With the rise of technology and finance, crowdfunding has been uprising as a popular method of financing projects. Kickstarter provides an online platform in which anyone with Internet access can upload their own project “pitch” to gain funding for their idea on an all-or-nothing model. My thesis explores financial trends and factors that potentially contribute to a successful Kickstarter campaign within the classical music projects subcategory. I use a logistic regression and the Ordinary Least Squares model to examine a dataset of already successfully funded projects and a second dataset that contains both successfully and unsuccessfully funded projects that were tracked over a period of time. Additionally, I collected text files of the word content on all projects to identify most frequently utilized words for the successful and unsuccessful files. Controlling for other characteristics, the key findings are that projects with higher target funding levels are both less likely to fund and fund at a lower percentage of the target, projects receiving more comments are more likely to fund, and projects proposed by those that fund other projects are more likely to fund. In addition, certain words are correlated with success or failure. However, since the method of identifying important words used data mining rather than just testing, we cannot predict that these words would increase the likelihood of success in future projects. Due to limited sample size and high correlations among the variables in specifications including both the project characteristics and words, the main results for each set of explanatory variables used separately tend to become statistically insignificant. Additionally, the funding pattern over time appears not to exhibit the herding behavior found in some asset pricing markets. This is an interesting finding given the highly social nature of funding via Kickstarter.

People value their privacy; however, they typically do not make the protection of their privacy a priority. Privacy is oftentimes not tangible, complicating the efforts of technology users to express and act according to their privacy needs. Additionally, people may not be fully aware of the risks they are subjecting themselves to once they use the Internet for financial transactions, or create profiles on online social networks. Companies post privacy policies inform people about their informational practices; but, this information is extremely difficult to use and typically not considered in users’ decision-making processes. Privacy concerns have also had an impact on users’ adoption of new technologies that share personal information. A plethora of mobile location-finding technologies applications have become available over the last two decades, but the products and services offered by the technology developers may not comprehensively address the privacy implications and privacy concerns surrounding their use. The design considerations for these products may not provide the necessarily amount of control or risk mitigation for users to ensure that their location information is not misused. In this thesis, I focus on the impact of salient privacy information on privacy concerns and behavior in two contexts: online shopping and the use of a mobile-location sharing technology. I examine several case studies focusing on the evolution of privacy attitudes after people use specific technologies. Based on the examination of the use of a location-sharing system, I highlight several design considerations for mobile-location application developers to ensure they address their users privacy concerns. I use the results of online surveys and user studies to provide concrete information on the impact of feedback on the comfort with using location-sharing technology. This research shows that users will pay a premium to purchase from websites that offer better privacy policies IF that privacy information is made visible and understandable. This research points to the importance of control in the management of privacy concerns. Whether it be mandated by legislation, or recommended in industry standards or design standards, offering users control in the form of understandable privacy policy information, or control over the disclosure of personal information by technology, is essential.

The purpose of this study is to observe whether the religiosity of a region has an effect on its economic performance by running regressions on real gross domestic product, real household income, population, unemployment, and religiosity of each state un the U.S. from 2006 to 2012 to see if religion has a statistically significant impact in the economy do this. Considering the dwindling presence of religion in the world’s top economic powerhouses, it is expected to have a negative relationship between religion and the economy. The results show that there is a statistically significant correlation between religiosity and the economy, but the specific nature of the relationship remain inconclusive on the explicit nature of how religion may impact the economy.

<p> Economic models generally fail to adequately measure positive and negative growth paths in development through agrarian, industry, and service economies. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to design a new model that could accommodate both directions of growth and better measure development paths with particular attention to labors contributions. The theoretical foundation for this study was Walt Whitman Rostow's 5 economic stages of growth classifications. This Study attempted to find the most common economic growth path. While most development models use three to five classifications, this study used nine new classifications giving it a unique and specific look at international development. The two model indicators used were gross domestic product composition by sector (the economic success of the system) and labor force occupation by sector (labors activity to help define behavior of the system). The sample included data from 279 nations from the CIA World Factbook. A systematic method of analysis was used in the open, axial, and selective theoretical coding phases. The key findings reveal 9 distinct growth phases, 15 identified growth paths, and 4 distinct path clusters which helps measure and define development behavior. This analysis resulted in building upon Rostow's original observations. The implications for social change show that policy makers can benefit from using this new model, named the behavioral international economic development growth path model, to provide improved decision making measurements related to agrarian, service, and industry sectors of the economy. In addition, public administrators in developing nations may benefit from a better understanding of more specific development paths, probabilities of path movement, and comparison of policies from same classification nations.</p>

<p> Preferences and behaviors for privacy management with mobile applications are difficult to capture. Previous measures are mostly based on self-report data, which often does not accurately predict actual user behavior. A deeper understanding was sought, gleaned from observing actual practices. This thesis analyzes 11,777 applications from the Google Play marketplace in order to determine the impact of privacy settings on purchase behavior. This was done by looking at the effect of the number of privacy concessions as well as the effect of individual concessions and category on number of downloads. It was found that users of paid applications do not have a preference for fewer privacy concessions. This study further reinforces the disconnect between the user's often stated preference for privacy and their actual behavior -- a discrepancy known as the &ldquo;privacy paradox &rdquo;. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.</p>

Contrairement à l'hypothèse conventionnelle d'égoïsme avancée par la théorie standard, il est largement reconnu que les gens se comportent systématiquement de manière prosociale et, en outre, que la propension à le faire est sensible à plusieurs éléments du contexte décisionnel, qui autrefois étaient systématiquement relégués au second plan. Notre thèse s'intéresse particulièrement au fait que les préférences sociales constituent des éléments contextuels décisifs et examine la mesure dans laquelle les normes sociales peuvent expliquer des déviations comportementales qui autrement pourraient sembler irrationnelles. Dans un contexte où les budgets publics sont limités et ou les défis sociaux et environnementaux sont de plus en plus pressants, les interventions basées sur des approches comportementales peuvent constituer des instruments politiques attrayants, notamment du fait de leur moindre coût en comparaison des mesures basées sur descontraintes réglementaires et/ou sur des incitations économiques. Étant donné que les normes sociales peuvent être un déterminant important des performances globales d'une société dans des domaines très variés, nous étudions plusieurs aspects liés à la conception optimale de ces interventions comportementales qui exploitent les considérations normatives, ainsi que de la dynamique entre les normes sociales et les mesures institutionnelles formelles. Nous réalisons également une revue de la littérature relative à l'impact des interventions basées sur les normes sociales sur les comportementsenvironnementaux ainsi qu'aux mécanismes théoriques sous-jacents permettant d'expliciter le le rôle de ces normes dans le processus décisionnel. / A growing body of empirical evidence demonstrates that decision-making is embedded within complex personal, cognitive, and social contexts that call for a richer understanding of behavior than that described by traditional neoclassical economic theory. Contrary to the conventional selfishness assumption advanced by standard theory, it has now been established that people systematically behave in prosocial ways and furthermore, that the propensity to do so is sensitive to a variety of elements of decision context that have historically been considered irrelevant. We examine the assumptions that social preferences are outcome-regarding and consistent, and the extent to which social norms may be implicated in the divergences from these assumptions.This work has a strong applied focus. In an environment of limited public budgets and increasingly pressing social and environmental challenges, interventions based on behavioral insights can be appealing policy instruments, as they are often more economical than traditional command-and-control or incentive-based tools, and have the potential to generate reliable and immediate behavior change. Given that social norms can be an important determinant of aggregate societal outcomes in a diverse range of contexts, we investigate several aspects of the optimal design of behavioral interventions that leverage normative considerations, as well as the dynamics between social norms and formal institutional measures. These works are complemented by a review of the literature regarding the impact of social norm interventions on proenvironmental behaviors and of several theoretical accounts of the role that social norms play in the decision-making process.Through the use of both laboratory and online experiments (via Amazon Mechanical Turk and the NSF-funded Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences), the experimental studies that comprise the thesis examine the impact of valence framing on the effectiveness of a normative intervention, the capacity for a single normative intervention to generate heterogeneous behavioral impacts, and the effectiveness of certain informal norm-enforcement mechanisms and their interaction with formal institutional sanctions. From these studies, we draw a number of policy-relevant implications and identify the need for future work on a number of specific issues related to the role of social norms in behavior and accordingly, to the design of effective behavioral interventions that leverage social norms.

This thesis is aimed at forecasting of experimental results in a lab environment, investigating often discussed external validity of laboratory experiments. We run a novel laboratory experiment in which the subject pool is asked to make predictions on results of a certain field experiment. The collected data is ana­ lyzed using different accuracy measures, arriving at several interesting results. First, the forecast among the 94 subjects is quite informative about the actual treatment effects although its accuracy substantially varies based on a type of accuracy measure and a particular treatment. Second, the average forecast is either more accurate or at least comparable to the mean individual forecast, proving the presence of "wisdom-of-crowds" effect.

This dissertation consists of three chapters devoted to the study of communication games and behavioral economics. The first chapter extends the cheap talk model of Crawford and Sobel (1982) (CS). In CS, a speaker (S) uses cheap talk to persuade a decision maker (DM) to select an action as profitable to S as possible. This paper shows that the presence of an outside option -- that is, allowing DM to avoid taking any action, yielding state-independent reservation utilities to DM and S -- has an important qualitative impact on the results. Contrary to CS, in this model, the informativeness of communication is not always decreasing in the level of conflict of interest. Relatedly, communication can be more informative than in CS. The second chapter uses a different version of my cheap talk model with an outside option to explore managerial issues such as delegation and interpersonal authority. In this chapter, actions are costly for DM, and S's information is noisy. Hence, the agents may agree or disagree on the ex-ante ranking over projects, and DM may choose not to carry out any project. Unlike in the standard cheap talk model (without an outside option), when their ex-ante rankings coincide, S is more tempted to lie and hide bad news about both agents' ex-ante most preferred project because DM is highly likely to carry it out. Consequently, when their ex-ante rankings coincide, DM can have less incentives to delegate the choice of project to S and more incentives to use interpersonal authority than when their ex-ante rankings differ. The third chapter develops a theory of "personal rules" to explain a paradoxical stylized fact that increasing punishment rates can increase crime. This theory, based on the tradeoff between one's self-image of criminal productivity and the temptation of committing a crime, analyzes the way the agent may transform lapses into precedents. The foundation for this transformation is imperfect recall of one's own criminal productivity, which leads people to draw inaccurate inferences from their past actions. Rationalization may lead them to overestimate the utility of committing a crime when the opportunity presents itself.

Les essais contenus dans cette thèse utilisent des preuves empiriques pour répondre à deux questions qui sont d'une importance capitale compte tenu de notre compréhension croissante de la relation de préférences sociales et de la croissance économique et le bien-être au niveau des pays : les bases du comportement prosocial et l'impact des politiques visent à l'augmenter. Les niveaux de comportement prosocial ont souvent été pris comme une donnée fixée, or ces essais fournissent la preuve qu'ils sont susceptibles de changer à partir des interventions politiques. Étant donné qu'il y a peu d'interventions spécifiquement axées sur la confiance et la coopération, il peut y avoir une grande portée pour améliorer du bien-être en augmentant la politique axée sur cette question. C’est ce qui est démontré dans ces essais. Chapitre 1 aborde les bases du comportement pro-social en utilisant différents cadres dans les demandes d'une contribution au bien public, et montre que les informations sur la norme sociale est le facteur de motivation le plus puissant. Chapitre 2 fournit des résultats empiriques et théoriques que le comportement pro-social au niveau communautaire (en contribuant aux services publics locaux) dépend de l'efficacité attendue de ce comportement. Le chapitre 3 fournit de nouvelles résultats sur l'impact de la confiance sur le plan individuel, et montre qu'un programme de formation de l'enfance qui a augmenté la confiance (ainsi que amélioré l'attention et réduit la délinquance), a déclenché une chaîne d'événements pour améliorer les résultats à long terme en termes d’éducation, criminalité et performance économique. / The essays contained in this dissertation use empirical evidence to address two issues which are critically important given our growing understanding of the relationship of social preferences to economic growth and well-being at the country level: the foundations of prosocial behavior and the impact of policies designed to increase it. Levels of prosocial behavior have often been taken as a given, fixed, factor, but these essays provide evidence that they are subject to change from policy interventions. Given that there are few interventions specifically focused on trust and cooperation, there may be large scope for improving welfare by increasing the policy focus on this issue, and these essays provide evidence that this is indeed the case. Chapter 1 addresses the foundations of pro-social behavior using different frames in requests for a public good contribution, and shows that information on the social norm is the most potent motivator of public good contribution. In Chapter 2 provides empirical and theoretical evidence from a large project that pro-social behavior at the community level, in contributing to local public services, depends on the anticipated efficacy of that behavior. Chapter 3 provides new evidence on the impact of trust on the individual level, and shows that a childhood training program that increased trust, as well as improving attention and reducing delinquency, set off a chain of events resulting in better long-term outcomes for individuals in terms of education, criminality, and economic performance.

Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) is a psychological intervention that combines acceptance and mindfulness approaches with behavior change strategies to increase psychological flexibility, defined as present moment awareness despite unpleasant private events, and behaving based on personal values. Obesity is a socially significant problem effecting duration and quality of life. Quantifying differences between high and low exercise groups and evaluating interventions that affect exercise value represent an avenue to understand obesity and change behavior. This study assessed the effects of a brief ACT exercise on the demand for general and sport-specific exercise and delay discounting rates of four commodities (i.e., money, food, general exercise, and sport-specific exercise) in Division I athletes (n=78) and non-athletes (n=78) from the same university. Statistically significant main effects for general exercise were observed between athletes compared to non-athletes for intensity, elasticity, and breakpoint. Differences in demand for sport-specific exercise between athletes and non-athletes were observed across all behavioral economic indices. The ACT intervention did not alter the demand for general or sport-specific exercise. General and sport-specific exercise were valued similarly between individual participants in each group. In the delay discounting task, ACT significantly decreased degree of discounting of all four commodities (increased the area under the curve) in both athletes and non-athletes. No differences were observed between athletes and non-athletes for any of the four commodities, indicating that athletes and non-athletes discounted these commodities similarly. Results from the demand task provide initial support for the extension of hypothetical purchase tasks to exercise behavior. which would offer a standardized method to quantify exercise value efficiently. Results from the discounting task provide initial evidence indicating that ACT may be effective in reducing discounting rates across commodities. Given that steep discounting rates are considered to play an important causal role in maladaptive behaviors related to obesity, evidence of a therapeutic intervention with the potential to produce longer-lasting change in decision-making is encouraging.