Pay Now or Pay Later: The Impact of Time on Payment Preference in Hotel Booking

The “book now, pay later” phenomenon is one form of payment which has flow-on effects such as increasing last-minute cancelations. To encourage prepayment, some hotels have been offering a price discount or free upgrade for choosing the “pay now” option, but little is known about which incentives can generate better outcomes. This study aims to examine what types of payment options are preferable based on the time between booking and check-in (i.e. temporal distance), and to investigate how the payment options and temporal distance jointly influence perceived risks. The findings demonstrate that while people prefer the pay now with monetary incentive option when traveling time is in the near future, they mostly prefer the pay later option when traveling time is distant. In addition, people planning a trip in the distant future perceive significantly higher risks from the pay now with non-monetary and monetary incentive options than from the pay later option.

A Monetary Incentive DTN Routing For Wireless Sensor Networks

The DTN (Delay/Interrupt Tolerant Network) protocol that relies on nodes to handle network interruptions is one of the important components of the wireless sensor network (WSN) routing protocol. However, due to resource consumption, nodes may be unable to unconditionally relay data. To address this issue, several incentive mechanisms have recently been proposed to encourage node participation. However, the existing solutions either do not fully consider the sender’s budget or do not consider the relay cost limitation, which violated the practical incentive mechanism requirements of the DTN protocol. In this paper, we focus on developing a new incentive mechanism for DTN routing that specifically address the challenges brought up by budget and relay cost limitation. Our core idea is to define the payoff functions of the sender and the next hops, then optimize the strategies under the constraints of the sender’s budget and the relay’s cost. Our experimental results demonstrate that the maximized social welfare for all participants can be realized under these constraints.

Appraisal on Workforce Performance towards Industrialised Building System in Perak, Malaysia

The workforce has always been the backbone of the construction industry in the Industrialised Building System (IBS). Previous researchers often obtain data and opinions from the perspective of construction professionals and often neglect the labour workforce opinion. This study aims to investigate various factors that affect the workforce's productivity in IBS performance. The data collection amounts 60 targeted respondents. This study found a strong correlation between motivation, education, and workforce skill level that affects productivity in implementing IBS. The resolution is to propose an improvement of monetary incentive and academic level of the workforce. Keywords: Workforce; Industrialised Building System (IBS); Construction Industry; Malaysia eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6i18.3066

Altered Neural Processing of Reward and Punishment in Women With Methamphetamine Use Disorder

It has been suggested that the altered function of reward and punishment is an important vulnerability factor leading to the development of drug use disorders. Previous studies have identified evidence of neurophysiological dysfunction in the reward process of individuals with substance use disorders. To date, only a few event-related potential (ERP) studies have examined the neural basis of reward and punishment processing in women with methamphetamine (MA) use disorders. The current ERP research aims to investigate the neurophysiological mechanisms of reward and punishment in women with MA use disorder using a monetary incentive delay task. Nineteen women with MA use disorder (MA group) and 20 healthy controls (HC group) were recruited in this study. The behavioral data showed that the reaction time (RT) was faster and the response accuracy (ACC) was higher for the potential reward and punishment conditions compared to neutral conditions. During the monetary incentive anticipation stage, the Cue-P3, and stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) were larger in the MA group than in the HC group. The SPN under the potential reward condition was larger than that under the neutral condition in the MA group but not in the HC group. During the monetary incentive consummation stage, the feedback-related negativity and feedback P3 (FB-P3) following positive feedback were significantly larger than negative feedback in the potential reward condition for the HC group, but not for the MA group. However, the FB-P3 following negative feedback was significantly larger than positive feedback in the potential punishment condition for the MA group, but not the HC group. The results suggest that women with MUD have stronger expectations of generic reward and stronger response of generic harm avoidance, which could be targeted in designing interventions for women with MA use disorder.

Impact Of Government Incentives Policy On Workers' Productivity

This study examined the impact of government incentive policy on workers` productivity in Taraba State (a study of Takum L.G.A). Survey research design was adopted, while data were obtained through primary source. The population of the study was 300 and the sample size is 171 by using Taro Yamane statistical method, Data were presented in frequency tables and percentages were used to analyze the data. Formulated hypotheses on the other hand were tested using Pearson product moment correlation, aided by the statistical package for Social Sciences (SPSS)version 23.0. The findings revealed that good incentive polices motivate workers, in that motivated workers are happy workers and happy workers are productive workers. The study further revealed that a monetary incentive is essential in getting workers to perform better. Therefore, the study recommends that management of Takum L.G.A should Endeavour to improve the workers remuneration in order to motivate employees to put more effort in their services. In addition, it also recommends that the management of Takum L.G.A should identify a non-financial incentive scheme that will motivate workers to perform more tasks. Lastly, it recommends that, the government of Takum L.G.A should constantly review and introduce new incentive policy that will aid to motivate employees for higher productivity.

Advised or Paid Way to get it right. The contribution of fact-checking tips and monetary incentives to spotting scientific disinformation

Disinformation about science can impose enormous economic and public health burdens. Several types of interventions have been proposed to prevent the proliferation of false information online, where most of the spreading takes place. A recently proposed strategy to help online users recognise false content is to follow the techniques of professional fact checkers, such as looking for information on other websites (lateral reading) and looking beyond the first results suggested by search engines (click restraint). In two preregistered online experiments (N = 5387), we simulated a social-media environment and set-out two interventions, one in the form of a pop-up meant to advise participants to follow such techniques, the other based on monetary incentive. In Experiment 1, we compared these interventions to a control condition. In Experiment 2 another condition was added to test the joint impact of the pop-up and the monetary incentive. We measured participants' ability to identify whether presented information was scientifically valid or invalid. Results revealed that while monetary incentives were overall more effective in increasing accuracy, the pop-up contributed when the post originated from an unknown source (and participants could rely less on prior information). Additional analysis on participants’ search style based on both self-report responses and objectively measured behaviour revealed that the pop-up increased the use of fact-checking strategies, and that these in turn increased accuracy. Study 2 also clarified that the pop-up and the incentive did not interfere with each other, but rather acted complementarily, suggesting that attention and literacy interventions can be designed in synergy.

Lateral reading and monetary incentives to sort out scientific (dis)information

Scientific disinformation can impose enormous economic and public health burdens. Several types of interventions have been proposed to prevent the proliferation of false information online, where most of the spreading takes place. A recently proposed strategy to help online users recognise false content is to follow the techniques of professional fact checkers, such as looking for information on other websites (lateral reading) and looking beyond the first results suggested by search engines (click restraint). In two preregistered online experiments (N = 5387), we simulated a social-media environment and set-out two interventions, one in the form of a pop-up meant to induce participants to follow such techniques, the other based on monetary incentive. In Experiment 1, we compared these interventions to a control condition. In Experiment 2 another condition was added to test the joint impact of the pop-up and the monetary incentive. We measured participants' ability to identify whether presented scientific information was scientifically (in)valid. Results revealed that while monetary incentives were overall more effective in increasing accuracy, the pop-up contributed when the post originated from an unknown source (and participants could rely less on prior information). Additional analysis on participants’ search style based on both self-report responses and objectively measured behaviour revealed that the pop-up increased the use of fact-checking strategies, and that these in turn increased accuracy. Study 2 also clarified that the pop-up and the incentive did not interfere with each other, but rather acted complementarily, suggesting that attention and literacy interventions can be designed in synergy.

Can Monetary Incentive Regulate Boarding Passenger Distribution on the Metro Station Platform?

To equilibrate the passenger distribution on the metro platform and carriage, a monetary incentive policy was explored in this paper; a discount on travel fare was provided to motivate metro passengers to queue for boarding in the noncrowded areas on the platform. The congested state is evaluated combined with the passenger distribution in the upcoming metro carriage. The utility of metro passengers and companies caused by the monetary incentive policy was analyzed, and the binary logit model was used to relate the utility to the passenger’s willingness to move from crowded areas to noncrowded ones. With data acquired from the questionnaire survey, a regression analysis was employed to explain the variation in passengers’ willingness to move as a function of discount level as well as personal and trip characteristics. The regression results show that effect of incentive discount is greater on female passengers and elderly passengers. A 10% discount can motivate most passengers aged over 40, and a 30% discount works on most female passengers. According to the different levels of passenger sensitivity, a particular discount can be determined to motivate a specific proportion of passengers to move and achieve the regulation of passenger distribution on the metro station platform and metro carriage.