published_or_final_version / abstract / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

In this study, we capture the moderating effect of aggressive driving behavior while assessing the influence of a comprehensive set of variables on injury severity. In doing so, we are able to account for the indirect effects of variables on injury severity through their influence on aggressive driving behavior, as well as the direct effect of variables on injury severity. The methodology used in this study to accommodate the moderating effect of aggressive driving behavior takes the form of two models – one for aggressive driving and another for injury severity. These are appropriately linked to obtain the indirect and direct effects of variables. The data for estimation is obtained from the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Study (NMVCCS). From an empirical standpoint, we consider a fine age categorization until 20 years of age when examining age effects on aggressive driving behavior and injury severity. There are several important results from the empirical analysis. Young drivers (especially novice drivers between 16-17 years of age), drivers who are not wearing seat belt, under the influence of alcohol, not having a valid license, and driving a pickup are found to be most likely to behave aggressively. Situational, vehicle, and roadway factors such as young drivers traveling with young passengers, young drivers driving an SUV or a pick-up truck, driving during the morning rush hour, and driving on roads with high speed limits are also found to trigger aggressive driving behavior. In terms of vehicle occupants, the safest situation from a driver injury standpoint is when there are 2 or more passengers in the vehicle, at least one of whom is above the age of 20 years. These and many other results are discussed, along with implications of the result for graduated driving licensing (GDL) programs. / text

This dissertation examines the interplay between gender ideology, women's actions, and automotive technology in the United States from the beginning of the automotive era through the 1920's. Looking at cultural ideology as a strong yet fragmented and malleable historical force, I have analyzed the effect of popular conceptions of masculinity and femininity on the design, marketing, and use of automobiles. At the same time, I have attempted to show how motorcars, often employed as vehicles of social ideals, promoted some reinterpretation of men's and women's proper roles and places. The auto indeed served as a focus for discourse about the contingent relation between social and political emancipation. While some observers expected the automobile to liberate women from domesticity and subordination, others insisted on the congruence between automobility and domestic life. Though some women would use cars as tools of social or political nonconformity, the auto ultimately transformed and extended women's spatial and temporal province, while preserving the home as the ideal hub of women's activities. Still, the car culture revision of gender ideology had profound consequences for the way the private family car would emerge as a primary transportation mode, facilitating new manners and morals, new commercial and political possibilities, and a revolution in urban development.

No description available.

The overall aim was to elucidate the effects of vehicle passengers on young drivers. This generated two specific aims and four papers. The first aim was to investigate the crash risk for young drivers with passengers and to establish whether such accidents involve any special circumstances compared to those that occur without passengers. This goal was achieved by analysing accident and exposure data from two registers. The second objective was to analyse the group processes that develop between four young men in a vehicle and to ascertain how those interactions affect driving behaviour. Those issues were addressed by performing an observational study of twelve young men driving an instrumented vehicle in real traffic with and without passengers. The interactions between the vehicle occupants were video and audio recorded, and the driving behaviour was registered in various ways. The results show that drivers with passengers have a lower crash risk compared to those driving alone regardless of the driver’s age, although this effect is weaker for young drivers (especially males) than for other age groups. Compared to driving alone, driving with passengers for young drivers is more extensively associated with single-vehicle crashes that occur at night, on weekends, and in rural areas on roads with higher speed limits, and it leads to more severe outcomes. It has also been found that the passengers sometimes try to induce the young drivers to act in either safer or more dangerous ways, although the drivers very often resist urging and coaxing from their passengers. Cohesion is another factor that affect the driver-passenger group: a high level of cohesion, especially task cohesion, is associated with a low number of unsafe driving actions. Consequently, it seems that the presence of passengers is not enough to ensure safe driving—substantial group cohesion is also necessary for such behaviour. / Det övergripande syftet med denna avhandling var att studera passagerares effekt på unga förare, vilket genererade två delsyften och fyra delarbeten. Det första delsyftet var att undersöka olycksrisken för unga förare med passagerare och att ta reda på om dessa olyckor skedde under några speciella omständigheter. För att få svar på syftet gjordes en registerstudie där olycks- och exponeringsdata från två olika register analyserades. Det andra delsyftet var att analysera de grupprocesser som utvecklas mellan fyra unga män i en bil och att studera hur dessa interaktioner påverkar körbeteendet. Detta undersöktes med en observationsstudie där tolv unga män fick köra en instrumenterad bil i verklig trafik, både med och utan passagerare. Interaktionerna som uppstod i bilen spelades in med hjälp av videokameror och mikrofoner och körbeteendet registrerades med olika mätinstrument. Resultatet visar att förare med passagerare har en lägre olycksrisk jämfört med förare utan passagerare oavsett förarens ålder. Denna effekt är inte lika stark för unga förare (speciellt inte unga män) som den är för övriga åldersgrupper. Unga förares olyckor med passagerare är också mer vanligt förekommande under speciella omständigheter. Jämfört med olyckor utan passagerare sker de i större utsträckning under nattetid, under veckoslut, i tätbebyggt område, på vägar med hög hastighetsbegränsning, de är oftare singelolyckor och de får mer allvarliga konsekvenser. Vidare visar resultaten att passagerare ibland, på olika sätt, försöker få den unga föraren att köra på ett annat sätt än vad de gör vilket kan betyda ett säkrare eller ett mer trafikfarligt beteende. Det verkar dock som att förarna oftast står emot dessa övertalningsförsök och förolämpningar. En annan faktor som påverkar gruppen är kohesion: en hög grad av kohesion, speciellt uppgiftskohesion, visar sig leda till färre trafikfarliga körbeteenden. Med andra ord verkar det som att blotta närvaron av passagerare inte räcker för att få ett säkert körbeteende; det behövs även en betydande grad av kohesion.

Over 200 railway suicides occur on the British Rail Network (BRN) every year. Research into the physical and psychological effects of this traumatic event on train drivers has been limited, and has focused very little on the mediating influence of personal factors. Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology (PCP, 1955) was used in the current study to explore the relationship between train drivers’ views of themselves and others, and the psychological impact of witnessing a railway suicide. This was achieved through the use of repertory grid technique. Repertory grid measures of tightness of the overall construct system, level of elaboration of the self and others, construed distances between the self and others, conflict, extremity of ratings, and superordinacy were compared with participants’ scores on a measure of the psychological impact of the event (Impact of Event Scale Revised, IES-R, Weiss & Marmar, 1997). The fifteen participants in the study also completed a background information questionnaire. A content analysis of the constructs used in the repertory grids, and a thematic analysis of a follow up interview with two of the participants was also conducted. The findings indicated that most drivers experienced symptoms suggestive of a significant posttraumatic stress (PTS) reaction following the incident. For many this appeared to be short-lived, but for some the incident had longer lasting effects, and a third of the sample had been given an official diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Possibly due to the small sample size, many of the correlations did not achieve statistical significance. However, discrepancy between the self and ideal self, and the number of moral constructs employed by participants, were both positively associated with reported levels of psychological distress. The superordinacy of the traumatised construct, and the number of emotional constructs employed by participants, were both negatively associated with reported levels of psychological distress. These findings therefore gave some support to Sewell and Cromwell’s (1990) PCP model of trauma, and to the importance of emotional processing of traumatic events. The thematic analyses added information about the nature of the changes experienced by train drivers following these events, and the impact of contextual factors. The repertory grid technique proved useful in measuring the influence of personal meaning making on the impact of traumatic events. The findings suggest that drivers can best be supported clinically by reducing the discrepancy between their self after the event and their ideal self, increasing their ability to emotionally process their experience, and by giving consideration to issues such as anger and blame. Limitations of the research are presented, as well as suggestions for further research.

Mergers and acquisitions play an important role in international financial markets, which explains why this research area attracts of lot of attention from academics, bankers, and investors. Generally, in takeovers, two firms merge in order to achieve specific strategic and business objectives. The ultimate goal is often, but not always, the creation of shareholder value. In many cases, the creation of shareholder value is not the primary objective of the managers, however, which is one of the reasons why takeovers have been associated with the destruction of value in several existing studies. Instead, many M&A decisions are a function of managerial behaviour. In this thesis, I investigate the drivers of M&A activity, and consider both purely rational (neo-classical) and behavioural reasons as managers’ motivations for getting involved in M&A transactions. The thesis’s main body consists of three empirical studies that investigate how M&A activity is driven by macro-economic forces, managerial behaviour and board networks. Chapter 3 investigates whether merger waves are driven by macro-economic determinants and financial markets; Chapter 4 tests whether envy among CEOs has any explanatory power over the appearance of merger waves; Chapter 5 looks at whether board networks affect the relative merits of acquisitions and the probability of acquiring firms in “linked” industries. More specifically, Chapter 3 tests the extent to which US and UK merger waves are driven by macro-economic and financial market factors. Besides the analysis of domestic M&A activity, I also study the drivers of cross-border acquisitions between the UK and the US. I disentangle M&A activities according to how they are financed, and test whether managers follow market timing strategies when engaging in M&A transactions. I find evidence that domestic takeovers in the US and in the UK are highly correlated with the credit cycle and moderately correlated with the business cycle. I also test wave patterns in US and UK merger waves, and find that the merger waves in the two countries are significantly related to each other. Chapter 4 considers the view that irrational managerial behaviour could trigger UK merger waves. In particular, I assume that CEOs assess their own situation relative to those of their peers. If a CEO earns less than his peers, he becomes envious. Since it is established in the literature that firm size and executive compensation are positively correlated, CEOs have an incentive to engage in size-increasing mergers in order to decrease any compensation differential. Cross-sectional envy should therefore be considered as a potential explanation for merger waves. In an interdisciplinary approach, I develop a new measure for envy that is based on theories borrowed from the sociology area. My results from comprehensive tests with this new measure show that envy is unlikely to be an explanation for UK merger waves. Chapter 5 uses social networking theory to examine possible benefits for the acquirer from being well-connected. I assume that strong board networks are associated with better and faster access to information. Building on this rationale, I hypothesize that well-connected acquirers make better acquisitions due to reduced information asymmetries between them and the target. This chapter examines whether board interlocks between the acquirer and the target, existing prior to the acquisition, are associated with superior cumulative abnormal returns for the acquirer. Using centrality measures from social networking theory, I test whether firms that are well-connected make better acquisitions, as measured by the announcement returns of the acquirer. I find acquirer-target board interlocks to be significantly and positively associated with the acquirer’s cumulative abnormal returns. Centrality measures, however, turn out not to have any significant impact on the acquirer’s stock price reaction. Lastly, I show that acquirers are significantly more likely to acquire firms from industries with which they are “linked” via board members that have multiple directorships.

Due to changes of regulations in the banking sector after the credit crunch, equity crowdfunding has become an alternative funding source in raising capital for small and medium sized enterprises, that face a lack of financial resources or trustworthiness. The aim of this thesis is to identify the determinants of a successful equity crowdfunding project. We base the study on a sample of 398 projects pitched on an equity crowdfunding platform (Crowdcube) between 2011-2016. The analysis of the cross-section dataset is conducted of Logit, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Negative Binomial regression models. The results show that the more investors participate in the investment, the higher is the success of equity crowdfunding. Moreover, a higher equity participation offered to the investors also has a positive impact on the financing success. However, a prior crowdfunding history of the company does not raise its reliability. Moreover, technology companies are less trusted by the investors and less successful on equity crowdfunding platform. Depending on the model used, start-up companies usually gain a higher success with their pitch, which can be positively influenced by a high social media presence.

Class of 2009 Abstract / OBJECTIVES: Truck drivers one of the most vital components of a country’s economy, and also one of the most medically underserved populations. To date, few studies have explored the healthcare needs of over the road truck drivers. The objective of this study is to determine if a need exists for the creation of a healthcare education program for over the road truck drivers and if retail pharmacy could be an effective setting for such a program. METHODS: A needs assessment analysis was used to examine available literature concerning the healthcare of over the road truck drivers. A multi-question survey was designed to illicit the feasibility of initiating a healthcare education program to over the road truck drivers in a retail pharmacy setting. This survey was administered to third year pharmacy interns, and 67 completed surveys were collected. RESULTS: Statistics from the selected literature showed over the road truck drivers had increased health risks and barriers to receive proper healthcare. Sixty-two percent of the pharmacy interns felt they could help provide healthcare education to over the road truck drivers, but 71% of interns felt that management wanted to have as little time as possible expended providing education and counseling. CONCLUSIONS: Over the road truck drivers are at increased risk of healthcare problems due to the demands of the profession and a healthcare education program is warranted to help

The aim of this thesis is to describe perceived barriers and drivers and analyze its impact on the implementation of strategies among food retailers in order to reduce food waste. On supply chain, food retailers are in the powerful position, communicating both consumers and suppliers. Existing literatures and our findings show that food retailers engage mostly in strategies to prevent and re-use food waste. The methodology used in this thesis is qualitative research through single case study design in order to gain valuable insights from food retailers and develop the existing theories. The empirical date is collected through semi-structured interviews with a store manager, the head of logistics and a project manager and environmental ambassador, Karin Bildsten. The findings had formed several learning points. First, in this case the major barrier is lack of resources in financial and knowledge terms in order to implement strategies. Second, consumers have a strong impact on the implementation of strategies, playing both as drivers and barriers. Lastly, environmental consideration of employees is a strong driver as well as positive response from society toward implementing different strategies. This research intended to give inspiration to other researchers into this new field of research. The authors concluded with practical recommendations to food retailers as well as some advices to different stakeholders.