How Does Communicating Herd Immunity Affect Immunization Intentions?

While previous studies have shown that communicating herd immunity can increase immunization intentions, it is unclear how the definition of the beneficiaries influences intentions. In a vignette study, using a new hypothetical influenza virus, 4,172 participants from five European countries (Bulgaria, N=873; Denmark, N=896; England, N=873; Estonia, N=916; and Italy, N=745) were randomized to one of three experimental conditions: (1) control (no mention of herd immunity), (2) society (social benefit of immunization for overall society mentioned), and (3) friends (social benefit for friends and family members mentioned). While the study did not find that communicating herd immunity influenced overall immunization intentions across the five countries, it found substantial cross-country differences in the effect of the communication. In England, friends increased intentions, while society increased intentions in Denmark but decreased it in Italy. While communicating the social benefit of immunization can influence intentions, its contrasting effects highlight the importance of empirically testing.

Social Ties and Money Priming in Bargaining Games and the Prisoner‘s Dilemma

The authors examine the effects of money priming and solidarity on individual behavior in three simple games: dictator, ultimatum, and prisoner's dilemma game. In three consecutive experiments, they use two different money treatments and two neutral (control) treatments. Additionally, they vary the strength of social ties between participants by conducting experiments with students from a military university and a regular university. Although the priming procedure is sufficient to remind people of the concept of money, it is not sufficient to induce systematically different behavior of the treatment groups compared to the control groups. They find significant differences between groups with strong and weak social ties, even without activating the idea of group affiliation. They discuss various explanations of why the results seem to contradict previous research on money priming.

Digital Nudge Efficacy and the Influence of Personality in Pre-Purchase Information Research

This study analyses digital nudging in the early stages of the customer journey. The experimental approach investigates the influence of digital nudging principles on decision making when searching for educational programs. The online experiment shows significant impact for three of the five digital nudging principles and greatly varying effect sizes. Social norms, anchoring and adjustment, and status quo nudging principles have a substantial impact when used in the pre-purchase stage. Loss aversion and hyperbolic discounting nudges have not shown a significant influence on choice behavior. Furthermore, extraverted individuals show significantly less behavioral change when confronted with a loss aversion nudge. These results imply a careful consideration of the chosen nudging principle and the target groups personalities when implementing digital nudges and start a novel discussion on the usage of digital nudges in the pre-purchase stage of the customer journey.

Does the Food Safety Ranking System Act as a Nudge?

Public health safety is of concern to authorities across the globe, and inspector's food hygiene ranking system has been introduced in many countries. Mandatory disclosure of hygiene ranking information was introduced to empower consumers to make informed decisions regarding foodborne risks. Evaluating available research on public perception and attitude towards such rankings, it seems that the food safety rankings may prompt hygiene compliance by the food business operators and may act as a nudge for consumers to avoid outlets, though with certain caveats. Significant assessment of the scheme remains to be carried out for the ranking system to be an effective nudge for sustainable consumer protection. The public health authorities and organisations need to consider several real-world cognitive and behavioural constraints.

Obstacles as Building Blocks

Although individuals generally do not wish to be expected to do good work with bad tools, there are some activities for which there are advantages to having to face certain types of obstacles. One of these is mental processing, an important facet of cognitive psychology. This study extends the work of cognitive psychologists by introducing font disfluency, or the use of difficult-to-read font or typeface, to the exam-taking phase of economics principles courses. Difference-in-means tests indicate that students completing exams that were formatted in the difficult-to-read font scored as many as 9.6 points higher than their counterparts who completed exams formatted in the traditional font. On the other hand, regression analysis controlling for student demographics and human capital failed to produce a statistically significant result. The authors believe, however, that this result is likely due to the omission of student effort in the regression specification. As such, further research on the impact of font disfluency on exam performance is clearly warranted.

Women Trafficking Problem in Assam

The increasing numbers of newspaper reports on disappearing women from the north eastern state of Assam and especially from the economically backward areas of the state in recent years deserve close attention from both researchers' points of view as well as policy-level intervention of the larger community along with the government. This study makes an attempt to operate upon the menace area through the scalpel of game theory under the light of both primary and secondary data collected from the study area. It is an attempt to outline conscious human behaviour that leads to crimes such as women trafficking and identify the parameters controlling or affecting which types of crimes can be controlled. In order to do so, different distinct entities associated with the problem have been considered as different players leading to the concluding indication of prevailing flaws in the legal system of the country along with lack of employment opportunities and mass ignorance about the problem in hand among common people as the major reasons.

Examining the Intention to Invest in Cryptocurrencies

Among investors of cryptocurrencies there are supporters and detractors; this claims for the identification of the behavioral and socio-demographic factors that push to invest (or not) in cryptocurrencies. A survey has been administered to 275 Italian investors. Together with socio-demographic features (gender, income, age, and education), behavioral factors derived from the theory of planned behavior (attitude, subjective norm, and perceived control behavior) and from the financial behavior literature (illegal attitude, herding behavior, perceived risk, perceived benefit, and financial literacy) have been collected and analyzed. While attitude, illegal attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, herding behavior, and perceived risk have a positive impact on investors' intentions. Socio-demographic factors and financial literacy have no influence on the intention to invest in cryptocurrencies. This is the first study that comprehensively investigates the influence of behavioral and socio-demographic factors on the intention of investors to invest in cryptocurrencies.

Health Considerations During the COVID-19 Outbreak

SARS-CoV-2, the name given to the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, was first reported in the city of Wuhan from the Hubei region of China. Officially recognised at the beginning of 2020, it rapidly spread from Wuhan to the rest of China, eventually taking hold in the rest of the world despite global efforts to contain it. Of these efforts, the most notable is the implementation of lockdown policies which were meant to reduce as much as possible the spread of the virus, thus reducing the burden on the healthcare systems ("flatten the curve"), as well as buy time to develop more effective treatments. This paper intends to study the mental and physical effects exerted by these policies on people worldwide. The online survey has collected responses from 1,586 individuals from across the world, on which the authors employed varied statistical methods such as confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multivariate analysis. The findings presented in the paper suggest that several effects, such as problems focusing, insomnia, feelings of guilt or pessimism, can be directly attributed to the lockdown-induced changes in people's behaviours and routines. The findings are not only indicative of the need for social interaction and physical activity, but also of the importance of factual information available to the public during such crises, and of the emotional support and assistance required by people to cope with situations like this.

Inequality in Early Childhood

This paper has a dual purpose. First, it aims to construct and evaluate parental investment in early childhood based on five indicators: mental development, discipline, nutrition, health, and leisure. Second, it aspires to establish a link between the education of mother and family well-being and the level of parental investment in early childhood with regard to the five indicators. The author tests the impact of family well-being and mother's education on investment in early childhood to find out if discrimination of gender and residence inequalities matter. Results indicate that the family's degree of wealth/socio-economic class and mother's education have a significant positive effect on all indicators of parental investment in early childhood except on discipline. The author also sees that households in rural areas invest more in the discipline of their children than urban ones. Moreover, they discriminate between gender in favor of boys.

Decision Making and Entrepreneurial Orientation of SMEs

Recently there have been several reports concerning the SMEs' decision-making in the foreign markets, including the discussion comparing the so-called “effectual” decision-making style with the causative one. The study aims to investigate the nature of the decision making of SME-exporters and to analyze the relationship of the decision-making style with their entrepreneurial orientation. A mixed-mode CAWI/CATI method was applied to 300 Polish SMEs from the manufacturing sector in the Spring of 2018. To assess their decision making, the scale based on Chandler et al. was used, and to evaluate their entrepreneurial orientation, the scale adapted from Fiore et al. was used. As it was found, formal planning dominated the studied firms' decision making. The more advanced international players relied more on formalized contracts with their partners than the other firms. Moreover, there exists a positive and significant association of decision making with entrepreneurial orientation dimensions.