Thesis (Ph.D. (International Commerce))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 211 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 202-209).

This record of study is an examination of the personal costs negotiated by three African American women central office educational leaders. The focus is to identify the personal costs that these women experience as they work as leaders in three different urban educational settings. The purpose of this study is to give voice to these women and to promote the utilization of their knowledge and skills by identifying the costs, consequences of the costs and the ways these women cope, as well as to provide research for the small number of African American female central office leaders. This qualitative study included some of my experiences related to personal costs as well, since I share race and gender characteristics with the women participants and was an integral part of this research study. In addition I used feminist and Black feminist epistemology to guide my work. To access the data, I interviewed each woman twice in a location of her choice. The interviews were audio-taped and then transcribed. The transcriptions were read and re-read and the data unitized. The data were coded by the action or type of experience. Data were compiled into categories and then within each category subcategories were noted. The categories were derived from a combination of codes emerging from the data as well as core themes of Black feminist epistemology. The women in my study were well educated; two of them had doctoral degrees. They noted cost associated with their work as professionals as well as costs associated with their families and home life. Some identified costs were reduced time with families, health issues, few mentors, the scrutiny and burden of being the only African American female on their level in their organizations and salary inequities. To manage the costs the women utilized hired assistance, utilized the support of family and friends, were prayerful and maintained a commitment which centered on the vocation of children‟s education. Recommendations for solutions include a collective sponsorship to address the costs. In addition, it is in the best interest of everyone in schools to have more women like these leaders.

The objectives of this study include: (1) to examine how exercisers understand the concept of a healthy person, and how satisfied they are with their health; (2) to examine goals and reasons to exercise and the perceived importance of health to reach the goals; (3) to examine strategies both to avoid injuries, overtraining, or burnout and to strengthen health among exercisers and if exercisers put their health under risk in order to achieve their goals; (4) to examine how exercisers perceive “benefits” and “costs” of exercise participation in relation to satisfaction with health and exercise. The sample consists of 12 regular exercisers (7 men & 5 women; age: M = 25.4  5.9). A semi-structured interview guide was created for this study, and based on earlier research and the working model. The qualitative data were analysed by means of both deductive and inductive analyses and 12 category profiles have been developed. Overall exercisers showed a positive perception/attitude and perception to exercise participation and most of them pointed out their satisfaction with their health. Exercisers presented much more data related to benefits of their exercise participation than to costs. Exercisers reported that health is important for them and the majority of the exercisers never put their health at risk. The results are discussed from the point of view of the Perceived health and sport/exercise participation model. Keywords: Benefits, Costs, Exercise, Perceived health, and Satisfaction.

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Forecasting, cost management and pricing policies are topics which have beenwidely investigated over time. Due to a lack of scientific research about therelationships between each of those subjects, these methods have beeninvestigated in combination with their outcomes. The purpose of this work was todevelop a framework which can be used by managers who want to make adecision in either of the subjects mentioned before. By the use of a qualitative, interpretive research design, a literature review was performed which led to some interesting findings. Generally, it can be said that the methods are not related directly, although the outcomes are linked and can often be used as a criterion for the decision making process for the other methods.

<p>Every consumer decision incurs a cost. An hour spent researching products is an hour not spent working. Vacation days used in the winter are vacation days not used in the summer. A dollar spent on a car payment is a dollar not spent dining out. What determines the extent to which consumers consider such opportunity costs when making decisions?</p><p>Although every purchase requires an outlay cost (i.e., spending dollars in order to obtain a good), outlay costs only have economic significance because some other good or service must be given up as a result. Consumers have unlimited wants but limited resources, so satisfying one want means not satisfying another (the opportunity cost). An opportunity cost is "the evaluation placed on the most highly valued of the rejected alternatives or opportunities" (Buchanan 2008) or "the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen" (Oxford English Dictionary 2010). Opportunity costs are foundational to the science of economics and, normatively, consumers should account for opportunity costs in every decision they make. I define opportunity cost consideration as "considering alternative uses for one's resources when deciding whether to spend resources on a focal option."</p><p>Because consumers face opportunity costs, every purchase decision is effectively a choice among alternative resource uses, not just a decision of whether or not to make a particular purchase. When consumers consider their opportunity costs, alternative resource uses specify the broadest form of competition that products face: each resource use competes for share-of-wallet with all other potential resource uses. Understanding when consumers consider a purchase decision as an allocation across multiple options, and what those considered options are, allows researchers and practitioners to better understand why consumers make the purchases that they do, why they restrain from making the purchases that they do not, and how to influence purchases of focal options by increasing or decreasing consideration of alternative resource uses.</p><p>What determines when consumers consider opportunity costs? In Essay 1, I propose that consumers consider opportunity costs when they perceive immediate resource constraints. In Essay 2, I propose that consumers consider opportunity costs when the resource in use increases the accessibility of alternative resource uses in memory.</p><p>Beyond addressing when consumers consider opportunity costs, I address three additional questions. First, who is more likely to consider opportunity costs? Individuals with a high propensity to plan are likely to consider opportunity costs even when they are not immediately constrained. Second, which opportunity costs are consumers more likely to consider? Consumers are more likely to consider opportunity costs that are more typical of the category of possible resource uses than opportunity costs that are less typical of the category of possible resource uses. Third, what are the consequences of opportunity cost consideration? Individuals who consider their opportunity costs are more sensitive to their value than those who do not consider them. In addition to aiding our understanding of the consumer decision process, understanding opportunity cost consideration has important implications for consumers' sensitivities to the structure of the decision environment, understanding the nature of competition and cross-price elasticities, memory for foregone options, and construction of preferences.</p> / Dissertation

Automated products, especially automated decision aids, have the potential to improve the lives of older adults by supporting their daily needs. Although automation seems promising in this arena, there is evidence that humans, in general, tend to have difficulty optimizing their behavior with a decision aid, and older adults even more so. In a human-automation collaborative system, the ability to balance costs involved in relying on the automation and those involved in verifying the automation is essential for optimal performance and error minimization. Thus, this study was conducted to better understand the processes associated with balancing these costs and also to examine age differences in these processes. Cost of reliance on automation was evaluated using an object counting task. Participants were required to indicate the number of circles on a display, with support coming from a computer estimate decision aid. They were instructed to rely on the aid if they believed its answer or verify the aid by manually counting the circles on the screen if they did not believe the aid to be correct. Manipulations in this task were the cost of a wrong answer, either -5, -10, -25, or -50 points and the cost of verification, either high or low. It was expected that participants would develop a general pattern of appropriate reliance across the cost conditions, but would not change their reliance behavior enough to reach optimality. Older adults were expected to rely on the decision aid to a lesser extent than younger adults in all conditions, yet rate the automation as being more reliable. It was found that older and younger adults did not show large differences in reliance, although older adults tend to be more resistant to changing their reliance due to costs than younger adults. Both age groups significantly underutilized the computer estimate, yet overestimated its reliability. The results are important because it may be necessary to design automated devices and training programs differently for older adults than for younger adults, to direct them towards an optimal strategy of reliance.

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In this dissertation I study theories on auctions with participation costs with various information structure. Chapter II studies equilibria of second price auctions with differentiated participation costs. We consider equilibria in independent private values environments where bidders? entry costs are common knowledge while valuations are private information. We identify two types of equilibria: monotonic equilibria in which a higher participation cost results in a higher cutoff point for submitting a bid, and neg-monotonic equilibria in which a higher participation cost results in a lower cutoff point. We show that there always exists a monotonic equilibrium, and further, that the equilibrium is unique for concave distribution functions and strictly convex distribution functions with some additional conditions. There exists a neg-monotonic equilibrium when the distribution function is strictly convex and the difference of the participation costs is sufficiently small. We also provide comparative static analysis and study the limit status of equilibria when the difference in bidders' participation costs approaches zero. Chapter III studies equilibria of second price auctions when values and participation costs are both privation information and are drawn from general distribution functions. We consider the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium. It is shown that there always exists an equilibrium for this general economy, and further there exists a unique symmetric equilibrium when all bidders are ex ante homogenous. Moreover, we identify a sufficient condition under which we have a unique equilibrium in a heterogeneous economy with two bidders. Our general framework covers many relevant models in the literature as special cases. Chapter IV characterizes equilibria of first price auctions with participation costs in the independent private values environment. We focus on the cutoff strategies in which each bidder participates and submits a bid if his value is greater than or equal to a critical value. It is shown that, when bidders are homogenous, there always exists a unique symmetric equilibrium, and further, there is no other equilibrium when valuation distribution functions are concave. However, when distribution functions are elastic at the symmetric equilibrium, there exists an asymmetric equilibrium. We find similar results when bidders are heterogenous.