di Era Covid-19: Studi Kasus Pada UMKM Sektor Makanan di Kota Bandung

Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis pengaruh bevaioral finance dengan mengunakan factor bias overconfidence terhadap pengambilan keputusan hutang pada UMKM dan pengaruh behavioural finance dengan menggunakan factor bias illusion of control terhadap pengambilan keputusan hutang pada UMKM. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian berbasis kuantitatif, dengan jenis metoda penelitian yang dipakai adalah Regresi Linier Berganda. Penelitian ini menggunakan 59 sampel pelaku usaha UMKM sector makanan yang berada di wilayah Kota Bandung. Teknik pengambilan sampel yang dipilih dalam penelitian ini adalah dengan cara teknik sampling insidental dan pengumpulan data menggunakan kuesioner yang disebarkan kepada responden yaitu pelaku sekaligus pemilik UMKM. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah regresi linear berganda. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan adanya pengaruh overconfidenceyang signifikan terhadap pengambilan keputusan hutang disaat era pandemic covid-19 yang dilakukan oleh pelaku usaha UMKM sector makanan yang berada di wilayah Kota Bandung. Dan hasil penelitian pun menujukan bahwa ada pengaruh signikan dari factor bias illusion of control terhadap pengambilan keputusan hutang disaat era pandemic covid-19 yang dilakukan oleh pelaku usaha UMKM sector makanan yang berada di wilayah Kota Bandung.Keputusan Berhutang yang dilakukan pelaku UMKM sector makanan di kota Bandung ini dipengaruhi oleh karakteristik responden yang memiliki usia produktif 36 sampai dengan 40 tahun, sebagian besar perempuan dengan latar belakang Pendidikan perguruan tinggi yang sudah menggeluti usaha lebih dari 5 tahun.

Exploring decision-making biases among Iranian entrepreneurs: some novel insights

Purpose Decision-making biases play decisive roles not only in entrepreneurs’ decisions but also in the fate of entrepreneurial businesses. While the extant literature in this regard is relatively rich, it has predominantly focused on certain biases like overconfidence and overoptimism at the expense of other possibly influential biases, which could influence entrepreneurial decisions. Thus, to address this serious research gap, this paper aims to explore four of the less-researched biases of escalation of commitment, the illusion of control, confirmation and the belief in the law of small numbers in entrepreneurial decisions. Design/methodology/approach By taking a qualitative approach, the data for this study were collected through face-to-face interviews with 19 Iranian habitual (experienced) entrepreneurs running small businesses and analyzed by a qualitative thematic analysis. Findings According to the results, the environmental uncertainty, the reluctance to lose face and the experiences of previous failures contributed to the escalation of commitment, while disregard for external factors beyond one’s control caused the illusion of control, factors like prior successful businesses in the same sector, looking for resorts to manage uncertainty, along with the decision to exploit opportunities resulted in the confirmation bias, while the expenses of conducting sweeping pilot tests in the market and the reluctance to reveal a business secret to the competitors were the main contributors of the belief in the law of small numbers. Originality/value This study is a pioneer in scrutinizing four less-researched but important biases in entrepreneurs and, thus extending the line of research in this regard.

Cognitive Biases, Risk Perception, and Risky Driving Behaviour

This study evaluated the relationship between drivers’ cognitive biases (i.e., optimism bias, illusion of control) and risky driving behaviour. It also investigated the mediational role of risk perception in the relationship between cognitive biases and self-reported risky driving. The sample included 366 drivers (Mage = 39.13, SD = 13.63 years) who completed scales measuring optimism bias, illusion of control, risk perception, and risky driving behaviour, as well as demographic information. The results showed that risky driving behaviour was negatively predicted by optimism bias and positively predicted by the illusion of control. Further, risk perception negatively correlated with risky behaviour and also mediated the relation between both optimism bias and illusion of control with risky driving. The practical implications of these results for traffic safety and future research are discussed.

Giving Absurdity Form: The Place of Contemporary Art in the Environmental Crisis

Absurdity in art creates bizarre juxtapositions that expose, and question conflicted, even dangerous, aspects of life which have become normalized. Absurd art appears in troubled times, subverting moments of extreme contradiction in which it appears impossible to think differently. For example, Dada (1917–1923) used nonsense to reflect the nonsensical brutality of WW1. The power to unsettle in this form of art rests in disrupting the world of the viewer and positioning them as interlocutors in a new framing. Absurdity in art reveals the absurdity that is inherent in life and its institutions, breaking the illusion of control. It can help us to comprehend the ‘incomprehensible’ in other species and spheres of life. In the challenge of anthropogenic climate change, how might the absurd capture the strangeness of current times in which a gap is widening between the earth we live ‘in’ and the earth we live ‘from’? This article explores qualities of the absurd in art as a possible way in which to grasp and reimagine ourselves beyond the anthropocentric, focusing on the work of the artists John Newling (b. 1952, UK) and Helen Mayer (1927–2018, US) and Newton Harrison (b. 1932, US), known as ‘The Harrisons’.

Illusion of control in farmers’ investment and financing decisions

PurposePeople’s tendency to overestimate their ability to control random events, known as illusion of control, can affect financial decisions under uncertainty. This study developed an artifactual field experiment on illusion of control for a farm machinery investment.Design/methodology/approachIn an experiment with two treatments, the individual farmer was either given or not given a sense of control over a random outcome. After each decision, the authors elicited perceived control, and a questionnaire collected additional indirect measures of illusion of control from 78 German farmers and 10 farm advisors.FindingsThe results did not support preregistered hypotheses of the presence of illusion of control. This null result was robust over multiple outcomes and model specifications. The findings demonstrate that cognitive biases may be small and difficult to replicate.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample is not representative for the German farming population. The authors discuss why the estimated treatment effect may represent a lower bound of the true effect.Originality/valueIllusion of control is well-studied in laboratory settings, but little is known about the extent to which farmers’ behavior is influenced by illusion of control.