The very high travel demands associated with hurricane evacuations require some strategies, such as contraflow sections, to be included in hurricane evacuation plans. However, the response or reaction of the evacuees to these strategies has not been given much attention in the past. This study concentrated on one particular strategy, contraflow segments, and investigated evacuees' willingness to use them through an animated survey. Usable data was collected from 821 respondents. The first part of the study dealt with six factors (service availability, police presence, exit location, entry congestion, availability of multiple entries, and limited choice) which were studied independently and compared against individual background characteristics. The distribution of the responses from the survey indicated that the presence of multiple entries or the availability of information about services increased the likelihood of evacuees switching to contraflow lanes, while the presence of police personnel for instance did not greatly alter the decision. Other factors like entry congestion or exits well before or well after initially desired ones decreased the willingness to use contraflow lanes. In the case where contraflow lanes were the only option on the main evacuation route (without the regular lane alternative), evacuees were willing to take detours to avoid the use of contraflow facilities. However, the effects of the above listed factors were associated with the background characteristics of the evacuees as the odds ratios in this study indicated. Previous contraflow or reverse lane experience for instance attenuated the effect of entry congestion on avoiding contraflow lanes. Contraflow experience on the other hand increased the likelihood of using the first entry when two entries were available and increased the willingness to switch to contraflow lanes when information about services was provided. Also, evacuation experience, presence of passengers affecting stops, and having dependents in the family improved the willingness to use contraflow lanes given information about services. Other characteristics like living in a hurricane prone area increased the inclination to use contraflow in the presence of police personnel and having passengers affecting destination choice increased the willingness to detour and avoid contraflow when regular lanes were not part of the main evacuation route from the respondent's origin. The second part of the study dealt with congestion and information about congestion levels along the regular and contraflow lanes. Different combinations of levels of congestion and information were presented to the respondents in the animated part of the survey. Respondents indicated their preference for contraflow or regular lanes in these scenarios. This data was used to develop a conditional logit model which predicted choice based on the presented options. Evacuees demonstrated an overall willingness to switch to contraflow lanes when these lanes were less congested than the regular lanes. However, with similar congestion levels on the regular and contraflow lanes, willingness to switch to contraflow lanes decreased as congestion levels increased. Information about upcoming congestion influenced evacuees' route choice decisions. Information motivated switching to contraflow lanes when conveying better downstream conditions along these lanes. Overall, evacuees demonstrated a willingness to benefit from any congestion improvement offered by contraflow lanes as opposed to assumptions in the literature claiming underutilization of these segments due to drivers' discomfort and unfamiliarity. / Master of Science

I syftet att undersöka hur en skatte- och bidragsreform kan tänkas påverka utbudet av arbetskraft för ungdomar, modelleras en Discrete Choice nyttofunktion, där valet av antalet arbetstimmar begränsas till fem olika arbetstimmarsklasser. Modellen tar hänsyn till icke-linjära skatter och icke-konvexa budgetkurvor. I nyttomaximeringen tas även hänsyn till valet av socialbidrag. För att se effekten på ungdomarnas arbetstimmar används mikrosimuleringsmodellen FASIT som innehåller databaser över inkomster, skatte- och transfereringssystem. Finans- och Socialdepartementen använder modellen för att se reformers eventuella effekter på specifika grupper i samhället. Skattereformen innebär en höjning av grundavdraget och bidragsreformen en sänkning av socialbidraget. Syftet med reformerna är att öka inkomstdifferensen mellan att inte arbeta och att arbeta och därmed öka incitamenten till att vilja arbeta för ungdomar. För att kunna motivera en sådan reform, ska den inte försämra statens finanser, utan helst vara självfinansierad. Resultaten visar att en skatte- och bidragsreform av detta slag inte ökar ungdomarnas arbetstimmar signifikant. Däremot kommer användandet av socialbidrag minska med över 90 %, även om inte många ungdomar levde på socialbidrag innan reformen. För staten innebär en sådan här reform att både skatteinkomsterna minskar, p.g.a. grundavdragshöjningen och bidragsutgifterna minskar, till följd av mindre socialbidragsutbetalningar. Däremot, kommer inkomsterna att minska mer än utgifterna, så det blir svårt att berättiga reformen. / With the purpose of examining how a tax- and social assistance reform would affect the labor supply for Swedish youth, a Discrete Choice utility function is utilized, where the choice of working hours is restricted to five different sets of working hours. This model takes nonlinear taxes and nonconvex budget constraints into consideration and in the utility maximization the youth has to keep the choice of accepting the social assistance in mind. The effect on youth working hours is simulated in a micro simulation model, FASIT, which contains databases on Swedish incomes, taxes- and subsidies systems and is mostly used by the Swedish Ministry of Finance in order to investigate policy reforms’ affect on different groups in society. The tax reform implies an increase of the basic deduction and the subsidy reform implies a decrease of the amount of social assistance. The purpose of the reforms is to increase the income gap between not working and working and thereby increase the incentives of being willing to work. To be able to justify a reform like this, it must not be too expensive for the government, but preferably it should be self-financed. The results show that the reforms will not increase the working hours of the youth significantly. But at the same time the reform decreases the need of social assistance with over 90 %, although not a large part of the youth supported themselves through social assistance before the reform. For the government the reform will result in a decrease in tax revenues and a decrease in the subsidy cost. The problem is that the revenues will decrease much more than the costs; therefore the reform is difficult to justify.

<p>I syftet att undersöka hur en skatte- och bidragsreform kan tänkas påverka utbudet av arbetskraft för ungdomar, modelleras en Discrete Choice nyttofunktion, där valet av antalet arbetstimmar begränsas till fem olika arbetstimmarsklasser. Modellen tar hänsyn till icke-linjära skatter och icke-konvexa budgetkurvor. I nyttomaximeringen tas även hänsyn till valet av socialbidrag. För att se effekten på ungdomarnas arbetstimmar används mikrosimuleringsmodellen FASIT som innehåller databaser över inkomster, skatte- och transfereringssystem. Finans- och Socialdepartementen använder modellen för att se reformers eventuella effekter på specifika grupper i samhället.</p><p>Skattereformen innebär en höjning av grundavdraget och bidragsreformen en sänkning av socialbidraget. Syftet med reformerna är att öka inkomstdifferensen mellan att inte arbeta och att arbeta och därmed öka incitamenten till att vilja arbeta för ungdomar. För att kunna motivera en sådan reform, ska den inte försämra statens finanser, utan helst vara självfinansierad.</p><p>Resultaten visar att en skatte- och bidragsreform av detta slag inte ökar ungdomarnas arbetstimmar signifikant. Däremot kommer användandet av socialbidrag minska med över 90 %, även om inte många ungdomar levde på socialbidrag innan reformen. För staten innebär en sådan här reform att både skatteinkomsterna minskar, p.g.a. grundavdragshöjningen och bidragsutgifterna minskar, till följd av mindre socialbidragsutbetalningar. Däremot, kommer inkomsterna att minska mer än utgifterna, så det blir svårt att berättiga reformen.</p> / <p>With the purpose of examining how a tax- and social assistance reform would affect the labor supply for Swedish youth, a Discrete Choice utility function is utilized, where the choice of working hours is restricted to five different sets of working hours. This model takes nonlinear taxes and nonconvex budget constraints into consideration and in the utility maximization the youth has to keep the choice of accepting the social assistance in mind. The effect on youth working hours is simulated in a micro simulation model, FASIT, which contains databases on Swedish incomes, taxes- and subsidies systems and is mostly used by the Swedish Ministry of Finance in order to investigate policy reforms’ affect on different groups in society.</p><p>The tax reform implies an increase of the basic deduction and the subsidy reform implies a decrease of the amount of social assistance. The purpose of the reforms is to increase the income gap between not working and working and thereby increase the incentives of being willing to work. To be able to justify a reform like this, it must not be too expensive for the government, but preferably it should be self-financed.</p><p>The results show that the reforms will not increase the working hours of the youth significantly. But at the same time the reform decreases the need of social assistance with over 90 %, although not a large part of the youth supported themselves through social assistance before the reform. For the government the reform will result in a decrease in tax revenues and a decrease in the subsidy cost. The problem is that the revenues will decrease much more than the costs; therefore the reform is difficult to justify.</p>

Almost everything that we do involves a choice. In recent years there has been a growing interest in the development and application of quantitative statistical methods to study choices made by individuals with the purpose of gaining a better understanding of how choices are made and also to predict future choice responses. In many fields, the choices made by individuals will determine the effectiveness of policy. Understanding what drives people's choices and how these choices may change is critical for developing successful policy. Discrete choice modeling provides an analytical framework with which to analyze and predict how people's choices are influenced by their personal characteristics and by the different attributes of the alternatives available to them. In an ideal situation we would build discrete choice models using information from choices that people are observed to make, i.e., revealed preference (RP) information. From these data we can quantify the influence of particular variables in the real choice context; for example, how important is price in the decision to travel by train? There are, however, potential problems with these data. There might not be enough variation of the explanatory attributes; for example little price variation across alternatives. Furthermore, several attributes might be highly correlated e.g. price and quality. But the most important of all is the fact that it is not possible to observe choices for alternatives that do not yet exist; for example new programs and technologies. In cases where the data limits the information provided by real choices it may be appropriate to collect stated preference (SP) data, which is information on preferences provided from hypothetical choice situations. This dissertation provides several applications of discrete choice modeling using both raveled preferences and stated preference. Unlike the last two chapters which deal with the revealed preference, the first Chapter, uses stated preference data. This Chapter evaluates the impact of several attributes of monetary incentives on the decision of patients to participate in a new weight loss program. Since this program does not exist yet, revealed preference data were not available and stated preference data were collected. The attributes of interest in this study include magnitude, timing and form of payment. The goal is to see what level and what combination of these attributes provides greater impact on the reach of the program. We also account for preference heterogeneity by using a random parameter framework. Chapter 2 discusses another application of discrete choice models in event history models (also called survival analysis). In these type of models, the main goal is to use the history of happening an event to learn more about the effect of different factors on the probability of occurrence. The event of interest in our case is the birth. We use the birth history of rural women and try to model their decision to give birth over time. The ultimate goal is to evaluate the effect of health clinics and family planning program on this decision. The final Chapter considers the application of discrete choice modeling in an electoral framework. The 2005 presidential election in Iran is used to model the decisions of Iranian voters. Using this revealed preference data we try to learn more about the main factors evolved in both participation and in the candidate selection. / Ph. D.

Societies will always fail to live up to the expectations of citizens one way or another, independent of their economic and political standards. Albert Hirschman proposed that citizens then have the option of expressing their voice for social change. This paper sets up a rational choice model of voice to empirically test whether higher levels of political and economic grievance make it more likely for citizens of a country to have a collective voice. The main result from the probit regression is that an increase in the level of democracy has a negative effect on the probability of voice, all else being equal.

This research takes the Executive Master of Business Administrator¡]EMBA¡^, a kind of higher education, as an example to discuss the consumer¡¦s choice models in the professional service. The main purpose of the research is to realize whether consumer¡¦s decision environment, involvement and knowledge of EMBA service as well as their personal difference will have connection with their choice models. About the research method, subjects were EMBA graduate students who ever had chosen experience. The sample came from north and south Taiwan where got more choices of EMBA school and received 192 valid questionnaires. For statistic analysis, the sample was separated into two groups by the number of decision environment¡¦s alternative and attribute quantity, and distinguished by both involvement and knowledge into low, median and high groups. The factor analysis, reliability analysis, chi-square test, discriminant analysis and one-way ANOVA are used as statistical analysis methods. The results are presented below: 1. When consumers choose EMBA, the number of alternatives has the connection with choice models. But there is no obvious connection between the number of attributes and the choice models. 2. When the degree of consumer involvement is different, the connection between alternative numbers and choice models will be different. 3. When the degree of consumer knowledge is different, the connection between alternative numbers and choice models will be different. 4. The difference of consumer personal factors only exist the connection with the consumer involvement of EMBA, but has no obvious connection with choice models and the knowledge of EMBA. Comparing to the other related researches, most of them are based on such as EKB model, analyzing all consumer decision or purchase processes. But those researches didn¡¦t investigate deep enough about consumer purchasing behavior¡¦s final secret process of professional services. Thus, this is an exploratory research, trying to describe the consumer decision situation of internal EMBA. And that is this research¡¦s contribution and value.

Based on the Information Integration Theory, the current study investigates whether students¡¦ integration model of ticket fare and total travelling time difference will change when facing different safety conditions after they join the trials held by the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Company (KRTC). The result indicates that the students¡¦ integration model of ticket fare and total travelling time difference is the ¬Û¥[ model. By using a different model of discussion, the result of my questionnaire shows that the linear transportation behavior found by traditional Mode Choice Model can be maintained. The result of data analysis suggests that KRTC has to adopt different strategies to enhance students¡¦ willingfulness to change their vehicles for transportation. It is shown that students add the scale values of ticket fare and total travelling time difference to motivate them to change their vehicles for transportation. Therefore, if we want to enhance the willingness to change their transporting vehicles, it is more effective to provide a solution with a higher scale value. In this study, students' scale value of total travelling time difference was higher than ticket price. Hence, if KRTC wants to enhance their willingfulness to change transporting vehicles, it is a more effective strategy to devise a way to decrease total travelling time.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(農学) / 甲第19031号 / 農博第2109号 / 新制||農||1031(附属図書館) / 学位論文||H27||N4913(農学部図書室) / 31982 / 京都大学大学院農学研究科生物資源経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 栗山 浩一, 教授 福井 清一, 准教授 秋津 元輝 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Agricultural Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

Farmland preservation has long been viewed by the public as a worthwhile endeavor. A public program can be set up to bring willing buyers and sellers together to facilitate the transfer of development rights. The farmer is paid for the opportunity cost of forfeiting the development rights to the land, while the general public is taxed the amount of their total benefit created by the existence of farmland. Through the data from an attribute-based choice survey (conducted in four geographic areas) the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of the public to preserve farmland that exhibited certain attributes, was estimated. The attributes included different use (grain, hay, vegetable, pasture, forest), location (near urban), quality (prime), size (varied acreage relative to geographic area sampled), and cost (varied costs from $3 to $50) components. Selection bias was tested for in order to confirm that the respondents are an unbiased representation of the geographic areas sampled. If selection bias was present, it would need to be corrected for in order to aggregate the survey results to the population of the geographic areas. Selection bias was tested for using a bivariate probit model with sample selection, a variation on the Heckman correction model. Selection bias was not significant, so the choice model was estimated using a probit model. The response was dependent on the use, location, quality, size, and cost components. Based on the parameter estimates, the geographic areas were compared using the scale parameter. A variation of the Swait and Louviere method was used to find the optimal scale parameter ratios between pair-wise geographic areas. Heterogeneity of the parameter estimates as well as heterogeneity of variances was tested. Prime farmland was significant and positive in all geographic areas, suggesting it should be included in the national ranking criteria for a farmland preservation program. WTP by household for each attribute was reported. Additionally, the WTP was aggregated to provide a hypothetical range of the monetary benefit farmland provides for the residents of each geographic area. / Master of Science

Title: It’s easy to quit - I’ve done it hundreds of times: A literary study of the correlation between free will and substance abuse The purpose of this bachelor's thesis was to examine, through an integrative literary study, how selected previous research on the two theories, The Brain Disease Model of Addiction and The Choice Model of Addiction, describe the significance of free will in the development of and recovery from substance use disorder. The findings indicate that free will is significant in all stages of substance abuse. The study suggests that the discourse surrounding voluntariness and addiction ought to become more nuanced. The study notes that clients are easily influenced by treatment providers and thus conversations concerning disease versus free will should be approached cautiously by the treatment provider. The study suggests that social workers could benefit from critically examining their own stance regarding free will and addiction, including moral responsibility. Future research should continue developing screening methods to measure motivation levels in clients and to find the best treatment for each individual. / Syftet med denna kandidatuppsats var att genom en integrativ litteraturstudie undersöka hur utvald tidigare forskning om de två teorierna The Brain Disease Model of Addiction och The Choice Model of Addiction beskriver betydelsen av fri vilja när det gäller utvecklingen av och tillfrisknandet från ett substansberoende. Huvudresultatet visar att fri vilja är av betydelse i alla stadier av ett substansberoende. Studien tyder på att diskursen kring frivillighet och beroende torde blir mer nyanserad och att beroendeforskningen torde se beroende på ett spektrum. Studien konstaterar också att klienter är lättinfluerade av behandlare och därför bör samtal om sjukdom kontra fri vilja hanteras försiktigt av behandlaren i klientmöten. Socialarbetare som arbetar med beroende bör kritiskt granska sin egen ståndpunkt gällande beroendets frivillighet, inklusive moraliskt ansvar. Förslagsvis bör framtida forskning fortsätta att utveckla screeningmetoder för att bättre kartlägga motivationsnivån hos klienter och för att hitta den bästa behandlingsplanen för varje individ.