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Optimism refers to peoples’ general tendency to anticipate good outcomes in areas that are important to them. Numerous studies have shown that optimism is significantly correlated with improved physical and mental health. Optimism can come to an overly optimistic degree, called optimism bias. People generally expect better outcomes and fewer negative events to happen for themselves in the future compared to the average person. There are two sides to this: being optimistically biased might lead to risky behavior, but it might also ease people's worries about the future. To have a consistently negative view is suggested to correlate with depressive symptoms and worsened health. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the neural correlates and functional markers of optimism and optimism bias. Optimism is suggested to correlate with gray-matter volume in the thalamus, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and bilateral putamen. The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) have a crucial role in dismissing undesirable information and self referential processing. Research regarding this issue might be beneficial for further understanding of the connection between optimism and well-being.

Humans are limited in their capacity to process information about the environment; to choose the most salient details to process, we have to make rapid value appraisals and prioritize our attentional resources. In this proposed study, it is expected that attention is required to learn from affective information. Learning is measured by the difference between update (the difference between the first and second estimation) and the estimation error (the difference between the average likelihood and the first estimation). Using a belief-updating paradigm, participants will be asked to estimate their likelihood of encountering a negative event, once before and once after they receive the average likelihood information. By comparing the difference in estimations after being exposed to desirable or undesirable information and a positive or negative reinforcer across three levels of attentional load, the effects of attention on learning from affective reinforcement can be examined. It is proposed that attention mediates learning from affective information. This is demonstrated by the failure to learn differentially from affective information under high attentional load, while in a no load condition participants will learn differentially according to the type of news and affective reinforcer that they receive. The expected result would indicate that attention is a necessity for optimal learning outcomes, especially when learning from affective information. This has implications in the effectiveness of communicating affective information, such as in the health care field.

The aim of the represent research was to investigate the relationship between illusion of control, optimism bias, locus of control, and drivers&rsquo / risk-taking behavior among Turkish drivers. A total of 307 drivers completed the Driver Behavior Questionnaire, the Driver Skills Inventory, the Optimism Bias Scale, the Multidimensional Traffic Locus of Control Scale, and Rotter&rsquo / s Internality Externality Scale. In chapter one, comparison between perceived risk as driver and perceived risk as passenger demonstrated existence of illusion f control among drivers. Drivers&rsquo / risk assignments were different when imagining themselves as drivers and passenger. Illusion of control was found to be related to the total number of accidents, especially involvement in active accidents. This indicates a positive relationship between illusion of control and risk-taking behavior. In the second chapter, optimism bias was found in drivers&rsquo / risk likelihood estimations for accident involvement in the future. Drivers estimated their risk of being involved in four types of accidents as less than an average driver. Optimism bias was related to self-reported violations and strong evaluation of driving and safety skills as strong. Young and novice drivers were more realistic in their risk estimations. In the third chapter, relationship between locus of control and risk-taking was investigated. Only fate scale correlated with violations. Drivers who attribute accident causes to fate were more likely to commit violations. The limitations of the current research and implications for further research were discussed.

Within the construction industry, proximity of actual to scheduled completion time is a primary performance measure, and deviations from planned schedules remain a popular concern in the field of construction management. Prevailing research assumes that delays arise either from flawed execution of the plan or from failure to plan effectively. Thus, solutions suggested include improving execution and developing ever more sophisticated planning techniques. In spite of these efforts, accuracy in scheduling construction projects has shown little or no improvement, and clients continue to incur the significant costs associated with the failure to more accurately plan. Eschewing this traditional techno-rational view, the current research turned to critical management studies for solutions and investigated planning intentionality, the intentional and unintentional roles planners play in project delays. Thus, it sought to explore the following with respect to the project planner role: optimism bias, where a planner unintentionally mitigates negative information in decision-making; strategic misrepresentation, where a planner intentionally mitigates negative information; and group dynamics in time estimation. The latter is relevant because a team rather than an individual typically embodies the planner function within a construction project. To perform this research, two mixed-methods studies, preceded by a pilot study, and seven interviews with project planners were conducted. The first mixed-methods study investigated how intended and unintended actions of participants affected underestimation of time during task performance; and the second investigated the creation of collective intentionality, the transmutation of individual preferences into a group consensus in time estimation. Results of the first mixed-methods study identified the key situational variables differentiating intended and unintended actions of planners and indicated how these can influence the quality of time estimation. Results of the second study showed that group performance in time estimation was inferior to that of individuals and that group member interaction appeared detrimental to good decision-making. Reasons found were sense of power, commitment, confidence level, cultural diversity, conflicts, and groupthink. The findings were compared and contrasted with those obtained from interviews with project planners to enhance the scope of the study.

Ma thèse de doctorat traite de la sélection de projets d'innovation en entreprises, en utilisant les marchés de prédiction comme mécanisme de sélection alternatif. Le processus d'innovation et son évaluation sont des activités ayant des répercussions sur la croissance et le développement. L’évidence montre que les méthodes habituelles d'évaluation et de sélection de projets d’innovation, comme le processus en entonnoir, ne sont pas rentables. Proposer une méthode plus efficace contribuera de manière significative à une meilleure allocation des ressources. Dans la première partie de ma thèse, je teste les prévisions du marché de prédiction contre celles des experts. Dans la deuxième, j'examine les aspects comportementaux de la prise de décision sur le marché de prédiction entrepreneurial, notamment comment le biais d’optimisme influence les décisions des traders. J’ai mené pour ces parties des expériences avec des sujets humains. Dans la troisième partie, j'examine les propriétés et éléments clés des marchés de prédiction et fourni une chronique et une classification d’articles sur les contributions les plus importantes de la littérature dans ce sujet. / My PhD thesis deals with selection of corporate and entrepreneurial innovation projects, using prediction markets as an alternative selection mechanism. Innovation process and its evaluation are two very important economic activities with repercussions for growth and development. Available evidence strongly suggests that conventional evaluation and selection methods, such as development funnel in corporate setting or decisions of Venture Capital firms in entrepreneurial one, do not yield cost-effective results. Coming up with an efficient and cost-effective method would contribute significantly to better resource allocation and social welfare. In the first part of the thesis, I test the prediction market predictions against experts’. In the second part, I examine behavioral aspects of decision-making in entrepreneurial prediction market setting, particularly how optimism bias influences traders’ decisions in prediction market. I conducted experiments with human subjects for the first two parts. In the third part of the thesis, I examine the most important elements and properties of prediction markets and provide a survey of most important contributions to prediction market literature, together with the classification and list of articles in major categories.

Transportation infrastructure improvement projects are typically huge and have significant economic and environmental effects. Forecasts of demand of the facility in the form of traffic level help size the project as well as choose between several alternatives. Inaccuracy in these forecasts can thus have a great impact on the efficiency of the operational design and the benefits accrued from the project against the cost. Despite this understanding, evaluation of traffic forecast inaccuracy has been too few, especially for un-tolled roads in the United States. This study, part of a National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) funded project, bridges this gap in knowledge by analyzing the historical inaccuracy of the traffic forecasts based on a database created as part of the project. The results show a general over-prediction of traffic with actual traffic deviating from forecast by about 17.29% on an average. The study also compares the relative accuracy of forecasts on several categorical variables. Besides enumerating the error in forecasts, this exploration presents the potential factors influencing accuracy. The results from this analysis can help create an uncertainty window around the forecast based on the explanatory variables, which can be an alternate risk analysis technique to sensitivity testing.

Motorised countries have more fatal road crashes in rural areas than in urban areas. In Australia, over two thirds of the population live in urban areas, yet approximately 55 percent of the road fatalities occur in rural areas (ABS, 2006; Tziotis, Mabbot, Edmonston, Sheehan & Dwyer, 2005). Road and environmental factors increase the challenges of rural driving, but do not fully account for the disparity. Rural drivers are less compliant with recommendations regarding the “fatal four” behaviours of speeding, drink driving, seatbelt non-use and fatigue, and the reasons for their lower apparent receptivity for road safety messages are not well understood. Countermeasures targeting driver behaviour that have been effective in reducing road crashes in urban areas have been less successful in rural areas (FORS, 1995). However, potential barriers to receptivity for road safety information among rural road users have not been systematically investigated. This thesis aims to develop a road safety countermeasure that addresses three areas that potentially affect receptivity to rural road safety information. The first is psychological barriers of road users’ attitudes, including risk evaluation, optimism bias, locus of control and readiness to change. A second area is the timing and method of intervention delivery, which includes the production of a brief intervention and the feasibility of delivering it at a “teachable moment”. The third area under investigation is the content of the brief intervention. This study describes the process of developing an intervention that includes content to address road safety attitudes and improve safety behaviours of rural road users regarding the “fatal four”. The research commences with a review of the literature on rural road crashes, brief interventions, intervention design and implementation, and potential psychological barriers to receptivity. This literature provides a rationale for the development of a brief intervention for rural road safety with a focus on driver attitudes and behaviour. The research is then divided into four studies. The primary aim of Study One and Study Two is to investigate the receptivity of rural drivers to road safety interventions, with a view to identifying barriers to the efficacy of these strategies.

Cost Overrun is something that plagues infrastructure projects, both in Sweden and globally. The repercussion of it can be severe since it not only hurts the public’s perception of how the public authorities manage and allocates its resources, but also due to the immense opportunity costs that arise when the increased costs need to be covered. In general, the factors that lead to cost overrun in infrastructure transport projects can often be derived from technical, psychological, political, and economical factors, and it is not uncommon that there is a combination of these factors, which is why the subject of cost overrun is so complex. With a highly unique dataset, this paper examines cost overrun in Swedish infrastructure transport projects to see if there is a statistical relationship between cost overrun and the size of a project, its regional location, and whether it is a road- or railway project. Furthermore, an evaluation of the process of estimating and forecasting costs will be conducted. The results shows that the characteristics of regional locations have a significant relationship with projects experiencing cost overrun and that cost overrun is more common in smaller projects. There were no significant differences in cost overrun between types of projects, but it was found that between the period 2018 to 2022, cost estimates had been underestimated by approximately 34%.

鑒於財政負擔加重以及對政府服務效率之檢討，歐美各國逐步發展出以民間融資創建 (Private Finance Initiative, PFI) 之方式提供公共服務。為判斷由政府自辦或PFI 何者較具效益，英國政府提出公帑節省價值 (Value for Money, VfM) 評估。經考量專案全生命週期之成本，並調整風險與折現後，若公私協力較政府自辦在相同服務水準下所需成本較少，則稱其具備VfM。公私協力主要效益之一在於將部分建造及營運之風險由政府移轉予民間。因此，如何量化可移轉之風險對VfM的評估結果影響甚鉅。英國提出以「樂觀偏誤」 (optimism bias, OB) 量化由政府自辦須承擔的追加預算、延遲完工或利益短少之風險，並委託 Mott MacDonald 研究過去重大公共採購案件，得出樂觀偏誤之參考值，提供評估者合理估算樂觀偏誤的基準。本文研究英國的評估方式及經驗，針對 Mott MacDonald 之研究方法作進一步研討。接著以臺灣機場捷運建設案為例，計算其樂觀偏誤，並嘗試運用 Mott MacDonald 之研究方法加以分析。最後探討 Mott MacDonald 之研究方法在臺灣運用的適切性，且對樂觀偏誤之研究方法提出建議。