Sweden is known for being at the forefront of becoming a cashless society.However, cash continues to be an important part of the payment ecosystem butthere are limited studies and data regarding the preference for holding cash. Previousstudies have shown that the use of cash is declining with regards to comers and thatthere are behavior differences between cultures and sociodemographic groups inregards to characteristics and preferences for payment methods. The aim of thisstudy was to investigate the informational attributes that drives the preference forholding cash by studying two extreme cases, Sweden which is a pioneer of cashlesssociety, and Germany which is one of the most conservative cash-intensivecountries in the Western world. Primary quantitative data was derived fromstandardized questionnaires issued in both countries by Loomis AB; the data wasdescribed and analyzed with applicable statistical procedures. A multivariate analysiswas performed on a specific segment of the collected data were the respondents hadbeen asked to rate cash associated statements based on their agreeableness towardsthem. These segments were then examined through a Principal component analysisto determine the underlying dimensions regarding preferences for cash. Our resultssuggest that Germans withdrew cash more frequently, from a wider spectrum ofdenominations and carried it to a larger extend than Swedes. Swedes made limitedwithdrawals, of small denominations and preferred to carry smaller amounts of cash.The results also show that there were differences in the perception and preferencesfor cash between sociodemographic groups, with e.g. older age groups being used to itand the youngest using it due to ‘status quo bias’. The main conclusions include thatthe informational attributes such as security, anonymity, ease of use and paymentinfrastructure was the main drives for the preferences of holding cash. / Sverige är känt för att vara i framkanten gällande transformationen till att bli ettkontantlöst samhälle. Kontanter fortsätter dock att vara en viktig del avbetalningsekosystemet, men det finns begränsade studier och data om preferensenför att hålla kontanter. Tidigare studier har visat att användningen av kontanterminskat i dagligvaru- och sällanköpshandeln och att det finns beteendeskillnadermellan kulturer och sociodemografiska grupper med avseende på egenskaper ochpreferenser för betalningsmetoder. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka deinformativa attribut som driver preferensen för att hålla pengar genom att studeratvå extrema fall, Sverige som är en pionjär gällande det kontantlösa samhället ochTyskland som är ett av de mest konservativa kontantanvändande länderna ivästvärlden. Kvantitativa data härleddes från standardiserade frågeformulärutfärdade i de båda länderna av Loomis AB; data beskrevs och analyserades medtillämpliga statistiska förfaranden, mer specifikt en multivariantanalys som gjordespå ett visst segment av de insamlade uppgifterna, där de svarande blev ombedda attbedöma kontantanvändningen genom associerade uttalanden baserat på derasöverensstämmelse med dem. Dessa segment undersöktes sedan genom enhuvudkomponentanalys för att bestämma de underliggande dimensionerna gällandepreferenser för kontanter. Våra resultat tyder på att tyskar tar ut pengar merfrekvent, från ett bredare spektrum av valörer och bär i större utsträckning merkontanter än svenskar. Svenskar har en begränsad uttagsfrekvens, främst av småvalörer samt att de föredrar att bära kontanter i en liten utsträckning. Fortsatt visarResultaten att det fanns skillnader i perception och preferenser för kontanter mellansociodemografiska grupper, exempelvis är äldre åldersgrupper vana vidkontantanvändning och att de yngre åldersgrupperna använder kontanter på grundav "status quo bias". De viktigaste slutsatserna är att de informativa attribut somsäkerhet, anonymitet, användarvänlighet och betalningsinfrastruktur är de viktigastedrivkrafterna gällande preferensen att hålla kontanter.

Rapid digitalisation development has been stampeding widely across today’s societies, and not least in the payment industry. Though, the digitalisation in the payment industry has been very deviating, even between similar well-developed countries, and while there are positive and negative effects with both digital- and physical payment means, there is little knowledge that highlights the influencing factors and accompanied problems. This study therefore explore swhich, and how, different factors influence a country’s degree of digital payments, and creates further understanding of where the payment markets are heading in the future. It is done through a case study of four different industrialised countries, Sweden, Italy, Canada, and Switzerland which involves mapping the countries’ payment markets, as well as potential factors influencing a population’s payment habits, through a perspective of innovation theory in terms of dominant designs and technological discontinuities. Theory of network externalities and two-sided platforms are further used to explain and discuss how a two-sided market, likethe payment market, is affected by changes and other circumstances in different ways.Conclusions are then drawn from the used theories together with a comparison of the findings,and identifies certain influencers to a country’s distribution of payments, as well as provides indications of where the different payments markets are heading in the future. Data is mainly gathered through written material and credible databases, but also from semi-structured interviews. / Den snabba digitaliseringen har slagit sig fram i dagens samhällen, och inte minst i betalningsindustrin. Dock har digitaliseringen i betalningsindustrin varit mycket avvikande mellan liknande välutvecklade länder, och medan det finns positiva och negativa effekter med både digitala och fysiska betalningsmedel, finns det inte mycket kunskap om påverkandefaktorer och medföljande problem. Denna studie undersöker därför vilka, och hur, olika faktorer påverkar ett lands grad av digitala betalningar, och vidare skapar ytterligare förståelse för var betalningsmarknaderna är på väg framöver. Detta görs genom en fallstudie av fyra olika industrialiserade länder, Sverige, Italien, Kanada och Schweiz, som innebär en kartläggning av ländernas betalningsmarknader, och av potentiella faktorer som påverkar befolkningens betalningsvanor, genom ett perspektiv från innovationsteori i form av dominerande design och tekniska diskontinuiteter. Teori om nätverksexternaliteter och tvåsidiga plattformar används vidare för att förklara och diskutera hur en tvåsidig marknad som betalningsmarknadenpåverkas av förändringar och andra omständigheter. Slutsatser dras sedan från de användateorierna tillsammans med en jämförelse av resultaten och identifierar påverkande faktorer tillett lands betalningsdistribution, samt ger indikationer på var de olika betalningsmarknaderna är på väg framöver. Data samlades huvudsakligen in genom skriftligt material och från tillförlitliga databaser, men även från semistrukturerade intervjuer.

Traffic safety has been considered one of the most important issues in the transportation field. Crashes have caused extensive human and economic losses. With the objective of reducing crash occurrence and alleviating crash injury severity, major efforts have been dedicated to reveal the hazardous factors that affect crash occurrence. With these consistent efforts, both fatalities and fatality rates from road traffic crashes in many countries have been steadily declining over the last ten years. Nevertheless, according to the World Health Organization, the world still lost 1.24 million lives from road traffic crashes in the year of 2013. And without action, traffic crashes on the roads network are predicted to result in deaths of around 1.9 million people, and up to 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries annually, with many incurring a disability as a result of their injury by the year 2020. To meet the transportation needs, the use of expressways (toll roads) has risen dramatically in many countries in the past decade. In fact, freeways and expressways are considered an important part of any successful transportation system. These facilities carry the majority of daily trips on the transportation network. Although expressways offer high level of service, and are considered the safest among other types of roads, traditional toll collection systems may have both safety and operational challenges. The traditional toll plazas still experience many crashes, many of which are severe. Therefore, it becomes more important to evaluate the traffic safety impacts of using different tolling systems. The main focus of the research in this dissertation is to provide an up-to-date safety impact of using different toll collection systems, as well as providing safety guidelines for these facilities to promote safety and enhance mobility on expressways. In this study, an extensive data collection was conducted that included one hundred mainline toll plazas located on approximately 750 miles of expressways in Florida. Multiple sources of data available online maintained by Florida Department of Transportation were utilized to identify traffic, geometric and geographic characteristics of the locations as well as investigating and determination of the most complete and accurate data. Different methods of observational before-after and Cross-Sectional techniques were used to evaluate the safety effectiveness of applying different treatments on expressways. The Before-After method includes Naive Before-After, Before-After with Comparison Group, and Before-After with Empirical Bayesian. A set of Safety Performance Functions (SPFs) which predict crash frequency as a function of explanatory variables were developed at the aggregate level using crash data and the corresponding exposure and risk factors. Results of the aggregate traffic safety analysis can be used to identify the hazardous locations (hot spots) such as traditional toll plazas, and also to predict crash frequency for untreated sites in the after period in the Before-After with EB method or derive Crash Modification Factors (CMF) for the treatment using the Cross-Sectional method. This type of analysis is usually used to improve geometric characteristics and mainly focus on discovering the risk factors that are related to the total crash frequency, specific crash type, and/or different crash severity levels. Both simple SPFs (with traffic volume only as an explanatory variable) and full SPFs (with traffic volume and additional explanatory variable(s)) were used to estimate the CMFs and only CMFs with lower standard error were recommended. The results of this study proved that safety effectiveness was significantly improved across all locations that were upgraded from Traditional Mainline Toll Plazas (TMTP) to the Hybrid Mainline Toll Plazas (HMTP) system. This treatment significantly reduced total, Fatal-and-Injury (F+I), and Rear-End crashes by 47, 46 and 65 percent, respectively. Moreover, this study examined the traffic safety impact of using different designs, and diverge-and-merge areas of the HMTP. This design combines either express Open Road Tolling (ORT) lanes on the mainline and separate traditional toll collection to the side (design-1), or traditional toll collection on the mainline and separate ORT lanes to the side (design-2). It was also proven that there is a significant difference between these designs, and there is an indication that design-1 is safer and the majority of crashes occurred at diverge-and-merge areas before and after these facilities. However, design-2 could be a good temporary design at locations that have low prepaid transponder (Electronic Toll Collection (ETC)) users. In other words, it is dependent upon the percentage of the ETC users. As this percentage increases, more traffic will need to diverge and merge; thus, this design becomes riskier. In addition, the results indicated significant relationships between the crash frequency and toll plaza types, annual average daily traffic, and drivers* age. The analysis showed that the conversion from TMTP to the All-Electronic Toll Collection (AETC) system resulted in an average reduction of 77, 76, and 67 percent for total, F+I, and Property Damage Only (PDO) crashes, respectively; for rear end and Lane Change Related (LCR) crashes the average reductions were 81 and 75 percent, respectively. The conversion from HMTP to AETC system enhanced traffic safety by reducing crashes by an average of 23, 29 and 19 percent for total, F+I, and PDO crashes; also, for rear end and LCR crashes, the average reductions were 15 and 21 percent, respectively. Based on these results, the use of AETC system changed toll plazas from the highest risk sections on Expressways to be similar to regular segments. Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of AETC system was proven to be an excellent solution to several traffic operations as well as environmental and economic problems. For those agencies that cannot adopt the HMTP and the AETC systems, improving traffic safety at traditional toll plazas should take a priority. This study also evaluates the safety effectiveness of the implementation of High-Occupancy Toll lanes (HOT Lanes) as well as adding roadway lighting to expressways. The results showed that there were no significant impact of the implementation of HOT lanes on the roadway segment as a whole (HOT and Regular Lanes combined). But there was a significant difference between the regular lanes and the HOT lanes at the same roadway segment; the crash count increased at the regular lanes and decreased at the HOT lanes. It was found that the total and F+I crashes were reduced at the HOT lanes by an average of 25 and 45 percent, respectively. This may be attributable to the fact that the HOT lanes became a highway within a highway. Moreover adding roadway lighting has significantly improved traffic safety on the expressways by reducing the night crashes by approximately 35 percent. Overall, the proposed analyses of the safety effectiveness of using different toll collection systems are useful in providing expressway authorities with detailed information on where countermeasures must be implemented. This study provided for the first time an up-to-date safety impact of using different toll collection systems, also developed safety guidelines for these systems which would be useful for practitioners and roadway users.

The digital payment industry has become one of the fastest evolving markets in the world, but in the wake of its rapid advancement, an ever increasing gap between academic theory and the actual reality of this market widens - and especially so when it comes to entry theory. It is widely acknowledged that the world is moving towards an ever more homogeneous economy, but despite the fact that payment preferences differ greatly from country to country - research on this subject continues to revolve mainly around localized efforts. But as historical inequalities between poor and rich societies continue to dissipate - learning from nations at the forefront of technological advancement increases the likelihood that the developed strategy becomes applicable to an increased number of countries. By selecting a nation most conducive to technological growth, the purpose of this report is to map the present dynamics in its digital payment industry using both recent and traditional market entry theory. However, studies geared towards globalized strategy formulation cannot be assumed as having guaranteed access to internal company-data at all times. So in order to facilitate such studies, the level of dependency on primary data required for conducting such research needs to be understood first, which is why the work in this report is constrained strictly to data of secondary nature. This, not only to further map the characteristics of this market, but also to see how open the market is to public inspection. Ultimately, the academic contribution becomes that of providing a road-map towards adapting currently available market entry theory to suit the rapidly evolving conditions of the digital payment industry from a global perspective and, when failing to do so, the aim is to also explore avenues for further research towards this end goal.