Probabilistic Incentive Research Articles

Privacy-aware optimal load scheduling for energy management system of smart home

The wide deployment of smart meters has brought the significant challenge to privacy protection of residential users. However, the existing rechargeable battery schemes cannot protect the privacy when the consumer power usage is either high or low for a long period. A new energy management scheme for smart home is proposed to enhance the privacy protection ability while ensuring the electricity cost and comfort in the article. This article enhances privacy while addressing the joint optimization problem for smart home. Firstly, an energy management architecture incorporated the rechargeable batteries and renewable resources is constructed for enhancing privacy, where the user’s privacy is enhanced by utilizing the rechargeable batteries as well as the home appliance shifting. Secondly, the incentive probability is defined according to user satisfaction and the participation degree of demand response, and a probabilistic incentive mechanism is introduced to encourage more users to participate in household load schedule. Finally, the power cost, privacy as well as user satisfaction are systematically characterized in the objective function of the load scheduling, which is further decomposed by load classification. Then a hierarchical optimization method is leveraged to solve the optimal problem, maximizing the utilization of both residential users and power provider. The simulation results based on Pecan Street dataset validate the performance of the proposed strategy, and compared with the rechargeable battery schemes, the proposed scheme can save 19.72% of the electricity cost while ensuring privacy.

The effect of probabilistic incentives to promote cooperation during the pandemics using simulation of multi-agent evolutionary game

Social dilemmas describe conflict situations between immediate self-interest and longer-term collective interests. In these situations, it is better that all players work together to attain a common goal, but individuals may threaten the best payoff of the group by free-riding. Human behavior in a pandemic is one example of a social dilemma but wait-and-see games and relying on herd immunity to get a free ride generates a threat of continuing the pandemic. This study aims to use probabilistic incentives given by a third party as a mechanism to inhibit free-riding behavior by promoting cooperation in the volunteer dilemma game. For more realistic human behavior simulation, we use an agent-based model of network topology. When the parameters of the problem change gradually, an abrupt jump in the cooperation rate may happen and lead to a significant shift in the outcome. Catastrophe theory is a valuable approach to survey these nonlinear changes. This study tries to give some managerial insights to the decision-makers to find the minimum level of necessary effort in which the cooperation dominates the defection.

A Vehicular Crowdsensing Market for AVs

The rapid adoption of the vehicles and their on-board sensors as a primary means of transportation make them natural candidates for the outsourcing of data collection. However, vehicles mobility patterns tend to cluster into specific regions such as highways and popular roads, that makes their utilization difficult for data collection in isolated regions with low density traffic. We tackle this problem by proposing a probabilistic incentive mechanism for Vehicular Crowdsensing (VCS) that encourages vehicles to deviate from their pre-planned trajectories in order to visit and collect data from the isolated places. Our proposed framework is able to handle asynchronous vehicles. Also, vehicles consider the traffic holistically to find more profitable routes. By using a realistic vehicular movement data set (UBER movement), open-street maps (OSM) and SUMO vehicular traffic simulator, we show our algorithm significantly outperforms traditional approaches for trajectory generation in terms of spatial and temporal coverage, road utilization, and average participant utility.

Impact of probabilistic incentives on the evolution of cooperation in complex topologies

Social incentive, as a significant mechanism explaining the evolution of cooperation, has attracted great attention both theoretically and experimentally. In the present paper, we introduce an incentive mechanism in 2-person evolutionary games, in which each cooperative agent has a certain probability to acquire an extra positive or negative benefit. The presented results show that the probabilistic positive incentives promote cooperation, and the probabilistic negative incentives oppose cooperation. The robustness of the conclusions is tested for the prisoner’s dilemma game on the Erdös–Rényi random graphs and the Barabási–Albert scale-free networks, which may indicate that the conclusions are generally valid, irrespectively of the underlying interaction networks. In addition, the investigations of the impacts of heterogeneous incentives and varied incentive probabilities on the evolution of cooperation reveal that the essence that influence individual behaviors may be the potential incentive possibilities rather than the incentive itself. Our conclusion may be conducive to interpreting the emergence and maintenance of cooperation within the structured population.

Financial disincentives? A three-armed randomised controlled trial of the effect of financial Incentives in Diabetic Eye Assessment by Screening (IDEAS) trial

ObjectiveConflicting evidence exists regarding the impact of financial incentives on encouraging attendance at medical screening appointments. The primary aim was to determine whether financial incentives increase attendance at diabetic eye...

On the Validity of Cost-Saving Payment Methods in Dictator-Game Experiments: A Systematic Test

Abstract Driven by methodological concerns, theoretical considerations, and previous evidence, we systematically test the validity of common dictator-game variants with probabilistic incentives. We include four approaches and compare them to a standard dictator game: involving fewer receivers than dictators; paying only some subjects or decisions; role uncertainty at the time of the transfer decision. We also relate the dictator-game variants to established complementary individual difference measures of pro-sociality: social value orientation, personal values, a donation to charity, and Big Five personality factors. Our data show that dictator behavior is quite sensitive to the applied methods. The standard version of the dictator game has the highest validity. Involving fewer receivers than dictators and not paying for all decisions yields comparably valid results. By contrast, when only some subjects are paid or when subjects face uncertainty about their final player role, the expected associations with complementary pro-sociality measures are distorted. Under role uncertainty, generosity is biased upwards. We conclude that the validity of the dictator-game outcomes is highly sensitive to the applied methods.

The Effects Of Non-Monetary Incentives Upon Survey Refusal Tendencies Of The Affluent Consumer Population

This study examined the refusal to respond phenomenon in survey research. The effects of various non-monetary incentives upon response rates of upscale consumers were tested. High value probabilistic and low value reward incentives were administered, in conjunction with a control group. Chi Square analysis indicated a significant difference between response rates for the control and probabilistic executions. These results suggest that the high value probabilistic incentive actually decrease response rates in the affluent population.

Using Probabilistic Incentives to Increase Response Rates to Mail-return Highway Intercept Diaries

This article reports the results of a field experiment testing the effectiveness of a probabilistic monetary incentive to increase the rate of return of a highway intercept diary used to estimate the economic significance of tourism. The experiment consisted of two groups of travelers using a highway wayside rest just inside a state's borders. The control group was given the mail-return diary-questionnaire, while the experimental group was given the diary-questionnaire and told that they would be entered into a lottery for a $50 U.S. Savings Bond when the diary was returned. The rate of return of the diaries for the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group, but no other effects were found.