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Since most invasive forest pests first establish in urban areas, detection and containment of these pests within cities is important to the health of all forests. While the emerald ash borer (EAB) (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) has proved difficult to contain, efforts continue to mitigate the impacts of its spread. As part of those efforts, the Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) initiated its Emerald Ash Borer Treatment Program (EABTP) in 2018, providing financial incentives for insecticidal protection of ash trees. To better understand the role of incentives in promoting urban forest health, I conducted a study of properties, households, and practitioners involved in the program's first year. To examine where EABTP funding helped pay for tree protection, I conducted tree inventories on 16 urban participant properties. Concurrently with tree inventory work, I conducted web and mail surveys to examine homeowner engagement in preservation of threatened trees. Finally, to investigate the role of forest practitioners involved in program implementation, I conducted web surveys of VDOF foresters and Virginia arborists. Results demonstrated that on urban participant properties—typically large and wooded—white ash (Fraxinus americana) was the dominant species. Results from homeowner surveys demonstrated broad support for personal investment in tree preservation, and the significance of attitudinal predictors towards those intentions. Results from practitioner surveys demonstrated substantial, though not unanimous, support for the program as a benefit both to clients and forests. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of future urban forest health initiatives. / Master of Science / Because most non-native forest pests arrive in cities before spreading to rural areas, detecting and containing these pests within urban forests is important to all forested areas. One non-native pest, the emerald ash borer (EAB), has proved difficult to contain, but there are ongoing efforts to limit the damage it causes as it spreads. As part of those efforts, the Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) began its Emerald Ash Borer Treatment Program (EABTP) in 2018, which offered partial reimbursement for the cost of protecting ash trees with insecticide. To better understand how reimbursement payments might help promote the health of urban trees, I studied the properties, households, and practitioners involved in first year of the program. To examine where EABTP funding helped pay for tree protection, I conducted inventories of all trees on 16 participating properties in urban areas. At the same time, I conducted web and mail surveys to examine how homeowners thought about urban tree preservation. Finally, I conducted web surveys of VDOF foresters and Virginia arborists, to investigate roles of these practitioners in implementing the program. Results indicated that on urban participant properties, which were typically large and wooded, white ash was the dominant species. Results from homeowner surveys demonstrated broad support for personal investment in tree preservation, and the significance of attitudes in predicting that support. Results from practitioner surveys demonstrated substantial, though not unanimous, support for the program as a benefit both to clients and forests. These findings are discussed in the context of future urban forest health programs.

Countries around the world set ambitious targets to substantially reduce their greenhouse gasses emissions, including those which come from electricity sector. This requires a transition to a low carbon electricity generation and supply system, which in part, can be met by increasing distributed generation (DG) connection and implementing demand side response (DSR) programme on distribution network. Therefore, the role of distribution network operators (DNOs) in facilitating the connection of new DG and the implementation of DSR programme is vital. In order to encourage DNOs to be more active in the low carbon transition, the energy regulator needs to set up financial incentives for DNOs. Current DG incentive mechanism, which is applied in the UK, aims to incentivise DNOs based on the amount of DG capacity connected to the network. Consequently, in a generation-dominated area, the incentives might not be sufficient to cover the reinforcement required for connecting DGs, which in turn, the output energy from DGs will be excessively curtailed. Therefore, this research proposes a new approach, called energy-based DG incentive mechanism. This mechanism will incentivise DNOs based on the utilization of available DG energy on the network and its relation with the requirement of network reinforcement. In terms of DSR incentives, different mechanisms have been applied in some countries, including Australia and USA. Some of the mechanisms incentivise DNOs based on the investment cost or forgone revenue related to DSR initiatives, as implemented in demand management incentive and rate of return mechanisms. Other mechanisms aim to incentivise DNOs based on the energy savings or avoided costs of supply associated with DSR participation, as implemented in shared savings and avoided cost mechanisms. Those mechanisms operate independently without any correlation between them. Therefore, this research develops a new approach to assess the relation between DSR investment cost and DSR participation, called energy-based DSR incentive mechanism. This mechanism will incentivise DNOs based on the utilization of available DSR energy on the network and its relation with the required investment. Comparing with current incentive mechanisms, both energy-based DG incentive and energy-based DSR incentive can reflect the effectiveness of DNOs to deal with the required investments in association with DG connection and DSR implementation on their network.

<p>Despite of the financial crisis managers are receiving large financial short-term incentives in form of bonuses. This has been criticized in the media and by governments, shareholders and numerous of studies have been made about financial incentives and whether they work or not and the results vary. What do the companies themselves say about this? Why do they use short-term incentives?</p><p>The purpose of this thesis was to find out why companies choose to have short-term incentive plans which usually consist of an annual bonus. Moreover how the incentive plans are designed and what companies expects from them.</p><p>A qualitative method is used in this thesis; five interviews were made in order to collect empirical material. The companies that participated in the study were Q-Med, Boliden, Johnson & Johnson, Nordea, and Siemens. The personnel who were interviewed were Human Resources (HR) directors or Financial Directors or had compensations and benefits as their main responsibility. All companies who participated in the interviews are public companies, although not all of them are listed at the Swedish Stock Exchange, Siemens and Johnson & Johnson are listed at the New York and Frankfurt Stock Exchange.</p><p>The conclusion of this study is that companies use short-term incentives as a motivator for the management and to structure goals and set a common aim for the companies’ divisions. They also consider themselves to need them in order to attract and keep good managers. The incentive programme is structured with the aim to increase the company’s profit by motivating employees but also to rate and evaluate the manager. When the incentive programme is well designed and fulfils its purpose it will benefit the shareholders, who owns the company, as profits will increase.</p>

As computers become pervasive and better connected, the popularity of peer-to-peer computing has grown immensely. The sharing of unused resources at peers is desirable and practically important because they can collectively comprise a powerful system. The potential benefit, however, can be undermined by uncooperative behavior of some peers because they are managed individually and hence may not follow the expected protocols. To build robust systems, we must incorporate proper trust and incentive mechanisms so that peers would rather cooperate. In this dissertation, we demonstrate that building robust peer-to-peer information dissemination systems is important and viable, using four concrete cases. First, we investigate the incentive mechanism of BitTorrent, an exchange-based file distribution protocol. Our framework based on iterated prisoner's dilemma provides an insight into users' tension between eagerness to download and unwillingness to upload. By using both analytical and experimental approaches, we show that the current incentive mechanism of BitTorrent is susceptible to free riding. We propose an improved mechanism that punishes free riders effectively. Second, we present a trust-aware overlay multicast system that performs well in the presence of uncooperative nodes, which may block, delay, fabricate, or forge the messages they forward. We develop (1) a set of protocols that detect uncooperative behavior, (2) a scheme of trust value assignment according to the behavior of nodes, and (3) an algorithm that adapts the multicast tree based on trust values, all of which allows the system to remain stable and responsive over time. Third, we propose an alternative news feed dissemination system, called FeedEx, in which feed subscribers mesh into a network and exchange news feeds with neighbors. The collaborative exchange in FeedEx, with the help of the incentive-compatible design using the pair-wise fairness principle, reduces the server load and hence increases the scalability. Fourth, we introduce a new concept of peer-to-peer computing, that is, continual service using ephemeral servers. To this end, we develop a system model for the concept and implement a discrete-time simulator to find the conditions and the system support for eliciting cooperation. All four cases are substantiated by experimental results.

Die standardisierte Befragung ist in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung ein anerkanntes und häufig genutztes Erhebungsverfahren, um Einblicke in die Einstellungen von Bevölkerungsgruppen zu erlangen. In den letzten Jahrzehnten konnte jedoch ein deutlicher Rückgang der Teilnahmebereitschaft an Umfragen festgestellt werden. Zur Erhöhung der Teilnahmebereitschaft wird zumeist der Einsatz monetärer Anreize (= Incentives) empfohlen, wobei diese zu Beginn oder am Ende der Befragung ausgehändigt werden können. Es ist jedoch unklar, ob und inwiefern ein Incentive auch die Antwortqualität während der Befragung beeinflusst. Die bisher durchgeführten Studien weisen zumeist keine klare Begriffsdefinition für Antwortqualität auf und wählen daher Indikatoren zur Prüfung von Zusammenhängen ohne abgeleiteten theoretischen Bezug aus. Darüber hinaus fehlen im Forschungsfeld empirisch abgesicherte Theorien zur Erklärung der Wirkung von Incentives auf die Datenqualität in Befragungen. Eine theoretische Absicherung erscheint umso wichtiger, da in aktuellen Studien negative Befunde zur Antwortqualität aufgrund der Incentivierung berichtet werden (vgl. Barge & Gehlbach (2012)). Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist daher auf Grundlage theoretischer Konzepte – unter Verwendung eines Incentive-Experiments – die Frage zu klären, ob und inwiefern Incentives systematisch auf die Antwortqualität wirken. Hierfür wurde zu Beginn eine Definition für Antwortqualität aus dem Konzept des Total Survey Error (vgl. Biemer & Lyberg (2003); Weisberg (2005)), dem Satisficing-Ansatz nach Krosnick (1991) und dem Mikrozensusgesetz (2005) abgeleitet. Es wurden vier Facetten der Antwortqualität herausgearbeitet, welche als Grundlage für die später folgenden Analysen dienten. Darauf folgend wurde zum einen als motivationspsychologischer Ansatz die Cognitive Evaluation Theory (Deci & Ryan (1985)) herangezogen und zum anderen die Reziprozitätshypothese (Gouldner (1960)) vorgestellt. Aus diesen theoretischen Ansätzen wurden Zusammenhangshypothesen abgeleitet, welche stets einen positiven Effekt von Incentives auf die Antwortqualität postulierten. Im nächsten Schritt wurde das Erhebungsdesign beschrieben (= drei Versuchsgruppen mit unterschiedlicher Incentivierung: 0 Euro, 5 Euro, 20 Euro; als Versuchspersonen wurden Studierende der Universität Göttingen herangezogen) und der zur Hypothesenprüfung benötigte, selbst entwickelte Fragebogen vorgestellt. Die zentrale Schlussfolgerung der auf Basis der Ergebnisse lautet, dass Incentives heterogene Effekte auf die vier Facetten der Antwortqualität aufweisen. Die Höhe des Incentives beeinflusst dabei nicht nur die Stärke der Effekte, sondern auch deren Wirkrichtung. Darüber hinaus konnten bei einem Incentive in Höhe von 5 Euro tendenziell positive Effekte bezüglich der Antwortqualität beobachtet werden, wobei bei einem Incentive in Höhe von 20 Euro prinzipiell eher negative Effekte festgestellt wurden. Es konnten dabei auch negative Effekte auf die Facetten der Antwortqualität in der Versuchsgruppe ohne Incentive festgestellt werden. Diese negativen Zusammenhänge werden über die Definition der Situation erklärt. Hierbei wird vermutet, dass die Befragten Forscher in ihren Studien unterstützen wollen, aber aufgrund von Fehlinterpretationen über die Ziele und Erwartungen der Forscher zu einem unerwünschten Antwortverhalten tendieren. Aus dieser Erklärung heraus wird die Vermutung formuliert, dass mit steigender intrinsischer Motivation, bzw. Reziprozität nicht die Antwortqualität steigt, sondern höchstens der Wille der Befragten für eine verbesserte Antwortqualität.

Despite of the financial crisis managers are receiving large financial short-term incentives in form of bonuses. This has been criticized in the media and by governments, shareholders and numerous of studies have been made about financial incentives and whether they work or not and the results vary. What do the companies themselves say about this? Why do they use short-term incentives? The purpose of this thesis was to find out why companies choose to have short-term incentive plans which usually consist of an annual bonus. Moreover how the incentive plans are designed and what companies expects from them. A qualitative method is used in this thesis; five interviews were made in order to collect empirical material. The companies that participated in the study were Q-Med, Boliden, Johnson &amp; Johnson, Nordea, and Siemens. The personnel who were interviewed were Human Resources (HR) directors or Financial Directors or had compensations and benefits as their main responsibility. All companies who participated in the interviews are public companies, although not all of them are listed at the Swedish Stock Exchange, Siemens and Johnson &amp; Johnson are listed at the New York and Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The conclusion of this study is that companies use short-term incentives as a motivator for the management and to structure goals and set a common aim for the companies’ divisions. They also consider themselves to need them in order to attract and keep good managers. The incentive programme is structured with the aim to increase the company’s profit by motivating employees but also to rate and evaluate the manager. When the incentive programme is well designed and fulfils its purpose it will benefit the shareholders, who owns the company, as profits will increase.

Memory plays an important role in defining how one behaves. The neurobiological mechanisms of memory have been studied extensively in animal models and the NMDA glutamate receptor has been identified to play an important role in the consolidation and reconsolidation of appetitive memories. Certain memories, depending on what was learned, can function differently and can be more difficult to disrupt based on a number of factors. Currently, no study has examined whether or not a reward-predictive stimulus attributed with incentive value is more difficult to disrupt than a stimulus that functions as a general reward-predictor. To determine the role of the NMDA receptor on memory consolidation with different functioning reward-predictive stimuli rats underwent a Pavlovian conditioned approach, where a post-session NMDA receptor antagonist was administered daily. Furthermore, to determine the role of the NMDA receptor on memory reconsolidation, another set of rats were trained on a Pavlovian conditioned approach task, after training was complete rats were presented with a reward-predictive stimuli followed by an administration of a NMDA receptor antagonist and then re-tested.

This study investigated the effects of unit price structure, unit price descriptions, and unit price sequence on the demand for money in humans. Six groups of 3 participants solved multiplication problems in exchange for money under various unit prices. Consumption of money decreased as the unit price increased across all conditions. However, the data also showed that: (a) fixed price structures produced slightly more elastic demand than did variable price structures, (b) price descriptions produced more elastic demand under variable price structures but had little or no effect under fixed price structures, and (c) the alternate sequence used with fixed price structures produced slightly more elastic demand.

The accurate determination of malingering relies on the use of validated and clinically relevant assessment measures. Simulation design is the most often-used research design to accomplish this. However, its external validity is sometimes questioned. The goal of the thesis was to systematically evaluate these major elements: situation, incentives, and coaching. The situation in simulation studies can vary from relevant (academic failure in a college population) to irrelevant (capital murder) for the samples being studied. Incentives refer to the external motivation given to improve simulators' performance and can be positive (extra credit and monetary reward) or negative (extra time and effort). Finally, coaching refers to whether the participant receives any information on detection strategies that are designed to identify feigners. Using a large undergraduate sample in a factorial design, results indicate that a scenario familiar to the participants generally improved the believability of their responses. Coaching also improved the ability to feign convincingly, while incentive type was not associated with any change in scores. The implications of these findings for future research designs and the connection to practice are discussed.