Measuring happiness under interpersonal comparison: An advanced theoretical framework and implications

The origin of happiness arouses people’s curiosity for a long time. Recent research introduces a utility theory for measuring subjective happiness in a social context. The past recent monetary conditions influence the present subjective happiness through two distinct channels: interpersonal comparison and self-adaptation. In this paper, we develop this theory to analyze behavioral patterns. Together with prospect theory’s gain-loss utility function, we exploit the theory in predicting psychological phenomena of craving. We explore the relationships between happiness and earnings. Under certain conditions, a high payoff disappoints you immediately and even leads to continuous disappointment across periods. We extend the explanations of the scenarios of New York cabdrivers’ labor-supply decisions. The effect of social comparisons may trigger workers’ behaviors of quit-working, which deepen related understandings of the literature.

A 500,000-Person Experiment Evaluating the Impact of Geographically-Targeted, High-Payoff Vaccine Lotteries

Lotteries have been shown to motivate behavior change in many settings. However, the value of large-scale, geographically-targeted lotteries as a policy tool for changing the behaviors of entire populations is a matter of heated debate. In mid-2021, we implemented a pre-registered, city-wide experiment in Philadelphia to test the effects of three, high-payoff (up to $50,000) geographically-targeted lotteries designed to motivate adult residents of Philadelphia to get vaccinated against COVID-19. All Philadelphia residents ages 18 and older were eligible for inclusion in each drawing but, if selected, could not accept a prize unless they had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In each drawing, residents of a randomly selected “treatment” zip code received half of the 12 lottery prizes (boosting their chances of a win to 50-100x those of other Philadelphians). This experimental design makes possible a causal estimate of the impact of vastly increasing people’s odds of winning a vaccine lottery. We estimate that the first treated zip code, which drew considerable media attention, may have experienced a small bump in vaccinations compared to control zip codes: vaccinations rose by an estimated 61 per 100,000 people (an 11% increase). Pooling results from all three zip codes treated over the course of our six-week experiment, however, we do not detect any overall benefits. This unsustained effect may be because media attention waned, salience of the lottery declined, or attitudes about vaccination became increasingly entrenched over time. Further, our 95% confidence interval provides an upper bound on the overall benefits of treatment in our study of 9%. Given that lotteries of this scale cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement, the lack of a substantial benefit from this experiment strengthens the policy case for other, more impactful ways to encourage health behavior change.

Swinging for the Fences Versus Advancing the Runner: Culture, Motivation, and Strategic Decision Making

This research investigated cross-cultural differences in strategic risky decisions in baseball—among professional baseball teams in North America and Japan (Study 1) and among baseball fans in the United States and Japan (Study 2—preregistered). Study 1 analyzed archival data from professional baseball leagues and demonstrated that outcomes reflecting high risk-high payoff strategies were more prevalent in North America, whereas outcomes reflecting low risk-low payoff strategies were more prevalent in Japan. Study 2 investigated fans’ strategic decision making with a wider range of baseball strategies as well as an underlying reason for the difference: approach/avoidance motivational orientation. European American participants preferred high risk-high payoff strategies, Japanese participants preferred low risk-low payoff strategies, and this cultural variation was explained by cultural differences in motivational orientation. Baseball, which exemplifies a domain where strategic decision making has observable consequences, can demonstrate the power of culture through the actions and preferences of players and fans alike.

Small UAS and Delivery Drones: Challenges and Opportunities The 38th Alexander A. Nikolsky Honorary Lecture

During the past two decades, there has been major growth of small-unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAV) for hobbyists and rapidly expanding commercial and military applications. The impetus for this dramatic expansion has been due to the explosion of mobile technology in terms of microelectronics, data processing and transmission capability, high-energy-density batteries, miniaturized integrated programmable chips, and innovations in computer vision and videography/photography. However, there are many challenges to overcome before these small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) can be used for routine commercial and military applications, which include reliability, sizable payload and range, stringent navigation/guidance requirements, and precision takeoff/landing and robust autonomous flight in constrained and low-altitude gusty environment. The objective of this paper is to cover state-of-the-art of sUAS and delivery drones, identify technology gaps and key scientific barriers, and present future research needs for high payoff applications.

Cheap Talk Games with Two-Senders and Different Modes of Communication

This paper deals with the effects of different modes of communication in a costless information transmission environment with multiple senders. To this aim, we present a theoretical and experimental study of three Cheap Talk games, each having two senders and one receiver. The communication of senders is simultaneous in the first, sequential in the second and determined by the receiver in the third game (the Choice Game). We find that the overcommunication phenomenon observed with only one sender becomes insignificant in our two-sender model regardless of the mode of communication. However, as to the excessive trust of the receiver, our results are not distinguished from those in the one-sender model. Regarding the Choice Game, our logistic regressions on experimental results suggest that the receiver is more likely to select simultaneous play if the previous play was simultaneous and the receiver earned the high payoff and much more likely to select simultaneous play if the messages were nonconflicting.

Does Sports Betting Affect Investment Behaviour? Evidence from Ghanaian Sports Betting Participants

The study sought to assess the impact of sports betting on the investment behaviour of Ghanaians, focusing on sports betting centers within the Accra Metropolis, Ghana. The objectives of this observational study were to determine how individuals perceive the risk of sports lotteries as opposed to investment, to determine if sports lottery was viewed as an alternative to investments and savings, and to understand how participation in sports lotteries affects individuals’ ability to save and invest. In adopting a survey approach, 99 sports betting participants across selected betting centers were examined using questionnaires and the data subsequently analyzed through cross-tabulations. The study found that sports betting behaviour had a complementary rather than a substitutionary effect on investment behaviour. The participants were both risk-aware and risk-averse, but engaged nevertheless in betting for a chance of winning a high payoff. Thus, the findings demonstrated that sports betting participants viewed betting as a means to an end, a chance to improve their financial circumstances, rather than as a substitute for investing, and exhibited understanding of a clear distinction, with regards to behaviour, towards investing and sports betting. In return for a substantive payoff, the respondents were willing to stop sports betting, thereby indicating that the financial payoffs were the main motivation for sports betting. The findings also provided evidence that individual sports betting behaviour can be moderated by influencing one’s financial circumstances.RésuméL’étude cherche à évaluer l’incidence des paris sportifs sur le comportement d’investissement des Ghanéens, en mettant l’accent sur les centres de paris sportifs au sein de la métropole d’Accra, au Ghana. Cette étude observationnelle vise à déterminer comment les personnes perçoivent le risque lié à la loterie sportive par rapport à l’investissement, à déterminer si la loterie sportive est considérée comme une solution de rechange aux investissements et à l’épargne et à comprendre comment la participation à la loterie sportive affecte la capacité des personnes à épargner et à investir. En adoptant une approche d’enquête et à l’aide de questionnaires et de données analysées dans des tableaux croisés, on a analysé 99 participants aux paris sportifs dans les centres de paris sélectionnés. L’étude a révélé que les paris sportifs avaient un effet complémentaire plutôt qu’un effet de substitution en matière de comportement d’investissement. Les participants étaient conscients du risque et démontraient une aversion au risque, mais pariaient pour avoir la chance de remporter un gain élevé. Ainsi, les résultats ont montré que les participants aux paris sportifs considéraient ces paris comme un moyen d’atteindre une fin, une chance d’améliorer leur situation financière plutôt que comme un substitut à l’investissement. Et en ce qui concerne le comportement, ils savaient clairement faire la différence entre l’investissement et les paris sportifs. Les données ont montré qu’en échange d’un gain substantiel, les répondants étaient disposés à cesser de participer à ces paris, ce qui a permis de démontrer que les gains financiers étaient la principale motivation de ces jeux. Les résultats fournissent également des preuves étayant l’idée selon laquelle le comportement individuel lié aux paris sportifs peut être modéré en influençant la situation financière de chacun.

Do Mutual Fund Investors Overweight the Probability of Extreme Payoffs in the Return Distribution?

We investigate the role of extreme positive payoffs in the distribution of monthly fund returns in investors’ mutual fund preferences. We document a positive and significant relationship between the maximum style-adjusted monthly return (MAX) and future fund flows. The relationship is robust to controlling for average performance, volatility, skewness, and various other fund characteristics. Our findings are consistent with the notion that fund investors overweight the probability of high payoff states in the past return distribution. We further show that MAX is not a useful predictor of future performance and that an increase in a fund’s visibility does not explain our findings.

Too Good to Be True? Psychological Responses to Uncommon Options in Risk–Reward Environments

Risks and rewards, or payoffs and probabilities, are inversely related in many choice environments. We investigated people’s psychological responses to uncommon combinations of risk and reward that deviate from learned regularities (e.g., options that offer a high payoff with an unusally high probability) as they evaluated risky options. In two experiments (N = 183), participants first priced monetary gambles drawn from environments in which risks and rewards were negatively correlated, positively correlated, or uncorrelated. In later trials, they evaluated gambles with uncommon combinations of risk and reward—that is, options that deviated from the respective environment’s risk–reward structure. Pricing, response times, and (in Experiment 2) pupil dilation were recorded. In both experiments, participants took more time when responding to uncommon compared to foreseeable options or when the same options were presented in an uncorrelated risk–reward environment. This result was most pronounced when the uncommon gambles offered higher expected values compared to the other gambles in the set. Moreover, these uncommon, high-value options were associated with an increase in pupil size. These results suggest that people’s evaluations of risky options are based not only on the options’ payoffs and probabilities, but also on the extent to which they fit the risk–reward structure of the environment.