Actual Preferences Research Articles

An exploratory analysis of the web-based keywords of fashion brands using big-data

This study empirically analyzed the influence of fashion brands’ marketing issues on actual sales and consumer preference—focusing on evaluation trends of brands over time by using the theoretical background and big data provided through literature. This study examined the influence of three fashion brands (Balenciaga, Vetements, and Off-White) that have recently seen a drastic increase in the number of searched volumes through social networks. To identify the consumer-brand evaluations and trends and the marketing issues, the time period was divided into Groups A and B, which are from 2014 to 2015 and from 2016 to 2017, respectively. This study analyzed the frequency of overlapping keywords by using the R program to graphically visualize the changes over the timeline. Specifically, this analysis extracted data mainly related to bags, wallets and accessories for 2014-2015, but in 2016-2017, all four brands saw a vast increase in the frequency of searching product keywords related to clothing and footwear, and newly extracted ones were the top keywords. When analyzing the big data with these keywords as indicators, I confirmed that the products related to bags, wallets, and accessories were shifted to those related to apparel and footwear. Consumers previously recognized luxury brands such as Balenciaga as accessoriesoriented brands that were focused on handbags and sunglasses, but now they are gaining popularity and recognition among consumers as a fashion brand.

Unpacking domestic preferences in the policy-\u2018receiving\u2019 state: the EU\u2019s migration cooperation with Senegal and Ghana

Drawing on interviews conducted in Brussels, Dakar and Accra between September 2017–March 2018, this paper discusses the responses of domestic policy actors to the EU’s migration policy proposals in the two West African countries of Senegal and Ghana. EU-African cooperation in migration is mediated by the domestic context that the EU’s migration agenda is ‘received’ in, and the preferences and responses of policy communities in the countries that are the intended recipients of the EU’s governance approach. While existing studies have examined preference formation on the part of European actors in the EU’s external migration agenda, the preferences and agency of African actors and how these shape the EU’s external migration governance remain under-examined. Looking primarily at domestic contestation in the area of returns and readmission, this paper demonstrates that the preferences of policy actors in the receiving country are formed in a shifting domestic context and have an impact in determining the ability of the EU to achieve its aims and preferred governance strategy. In addition, it is shown that organisational and bureaucratic dynamics can influence cooperation outcomes.

Shining a Light on Dark Patterns

Dark patterns are user interfaces whose designers knowingly confuse users, make it difficult for users to express their actual preferences, or manipulate users into taking certain actions. They typically exploit cognitive biases and prompt online consumers to purchase goods and services that they do not want, or to reveal personal information they would prefer not to disclose. Research by computer scientists suggests that dark patterns have proliferated in recent years, but there is no scholarship that examines dark patterns’ effectiveness in bending consumers to their designers’ will. This article provides the first public evidence of the power of dark patterns. It discusses the results of the authors’ large-scale experiment in which a representative sample of American consumers were randomly assigned to a control group, a group that was exposed to mild dark patterns, or a group that was exposed to aggressive dark patterns. All groups were told they had been automatically enrolled in an identity theft protection plan, and the experimental manipulation varied what acts were necessary for consumers to decline the plan. Users in the mild dark pattern condition were more than twice as likely to remain enrolled as those assigned to the control group, and users in the aggressive dark pattern condition were almost four times as likely to remain enrolled in the program. There were two other striking findings. First, whereas aggressive dark patterns generated a powerful backlash among consumers, mild dark patterns did not – suggesting that firms employing them generate substantial profits. Second, less educated subjects were significantly more susceptible to mild dark patterns than their well-educated counterparts. Both findings suggest that there is a particularly powerful case for legal interventions to curtail the use of mild dark patterns. The article concludes by examining legal frameworks for ameliorating the dark patterns problem. Many dark patterns appear to violate federal and state laws restricting the use of unfair and deceptive practices in trade. Moreover, in those instances where consumers enter into contracts after being exposed to dark patterns, their consent could be deemed voidable under contract law principles. The article proposes a quantitative bright-line rule for identifying impermissible dark patterns. Dark patterns are presumably proliferating because firms’ secret and proprietary A-B testing has revealed them to be profit maximizing. We show how similar A-B testing can be used to identify those dark patterns that are so manipulative that they ought to be deemed unlawful.

Costless Information and Costly Verification: A Case for Transparency

A principal has to take a binary decision. She relies on information privately held by a completely biased agent. The principal cannot incentivize with transfers but can learn the agent's information at a cost. Additionally, the principal privately observes a signal correlated with the agent's type. Transparent mechanisms are optimal: unlike in standard results with correlation, the principal's payoff is the same as if her signal was public. They take a simple cut-off form: favorable signals ensure the agent's preferred action. Signals below this cut-off lead to the nonpreferred action unless the agent appeals. An appeal always triggers type verification.

Urban amenity, human capital and employment distribution in Shanghai

Human capital theory argues that by attracting skilled workers urban amenities are increasingly important to the location decisions of firms and to employment agglomeration. However, this hypothesis has been questioned with respect to the direction of causality at the interurban level, the existence of endogeneity, and confusion between revealed and actual preferences of consumers. In this research, to contribute the existing debate over the relationship between amenities and jobs, we develop a new measurement of private service amenities based on the comments about facilities from Dianping.com, and further relate it to labor markets in Shanghai at the intra-urban level. We find that human capital theory and the distribution of amenities can partially explain the employment agglomeration in Shanghai, and their applicability is also influenced by types of amenities and sectors. Private service amenities, such as entertainment, shopping, for-profit healthcare facilities, and restaurants, are largely associated with the employment agglomeration of producer services at the subdistrict-level, which supports human capital theory, while the agglomeration of manufacturing employment is more likely associated with the development of public facilities such as transportation systems. Our study provides an innovative way to examine urban theories in the context of the social data revolution. It also suggests that the Chinese government has to encourage the decentralization of service amenities to overcome the increasing centrality of producer services and the accelerating marginality of manufacturing employment.

On the Inducibility of Stackelberg Equilibrium for Security Games

Strong Stackelberg equilibrium (SSE) is the standard solution concept of Stackelberg security games. As opposed to the weak Stackelberg equilibrium (WSE), the SSE assumes that the follower breaks ties in favor of the leader and this is widely acknowledged and justified by the assertion that the defender can often induce the attacker to choose a preferred action by making an infinitesimal adjustment to her strategy. Unfortunately, in security games with resource assignment constraints, the assertion might not be valid; it is possible that the defender cannot induce the desired outcome. As a result, many results claimed in the literature may be overly optimistic. To remedy, we first formally define the utility guarantee of a defender strategy and provide examples to show that the utility of SSE can be higher than its utility guarantee. Second, inspired by the analysis of leader’s payoff by Von Stengel and Zamir (2004), we provide the solution concept called the inducible Stackelberg equilibrium (ISE), which owns the highest utility guarantee and always exists. Third, we show the conditions when ISE coincides with SSE and the fact that in general case, SSE can be extremely worse with respect to utility guarantee. Moreover, introducing the ISE does not invalidate existing algorithmic results as the problem of computing an ISE polynomially reduces to that of computing an SSE. We also provide an algorithmic implementation for computing ISE, with which our experiments unveil the empirical advantage of the ISE over the SSE.

Educational processes’ guidance based on evolving context prediction in intelligent tutoring systems

Considerable attention has been paid to content adaptation in ITS. However, process-oriented adaptation has been neglected and none of ITS addressed the correlation between the learning and the teaching process. Indeed, uncertainty coming from the dynamic preferences of learners and tutors, the evolutionary cognitive state of the learner and the choice of goals and educational strategies is not well considered in ITS. So, in this paper, a new proposal for guiding and adapting the construction of both learning and pedagogical processes named educational processes in intelligent tutoring system is described and detailed. The research strategy followed is based on a dynamic Bayesian network to predict the educational context, a strategic perspective for modeling educational processes, and guidance algorithms for their development and support. This aims to generate an individualized learning process for each learner by selecting the most appropriate pedagogical process according to the actual preferences of the tutor. Experimental results are given to illustrate the applicability of the proposed solution. The results show an improvement in guiding the learner and the teacher/tutor by considering the evolving and uncertain educational context. Learners will be therefore able to achieve the learning goal more efficiently when the pedagogical process is more adapted to their individual differences. The evaluation of knowledge improvement, the appropriateness of educational recommended context and the prediction effectiveness shows promising results.

Progress in Chemistry Studies for Students of Industrial Pharmacy Speciality with Different Learning Styles

The paper goal was to analyse the actual learning preferences of students in the speciality Industrial Pharmacy and find correlations between the learning styles and academic success in the study of chemistry. The Indices of Learning Styles by Felder-Soloman’s model were investigated for 1st to 5th-year students. The preferred learning styles do not change in the course of 4-years undergraduate studies and are described by the propensity to active (65-79% out of all students), sensitive (82-92%), visual (75-81%) and sequential (64-73%) manners of study. Master students are more susceptible to the reflective (43% of graduates vs 29% of undergraduates), intuitive (29% vs 12%) and verbal styles (43% vs 23%). No significant changes take place in the sequential-global dimension. The change in the general profile of a group of master students occurs at a stage of additional selection of graduates when they enter their master’s course. Progress in studies of eight chemistry and chemical technology disciplines was compared for students with typical and non-typical profiles. The higher the number of typical styles in learning preferences, the more definite distinction is observed in the academic performance. Students with typical learning profiles usually demonstrate better academic performance in studying chemical disciplines, but the difference becomes statistically significant with increasing the number of typical styles in learning preferences. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17807/orbital.v11i3.1395

Aligning endangered species management with fire-dependent ecosystem restoration: manager perspectives on red-cockaded woodpecker and longleaf pine management actions

BackgroundEndangered species management has been criticized as emphasizing a single-species approach to conservation and, in some cases, diverting resources from broad-based, land management objectives important for overall biodiversity maintenance. Herein we examine perceptions on management for an endangered species whose habitat requirements largely depend on frequent fire, the red-cockaded woodpecker (Leuconotopicus borealis Vieillot). In doing so, we consider the alignment between species-specific population recovery actions and broader ecosystem restoration goals. Through semi-structured interviews with natural resource professionals (n = 32) in the Southeast Coastal Plain of the United States, we examined manager perspectives on the evolution of recovery efforts and the potential alignment of recovery efforts with other management goals and objectives on public lands.ResultsParticipants described an evolution of approaches to manage red-cockaded woodpeckers, from an initial emphasis on intensive management actions with a single-species focus to reduce extinction risk (e.g., artificial inserts and translocation of individual birds) to a broader focus on restoring forest conditions and the processes that maintain them (e.g., fire). Most participants considered red-cockaded woodpecker habitat management to be compatible with other resource management actions (e.g., prescribed fire, mechanical thinning). However, there were some notable exceptions as a smaller but substantive number of participants indicated that specific habitat management guidelines (basal area guidelines for foraging habitat) posed a barrier to implementing preferred ecosystem restoration actions (transitioning stands of fast-growing, short-lived pines to longleaf pine [Pinus palustris Mill.]). Overall, participants expected efforts to provide habitat for red-cockaded woodpeckers to continue regardless of its conservation status and that intensive, single-species management actions would likely decrease over time.ConclusionsProviding for the specific needs of specialist species that are in decline is often necessary to prevent their extinction in the near term. Our findings suggest that the ability to connect long-term management actions to recover endangered species to other agency priorities may promote the willingness of managers to prioritize and continue long-term management of their habitats.

Filipino Students' Active-Passive Voice Preference in Invitation Letters

Discussions on active and passive use are rich in literature. However, there is a remarkable dearth of studies showing students' actual voice preferences after all concepts of the voice have been introduced. This study aims at ascertaining Filipino university students' actual preference of voice in invitation letters written in 2012, 2014, and 2015. It also looks at the tense-aspect combinations and the semantics achieved in the two voice categories. Three groups taking technical writing course from three universities in Manila produced 135 letters. Letters were run using AntConc and UAM Corpus tools. Results confirm the dominance of active voice, with passive almost nil in the corpus. The preference is found to be statistically significant. The dominance of active voice may suggest that foregrounding the doers is important. Moreover, there is no significant difference between the long and agentless passive. Although the results came from the parochial Philippine context, implications respecting students' preference of voices may be universal. Limitations and trajectories are offered accordingly.

Is Technical Efficiency Affected by Farmers’ Preference for Mitigation and Adaptation Actions against Climate Change? A Case Study in Northwest Mexico

Climate change has adverse effects on agriculture, decreasing crop quality and productivity. This makes it necessary to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies that contribute to the maintenance of technical efficiency (TE). This study analyzed the relationship of TE with farmers’ mitigation and adaptation action preferences, their risk and environmental attitudes, and their perception of climate change. Through the stochastic frontier method, TE levels were estimated for 370 farmers in Northwest Mexico. The results showed the average efficiency levels (57%) for three identified groups of farmers: High TE (15% of farmers), average TE (72%), and low TE (13%). Our results showed a relationship between two of the preferred adaptation actions against climate change estimated using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. The most efficient farmers preferred “change crops,” while less efficient farmers preferred “invest in irrigation infrastructure.” The anthropocentric environmental attitude inferred from the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale was related to the level of TE. Efficient farmers were those with an anthropocentric environmental attitude, compared to less efficient farmers, who exhibited an ecocentric attitude. The climate change issues were more perceived by moderately efficient farmers. These findings set out a roadmap for policy-makers to face climate change at the regional level.

Spectrum allocation, media policy and the key stakeholders’ understanding of digitalization in Austria: A shift in the regulatory preferences from broadcasting to broadband

Recent developments regarding media services transmitted through broadcasting and broadband technology have sparked new trends in digitalization and media convergence. Digitalization was supposed to safeguard the key social role of broadcasting in Europe, but it has mainly intensified its market dependence and orientation. Broadcasters no longer have priority in spectrum policy over online audio–visual services and broadband. Against this background, we analyse how much broadcasting is losing ground as a privileged cultural form as well as a widely used form of electronic mass communication technology in Austria. Through document analysis and stakeholder interviews, this article addresses how far, between 2007 and 2017, regulation, frequency allocations and the preferences of politicians and key stakeholders point at the substitution of broadcasting by broadband as the main means for the provision of media mass communication. The project draws on a new-institutionalist approach, which states that the output in a given policy process can be understood by researching technological change and the preferences of state and market actors together with the ideological cleavages and the formal and informal institutional rules affecting the process. The research objectives are: (1) to assess the evolution of media policy and communication legislation affecting broadcasting and electronic communication during the final stage of TV digitalization in Austria; (2) to assess the available supply and demand of the radio spectrum for free-to-air (FTA) broadcasting and the frequency share of broadcasters and (mobile) broadband operators; (3) to assess the understanding that political decision-makers and key stakeholders have regarding the role of broadcasting and broadband services both as social practice and as a technological solution for mass communication. The findings, which generally point to a shift from broadcast to broadband, are analysed against the background of the WRC 2015 outcome.

Latent space modelling of multidimensional networks with application to the exchange of votes in Eurovision song contest

The Eurovision Song Contest is a popular TV singing competition held annually among country members of the European Broadcasting Union. In this competition, each member can be both contestant and jury, as it can participate with a song and/or vote for other countries' tunes. Throughout the years, the voting system has repeatedly been accused of being biased by the presence of tactical voting, according to which votes would represent strategic interests rather than actual musical preferences of the voting countries. In this work, we develop a latent space model to investigate the presence of a latent structure underlying the exchange of votes. Focusing on the period from 1998 to 2015, we represent the vote exchange as a multivariate network: each edition is a network, where countries are the nodes and two countries are linked by an edge if one voted for the other. The different networks are taken to be independent replicates of a common latent space capturing the overall relationships among the countries. Proximity denotes similarity, and countries close in the latent space are assumed to be more likely to exchange votes. Therefore, if the exchange of votes depends on the similarity between countries, the quality of the competing songs might not be a relevant factor in the determination of the voting preferences, and this would suggest the presence of bias. A Bayesian hierarchical modelling approach is employed to model the probability of a connection between any two countries as a function of their distance in the latent space, and of network-specific parameters and edge-specific covariates. The inferred latent space is found to be relevant in the determination of edge probabilities, however, the positions of the countries in such space only partially correspond to their actual geographical positions.

Consociational Democracy and Political Engineering in Postwar Kosovo

This article examines the consociational democracy installed in Kosovo after the war. Starting from the premise that the electoral system is considered one of the key instruments for the engineering of post-conflict societies with deep ethnic divisions, the article analyzes the preferences of local and international actors for the type of electoral system. In particular, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission’s reluctance to organize elections without a prior creation of an institutional base, as well as grand governing coalitions. The mechanisms of consociational democracy aim at addressing elite cooperation between different ethnic communities for building peace and stability in post-conflict societies. But focusing on the intra- and inter-community dynamics of cooperation and confrontation between elites, I conclude that the main obstacle to building a democratic multi-ethnic society in Kosovo and implementing the power-sharing arrangements was the uncertainty over the status of Kosovo.

Animals Australia and the Challenges of Vegan Stereotyping

Animals Australia and the Challenges of Vegan Stereotyping

Temp Nations? A Research Agenda on Migration, Temporariness, and Membership

This article outlines a research agenda to study how, why, and with what consequences systems of migration policy that rely on time-delimited statuses have been tools of nation-state making. Taking a long view and comparing key contemporary cases, I argue that temporary migration regimes have been appealing because they purport to reconcile the disparate interests and preferences of political actors in sending and receiving countries, native and foreign workers, and employers. Such regimes have been a means for the affirmative selection of migrants as workers—an approach that preserves the option of rejecting them as permanent members. The proposed research would uncover the full range of temporal means by which states have shaped populations through migration policy. Substantively, it explores how changes in the ratio of temporary to permanent statuses affect the meaning of political belonging. This would include an examination of how the policing of temporariness requires routine bureaucratic monitoring as well as extreme measures like deportation with consequences for migrants as well as for the communities in which they live.

The (Co-)Location Sharing Game

Abstract Most popular location-based social networks, such as Facebook and Foursquare, let their (mobile) users post location and co-location (involving other users) information. Such posts bring social benefits to the users who post them but also to their friends who view them. Yet, they also represent a severe threat to the users’ privacy, as co-location information introduces interdependences between users. We propose the first game-theoretic framework for analyzing the strategic behaviors, in terms of information sharing, of users of OSNs. To design parametric utility functions that are representative of the users’ actual preferences, we also conduct a survey of 250 Facebook users and use conjoint analysis to quantify the users’ benefits o f sharing vs. viewing (co)-location information and their preference for privacy vs. benefits. Our survey findings expose the fact that, among the users, there is a large variation, in terms of these preferences. We extensively evaluate our framework through data-driven numerical simulations. We study how users’ individual preferences influence each other’s decisions, we identify several factors that significantly affect these decisions (among which, the mobility data of the users), and we determine situations where dangerous patterns can emerge (e.g., a vicious circle of sharing, or an incentive to over-share) – even when the users share similar preferences.

A comparison of preference elicitation methods for multi-criteria design decisions about resilient and sustainable buildings

Designing sustainable and resilient buildings is a complex process involving multiple actors and numerous, often conflicting, criteria to describe the social, environmental, and economic consequences of design decisions. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a well-established branch of systematic decision science that may be used to narrow the choice set and balance decision criteria and objectives. MCDM methods rely on eliciting decision makers’ (DM) criteria preferences through surveys—a critical, but often time-consuming and expensive process. This study compares two survey methods—Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique and Potentially All Pairwise RanKings of all possible Alternatives—used to capture DM’s preferences for subjective criteria relevant to the design of resilient and sustainable buildings. Significant differences were found between the results of the two methods, indicating that building design criteria are evaluated differently in different contexts. However, most DMs reported that both surveys accurately captured their preferences, complicating conclusions about DM’s actual preferences through single surveys. The design professionals surveyed also report lower cognitive load for the direct weighting method. Although this study does not report a preferred survey method, the findings suggest that great care must be taken when eliciting DM preferences, and when attempting to apply MCDM to building design decisions.

Abstract 253: Talk to Me About Your Medication Nonadherence: Stories from Older Adults with Heart Failure

Background: More than half of all heart failure (HF) patients do not take medications as prescribed, resulting in substantial negative health outcomes. Research has shown that medication adherence may be more a consequence of individual decisions rather than the ability to follow prescribed regimens, yet very little is known about older adults’ decision-making regarding nonadherence to medications for HF. Objective: The purpose of this study was to gain understanding and insight into older adults’ decision-making experiences and perceptions in choosing not to take HF medications as prescribed in the community setting. Methods: Using a narrative inquiry approach, the personal narratives of eleven adults aged 65 and older who took at least two daily medications for HF were gathered using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The data in this study were organized and analyzed using Riessman’s framework for narrative analysis. Results: This study suggests that medication nonadherence in older adults with HF is primarily attributed to intentional decisions, based on personal values, to deviate from the prescribed regimen. Although participants made decisions to take selected medications differently than prescribed, they did not perceive themselves to be nonadherent. Participants perceived their decisions for medication nonadherence as logical and necessary to maintain their health. None of the participants discussed their medication-taking decisions with their practitioner and described consulting resources, such as the Internet, for medication information. Conclusions: Assessments should aim to understand actual medication-taking routines and patient preferences. The development of interventions that utilize resources that are readily accessible to patients may promote decisions for medication adherence.

Trading Places, Trading Platforms: The Geography of Realignment

What motivates politicians and political parties to shift their positioning on an issue? Focusing on the case of trade policy in advanced plurality countries, I argue that the relative positioning of parties on an existing issue can change even when the preferences of the key actors (voters and politicians) are held constant, and even when party leaders continue to represent the same constituencies. In advanced plurality countries, college-educated voters support free trade, and high-density constituencies are predominantly represented by Left incumbents. As college-educated workers migrate to high-density constituencies in pursuit of higher wages, Left incumbents increasingly embrace free trade, while Right incumbents take more protectionist positions. I provide empirical support for several observable implications of my theory.