Food-borne illness is a significant burden both with regard to public health and financially. Efforts to reduce the level of food-borne illness continue to concentrate on the full food supply chain with particular regard given to Campylobacter, the most commonly reported zoonosis and the greatest burden to public health. The focus of this research is domestic food safety practises, where there is no regulation. Food safety is reliant on people’s knowledge or awareness, their ability to adopt safe food handling practises and for the correct behaviours to achieve this, to be routine. The elicitation of awareness and perceptions with regard to food safety are problematic due to the complexities of human nature, including the presence of several forms of bias, such as social desirability bias and optimistic bias. The research was designed in order to try to minimise such biases, whilst further understanding influences on food safety preparation behaviour. Food safety preparation behaviours and kitchen hygiene were investigated between people who had campylobacteriosis in comparison to people who had not had food poisoning. Whilst no difference was noted in the kitchen hygiene between the two groups, significant differences were noted in self-reported food preparation behaviours. Optimistic bias was exhibited by both groups but when tested again after six months had elapsed, the group who had not had food poisoning increased their optimism, introducing a significant difference in optimistic bias between the two groups. Awareness of a number of unsafe food behaviours was explored for individuals and groups of people using a method developed as part of the research. This method of hazard awareness uses video as a stimulus, creating an interactive survey, combined with attitudinal and demographic data. Changes were made to perceptions of knowledge and risk following the hazard perception challenge, with the number of hazards missed, influencing this movement in perception. The risk perception of unsafe food handling behaviours was examined using a novel technique Best-Worst Scaling, in order to identify relative risks. This technique, in conjunction with latent class modelling, demonstrated a difference in perceptions between food safety experts and members of the general public. However, these differences are nuanced and demonstrate that heterogeneity exists both within and across the groups. Taken together, these findings have extended the research on domestic food safety behaviour and risk perceptions. It has done so by developing and testing novel methods to elicit relative risk perceptions and hazard perception with regard to food safety behaviours. The results provide valuable evidence for stakeholders particularly with regard to the novel methods used in identifying the heterogeneity and influences of food safety behaviour between groups of people. It also provides important tools for stakeholders, risk managers and communicators to use in future research, communication and education.

This thesis focuses on two under-researched areas of consumer behaviour: conflict handling styles and consumer bargaining. As illustrated in this thesis, consumer bargaining is a substantial and important behaviour that has rarely been studied from a consumer perspective. Further, conflict handling, which is considered an important and wellresearched phenomenon in an organisational context, has been rarely applied to consumer behaviour, despite the potential for conflict in many areas. The aims of this thesis were to a) examine consumer bargaining behaviour across a variety of culturally diverse nations; b) develop and validate a new instrument to measure conflict handling styles; and c) examine the relationships between the likelihood of consumer bargaining, preferred conflict handling styles, and personal values. Consumer bargaining was found to be common in both developed and developing nations. Respondents from Australia and Germany reported bargaining for a broad range of products that vary in their prices, including cars, electronics, appliances, clothing, and computers. Bargaining in South Korea was even more common, including everyday purchases like clothing, and food and drink. Finally, bargaining in Brazil was almost as common as in South Korea, and also included expensive consumer durable purchases, such as electronic products and cars, in addition to everyday purchases, such as clothing, and food and drink. The conflict handling style instrument developed in this project had convergent validity with existing ratings scales, reproduced the theorised structure of the dual-concerns model of conflict handling, and had predictive validity in a service recovery context. The benefits iii of the new scale over existing ratings scales include: a) capturing relative preference for the conflict handling styles; b) reduction of sources of common method variance; c) reduction of ratings scale response biases; and d) reduction of numerical effect biases, such as different perceived distances between response categories. The newly developed scale was also used to assess the hypothesised relationships between personal values, conflict handling styles, and consumer bargaining intensity in a developed Western country (Germany). As expected, the dominate conflict handling style was positively related, while the avoid conflict handling style was negatively related to consumer bargaining intensity. Although no relationship was found between personal values and consumer bargaining intensity, personal values were found to be an antecedent of conflict handling styles. Specifically, the power value type was found to be a positive predictor of the dominate conflict handling style, while benevolence and social universalism were found to be positive predictors of the integrate conflict handling style.

Customer overall satisfaction towards a public transport system depends mainly on two factors: how satisfied they are with different aspects that make up the service and how important each of the service aspects is to the customer. Traditionally, researchers use revealed preference surveys and ordered probit/logit models to estimate the contribution of each service attribute towards the overall satisfaction. This paper aims to verify the possibility of replacing the traditional method with the more cost-effective best-worst case 1 method, using a customer survey recently conducted in Santander, Spain. The results show that the satisfaction level obtained from these alternative methods are remarkably similar. The relative importance of each attribute delivered by the two methods differ, with the Best-Worst approach showing more intuitive and consistent results with the literature on public transport customer satisfaction. A regression method is developed to derive customer satisfaction with each service attribute from Best-Worst modelling results.

Although data collection through discrete choice experimentsconducted using surveys are commonly used in research, aimingto improve data quality is still serviceable and necessary. Three distinct experiments were conducted with the objectives of improving data quality by better tailoring experiments to market conditionsas well as decreasing complexity and fatigue. First, consumer willingness-to-pay(WTP) for yogurt attributes was estimatedusing a survey targeted to be nationally representative of the US.A novel approach was used to allow for self-selection into the choice experiment for commonly purchased types of yogurt.On average, respondentswere willing-to-paya positive amount for requiring pasture access and not permitting dehorning/disbudding for both traditional and Greek yogurt. Respondents had positive WTPfor Greek yogurt labeled free of high fructose corn syrup, and were willing-to-pay morefor low-fat yogurt when compared to nonfat for both yogurt types.<div><br></div><div> Second, anew WTP data collection method, employing component discrete choice experiments in place of traditional larger experimental designs,was proposedand compared to the traditional method to elicit yogurt consumer’s WTP for attributes in yogurt. The new WTP data collection method was designed with the objective of decreasing complexity by having respondents participate in fewer choice scenarios. Incidences of attribute non-attendance (ANA), a potential simplifying heuristic that results from complexity, occurred less frequently for all attributes in the new WTP data collection method with one exception. Exhibiting ANA for any attribute was negatively correlated with the time respondents took to complete the choice experiment.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Finally, through the use of a newbest-worst scaling(BWS)data collection method,consumer preferences for fluid dairy milk attributes were elicited and results as well as measures of data quality were compared to the traditional method of BWS. Nine attributes of fluid milk were included in this study: container material, rbST-free, price, container size, fat content, humane handling of cattle, brand, required pasture access for cattle, and cattle fed an organic diet. The top (price) and bottom (container material) attributes in terms of relative ranking did not change between the new BWS data collection method and the traditional BWS method. The new BWS data collection method resulted in fewer incidences of ANA for all attributes except one. There was not a statistical difference in the number of transitivity (an axiom of consumer theory) violators,between the new and traditional BWS methods.<br></div>

Using the E. coli vaccine as a case study, this thesis examines the factors affecting the adoption of technologies with positive spillover (externality) effects related to food safety. Positive spillovers occur when the benefits from a technological innovation extend beyond the firm (farm) adopting the technology or they do not flow to the adopter. If there are insufficient incentives for the firm to adopt the new technology, adoption levels are sub-optimal, resulting in forgone benefits to society. These benefits include the avoidance of potential health costs, productivity loss and premature death costs as a result to exposure to E. coli O157:H7. Therefore, if the market incentives to adopt the technology are strengthened, adoption levels of the technology could reach socially optimal levels resulting in an improvement in food safety. This has been the case in the Canadian cattle industry, where the uptake of the E. coli vaccine by cow-calf producers has been very low. As such, a number of potential incentives to increase adoption of the vaccine were identified and assessed through a survey of cow-calf producers on the Prairies. Data from the survey were analyzed using a stated preference methodology, Best-Worst Scaling, and Latent Class cluster analysis. A Binary Probit Model was also used to examine the factors affecting willingness to adopt the vaccine. The results suggest that a significant number of producers were not aware of the existence of the E. coli vaccine. In addition, producers were most likely to be influenced in their adoption decisions by market/supply chain oriented incentives and government intervention incentives in the form of subsidies. On the other hand, incentives that were least likely to influence cow-calf producers’ decisions to adopt included government intervention through recommending use of vaccine and neighbours (other cow-calf producers) adopting the vaccine. The Latent Class cluster analysis revealed the existence of three unique producer clusters with different attitudes towards these incentives. Several socio-demographic variables and individual characteristics utilized in the Probit analysis were found to be determinants of a producer’s willingness to adopt an E. coli vaccine. The implications of this research are such that producer education and awareness campaigns may be utilized as tools for disseminating information on food safety technologies such as the E. coli vaccine. Furthermore, the market/supply chain incentives may be used to form potential market-based solutions to address the current low adoption rates. The existence of three unique producer clusters suggest that a one-size fits all strategy to encourage the adoption of the E. coli vaccine might be difficult to implement and thus a more targeted approach may be a feasible alternative.

No description available.

Les systèmes de santé accordent une attention croissante au point de vue des usagers dans l’organisation de l’offre de soins. L’instauration d’une offre de soins sensible aux besoins et préférences des patients constitue un enjeu majeur de qualité et d’efficacité des soins. Ce travail analyse le point de vue des patients pour l’offre de soins de médecine générale en utilisant différentes méthodes permettant d’obtenir des informations complémentaires en termes d’expérience de soins, de satisfaction, d’importance ou encore de préférences. Il s’agit des méthodes Delphi, de classement du meilleur au pire et de révélation des préférences par les choix discrets. Ces méthodes sont appliquées sur deux échantillons : en population générale pour la première et chez des patients poly-pathologiques pour les 2 autres afin d’identifier les principaux enjeux actuels et à venir de la réorganisation de l’offre de soins de médecine générale du point de vue des patients. Les résultats montrent le rôle central de la relation médecin-patient et plus particulièrement de l’échange d‘informations entre le médecin et le patient. Cependant une relation médecin-patient de qualité ne doit pas pour autant être réalisée au détriment de la qualité technique du soin et de la coordination de la prise en charge du patient. Ce travail montre également l’importance de prendre en compte l’expérience de soins des patients lors de l’analyse de leur point de vue, et plus particulièrement de leur disposition au changement. L’évaluation systématique et régulière des préférences des patients en pratique quotidienne peut permettre d’améliorer la communication médecin-patient ainsi que le contenu de l’offre de soins du point de vue des patients. / The healthcare systems are paying a great interest to the patients’ perspective for the organization of health care provision. Healthcare system which is accountable and responsive of patients’ needs and preferences is a major issue for the quality and efficiency of care. In this thesis, we analyze the views of patients for the supply of GP care in using different complementary methods about patients’ experience, satisfaction, importance or preferences. These methods are applied to a sample of patients in GP and to a sample of chronically ill patients in order to identify current and future major issues for the reorganization of GP care from the patients’ perspective. The results show the main role of the doctor-patient relationship and especially of the information exchange between doctor and patient and between patient and doctor. However the quality of the doctor-patient relationship is not enough. The technical quality of care (i.e. thoroughness) and the coordination are of high importance for patients. This work highlights that it is necessary to take into account the patients’ experiences in the analysis of their perspective (e.g. preferences) to fully and appropriately understand the results, especially in terms of willingness to change. The systematic and regular screening of patient preferences in daily GP practice can improve the doctor-patient communication and the content of the provision of care from the perspective of patients.

The emerging financial industry of asset-backed short-term finance was investigated by this study. Literature indicated that banks, locally and globally, are forced by regulation and the use of information technology, to rely less on human judgement and more on programmed decision-making, when evaluating loan applications. This leads to time-consuming processes with non-standard loan applications and loss of opportunities for business persons. Asset-backed short-term finance is a market response to this tendency. Due to the emerging nature of this industry, no previous academic description of or investigation into this industry could be found – a gap in academic literature which this study aims to fill. The industry is strategically positioned in relation to banks by focusing on functionality for urgent non-standard loan applications (period between application and decision, and access to decision-makers) as value proposition, where banks are found lacking. Relatively high interest rates form the profit proposition, as firms in this industry have limited access to funds. Collateral is central as risk-mitigating strategy, forming a part of the profit proposition. The people proposition is essential, as the industry is distinguished by individualised decision-making. A survey among customers of this industry identified four clusters of potential customers: The first had no needs unfulfilled by banks, while the other three clusters were attracted by either functionality, or the evaluation of collateral in contrast to repayment ability, or a combination of the two. A survey among providers revealed hesitance to supply information and a low level of agreement on strategic matters – possibly due to the emergent nature of the industry. It is asserted that the basis for further study was laid. / Business Management / D. Com. (Business Management)