A primary symptom of depression is anhedonia, or the loss of interest or pleasure. Anhedonic individuals can have deficits in anticipatory pleasure (‘wanting’ things) or consummatory pleasure (‘liking’ things). Depressed individuals generally have deficits in anticipatory but not consummatory pleasure. A possible buffer against anticipatory anhedonia is action orientation, or the ability to upregulate positive affect in pursuit of goals when stressed. To examine the relationship between stress, action/state orientation, and anhedonia, highly anhedonic individuals who were either action- or state-oriented underwent a demanding mood induction, and completed the Effort-Expenditure for Reward Task, a measure of motivation for reward. Evidence did not support action orientation as a buffer; however, individuals who showed fluctuation in self-reported motivation were less motivated to work for reward. Evidence emerged suggesting that fluctuation in motivation over time may predict less willingness to work. Future research can examine the relationship between variability in motivation and depression.

No description available.

No description available.

Studien har utförts med en strategisk urvalsmetod, semistrukturerade intervjuer samt en kvalitativ innehållsanalys om sjöfarten i Furusundsleden. På så sätt kunna se att sjöfartstrafiken skapar erosionsskador på strandzonen. Med teorin "willingness to pay” utreds om sjöfarten är ekonomiskt motiverbart kontra de miljöskador som uppstår av sjöfartstrafiken. Slutsatsen är att Furusundsleden inte brukas på ett hållbart sätt av sjötrafiken gentemot de skador som orsakas av erosion i den strandnära miljön, men kan ses som motiverbart ur ett ekonomiskt perspektiv då den gynnar Stockholms stad. Den sociala och ekologiska hållbarheten blir lidande då det är den enskilda fastighetsägarna längst Furusundsleden som blir påverkade genom att erosionsskadorna minskar deras fastigheter och den akvatiska miljön försämras. / The study has been conducted using a strategic selection method, semi-structured interviews, and a qualitative content analysis on the marine traffic in Furusundsleden. Using these methods, it was possible to observe that marine traffic causes erosion damage to the beach zone. Using the theory “willingness to pay” investigates whether shipping is financially defensible versus the environmental damage caused by shipping traffic. The conclusion is that the marine traffic through Furusundsleden is not sustainable due to it causing erosion damage to the marine and waterfront environment. It may be justifiable though through the economical view of the municipality of Stockholm. The social and ecological sustainability suffers as it is the individual property owners along Furusundsleden who are affected by the erosion damage and the deteriorating aquatic environment.

<p>  </p> <p>There is an increasing global awareness of the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance. Measures are being taken by non-government organizations, nations and individual entities to address this intensely pressing issue which ultimately threatens human lives. The One Health initiative provides a framework which may advance public understanding of and willingness to address antimicrobial resistance. One Health seeks to identify alternative solutions to problems through an understanding of the human-animal-ecological interconnection. There are several alternatives to antibiotics that have been proposed in livestock (and specifically poultry) production systems. This work focused specifically on the prospect of bacteriophages as a tool for microbial control. A sample of 1,497 respondents targeted to be representative of the population of Pakistan completed a survey providing data about knowledge of antibiotics, the threats of antimicrobial resistance, and their food shopping behaviors. A hypothetical discrete choice experiment was used to elicit survey respondent’s choices amongst various chicken products which varied according to purchase location (supermarket versus wet market) and were labeled with regard to the use of antibiotics in production. Respondents were randomly assigned into one or two groups. One group saw in-depth information about antibiotics and bacteriophage technology alongside basic information about poultry prices, purchase location, and product labeling. The other group saw only basic information about purchase location, pricing, and product labeling, but were not provided the additional information about antibiotics or bacteriophage technology and its potential effectiveness for microbial control. In addition to the estimation of consumer willingness to pay for poultry production processes, respondent’s food shopping behavior, familiarity with antibiotic use, and familiarity with bacteriophages or phages was assessed. A random parameters logit model was used to estimate Pakistan poultry consumer’s willingness to pay for bacteriophage technology as an alternative to antibiotics in poultry production. </p>

Willingness to communicate (WTC) arose out of the search for a construct to explain why some people are more likely to speak in a particular communication situation than others facing the same situation (MacIntyre, Dörnyei, Clément, & Noels, 1998). This study investigated the extent to which 1,789 Japanese university students' willingness to speak and write in English to a Japanese student, an international student, a Japanese teacher of English, and a foreign teacher of English varied inside an EFL classroom. Using the L2 WTC Questionnaire (Weaver, 2005), it was found that the students' level of L2 WTC varied significantly according to their level of self-perceived ability to speak and write in English. At the group level, students in the highest self-perceived speaking ability group were more willing to speak in English to an international student or a foreign teacher of English. In contrast, students in the lowest self-perceived ability speaking group were more willing to speak in English to a Japanese student or a Japanese teacher of English. At the individual level, the average student from the different self-perceived ability groups displayed distinctive patterns of willingness to speak in English to the different types of interlocutors. For example, the average student from the low self-perceived ability group was more willing to speak in English to an international student or a foreign teacher of English in speaking situations/tasks requiring a limited or controlled use of English. In terms of writing, the average student from the high self-perceived ability group was not willing to write in English to a Japanese student when the writing task required a certain level of personal information. Students' responses to the Open-ended L2 WTC Questionnaire also revealed a number of factors that mediated their willingness to use English with different types of interlocutors. Collectively, the findings of this study not only highlight the interpersonal nature of L2 communication, but also provide important insights into how different types of interlocutors can help maximize students' level of L2 WTC, which might in turn lead to further advancements in their level of L2 communicative competence. / CITE/Language Arts

This dissertation consists of three essays studying two aspects of the interactions between agriculture and the environment: agricultural technology adoption and its environmental impacts (in the first essay), and weather shocks and their impacts on rural households in developing countries (in the second and third essays). The first essay proposes a multimarket equilibrium approach to estimating the consumer surplus for environmentally-friendly technologies adopted by farmers. Compared to conventional non-market valuation techniques based on single-market equilibrium, this new method allows for farmers' price feedback effects on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for those technologies. Results from an application indicate that consumers are willing to pay a premium for environmentally-friendly technologies adopted by farmers, and that the multimarket equilibrium WTP is smaller in magnitude than its single-market equilibrium counterpart. In the second essay, I develop a unitary agricultural household model to examine the impacts of rainfall variability on migration, off-farm employment and transfers in rural Ethiopia. Empirical results show that the share of out-migrated household members and per capita off-farm labor supply decrease with average rainfall in the main growing seasons, and increase with the standard deviation of average rainfall in the five main growing seasons prior to the survey. The level and standard deviation of rainfall are found to have indeterminate effects on the amount of transfers that households receive from the extended family or informal social safety nets. The third essay evaluates the effectiveness of different diversification strategies in smoothing consumption. Results suggest that adverse rainfall shock (below average rainfall) and temperature shock (above average extreme heat degree days) both negatively impact consumption. Receiving public transfers is effective in smoothing consumption against adverse rainfall shock, and participating in off-farm employment is effective against adverse temperature shock. Sending migrants to urban areas and receiving transfers from former household members or informal social safety nets are not effective against any weather shock. / Ph. D.

Yes / Personalised nutrition (PN) may promote public health. PN involves dietary advice based on individual characteristics of end users and can for example be based on lifestyle, blood and/or DNA profiling. Currently, PN is not refunded by most health insurance or health care plans. Improved public health is contingent on individual consumers being willing to pay for the service. Methods: A survey with a representative sample from the general population was conducted in eight European countries (N = 8233). Participants reported their will- 25 ingness to pay (WTP) for PN based on lifestyle information, lifestyle and blood information, and lifestyle and DNA information. WTP was elicited by contingent valuation with the price of a standard, non-PN advice used as reference. Results: About 30% of participants reported being willing to pay more for PN than for non-PN advice. They were on average prepared to pay about 150% of the reference price of a standard, non-personalised advice, with some differences related to socio-demographic factors. Conclusion: There is a potential market for PN 30 compared to non-PN advice, particularly among men on higher incomes. These findings raise questions to what extent personalized nutrition can be left to the market or should be incorporated into public health programs / EC (FW7) funded Food4me project

This dissertation is comprised of three essays that investigate consumer behavior and health outcomes. The first essay uses experimental economic techniques to explore consumers' preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for nutritionally differentiated grass-fed beef. Our findings suggest that consumers' nutrition knowledge about the functions of Vitamin A, Vitamin E, CLA, and Omega 3 could positively affect their WTP for grass-fed beef while the knowledge about the main food sources of these nutrients negatively affects their WTP for grass-fed beef. Furthermore, a higher sensory evaluation score of grass-fed beef compared to conventional beef will lead to a higher probability for a consumer to choose grass-fed beef and a higher monetary value she/he is willing to pay for grass-fed beef. Using the same experimental data collected in the first study, the second essay investigates the impacts of consumers' nutrition knowledge on their WTP by accommodating the potential endogeneity problem using an instrumental variable approach and a non-instrumental variable approach. Our results suggest the existence of the endogeneity of nutrition knowledge and indicate that ignoring the endogeneity problem in econometric modeling will downwardly bias the estimates of the true effects of nutrition knowledge. The estimates obtained from different estimation strategies in the study indicate the robustness of our findings about the effects of nutrition knowledge on consumers' food purchasing behavior. The third essay investigates the impacts of primary care giver (PCG)'s time allocation patterns and household food expenditure choices on childhood obesity using the national panel study of income dynamics data. Our results do not suggest significant impacts of PCG's labor force participation, involvement in children's outdoor activity, and household food expenditures on children's Body Mass Index (BMI). However, the estimates from iterated seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) and semi-parametric polynomial estimation indicate that parents' BMI significantly influence children's BMI. Interestingly, physical activity appears to have weak correlation with children's BMI. / Ph. D.

Farmland preservation has long been viewed by the public as a worthwhile endeavor. A public program can be set up to bring willing buyers and sellers together to facilitate the transfer of development rights. The farmer is paid for the opportunity cost of forfeiting the development rights to the land, while the general public is taxed the amount of their total benefit created by the existence of farmland. Through the data from an attribute-based choice survey (conducted in four geographic areas) the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of the public to preserve farmland that exhibited certain attributes, was estimated. The attributes included different use (grain, hay, vegetable, pasture, forest), location (near urban), quality (prime), size (varied acreage relative to geographic area sampled), and cost (varied costs from $3 to $50) components. Selection bias was tested for in order to confirm that the respondents are an unbiased representation of the geographic areas sampled. If selection bias was present, it would need to be corrected for in order to aggregate the survey results to the population of the geographic areas. Selection bias was tested for using a bivariate probit model with sample selection, a variation on the Heckman correction model. Selection bias was not significant, so the choice model was estimated using a probit model. The response was dependent on the use, location, quality, size, and cost components. Based on the parameter estimates, the geographic areas were compared using the scale parameter. A variation of the Swait and Louviere method was used to find the optimal scale parameter ratios between pair-wise geographic areas. Heterogeneity of the parameter estimates as well as heterogeneity of variances was tested. Prime farmland was significant and positive in all geographic areas, suggesting it should be included in the national ranking criteria for a farmland preservation program. WTP by household for each attribute was reported. Additionally, the WTP was aggregated to provide a hypothetical range of the monetary benefit farmland provides for the residents of each geographic area. / Master of Science