Social media has provided both companies and customer with new opportunities. Customers are increasingly integrating social media into their daily lives and companies has noticed these new traditional medias and started to take advantage of them through brand communities. The new behavior occurring on brand communities is what research call customer engagement behavior and goes beyond transactional behavior. However, customer engagement has not been fully researched on different social media platforms. The most researched platform to date is Facebook. And with the rapid growth of social media and the constant development of new platforms it is of importance to understand customer engagement behavior on different social media platforms to further being able to adapt to each unique platform. Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the frequency of customer engagement behavior and its affect on perceived relationship benefits and ultimately, relationship outcomes. This based on three different social media platforms where one company were present with brand communities and then compare the outcome of each platform with each other. Hypothesis: 𝐻1 = The frequency of customer engagement behavior leads to perceived relationship benefits of engaging in a brand community. 𝐻2 = Customer perceived relationship benefits have a positive effect on relationship outcomes. Methodology: Cross-sectional online questionnaires distributed on three different social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Analysed using linear regressions. Findings: The findings indicates that the frequency on which a customer engage in engagement behaviors showed no statistical significance on Facebook, however, the frequency of reading messages, visiting the brand community, and purchasing products did show statistical significance on Instagram. Furthermore, the perceived relationship benefits that showed significance for both Facebook and Instagram was practical and economic benefits. While on Facebook social enhancement was considered an important indicator for relationship outcome and entertainment

Urban forests provide environmental, social, and economic benefits to urban residents. These benefits are often overlooked when making spatial and financial distributive decisions in urban areas. The City of Tampa has demonstrated interest in its urban forest resource and estimated its extent and some of the benefits provided. Estimating economic values for benefits that have not been quantified can help to ensure that resources are distributed more efficiently. Five methods to estimate urban forest benefits in the City of Tampa are reviewed, with contingent valuation being the method chosen out of this review process. A mailed, dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey was executed with two points of contact, yielding 107 responses for a 21.4 percent response rate. Despite positively rating the City’s urban forest, the majority of respondents (62.6 percent) were willing to pay for it to increase. The Turnbull distribution-free estimator was used to estimate a lower bound of $3.23 for willingness to pay to increase Tampa’s urban forest resource by 250,000 trees. Willingness to pay was positively associated with income and education. The survey responses also yielded important attitudinal and behavioral information that can help local decision makers increase the efficiency of urban forest distribution, maintenance, and promotion.

Product risk is important to firms’ enterprise risk management. This dissertation focuses on product risk in the U.S. life insurance and health insurance industries. In particular, we add new dimensions to the measurement of product risk for these industries, and we explore how these industries manage product risk in a context of other enterprise risks. In this dissertation, we identify new product risks, propose new measures, and study the management of these risks. In the life insurance industry, we identify a new type of product risk, the guarantee risk, caused by variable annuities with guaranteed living benefits (VAGLB). We propose a value-at-risk type measure inspired by the risk-based capital C3 Phase II to quantify the guarantee risk. In the health insurance industry, where the degree of uncertainty varies for different types of health insurance policies, we develop four exposure-based risk measures to capture health insurers’ product risks. Then we study how life and health insurers manage product risks (and asset risks) by using capital in the context of other risks and appropriate controls. We add to the literature in the life insurance industry by examining the relationship between capital and risks when the guarantee risk is accounted for. In the health insurance industry, to our knowledge, no similar research on the relationship between capital and risks has been conducted. In view of the current topicality of health insurance, our research therefore adds a timely contribution to the understanding of health insurer risk management in an era of health care reform. Capital structure theories, transaction cost economics, and insurers’ risk-taking behaviors provide the theoretical foundation for our research. As to methodology, we implement standard capital structure models for the life and health insurance industries using data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) annual filings of life/health insurers and health insurers. Simultaneous equations modeling is used to model life and health insurers’ enterprise risk management. And the estimation is conducted by the generalized estimation equations (GEE). We find that both U.S. life/health insurers and health insurers prudently build up capital as they experience more product risk and asset risk controlling for the other enterprise risks. We also find that life/health insurers may be using derivatives as a partial substitute for capital when managing new product risk caused by VAGLB, the guarantee risk. / text

While various systems of support and professional development are in place for teachers, there remains a distinct void when it comes to these same opportunities for beginning and especially, experienced principals. An emerging form of assistance for campus principals is leadership coaching: a confidential relationship between a professional coach and principal focused on capacity building and the provision of time and support for the school leader to thoughtfully reflect, plan, problem solve, and establish and achieve significant goals. Leadership coaching is an investment in campus principals, which seems to fill an immediate need for them to experience relevant, ongoing, job-embedded, and individualized professional development. This multiple-case qualitative study, using a grounded theory approach, was framed by the research questions: What are the experiences of middle and high school principals participating in leadership coaching and what benefits result from principal participation in leadership coaching? Through the constant comparative analysis of individual and collective data obtained through semi-structured interviews, observations, and documental evidence of principals participating in leadership coaching, principals’ perceptions of their leadership coaching experience and any benefits were revealed. Overall, findings suggested that participation in leadership coaching was perceived positively and led to principals taking time to pause from their stressful roles and responsibilities to reflect and plan. Principals described factors that accounted for initially connecting with their coaches, such as client readiness and the coach’s experience, as well as the conditions established by the coach that helped build and sustain a healthy coaching relationship: safety, flexibility, action-orientation, and skillful guidance. Additionally, principals reported personal, professional, and organizational benefits resulting from leadership coaching. Personal benefits included better self-care, reduced isolation, increased self-confidence, and heightened self-awareness. On a professional level, coaching resulted in the generation of plans/ideas, improved communication, individualized professional development, and an enhanced sense of efficacy. And finally, organizational benefits were identified in areas of staffing, solutions, student performance, and the extension of coaching to others. / text

This dissertation consists of three essays in applied econometrics that analyze the strategic interactions between individuals and institutions. The first chapter examines the relationship between employee benefits and the performance of startups. Using national longitudinal data on startups, I find that an increase in the share of employee benefits in total compensation packages leads to increased productivity of startups. Results indicate that a 10 percent increase in the share of employee benefits leads to an increase ranging from 1.5 to 3.9 percent in productivity even if the returns to the employee benefits are heterogeneous across startups. I also find that an increase in the share of employee benefits increases the chance of survival of startups. The second chapter investigates the dynamics of employee screening and transitions from temporary to permanent employment. I analyze unique German data that contains specific information about the dynamics of the transition from temporary to permanent employment, I find that employers screen the abilities of employees only before they hire them. I find no evidence that employers screen the cognitive ability of employees during temporary employment. The third chapter examines the relationship between housing prices and the availability of curbside parking. Using a policy change in Istanbul as a quasi-experiment, this chapter explores the effect of Istanbul’s switch from informal and free curbside parking to formal and paid curbside parking on housing prices. In a differences-in-differences model coupled with a propensity score matching, we find that an exogenous change in the availability of parking leads to a statistically significant decrease in house prices. We estimate that house prices per square meter decrease by 13 percent in the neighborhoods where the city starts charging curbside parking spaces. However, rents stay the same compared to the other neighborhoods. / text

Teachers integrate technology to make the learning environment interactive and appealing to students. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore perceptions of teachers at one high school working to integrate technology into instruction following participation in professional development. Guided by Dewey's constructivist theory and Mishra and Koehler's technological pedagogical content knowledge model, this study explored teachers' perceptions of pedagogy and technology integration following participation in professional development and the strategies they used to overcome barriers to integrating technology. Twelve purposefully selected high school teachers from English, social studies, mathematics, science, electives, health education, and special education provided triangulated data in the form of interviews, lesson plans, and classroom observations. Through the qualitative coding and analysis process, emergent themes were developed. Teachers suggested that professional development for technology integration should benefit the learning environment, be relevant to course content so that teachers can make connections to real-world learning experiences, and that there should be consistent follow-up training. Findings suggested that teachers have limited access to hardware and software and lack time to develop technology-rich lesson plans, and students lack technical skills. The implications for this study include that district and school administrators should plan and implement relevant professional development, assess the needs of teachers through effective communication, and identify additional resources or training to help teachers who struggle to integrate technology.

Air pollution—both indoor and outdoor—results in more deaths and diseases in India than in any other country in the world. The first chapter in this dissertation explores why despite profoundly negative health consequences of indoor air pollution, most rural Indian households cook using traditional biomass fuel. Among many factors that contribute to households’ continued use of solid fuels, we focus on one: women’s intra-household status. We exploit Indian son preference: having a girl first child lowers women’s status relative to having a boy first child, and is therefore associated with lower likelihood of using clean fuel. This effect is found throughout the wealth distribution, and is not concentrated among households in states with a high child sex ratio or households where women have some education. The second chapter focuses on outdoor air pollution in India. We use a general equilibrium model of Indian economy to quantify the spillovers from a carbon tax on fossil fuels to local air quality and the health outcomes in urban India. We estimate that a $10/ton of Carbon tax on all fossil fuels will reduce CO2 emission by 10.7% from business-as-usual and save nearly 0.3 million urban lives from pollution related deaths while adding 0.2 percent to the GDP over the three decades from 2003 to 2030. We get this double dividend from carbon tax if the tax revenue is used to reduce existing distortionary taxes. Carbon tax is more progressive if the revenue is repatriated to households, but the GDP is slightly smaller than the base case under this regime. In the third chapter, we present the first VSL estimates from India using hedonic wage method with worker and job characteristics data from Employment and Unemployment Survey of India (EUS)—a large nationally representative survey that has not been used in this literature before. We estimate VSL of an average low-skilled urban Indian worker to be about $85,000 in 2004-05 (about 65 times the annual wage) at 2010 constant prices. Our estimates of VSL and VSL-to-income ratio are much lower than all previous estimates from India. Comparisons with estimates from other developing countries like China and Taiwan, however, suggest that our estimates are more reasonable. Our VSL estimate, if reliable, sets a lower threshold for investment in environment and public safety projects that can be justified using cost-benefit criteria.

Bakgrund: Hunden har länge funnits vid människans sida och varit en värdefull följeslagare. Aktuell forskning rymmer lovande bevis för hundens positiva effekter på människans hälsa. Djurassisterade interventioner med hundar är trots denna forskning i dagsläget en relativt oanvänd resurs i omvårdnadssammanhang. Syfte: Belysa hundens hälsofrämjande effekter för patienten. Metod: En allmän litteraturöversikt baserad på nio kvantitativa artiklar och en kvalitativ artikel. Resultat: Fyra huvudkategorier som speglar hundens hälsofrämjande effekter identifierades. Dessa var emotionella effekter, fysiska effekter, sociala och kognitiva effekter samt psykiska effekter. Slutsats: Det har identifierats att hunden kan påverka varierande hälsoaspekter hos människan i en positiv riktning. Klinisk betydelse: Genom att ha kunskap om vilka hälsofrämjande effekter hunden potentiellt kan medföra för patienten kan vårdpersonal få ännu ett verktyg för att närma sig personcentrerad omvårdnad. / Background: Dogs have for a long time been living by the human side and has been valued as meaningful companions. Current research contains promising evidence for the positive health benefits the dog may have on humans. Despite this research animal-assisted interventions containing dogs are a relatively unused resource in nursing context. Aim: To illuminate the health benefits that dogs in healthcare can have for the patient. Method: A general literature review based on nine quantitative articles and one qualitative article. Results: Four main categories that reflect health benefits dogs can contribute to were identified. These were: emotional effects, physical effects, social and cognitive effects and psychological effects. Conclusion: It was identified that dogs may affect several aspects of human health in a positive direction. Clinical relevance: By having knowledge about which health benefits dogs potentially can have for the patient, health professionals have yet another tool to approach person-centered care.

This study investigated the online interactions of parents using the constructs of Wenger’s (1998) community of practice theory. Parents were surveyed and blogs and comments selections were examined to determine whether a communities of practice perspective would be appropriate as a construct to examine parents’ online interactions, and whether parents could gain similar benefits to those found from face-to-face parent support groups. This study provides evidence to support the utility of parents’ online interactions and the relevance of a community of practice perspective as analyzed with the components of Wenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice Theory. / text

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences