Positive Public Information Research Articles

Sustainable Public Safety and the Case of Two Epidemics: COVID-19 and Traffic Crashes. Can We Extrapolate from One to the Other?

COVID-19 and motor vehicle crashes (MVC) are both considered epidemics by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), yet their progression, treatment and success in treatment have been very different. In this paper, we propose that the well-established sustainable safety approach to road safety can be applied to the management of COVID-19. We compare COVID-19 and MVC in terms of several defining characteristics, including evolvement and history, definitions and measures of evaluation, main attributes and characteristics, countermeasures, management and coping strategies, and key success factors. Despite stark differences, there are also some similarities between the two epidemics, and these enable insights into how the principles of sustainable road safety can be utilized to cope with and guide the treatment of COVID-19. Major guidelines that can be adopted include an aggressive policy set at the highest national level. The policy should be data- and science-based and would be most effective when relying on a systems approach (such as Sweden’s Vision Zero, the Netherlands’ Sustainable Safety, and the recommended EU Safe System). The policy should be enforceable and supplemented with positive public information and education campaigns (rather than scare tactics). Progression of mortality and morbidity should be tracked continuously to enable adjustments. Ethical issues (such as invasion of privacy) should be addressed to maximize public acceptance. Interestingly, the well-established domain of MVC can also benefit from the knowledge, experience, and strategies used in addressing COVID-19 by raising the urgency of detection and recognition of new risk factors (e.g., cell phone distractions), developing and implementing appropriate policy and countermeasures, and emphasizing the saliency of the impact of MVC on our daily lives.

How Social Media Shapes One’s Public Mood: The Three-Way Interaction Effect of Sphere, Information Valence, and Justice Sensitivity

Public mood is a key concept in explaining collective activity, but the way social media shapes an audience’s public mood is still not fully understood. This study aims to explore how social media posts with various characteristics change public mood. The authors asked 351 participants to read 30 microblog newsletters with a 2 × 2 between-subject design (public × private sphere; positive × negative value). The results showed that (a) positive private information decreased negative public mood, (b) positive public information decreased positive public mood rather than increasing it, and (c) negative private information reduced the positive public mood of individuals who were high in justice sensitivity. The discussion focuses on the adverse effect of overexposure to positive public information and how individuals’ means of information processing vary.

Information credibility, disaster risk perception and evacuation willingness of rural households in China

Information credibility is important for effective disaster communication, and its strength affects the evacuation willingness of residents. However, few reports have studied the correlation of information credibility and disaster risk perception with residents’ willingness to evacuate during earthquake threats. Using survey data of 327 rural households located in four counties within earthquake-affected areas in Sichuan Province, this study systematically analyzed the credibility of public and private information about rural households, disaster risk perception and residents’ evacuation willingness. After creating an ordinary least square regression model (OLS) to investigate the correlations of the above factors, the results showed that: (1) Both positive public information and negative private information were positively correlated with residents’ evacuation willingness, and negative public information and positive private information were negatively correlated with residents’ evacuation willingness; (2) the perceived severity of disaster was significantly correlated with residents’ evacuation willingness, and the perceived probability of disaster was not significantly correlated with residents’ evacuation willingness; and (3) both positive and negative public information indirectly affected residents’ evacuation willingness through the perception of disaster severity. This study contributed to our understanding of the correlation of information credibility and disaster risk perception with evacuation willingness and provided important information for effective communication and disaster risk management.

“Give less but give smart”: Experimental evidence on the effects of public information about quality on giving

We conduct a laboratory experiment to test how information about charities’ qualities and its public visibility affect giving. We first show theoretically that a perceived increase in charities’ qualities represents a decrease in the price of charitable output, which could generate both an income and substitution effect on nominal giving. On the one hand positive news about charities’ qualities can increase giving, since donors realize that it is cheaper to generate charitable output. On the other hand positive news can reduce nominal giving because a smaller donation can generate an equal or higher level of charitable output. We then hypothesize and test that such negative income effect may be dominant among image-motivated donors whenever the quality of giving has a social signaling value: donors can “give less, but show that they give smart”. We find that when information is public, 34% of donors trade-off the quality and quantity of their donations. We show that these donors are relatively more motivated by social recognition, and strategically use positive public information to give less. The effect of public information is causal: when information about charities’ qualities is privately received, giving is always increasing in the quality of the news, and bad news has no effect on giving.

Impact of Public Information Arrivals on Cryptocurrency Market: A Case of Twitter Posts on Ripple

Public information arrivals and their immediate incorporation in asset price is a key component of semi-strong form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. In this study, we explore the impact of public information arrivals on cryptocurrency market via Twitter posts. The empirical analysis was conducted through various methods including Kapetanios unit root test, Maki cointegration analysis and Markov regime switching regression analysis. Results indicate that while in bull market positive public information arrivals have a positive influence on Ripple’s value; in bear market, however, even if the company releases good news, it does not divert out the Ripple from downward trend.

Public Information，Investment Term and Overvaluation

Institutional investors have become the dominant force in China’s stock market and play an important role in stabilizing the market and improving its efficiency. There are obvious distinctions in investment objectives, trading strategies and decision-making approach between short-term and long-term institutional investors, so it is necessary to distinguish them when exploring the relationship between institutional investors and the market stability. Positive public information often keeps investors in optimistic mind and leads to overvaluation of stocks. In the absence of short-selling constraints, stock mispricing will not be corrected by the market in time, so that overvaluation becomes obvious and persistent. Institutional investors with different term usually respond differently to the same information, which may lead to different extent of overvaluation. This paper examines whether there is a difference in the extent of overvaluation among the stocks of different investment term. It also examines whether this difference is affected by the overall market quotation, and whether the institutional investors of different term attach different importance to positive public information. The results suggest that, positive public information leads to more serious overvaluation of the stocks favored by short-term institutional investors when the market is short-sale constrained. The stocks with shorter term have higher cumulative returns during the issuance of positive analyst ratings. The difference in the extent of overvaluation among the stocks of different term is significant in the bull market, but no longer significant in the bear market. This may be because institutional investors（both long-term and short-term）are cautiously optimistic about positive public information in the bear market, and as the prices of stocks generally declined, previously excluded pessimistic” investors can enter the market. Short-term institutional investors are more reliant on public information than long-term institutional investors when they make decisions, which may be seemed as an explanation for the above phenomena. These results show that the short-term behavior of institutional investors aggravates market volatility, which is an important reason for stock price bubbles. Regulatory authorities can identify institutional investors according to investment term and the role of information dissemination. The relationship between short-selling constraints and stock overvaluation has been extensively studied. On this basis, we further explore the relationship between institutional investment term and stock overvaluation. It is always difficult to separate the effect of public information from private information when making an analysis on the impact of market information on institutional investors’ decision-making. We attempt to solve this problem by introducing the social network analysis into the study of institutional investors’ decision-making behavior. We explore the impact of positive public information on institutional investors’ valuation and trading behavior, which advances the research on the relationship between institutional investors’ decision-making behavior and the stability of the capital market, and also provides a reference for institutional investors to formulate relevant strategies.

Public Information, IPO Price Formation, and Long-Run Returns: Japanese Evidence

We use a sample of JASDAQ IPOs to study the effects of public information on offer price formation, initial returns, and long-run returns. Underwriters begin reporting anticipated offer prices of Japanese IPOs at an earlier point than in the US. The observable portion of the price formation process begins with an original price that is established before the roadshow, continues through establishment of the filing range, and concludes with the offer price. Neither price adjustment - from the original price to the midpoint of the range, or from the midpoint to the offer price - fully reflects public information from as long as four months before the IPO. As in the US, price adjustments are asymmetric. Prices adjust more fully in response to negative than to positive public information. It appears that adjustments are limited by an implicit agreement between the issuer and the underwriter that originates before marketing of the offer begins. The agreement reflects an expectation that the offer price will be based on the relative market values of public companies up to four months before the IPO. We find that one-year aftermarket returns are significantly lower when initial returns are high. Initial returns under-adjust relative to public information that is revealed before the IPO and the under-adjustment is substantially reversed in the aftermarket. The evidence connects the implicit contracting theory with the argument that offer prices are based partly on expected value at the time of early price discussions. As a result, it can explain episodes of substantial underpricing that are sustained over periods of several months. The paper also documents that over-allotment options affect price formation by enabling issuers to select significantly narrower filing ranges and to price more fully, so that initial returns are lower.