Environmental Economics of Pollination

The pollination of crops by domesticated bees and wild pollinators is easily and often imagined as an accidental but essential process in agriculture. The notion that pollinators are overlooked despite their essential role in food production is widespread among the general public, as well as in policy debates concerning all issues related to pollinators, ranging from regulation of pesticides to conservation of habitat for wild bees, to support of beekeeping as an industry or as a hobby. Meade was the first to formalize this notion by making pollination a canonical example of beneficial externality in economics and arguing that subsidies should be established to ensure that honeybees are provided in optimal numbers to pollinate crops. In the first two decades of the 21st century, the same argument, but this time focusing on wild pollinators, has been proposed and supported by a large and growing literature in conservation ecology. However, a thorough review of contributions on the economics of pollination reveals several misconceptions behind the appealing fable of pollination externalities. The most striking rebuttal of Meade’s argument comes from the study of pollination markets, where beekeepers and crop growers engage in voluntary transactions called pollination contracts. A small economics literature formalizes the issue of incentives solved by these transactions and provides a detailed empirical analysis of many complex aspects, such as the establishment of standards for the monitoring of bee densities or the impact of seasonality of blooms and bee population dynamics on pollination prices. Outside pollination markets, economists have made rather sparse and partial contributions to several other important issues related to pollination in agriculture, such as valuation of pollination services, conservation of wild pollinators, and regulation of pesticides that impact pollinators. On these topics, studies have largely been published in non-economics journals and economists stand to make valuable contributions by applying and popularizing the concepts of incentive design, information costs, and other key insights of environmental economics in the study of pollination.

Cooperative Game for Fish Harvesting and Pollution Control

This paper studies fishery strategies in lakes, seas, and shallow rivers subject to agricultural and industrial pollution. The flowing pollutants are modeled by a nonlinear differential equation in a general manner. The logistic growth model for the fish population is modified to cover the pollution impact on the fish growth rate. We start by presenting the stability analysis of the dynamical system to discern the different types of the evolution of the fish population according to human actions. A cooperative game is formulated to design strategies for preserving the fish population by controlling the pollution as well as the fish stock for harvesting. The sufficient conditions for implementing the cooperative strategy are investigated through an incentive design approach with an adaptive taxation policy for the players. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the benefit of the cooperative for fish population preservation but also for the players’ rewards.

Strategically Targeting Plug-In Electric Vehicle Rebates and Outreach Using “EV Convert” Characteristics

To expand markets for plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) beyond enthusiastic early adopters, investments must be strategic. This research characterizes a segment of EV adoption that points the way toward the mainstream: EV consumers with low or no initial interest in EVs, or “EV Converts.” Logistic regression is utilized to profile EV Convert demographic, household, and regional characteristics; vehicle-transaction details; and purchase motivations—based on 2016–2017 survey data characterizing 5447 rebated California EV consumers. Explanatory factors are rank-ordered—separately for battery EVs (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs), to inform targeted outreach and incentive design. EV Converts tend to have relatively “lower” values on factors that might have otherwise “pre-converted” them to EV interest: hours researching EVs online; motivation from environmental impacts and carpool-lane access; and solar ownership. PHEV Converts more closely resemble new-car buyers than other EV adopters, and BEV Converts actually tend to be younger and less-frequently white/Caucasian than new-car buyers. BEV Converts also tend to: lack workplace charging, be moderately motivated by energy independence, and reside in Southern California or the Central Valley. Predictors that not only help target consumers, but also help convert them, include rebates for BEV consumers and, modestly, fuel-cost savings for PHEV consumers.

Dynamic Inconsistency and Incentive Design: Insights from Behavioural Economics for HR Managers

Behavioural economics is a thriving field that offers descriptive models of human decision-making that deviate from the standard model of decision-making in economics. This article presents insights from behavioural economics that can help address dynamic inconsistency, that is, time-inconsistency problems of employees and inform incentive design strategies. The author argues that lessons from behavioural economics can be applied to design solutions that can transform HR practices. HR managers and leaders stand to benefit from the emerging evidence from the lab and field in behavioural economics that calls for a rethinking of the conventional understanding of human behaviour.

Human Resource Management: For Humans

Marketing departments, governments and policymakers all around the world have increasingly started embracing the field of behavioural sciences in improving the design of products and services, enhancing communications, improving managerial decision-making, encouraging desired behaviour by stakeholders and, more generally, creating a human-centric marketplace. Within organisations, the human resources management (HRM) function is perhaps the one place that acknowledges that humans are central to the organisation’s success, so it is critical that HRM too actively embraces the insights and methods of behavioural sciences. In this article, I provide an overview of the behavioural sciences, discuss how HRM can benefit from an in-depth knowledge of the science and illustrate specific examples from recruitment processes, training and communications, incentive design, employee-oriented processes, and diversity and inclusion initiatives that could benefit from evidence from behavioural sciences.

Investigating the Impact of Competition and Incentive Design on Performance of Crowdfunding Projects: A Case of Independent Movies

Recently, crowdfunding has become a popular e-commerce model based on web 2.0 platforms for fundraisers to collect funding from a large group of supporters using the Internet. However, many projects failed to reach their funding targets. Despite the growing interest of academic researchers and e-commerce professionals in identifying drivers of crowdfunding success, important factors like competition and incentive design have not received much attention in prior research. In this study we aim to fill this gap by investigating the impact of competition and incentive design on the performance of crowdfunding projects. Drawing upon literature of entrepreneurship, we develop a research model involving key factors such as competition intensity and the number of reward levels. Using real data of 209 independent movie projects of an online crowdfunding platform, we test the proposed hypotheses of the impact of competition and incentive design on crowdfunding success. Our results show that competition plays a significant role in crowdfunding performance. The higher competition pressure is, the lower performance of crowdfunding projects will be. We also find that factors such as the number of reward levels and the plan of attending movie festivals are essential to the success of crowdfunding projects, but the funding level of getting the top reward does not exert a significant impact. Our study contributes to the e-commerce literature by further exploring the mechanism of crowdfunding success with theoretical explanation and empirical evidence. Researchers and professionals can apply our theoretical findings regarding competition and incentive design in other e-commerce platforms. Furthermore, our results provide useful managerial insights and operational policies for project founders and managers of crowdfunding platforms.