Preference Theory Research Articles

Co-development of breast cancer health promotion educational materials for ethnically diverse women working with hairdressing and beauty salons: BELONG study.

Improved screening uptake is essential for early breast cancer detection, women's health and reducing health disparities. However, minority ethnic and deprived communities often face lower breast cancer screening rates and limited access to culturally tailored educational materials. A recent review found limited culturally tailored materials for breast cancer education. To investigate the culturally appropriate interfaces and preferences of salon staff in educating their clients about breast cancer METHOD: We used a two-stage approach, following the Double Diamond framework; discover and define phases. Relevant breast cancer materials (i.e., based on cultural appropriateness, English language presentation, and alignment with the UK context) were assessed using the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) toolkit. Interviews with ethnically diverse salon staff provided insights into their needs and preferences for client education materials. Thematic analysis was applied to interview transcripts. Cultural appropriateness was evident in 9/14 (64%) of the materials identified (e.g., targeting black ethnicities with positive representations). Of those, six of them demonstrated an overall SAM rating of 76% ("Superior"). Thematic analysis of interviews identified seven key themes, including the importance of engagement strategies, education and awareness for health promotion, salon staff's role, preferred training methods, supportive materials, inclusivity, representation, and participant satisfaction. This study highlights the SAM toolkit's role in selecting suitable educational materials for breast cancer prevention. The research offers prospects for improving breast cancer awareness in ethnically diverse communities and addressing healthcare access disparities, with salon hairdressers emerging as crucial advocates for health promotion.

A two-stage stochastic preference analysis on group decision making with interval additive preference relations

Interval additive preference relation (IAPR) is an efficient tool for describing the uncertain pairwise comparisons between alternatives in group decision-making (GDM). Existing GDM methods with IAPRs view the preference value as a whole and establish concrete conflict/consensus mechanisms for fusing individual opinions while neglecting the stochastic preference and aggregation modes to meet the different demands of decision. Thus, to reflect the stochastic characteristic in both preference representation and group preference aggregation, this paper presents a novel two-stage stochastic preference analysis on GDM with IAPRs. In first stage, the method involves extracting stochastic additive preference relations (SAPRs) from the IAPRs. A preference relations matrix is then established using a logarithmic least squares model applied to the SAPRs. In second stage, the weighted preference matrix is synthesized by combining the preference relations matrix with the decision makers’ weight space. This leads to the computation of positive and negative ideal preference solutions, as well as positive and negative preference distances. Subsequently, the relative preference closeness is calculated based on these distances. Relative ranking results are determined by an algorithm evaluating pairwise comparisons among alternatives, resulting in transitional preference rankings. The second stage involve deriving ranking acceptance indices and ranking confidence degrees through a continuous extraction process, facilitating the establishment of the ultimate best preference rankings. The proposed method’s effectiveness and validity are demonstrated by numerical examples and Monte Carlo simulations.

Multi-perspective learning for enhanced user preferences for session-based recommendation

Due to the sparsity and anonymity of interactions within sessions, capturing user preferences by modeling item relationships poses a significant challenge. Previous methods have attempted to utilize collaborative information from adjacent sessions or item attribute knowledge as supplements. However, these methods are prone to introducing interfering information through their session similarity measurement strategies and attribute embedding learning processes, both requiring optimization. Moreover, they often fail to fully model global item relationships. To address these issues, we propose a novel method called Multi-perspective Learning for Enhanced User Preferences (MLEUP) for session-based recommendations. Specifically, we first construct reliable session groups by measuring the overlap and incompatibility of items across sessions to calculate session similarity. Then, by modeling attribute–item and attribute–attribute relationships, along with employing a neighbor-based contrastive self-supervised attribute learning task, we learn high-quality attribute embeddings that capture the user’s stable preferences. Next, leveraging the session groups, we model global item multi-granularity co-occurrence and high-order sequential relationships through designed attention layers, enabling us to learn informative item embeddings that represent the user’s dynamic preferences. Finally, we further model the correlated relationship between the two user preference representations. Our approach ensures that effective attribute knowledge and global collaborative information are learned to mitigate the data sparsity issue, while comprehensively modeling global item relationships to capture the user’s complex dynamic preferences. Experimental results demonstrate that MLEUP achieves state-of-the-art performance in terms of precision, MRR, and NDCG. The experimental datasets and source code of MLEUP are publicly available at https://github.com/lean030/MLEUP.

Optimal carrying capacity in rural tourism: Crowding, quality deterioration, and productive inefficiency

This paper introduces a novel framework for characterizing destination overcrowding in rural tourism using a production approach. We build upon destination life cycle, carrying capacity, and consumer preference theories to characterize optimal levels of overnight stays in the presence of disutility from crowding. Using panel data for rural tourism in Spanish provinces, we model crowding non-linearly as a demand shifter within a service production function. To deal with plausible endogeneity, we use a control function approach within a Stochastic Frontier regression. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we show there is a non-linear concave relationship between overnight stays and crowding. We calculate optimal carrying capacity levels (turning points) for each province and illustrate which regions are exhibiting negative externalities from overcrowding.

Schumpeter and the post‐Keynesian monetary theory

AbstractThe name of Schumpeter is not among those of the precursors of post‐Keynesian monetary theory. This seems understandable when considering Schumpeter's ferocious criticism of The General Theory. However, in recent years various authors have highlighted significant points of contact between Schumpeter's monetary theory and that of Keynes and of post‐Keynesians. The objective of this work is not only to indicate the similarities between Schumpeter's monetary theory and that of the post‐Keynesians, but rather to show that Schumpeter's approach to money and credit allows making post‐Keynesian monetary theory more solid. In particular, we will show that Schumpeter's monetary theory enables to develop an explanation of the principle of effective demand sounder than that based on the simple presence of endogenous money and on the liquidity preference theory.

Financial Crises and Economic Downturns of Commercial Banks in North Rift Region, Kenya

Financial Crises and Economic Downturns of Commercial Banks in North Rift Region, Kenya

By the people, for the people: Local government's representation of voter preferences under the Affordable Care Act

AbstractDecentralized government is hypothesized to lead public service investments to better align with political preferences across geographical regions, yet there has been limited rigorous testing of this hypothesis. We examine how local public provision of hospital services varied according to political preferences between 2006 and 2016. We use state Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a source of exogenous variation. Consistent with the motivation for federalism, we find that areas less supportive of the ACA tended to convert the state expansion into lower property taxes with lower public hospital expenditures, whereas, in states that expanded Medicaid, local governments tended to increase public provision of healthcare.

A Contrastive Analysis of the Morphological and Syntactic Aspects of Urhobo and Ijaw Languages

The study undertakes a contrastive analysis of the morphological and syntactic aspects of Urhobo language and the Izon language, which are two indigenous languages spoken in the Niger Delta area in Nigeria. Contrastive analysis is used as the theory of preference to explore these languages, to show their similarity and points of divergence. The findings from the study attest to the similarity of these languages predictably as a result of their shared origin as they both are from the same Niger-Congo language family. There are cases of exact translations and linguistic interconnectedness between both languages in the morphological level. The study also confirms that there is noticeable difference in all levels of linguistics that makes both languages not mutually intelligible. The research’s implications include recommendations for language teaching and preservation as both languages are highly relevant for intercultural communication. The study also recommends that further research should be done in Nigeria’s indigenous languages as a way to respect and maintain unique linguistic identities. Scholars from different Nigerian languages should encourage the development and the growth of the indigenous languages to stop them from going into extinction. English language is the official language in Nigeria, it is the language of government, commerce, education, law, mass media and other areas of communication at the official level. The Nigerian language learner encounters so many problems in learning English. This paper reveals the importance of our indigenous languages.

Self-regulatory resources and institutional formation: An experiment

A novel laboratory experiment is used to show that the state of people’s self-regulatory resources influences their reliance on the formal enforcement of norms in a social dilemma. The subjects’ self-regulatory resources are manipulated using well-known depletion tasks. On the one hand, when their resources are not depleted, most decide to govern themselves through decentralized, peer-to-peer punishment in a public goods dilemma, and then achieve high cooperation norms. On the other hand, when the resources are limited, the majority enact a costly formal sanctioning institution; backed by formal punishment, the groups achieve strong cooperation. A supplementary survey on the Covid-19 pandemic was conducted to enhance the external validity of the findings, generating a similar pattern while revealing that people’s desire to commit, not their beliefs about others’ behavior without formal enforcement, drives their institutional preferences. Self-control preference theories, combined with inequity aversion, can explain these patterns because they predict that those with limited self-control are motivated to remove temptations in advance as a commitment device.

The Specter of Revealed Preference Theory

My aim in this paper is to argue that the recent philosophical defenses of revealed preference theory do not withstand scrutiny. Towards this aim, I will first outline revealed preference theory. I will then briefly present the two most common arguments that the received view offers against it. Afterwards, I will outline three argumentative strategies for rehabilitating revealed preference theory, and successively rebut each of them.

Inter-Sectoral Linkages in Nigeria: Evidence from Agriculture and Manufacturing Sectors

The main purpose of the research was to establish determinants of commercial bank growth. The specific objectives of the study was to; determine the effect of default rate on loans on growth of commercial banks, determine the effect of level of interest income on growth of commercial banks and to establish the effect of forex transaction volume on growth of commercial banks listed in Nairobi Securities Exchange. The study was guided by the interest rate theory, international fisher effect theory and time preference theory. Using multiple regression analysis, we found support for the proposition that loan default rate, interest rate and forex transaction had a significant effect on growth of commercial banks. Keywords: Growth of commercial bank, default rate on loans, interest income and forex transaction volume DOI : 10.7176/DCS/9-1-06

Equilibrium Portfolio Selection for Smooth Ambiguity Preferences

This paper investigates the equilibrium portfolio selection for smooth ambiguity preferences in a continuous-time market. The investor is uncertain about the risky asset’s drift term and updates the subjective belief according to the Bayesian rule. A verification theorem is established, and an equilibrium strategy can be decomposed into a myopic demand and two hedging demands. When the prior is Gaussian, we provide an equilibrium solution in closed form. Moreover, a puzzle in the numerical results is interpreted via an alternative representation of the smooth ambiguity preferences. Funding: This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China [Grant 2020YFA0712700], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 11871036, 11901574, 12071146, 12271290, and 12371477], and the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences [Grant 22JJD910003].

The Impact of Firm Risk and the COVID-19 Crisis on Working Capital Management Strategies: Evidence from a Market Affected by Economic Uncertainty

The present study aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and firm risk on working capital management policies among manufacturing firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The study sample consists of 1200 observations and 200 companies listed on the TSE over a six-year period from 2016 to 2021; furthermore, the statistical method used to test the hypotheses is ordinary least squares (OLS). The results show that the COVID-19 pandemic has led managers to increase current assets to total assets ratio (CATAR), current ratio (CR), quick ratio (QR), net working capital (NWC), cash to current assets (CTCA) ratio, while it has caused a decrease in operational cycle (OC), days account receivables (DAR), and current liabilities to total assets ratio (CLTAR). Furthermore, we find that the higher the company’s risk, the more managers are motivated to embrace the working capital investment policy, net working capital, cash to current assets ratio, and cash conversion efficiency (CCE). In general, our findings indicate that during times of crisis, Iranian companies tend to adopt conservative working capital policies to ensure sufficient liquidity to respond appropriately to unforeseen events. In this study, the theory of liquidity preference aligns with the observed behavior of firms in response to the COVID-19 crisis and firm risk, where the emphasis on liquidity and short-term financial stability becomes paramount.

Legitimacy Revisited: Moral Power and Civil Disobedience

Abstract In Legitimacy: The Right to Rule in a Wanton World, I offer both a conceptual analysis of legitimacy, the power-liability view, and a substantive moral theory, the free group agency view. Here, I defend my account against three challenges brought by Kjarsten Mikalsen. First, though I argue that conceptual analysis should not prematurely close open moral questions, it is not my view that conceptual analysis must have no substantive implications. Second, though I acknowledge that free group agency ordinarily supports a moral duty to obey, it is a feature, not a bug, that my conceptual analysis is consistent with moral theories that disagree with my preferred moral theory. Third, I argue that Mikalsen’s proposed explanation of justified civil disobedience, which sees law in such cases as creating a moral claim-right that entails a merely presumptive duty, is less perspicuous than the explanation given by the power-liability view. Along the way, I emphasize that the distinction between felicitous moral power and justified causal power is as important as the distinction between moral liability and moral duty.

Exploring Seiberg-like N-alities with eight supercharges

We show that a large subclass of 3d N\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{N} $$\\end{document} = 4 quiver gauge theories consisting of unitary and special unitary gauge nodes with only fundamental/bifundamental matter have multiple Seiberg-like IR duals. A generic quiver T\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{T} $$\\end{document} in this subclass has a non-zero number of balanced special unitary gauge nodes and it is a good theory in the Gaiotto-Witten sense. We refer to this phenomenon as IR N-ality and the set of mutually IR dual theories as the N-al set associated with the quiver T\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{T} $$\\end{document}. Starting from T\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{T} $$\\end{document}, we construct a sequence of dualities by step-wise implementing a set of quiver mutations which act locally on the gauge nodes. The associated N-al theories can then be read off from this duality sequence. The quiver T\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{T} $$\\end{document} generically has an emergent Coulomb branch global symmetry in the IR, such that the rank of the IR symmetry is always greater than the rank visible in the UV. We show that there exists at least one theory in the N-al set for which the rank of the IR symmetry precisely matches the rank of the UV symmetry. In certain special cases that we discuss in this work, the correct emergent symmetry algebra itself may be read off from this preferred theory (or theories) in addition to the correct rank. Finally, we give a recipe for constructing the 3d mirror associated with a given N-al set and show how the emergent Coulomb branch symmetry of T\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{T} $$\\end{document} is realized as a UV-manifest Higgs branch symmetry of the 3d mirror. This paper is the second in a series of four papers on 3d N\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{N} $$\\end{document} = 4 Seiberg-like dualities, preceded by the work [1].

Sequent Calculi for Choice Logics

Choice logics constitute a family of propositional logics and are used for the representation of preferences, with especially qualitative choice logic (QCL) being an established formalism with numerous applications in artificial intelligence. While computational properties and applications of choice logics have been studied in the literature, only few results are known about the proof-theoretic aspects of their use. We propose a sound and complete sequent calculus for preferred model entailment in QCL, where a formula F is entailed by a QCL-theory T if F is true in all preferred models of T. The calculus is based on labeled sequent and refutation calculi, and can be easily adapted for different purposes. For instance, using the calculus as a cornerstone, calculi for other choice logics such as conjunctive choice logic (CCL) and lexicographic choice logic (LCL) can be obtained in a straightforward way.

A Theory of Minority Entrepreneurship

Since different racial and ethnic groups experience different entrepreneurial outcomes, we need to develop an explanation for these differences as a foundation for overcoming them. Early analyses of entrepreneurship by Cantillon, Turgot, Smith, Say are applied to problems of minority entrepreneurship. Menger, Schumpeter, and Kirzner provided the most modern and complete treatments, but entrepreneurship’s multifaceted nature makes it difficult to incorporate into formal models. Segmented markets and preferred habitat theories drawn from financial economics are applied to address special issues confronting minority entrepreneurs and suggest how they might inform public policy. Because policy implications are suggested, it is hoped that this paper may contribute to a constructive conversation on opportunities to encourage entrepreneurship and advance minority communities.

Predicting COVID-19 Vaccination Uptake Using a Small and Interpretable Set of Judgment and Demographic Variables: Cross-Sectional Cognitive Science Study.

Despite COVID-19 vaccine mandates, many chose to forgo vaccination, raising questions about the psychology underlying how judgment affects these choices. Research shows that reward and aversion judgments are important for vaccination choice; however, no studies have integrated such cognitive science with machine learning to predict COVID-19 vaccine uptake. This study aims to determine the predictive power of a small but interpretable set of judgment variables using 3 machine learning algorithms to predict COVID-19 vaccine uptake and interpret what profile of judgment variables was important for prediction. We surveyed 3476 adults across the United States in December 2021. Participants answered demographic, COVID-19 vaccine uptake (ie, whether participants were fully vaccinated), and COVID-19 precaution questions. Participants also completed a picture-rating task using images from the International Affective Picture System. Images were rated on a Likert-type scale to calibrate the degree of liking and disliking. Ratings were computationally modeled using relative preference theory to produce a set of graphs for each participant (minimum R2>0.8). In total, 15 judgment features were extracted from these graphs, 2 being analogous to risk and loss aversion from behavioral economics. These judgment variables, along with demographics, were compared between those who were fully vaccinated and those who were not. In total, 3 machine learning approaches (random forest, balanced random forest [BRF], and logistic regression) were used to test how well judgment, demographic, and COVID-19 precaution variables predicted vaccine uptake. Mediation and moderation were implemented to assess statistical mechanisms underlying successful prediction. Age, income, marital status, employment status, ethnicity, educational level, and sex differed by vaccine uptake (Wilcoxon rank sum and chi-square P<.001). Most judgment variables also differed by vaccine uptake (Wilcoxon rank sum P<.05). A similar area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) was achieved by the 3 machine learning frameworks, although random forest and logistic regression produced specificities between 30% and 38% (vs 74.2% for BRF), indicating a lower performance in predicting unvaccinated participants. BRF achieved high precision (87.8%) and AUROC (79%) with moderate to high accuracy (70.8%) and balanced recall (69.6%) and specificity (74.2%). It should be noted that, for BRF, the negative predictive value was <50% despite good specificity. For BRF and random forest, 63% to 75% of the feature importance came from the 15 judgment variables. Furthermore, age, income, and educational level mediated relationships between judgment variables and vaccine uptake. The findings demonstrate the underlying importance of judgment variables for vaccine choice and uptake, suggesting that vaccine education and messaging might target varying judgment profiles to improve uptake. These methods could also be used to aid vaccine rollouts and health care preparedness by providing location-specific details (eg, identifying areas that may experience low vaccination and high hospitalization).

Do consumers try to solve the air pollution problem themselves? the effects of air pollution on purchase of hybrid and electric cars

Using a unique panel dataset on air pollution and car sales from thirty major cities in China across three years, we estimate the impact of air pollution on the adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles. To identify the causal effect, we use three sets of interactive fixed effects to control for a large group of potential confounders and an instrument for the air pollution variable. Our results show that worse air quality leads consumers to purchase more hybrid and electric cars, and the effect is larger in cities with higher incomes. These findings are consistent with predictions from the social preferences theory and point out new directions for strategies to promote the adoption of hybrid and electric cars.

Exploring the Alternatives to the Male-Breadwinner Model – The Implications for Social Policy Study

Abstract This article begins by discussing some of the main approaches that have emerged to gender and family policy, before proceeding to discuss more modern trends. It begins by discussing institutional approaches, such as the male-breadwinner model, defamilialisation, degenderisation. Then it discusses cultural approaches, such as the national ideals of care, gendered moral rationalities, and Hakim’s preference theory. Then this article continues by briefly discussing attempts to broaden the discussion by bringing in children (including through the capabilities approach) and by adding an intersectional perspective.