Earning a college degree has been shown to have a number of positive socioeconomic impacts on individuals and society as a whole. Although researchers acknowledge that the decision to attend college is a complex process involving multiple factors, studies have focused primarily on individual reasons as part of a linear college choice paradigm. Individual obstacles to college attendance that consistently emerge in this strand of research include academic preparation, socioeconomic status, cost, family background, parental influence, motivation, and guidance counselor support (Harris & Halpin, 2002). College attendance rates are particularly low among students living in rural areas. Nationwide, only 59 percent of students from rural America choose to attend college, compared to 62 percent of their urban counterparts and 67 percent of students from suburban areas. (National Student Clearinghouse, 2015). The purpose of this study was to examine the college decision-making process of high school students in rural Vermont to better understand why fewer than 61 percent choose to attend college, despite more than 90 percent aspiring to do so at some point during their K-12 academic career (VSAC, 2016). A qualitative ethnographic case study approach was used to provide a unique student-focused perspective on the complexities of the college-decision making process as they go through it during their senior year of high school. A series of in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 students at two rural high schools throughout their senior year as they wrestled with an influx of information from multiple sources creating a series of pushes and pulls from guidance counselors, family members and friends with varying motives. Individual case study analyses were conducted on the following three groups of students based on their level of commitment to attend college at the start of their senior year: College Confident, College Considering and College Conflicted. A cross-case analysis of those three groups was also conducted. The result is a detailed account of how students in each group internalized and acted upon new information about their post-secondary plans, which depended heavily on when they received it, who they received it from and its quality. In most cases, the experience proved to be a frustrating, convoluted process that waxed and waned with each new piece of information. Ultimately, students made final college-going decisions based heavily on a combination of information that was not always accurate, sometimes misleading, and on the advice of at least one parent they perceived as having their best interest in mind.

Despite the growing body of research in related disciplines, including economics, management, politics, psychology, and sociology, marketing research has largely overlooked the downstream consequences of economic inequality, despite its undeniable impact on individuals' consumption decisions and experiences. This dissertation endeavors to bridge this knowledge gap by uncovering two novel consumer consequences of economic inequality. To accomplish this, it draws upon a diverse range of data sources, including individual-level experimental and survey data, as well as aggregate-level transaction and census data. Additionally, it examines economic inequality across multiple levels, encompassing communities, counties, states, and countries, and operationalizes it both as objective and perceived economic inequality. In Essay 1, I investigate how economic inequality in a consumer's region affects their access to peer-to-peer (P2P) services. Across diverse types of P2P services, I find convergent evidence that increased economic inequality in a consumer's region reduces providers' willingness to serve them, ultimately resulting in their diminished access to P2P services. This adverse effect of economic inequality can be attributed to providers perceiving consumers from more unequal regions as less trustworthy. This perception leads them to perceive heightened financial risks associated with serving these consumers. Moreover, this negative impact of economic inequality attenuates when providers perceive greater interpersonal similarity with consumers from unequal regions. In Essay 2, I explore how economic inequality within one's society affects their education decisions through the lens of perceived education premium. Firstly, it encourages people to attend college as it amplifies the perceived education premium of college—the income gap between college graduates and high school graduates. Secondly, it motivates people to choose majors with higher earning potential but lower personal interests, as opposed to those that align more with their genuine interests but pay less. This shift towards prioritizing extrinsic motivations over intrinsic ones is driven by people's perception of a more significant education premium between majors—the income disparity between higher-paying and lower-paying majors. / Doctor of Philosophy / Economic inequality, defined as the unequal distribution of income among various groups in a society, has been on the rise globally in recent decades. Amid the growing economic inequality, researchers have been delving into its profound impacts on individuals across diverse domains, exploring its influences on their mindsets, perspectives on the world, social lives, and overall well-being. It's surprising that there has been relatively little research on how economic inequality affects people's consumption decisions and experiences, given its undeniable influence on them. In this dissertation, I explore the impacts of economic inequality on consumers' access to P2P services and education decision-making. In Essay 1, I investigate how economic inequality in a consumer's region affects their access to peer-to-peer (P2P) services. I examine whether P2P providers are equally willing to serve consumers from regions with varying levels of economic inequality. I reveal a disconcerting reality: providers are less willing to offer P2P services to consumers from more unequal regions, driven by the perception of these consumers as less trustworthy and posing a higher financial risk. These differing attitudes ultimately lead to reduced access to P2P services and region-based discrimination for consumers from regions characterized by higher economic inequality. Fortunately, these adverse outcomes can be mitigated by an increase in perceived interpersonal similarity between providers and consumers. In Essay 2, I investigate how economic inequality in one's society shapes their education decisions. I find that as economic inequality rises, people become more willing to pursue a college education because they perceive a wider income gap between well-educated individuals and those with lower levels of education. Besides college decisions, economic inequality also influences people's choice of major for a similar reason. In a society characterized by greater economic inequality, people gravitate towards majors that promise higher earning potential, even if these fields do not align closely with their personal interests. This preference is driven by their perception of a greater wage difference between higher- and lower-paying majors. These findings provide policy implications for several pressing challenges in higher education.

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The need for knowledge workers is increasing; most jobs of the future will require some post secondary education. Half of the students who enter the open door of the community college are not prepared for college level work and must first enroll in developmental education. Half of those students will not complete remediation. Though institutions of higher education provide developmental education, the effectiveness of developmental education programs - performance in subsequent courses, grade point average, and persistence to graduation - are rarely studied. This case study explored an Achieving the Dream institution's commitment to establishing a "culture of evidence" to guide decision making and facilitate student success in developmental education programs. Research was gathered from interviews, observations, and a review of pertinent documents during the researcher's four-month internship at the institution. This study found a culture of evidence evolving at the institution and the institution's participation in Achieving the Dream contributing to the culture of evidence through its use of data to measure student success and facilitate decision making. Indicators of student success measured at this institution included success rates in developmental courses, fall-to-fall persistence, progression in the developmental course sequence, and graduation rates. The researcher used John P. Kotter's Eight Stage Process of Creating Major Change as a framework to review the institution's progress toward creating institutional change. The researcher identified practices that could bring about institutional change when building a culture of evidence. / text