This study assessed the desirability for High-Occupancy/Toll (HOT) lanes in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) through stated preference and revealed traffic volume data gathering and analysis techniques. 4,000 surveys, distributed in five sample areas, asked respondents how much they would be willing to pay to escape congestion in eight unique trip conditions. Stated preference results found considerable public support for HOT-lanes in the GTA. In six out of eight trip conditions, a majority of respondents preferred to pay to travel in express lanes rather than endure congestion. Respondent willingness to pay (WTP) mean values varied considerably by trip condition. Willingness to pay to escape congestion was influenced by trip characteristics and driver factors. Trip urgency, traffic speed, and freeway trip distance were found to be statistically significant trip characteristic indicators of WTP. Previous exposure to electronic tolling and annual household income were found to be significant driver factor indicators of WTP in most trip conditions. Respondent gender and freeway travel frequency were found to be statistically significant driver factor indicators of WTP in some trip conditions. The presence of Hwy 407-ETR, an electronically tolled by-pass to Hwy 401, allowed for an examination of the effects of Hwy 401 volume and trip urgency on driver choice to use the tolled alternative. Results indicated that trip urgency and Hwy 401 volume were correlated with Hwy 407 throughput share. During periods of high trip urgency and high Hwy 401 volume, a substantial proportion of Hwy 401/407 corridor drivers chose to pay approximately $0.20/km to escape congestion.

Introduction Movies are considered entertainment goods. Entertainment is one of the experience industries. Intangibility, perishability and heterogeneity are the most significant characteristics of the movie industry. An emotional reaction of consumers cannot be calculated in the same sense that most other physical goods can. If the movie succeeded in meeting the expectations, ticket price decreases will not necessarily indicate further purchases in the future. There are high risks and uncertainty in the movie industry. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to define through a hedonic price theory establishing whether the recognition is a significant factor to the global success of movies. The global success of the movies is determined by the global box office revenue. There are eight independent variables tested in this paper: global movie popularity, global popularity of the directors, global popularity of the authors, fame (determined by wining Academy Award), major studios, sequel, family genre and animation genre. Only one control variable, which is year of release, is included. Method The paper uses empirical model and the data set along with the results of the empirical analysis to achieve the purpose. Only secondary data were collected for the paper. Conclusion To reduce uncertainty in movie industry box office revenue, according to the data collected, recognition is significant to the consumers’ willingness to pay. The willingness to pay is determined by the global box office revenue. Only four independent variables, namely: sequels, Academy Award, the global popularity of the directors and the global popularity of the authors of the original script, are significant recognition factors to the global box office revenue. Movie producers shall be aware that consumers have to make sure utility gained from the consumption exceeds the costs in order to make purchases. Based on the sample collected, it can be summarized that consumers of the movie industry in general rely on previous consumption and recognition to reduce risks and uncertainty in terms of making purchases.

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The paper analyses Gender Equality, Gender Equity and policies of combating inequality at workplace to make the society equal as a case study of Sweden. The aim of paper is see the gender equality, gender equity, discrimination against women at workplace and to describe the policies combating inequality in the welfare state of Sweden. This work highlights the gender equality in terms of institutionalizing gender equality, gender equity, gender and pay gap, parental leave, gender and the pension system and sexual behavior directed towards women and policies combating inequality to bring equality in society. For my research I used the secondary data the fact sheets, scientific literature, statistics from eurostate of Sweden and case studies about Swedish society and the theoretical explanation to explain the phenomena. To achieve my aim I used the combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods of research. I showed the empirical evidences of these phenomena from the Swedish society and theoretical analysis about equality and equity of gender in different wakes of life. I found an interesting conclusion that there are good policies and legislation to combat inequality to bring society but there are no policies to change the perception of society about male and female role.

<p>In the first chapter of this dissertation, I outline a hedonic equilibrium model that explicitly controls for moving costs and forward-looking behavior. Hedonic equilibrium models allow researchers to recover willingness to pay for spatially delineated amenities by using the notion that individuals "vote with their feet." However, the hedonic literature and, more recently, the estimable Tiebout sorting model literature, has largely ignored both the costs associated with migration (financial and psychological), as well as the forward-looking behavior that individuals exercise in making location decisions. Each of these omissions could lead to biased estimates of willingness to pay. Building upon dynamic migration models from the labor literature, I estimate a fully dynamic model of individual migration at the national level. By employing a two-step estimation routine, I avoid the computational burden associated with the full recursive solution and can then include a richly-specified, realistic state space. With this model, I am able to perform non-market valuation exercises and learn about the spatial determinants of labor market outcomes in a dynamic setting. Including dynamics has a significant positive impact on the estimates of willingness to pay for air quality. In addition, I find that location-specific amenity values can explain important trends in observed migration patterns in the United States.</p><p>The second chapter of this dissertation describes a model which estimates willingness to pay for air quality using property value hedonics techniques. Since Rosen's seminal 1974 paper, property value hedonics has become commonplace in the non-market valuation of environmental amenities, despite a number of well-known methodological problems. In particular, recovery of the marginal willingness to pay function suffers from important endogeneity biases that are difficult to correct with instrumental variables procedures [Epple (1987)]. Bajari and Benkard (2005) propose a "preference inversion" procedure for recovering heterogeneous measures of marginal willingness to pay that avoids these problems. However, using cross-sectional data, their approach imposes unrealistic constraints on the elasticity of marginal willingness to pay. Following Bajari and Benkard's suggestion, I show how data describing repeat purchase decisions by individual home buyers can be used to relax these constraints. Using data on ozone pollution in the Bay Area of California, I find that endogeneity bias and flexibility in the shape of the marginal willingness to pay function are both important.</p><p>Finally, in the third chapter of this dissertation, I combine the insights of the Bajari-Benkard inversion approach employed in second chapter with more standard estimation techniques (i.e., Rosen (1974)) to arrive at a new hedonic methodology that allows for flexible and heterogeneous preferences while avoiding the endogeneity problems that plague the traditional Rosen two-stage model. Implementing this estimator using the Bay Area ozone data, I again find evidence of considerable heterogeneity and of endogeneity bias. In particular, I find that a one unit deterioration in air quality (measured in days in which ozone levels exceed the state standards) raises marginal willingness to pay by $145.18 per year. The canonical two-stage Rosen model finds, counter-intuitively, that this same change would reduce marginal willingness to pay by $94.24.</p> / Dissertation

In recent years, there are several studies concerning brand and fashion. Nonetheless, there are few studies conducted on fashion brand which concerns embodying various industries. Without a doubt, brand value is the key factor of fashion industries success. This study will try to research on the broader usage of brand value. The purpose of this study is to research the influence of consumer¡¦s purchasing intention and willingness to pay of the commodities under each product categories; after combining with the fashion brand, under the different evaluation of fashion brand. The four hypotheses in the study are directed towards the relationship between consumers recognized evaluation of fashion brand, purchasing intention and willingness to pay for the brand separately. Hence, the investigation here will be to scrutinize the change of consumer¡¦s purchasing intention and willingness to pay after combining with particular fashion brand. The following hypotheses will be tested through a designated questionnaire with the convenience sampling method. A total number of 197 questionnaires were returned. By using a number of statistical methods and exploring the relationship between each variances and testing each hypotheses, the following conclusions are generated¡G 1. The study infers that products are non-convenience goods¡Bunnecessary goods¡Bhigh-durability¡Bhigh-visibility¡Bhigh-using-frequency can increase the consumers¡¦ willingness to pay after combining with the fashion brand. 2. The fashion brand with high-brand-evaluation when combined with most of product categories¡¦ commodities will evidently boost consumers¡¦ purchasing intention and willingness to pay. Thus, we can try to develop more feasible proposal. 3. Even in the industries that are unsuitable to incorporate the idea of fashion, we may still be able to find a feasible proposal. 4. The study suggests that fashion brands do the wholly survey on the bicycle industry and analyze their possibility and potential in this industry. Further research on the market of bicycles should be directed specifically towards young women who earn lower than 1,500,000 per year. Keywords: Fashion, Brand, Evaluation of Fashion Brand Product Category, Purchasing Intention, Willingness to Pay

From establishing government in 1949, Communist Party of China had pursuing a socialist system. However, over-emphasis on equal distribution lead to the individual income and the individual performance are not proportional, so that the mainland China was under the circumstances of "usually used in negative two half kilogram," and was near to the border of collapse. After Deng Xiaoping came back to power, threw away the past ideology of equal distribution, and he changed the economic system. China's economy began to advance by leaps and bounds. Nowadays, the mainland China¡¦s eco-nomic potentiality has surpassed Japan and it becomes the second economy which is only inferior to the U.S. economy. However, in so dazzling economic performance of mainland China's, the achievement of economic growth is not generally reflected in the labor standards on wages, The wages of workers in China still ranked among the last level of the world's wage classes. However, the average wage in the low social workers, the Gini coefficient is close to the bottom line of social tolerance. That is, how to set up wage growth mechanism, straighten out the relationship between income distribution has became a top priority of mainland authorities. This pay for performance system for the mainland legal system are based on the mainland of the State Council "pay for per-formance on the compulsory school system guidance," analysis to explore the subject, to be addressed. This paper is divided into seven chapters around: Chapter 1 Introduction, describes the study of this motivation, purpose, scope, methods, limits, and proposed research framework. Chapter 2 is to explore the mainland of the basic principles of pay for per-formance system, Chapter 3 of the mainland of the administrative organization of pay for performance system. Chapter 4 is to explore the mainland China of pay for perfor-mance system administrative privileges. Chapter 5and Chapter 6,are respectively to ex-plore the mainland China of performance pay system and monitoring of relief, and in Chapter 7 are conclusions and recommendations of pay for performance system

The growing importance of dogs in people’s lives and in high-density urban environments has increased demand for a place where people and their dogs can interact and exercise together. The recent increase in the number of dog parks across the country is evidence of these demands of dog owners and their companions. However, due to the absence of empirical study on dog parks and their attribute of non-market values, the benefits of dog parks are often underestimated and considered less in the decision making process regarding resource allocation. A post-occupancy evaluation at four dog parks was conducted to investigate use patterns of dog parks and user activities, to identify user preferences and the environmental factors influencing activities, to provide insights and guidelines in developing effective dog parks, and to estimate users’ willingness to pay for dog parks using contingent valuation method. A multiple-method approach was used to collect data including site observations and analysis, a questionnaire and behavioral mapping. The results indicated that dog parks received considerable use, served a variety of demographic groups and supported their exercise and social activities. Dog-park users were generally satisfied with dog parks but they expressed various preferences and needs. It is evident that dog parks are not only a place for dogs to exercise but a place for people to exercise, socialize, relax and enjoy greenery just like other parks. Proximity of dog parks was found to be a critical factor in encouraging frequent dog park use and satisfying users’ needs. Over eighty percent of survey respondents expressed that they were willing to pay an annual fee for dog parks, indicating the importance of visiting dog parks as outdoor recreation. Conservative estimate of average willingness to pay was $56.17/ household/ year. Satisfaction with maintenance and facilities, income, education and family size were found to be significantly associated with willingness to pay. These results could assist local governments and park planners in estimating aggregate monetary value of the dog parks and cost-benefit analysis to justify the development and maintenance of dog parks. Design guidelines and recommendations were generated based on the empirical findings for future design of dog parks.

Net pay (NP) and net-to-gross ratio (NGR) are often crucial quantities to characterize a reservoir and assess the amount of hydrocarbons in place. Numerous methods in the industry have been developed to evaluate NP and NGR, depending on the intended purposes. These methods usually involve the use of cut-off values of one or more surrogate variables to discriminate non-reservoir from reservoir rocks. This study investigates statistical issues related to the selection of such cut-off values by considering the specific case of using porosity () as the surrogate. Four methods are applied to permeability-porosity datasets to estimate porosity cut-off values. All the methods assume that a permeability cut-off value has been previously determined and each method is based on minimizing the prediction error when particular assumptions are satisfied. The results show that delineating NP and evaluating NGR require different porosity cut-off values. In the case where porosity and the logarithm of permeability are joint normally distributed, NP delineation requires the use of the Y-on-X regression line to estimate the optimal porosity cut-off while the reduced major axis (RMA) line provides the optimal porosity cut-off value to evaluate NGR. Alternatives to RMA and regression lines are also investigated, such as discriminant analysis and a data-oriented method using a probabilistic analysis of the porosity-permeability crossplots. Joint normal datasets are generated to test the ability of the methods to predict accurately the optimal porosity cut-off value for sampled sub datasets. These different methods have been compared to one another on the basis of the bias, standard error and robustness of the estimates. A set of field data has been used from the Travis Peak formation to test the performance of the methods. The conclusions of the study have been confirmed when applied to field data: as long as the initial assumptions concerning the distribution of data are verified, it is recommended to use the Y-on-X regression line to delineate NP while either the RMA line or discriminant analysis should be used for evaluating NGR. In the case where the assumptions on data distribution are not verified, the quadrant method should be used.

Performance-based Maintenance Contracts (PBMCs) are increasingly being used for roadway maintenance as an alternative to method-based specifications. However, this technique is still relatively new and several issues have not been adequately addressed in the literature. The paper provides a systematic process for developing quality assurance measures to be used within these contracts. The process addresses key issues, including the development of performance standards and targets, a method for monitoring the roadside performance, and a methodology for developing pay adjustment factors. The developed performance standards presented in the paper are easily measured and assigned grades of pass, fail, or not applicable. The required sample size is a function of the project characteristics, including performance variability along the project, required confidence level, and allowable tolerance. Finally, the pay adjustment curves are a function of the initial project LOS, the target LOS, and the maintenance cost to achieve the target LOS.