Recent research on judgment and decision making emphasizes decision architecture, the task and contextual features of a decision setting that influence how preferences are constructed (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). In a series of three papers, this dissertation considers architectural features related to the intertemporal structure of the decision setting that influence cognition, motivation, and emotion, and include modifications of (i) informational, (ii) experiential, (iii) procedural, and (iv) emotional environments. This research also identifies obstacles to decision making, whether that obstacle is an individual difference (e.g., age-related change in emotional processing) or a temporary state (e.g., a change in motivational focus, or sensitivity to irrelevant features of the decision setting). Papers 1 and 2 focus on decision architecture related to environmentally-relevant decisions, investigating how structural features of the decision task can trigger different choice processes and behavior. Paper 1 explores a potential mechanism behind constructed preferences relating to climate change belief and explores why these preferences are sensitive to normatively irrelevant features of the judgment context, such as transient outdoor temperature. Paper 2 examines new ways of emphasizing time and uncertainty with the aim of turning psychological obstacles into opportunities, accomplished by making legacy motives more salient to shift preferences from present-future and self-other trade-offs at the point of decision making. Paper 3 examines how the temporal horizon of a decision setting influences predicted future preferences within the domain of affective forecasting. In addition, Paper 3 explores how individual and situational differences might affect the match (or mismatch) between predicted and experienced outcomes by examining differences in forecasting biases among older versus younger adults. Taken together, these three papers aim to encourage individuals to make decisions that are not overshadowed by short-term goals or other constraints, with the aim of producing actionable modifications for policy-makers in the presentation of information relevant to such decisions.

This dissertation contains three essays in Economic Theory. The first chapter relates to information economics and mechanism design: it studies the inefficiencies that arise from delegating information acquisition to an uninterested agent. The second and third chapter are essays in decision theory and explore the behavioral implications of certain types of incomplete preferences. In the first chapter, a principal hires an agent to acquire costly information that will influence the decision of a third party. While the realized piece of information is observable and contractible, the experimental process is not. Assuming a general family of information cost functions (inclusive of Shannon’s mutual information), we show that the first best is achievable when the agent has limited liability or when he is risk averse, in contrast to standard moral hazard models. However, when the agent is risk averse and has limited liability, efficiency losses arise generically. Specifically, we show that the principal obtains his first best outcome if and only if she intends to implement a ”symmetric” experiment, i.e. one in which the cost of generating each piece of evidence is the same. On the other hand, ”asymmetric” experiments that are relatively uninformative with high probability but occasionally produce conclusive evidence will bear large agency costs. In the second chapter, we define an elimination rule as a binary relation that is reflexive and has no strict cycle. We study the behaviors of decision makers that can be represented by certain types of menu dependent elimination rules: upward refinements, in which the elimination rule becomes more complete as the choice set grows and are consistent with the decision maker extracting increasingly more information from bigger sets; and downward refinements, in which the elimination rule shrinks as the choice set grows, and that are consistent with choice overload phenomena. Finally, we study the behavior of a decision maker with incomplete preference who uses a heuristic rule to select an arbitrary subsets of undominated elements in each choice set. We show how to use this framework to identify all choice data consistent with a certain behavioral bias, by illustrating it with both the compromise effect and the attraction effect. In the third chapter, we introduce the notion of revealed betweenness for partial orders of dimension two, i.e. that are the intersection of two linear orders: how to identify solely from binary comparisons which of three mutually incomparable alternatives is ranked as the middle one for both linear orders. We use it to provide a new set of sufficient conditions for a partial order to be of order dimension two or less, by applying a characterization of a particular class of ternary relations: betweenness relations. We finally address the issue of identifiability of this pair of criteria.

What role does ethical theory play in everyday deliberation? On the ideal view, agents are taken to have an overriding commitment to a theory that dictates the obligatory, permissible, and forbidden actions in every conceivable situation. I argue that the ideal view imposes undesirable psychological burdens, whereas a non-ideal view—on which agents act according to the norms of their local practices and appeal to theory only when those norms prove insufficient to resolve particular problems—does not. Inspired by J. S. Mill, I develop one non-ideal theory for practices of regret, toleration, punishment, and partiality.

Across three essays, I explore how modern statistical machine learning approaches can be used to glean novel marketing insights from data and to facilitate data-driven decision support in new domains. In particular, I draw on Bayesian nonparametrics, deep generative modeling, and modern Bayesian computational techniques to develop new methodologies that enhance standard marketing models, address modern challenges in data-driven marketing, and, as I show through applications to real world data, glean new, managerially relevant insights. Substantively, my work addresses issues in customer base analysis, the estimation of consumer preferences, and brand identity and logo design. In my first essay, I address how multi-product firms can understand and predict customer purchasing dynamics in the presence of partial information, by developing a Bayesian nonparametric model for customer purchasing activity. This framework yields an interpretable, model-based dashboard, which can be used to predict future activity, and guide managerial decision making. In my second essay, I explore the flexible modeling of customer brand choice dynamics using a novel form of heterogeneity, which I term dynamic heterogeneity. Specifically, I develop a novel doubly hierarchical Gaussian process framework to flexibly model how the preferences of individual customers evolve relative to one another over time, and illustrate the utility of the framework with an application to purchasing during the Great Recession. Finally, in my third essay, I explore how data and models can inform firms' aesthetic choices, in particular the design of their logos. To that end, I develop image processing algorithms and a deep generative model of brand identity that links visual data with textual descriptions of firms and brand personality perceptions, which can be used for understanding design standards, ideation, and ultimately, data-driven design.

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杜屏. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2005. / 參考文獻 (p. 165-189). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in English. / Du Ping. / Lun wen (Zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2005. / Can kao wen xian (p. 165-189).

Decision making is the essence of an administrator's job. While planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting are the basic traditional "functions" of management, each of these clearly involves decisions---decisions as to which plan to implement, what goals to pursue, and how best to achieve the desirable ends. / Empirical findings support the hypothesized relationship between perceived external environments by individual school administrators and the types of decision-making models they adopted in schools. In particular, the level of perceived constraint from the external environments' 'linguistic orientation' and 'resource policy' greatly influences the types of decision-making models chosen by individual administrators in schools. Furthermore, the pattern of adopting decision models in a perceived less-constrained environment (i.e., demography and resource policy) correlates with the pattern in a perceived highly constrained environment (i.e., social values, funding, and linguistic orientation), except for the environment of 'control'. This suggests that the decision-making experience gained from a less-constrained environment can serve as a reference frame for the highly constrained environment. Supplementary interview data support the validity of the self-reported decision-making questionnaire. / Given the fact that little is known about how issues arising from external constraint affect the administrative decision-making process, this study focuses specifically on their intricate relationships to broaden our understanding on the ever-expanding arena of administrative decision making in a turbulently growing working environment. / In the past, schools were instrumental in maintaining the existing social order, and as such, they were kept in status quo. However, the globalized reform movement has vastly reshaped schools' external environment, compelling the whole education system to undergo radical change as well. In this context, school administrators have to be more proactive to the changing environment to ensure the viability of their schools. / This research investigates the relationship between the perceived external environment by individual school administrators and the decision-making models they adopted in schools. This study adopts the construct of Lam (1985) which delineates the perceived external environment into four domains: political, economic, social, and cultural domains. Factor analysis on local data yielded six external variables, namely, demography, funding, linguistic orientation, social values, control, and resource policy, and these were perceived to exert varying degrees of constraint in the operation of schools. Issues arising from these external variables were identified. The conceptual rationale and procedures of resolving the issues constitute the basis of pinpointing the decision-making models that school administrators adopt. / Law Chan Fai. / "November 2005." / Adviser: Nicholas Sun Keung Pang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4053. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 200-217). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Chiu, Man Kin. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-88). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iv / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.11 / Chapter 3 --- The Model --- p.28 / Chapter 3.1 --- The Preliminaries --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2 --- The problem setting --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3 --- The optimal selling strategy and structural properties --- p.39 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- The optimal selling strategy --- p.39 / Chapter 3.4 --- The optimal investment decision-Making regarding capacity and investment time --- p.44 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- The optimal decision on the construction capacity --- p.45 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- The optimal decision on the starting time of the investment --- p.48 / Chapter 4 --- Numerical analysis --- p.55 / Chapter 4.1 --- The setting of the numerical example --- p.56 / Chapter 4.2 --- The numerical results --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- The optimal capacity --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- The optimal starting time of the construction --- p.69 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- The effect of the capacity constraint --- p.73 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- The effect of the time constraint --- p.78 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.80 / Bibliography --- p.83

Context is an important driver in decision-making processes and problem-solving. It provides opportunities and constraints that must be considered when decisions are made. However, context is also difficult to define due to limits to knowledge and understanding of previous, current and future conditions. Context is dynamic, emergent, subjective and specific to individuals or groups at a particular place and time. However, context is often relegated to static representations of environmental properties with little consideration for the relationships between an actor (or actors), their task and the environments in which they are situated. This research introduces a new perspective for context in spatial decision-making in Geographical Information Science (GIScience). In addition, this research contributes to GIScience by 1) introducing a theoretical definition of context, 2) the development of methods to bound context into relevant and non-relevent categories, 3) introducing graph-based context models to capture and store relevant context, and 4) demonstrating how context models can be used in spatial decision-support systems.

Managers are increasingly faced with making complex decisions in turbulent organisational environments. This has led to greater information processing demands. Increasingly organisations try to deal with this in such a way that many of these decisions are now made in a group environment. The increase in group decision making has generated a corresponding intensification in the interest in options available to support such decision making. One such approach is a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) referred to as Decision Conferencing. However, Decision Conferencing rests on the unsupported key premise that the computer modeling, which forms an intrinsic part of the process, leads to shared understanding and commitment - the stated goals of the process. The application of Decision Conferencing to important organizational issues continues, yet prior to this study its fundamental premise was both empirically unsupported and potentially under-theorised. This theory-building research demonstrates that the interface between these concepts is more complex than the literature suggests and that the concepts themselves are problematic. Shared understanding is essentially a dependent variable, with factors such as comprehension of the modeling process impacting on the degree to which this is developed. In addition, many aspects of commitment fall outside of the domain of the Decision Conference workshop e.g. the individual’s sense of responsibility and degree of commitment to their profession. The idea of commitment appears to fall more into the arena of managerial responsibility and change management and it is partly how the outcomes are managed after the Decision Conference which will be crucial to their implementation. / Within this study it appears that the most a Decision Conference can offer is the ‘buy-in’ or constructive involvement of the individual participant; the assurance of an unassailable case to which all participants have contributed, for the adoption of the outcomes; and the confidence in the outcomes that this brings. All of this suggests that a higher order goal which subsumes these factors should be considered when re-conceptualising the Decision Conferencing experience. It is suggested here that Decision Quality is a more appropriate goal for the Decision Conferencing process. In essence this is an expansion of the existing ‘best bet’ concept already endorsed in the Decision Conferencing literature. The thesis presents a number of conditions for assuring decision quality e.g. a democratic environment for decision making; mutual respect and an encouragement of diversity. It is also argued that it falls to the facilitator to encompass all of these factors. Given the above, it is also suggested that it is appropriate to consider an alternative conceptualization of Decision Conferencing which facilitators of public sector groups might adopt. This revised conceptualization is drawn from complexity theory. Incorporating the findings from this study a more strongly theorised facilitation approach, entitled Quality Facilitation Practice (QFP) has been developed. Taking into account all of the above a revised model for Decision Conferencing in the public sector is presented, incorporating both QFP and the higher order goal of Decision Quality.