Voluntary Payment Research Articles

Improving payment of traffic fines with financial incentives: Discounts vs. penalties

The effective enforcement of traffic laws is critical for improved road safety outcomes. Decisions to follow traffic rules and pay fines are influenced by formal institutions (e.g. laws, court summons, and fines) as well as informal institutions (e.g. norms and aspects of culture). Formal and informal institutions create incentives that should be designed to steer individuals’ behaviour towards desired outcomes. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the institutions to deal with traffic violations in South Africa currently create effective incentives. This paper discusses the findings of a controlled laboratory experiment, conducted with a sample of university students, that tested the efficacy of different financial incentives that may influence the payment of traffic fines. An early payment discount was compared to a late payment penalty (used in other countries, for example, some states in the USA), and to the absence of any incentives. Furthermore, we examined whether the willingness to settle fines is sensitive to the likelihood of detection by the authorities. We found that introducing financial incentives significantly increases voluntary payment of fines, irrespective of whether immediate payment is encouraged with a discount or late payment is discouraged with a surcharge. In addition, subjects are more sensitive to the likelihood of detection when financial incentives are present.

Voluntary disclosures of payments from pharmaceutical companies to healthcare professionals in Germany: a descriptive study of disclosures in 2015 and 2016

ObjectiveTo analyse voluntary payment reports of pharmaceutical companies to German healthcare professionals (HCPs) in 2015 and 2016 based on an industry-self-regulating transparency codex.Design and participantsCohort study of all German HCPs...

Проблеми та шляхи оптимізації виконання адміністративного стягнення у виді суспільно корисних робіт

У статті приділено увагу проблемам застосування адміністративного стягнення у виді суспільно корисних робіт, упровадженого для погашення наявної заборгованості зі сплати аліментів. Зокрема, розглянуто проблемні питання, що виникають під час організації виконання рішень суду. Окремо приділено увагу питанню щодо оптимізації провадження з виконання постанов суду про накладення суспільно корисних робіт. Запропоновано зміни до чинного законодавства для удосконалення виконання постанов у справах про адміністративні правопорушення.

The Tip Perception of the Hotel Employees: Wage or Reward?

The “tip” phenomenon attracts the attention of various disciplines such as economics, sociology and psychology while it is a voluntary payment added on the service fee. A vast majority of the research on tipping examine the tipping behavior and motivation of the customers in the light of customer responses. There is a limited number of studies examining the “tip” phenomenon from an employee perspective. The aim of this study is to determine the tipping perceptions and beliefs of the employees who communicate face-to-face with customers and work in the hotel industry in Turkey. Our study reveals the meaning of tipping for hotel employees, the dynamics that determine the customers’ tipping behavior and the strategies that employees use to get a tip, considering the experience of the employees who worked/are working in a five-star hotel.

Policy and Pandemic: The Changing Practice of Nephrology During the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Outbreak.

The coronavirus (coronavirus disease-2019) pandemic has changed care delivery for patients with end-stage kidney disease. We explore the US healthcare system as it pertains to dialysis care, including existing policies, modifications implemented in response to the coronavirus disease-2019 crisis, and possible next steps for policy makers and nephrologists. This includes policies related to resource management, use of telemedicine, prioritization of dialysis access procedures, expansion of home dialysis modalities, administrative duties, and quality assessment. The government has already established policies that have instated some flexibilities to help providers focus their response to the crisis. However, future policy during and after the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic can bolster our ability to optimize care for patients with end-stage kidney disease. Key themes in this perspective are the importance of policy flexibility, clear strategies for emergency preparedness, and robust health systems that maximize accessibility and patient autonomy.

‘Warehouse’ or research centre? Analyzing public preferences for conservation, pre-breeding and characterization activities at the Czech genebank

Genebanks are places where crop varieties are stored, catalogued, and made available for redistribution so that their genetic diversity is not lost. Besides conserving cultivated crop diversity, some genebanks also conserve the wild relatives of crops, which can contain useful traits not present in the domesticated genepool, and can undertake other activities to make genetic diversity more usable in breeding, such as characterization and evaluation efforts and pre-breeding. We present here the results of a stated preference survey that elicits the preferences of the general Czech public for the conservation of additional wheat and wild wheat varieties, characterization and evaluation activities, and pre-breeding efforts. Czech citizens were asked whether they would be willing to make a one-time voluntary payment to finance specific, 10-year conservation programmes at the Czech genebank. Using a sequence of single-bounded dichotomous choice questions, we estimate a random effects probit model to analyze preferences for such conservation programmes. We find that Czech respondents had a strong preference for characterization and evaluation, and while they do not value pre-breeding, they are willing to pay for the conservation of additional wild wheat accessions (though not for cultivated wheat varieties). In aggregate, the estimated benefits are substantial compared to the current costs of conservation. The stated preference approach of this paper permits the estimation of the social value of crop diversity conservation and associated investments in research, including non-market values. Our results provide information of potential use for policymakers in relation to setting priorities for the funding of agricultural research.

Index Analysis of Administrative Offenses in Ukraine in 2014-2018

An objective assessment of the state and development of socio-economic phenomena and processes can only be ensured by use of properly selected statistical and mathematical methods. These methods cease to be a matter of interest in practical activities where there is no certainty as to how far they can be applied to specific tasks. Given significant advances in technology for the collection and processing of statistics, the proper use of statistical and mathematical methods is significantly hampered by insufficient knowledge of methods, their specifics, applications, and capacities to evaluate information.
 The article deals with the methodology of index analysis of statistical information on administrative offenses using data in Ukraine for 2014–2018. It is shown that the analytical system of statistical indices can be used to solve the tasks set out in the article, by the method of statistical groupings using the methods of statistical analysis of structural shifts.
 The theoretical and methodological provisions of the index analysis of statistical information on administrative offenses are demonstrated by data on the amount of the fines imposed, the amount of the fine paid voluntarily and the amount of property damage caused. The statistical information on the dynamics of fines and property damages in Ukraine for 2014–2018, as well as information on the fining depending on the performance of the administrative bodies, including by legal ground for the fining, are provided. The hypothesis on the inadequate quality of the administrative records prepared by the respective authorities needs to be further investigated, as the voluntary payments of fines, case-law of the local courts or compensation for material damage tend to be low. Considering the above hypothesis, it is established that an increase in the amount of fines imposed is attributed to the numbers of administrative cases rather than the quality of information used in their preparation.

Children and Their Debts: Current Situation in the Czech Republic Part Two: Specific Aspects of Debts of Children Arising from Contracts for Transportation of Persons

The paper deals with the issue of debts incurred by minors due to using public transport without a valid ticket. The authors subsequently analyse the particular legally significant facts, namely the conclusion of the contract, the ticket inspection, the imposition of the surcharge on top of the fare, the possibility of voluntary payment of the debt, and if not paid, its further increase related to filing a claim in court. Attention is also paid to the procedural aspects of these cases, where the authors point out the unsatisfactory representation of the minor in the proceedings, which in the end appears to be the main cause of the issue. The authors also draw attention to recent changes in the fare system for people aged under 26, which may also – albeit to a limited extent – contribute to reducing the frequency of this problem.

Особливий механізм справляння податків і зборів в умовах функціонування спрощеної системи оподаткування

The special taxation is used in the Tax Code of Ukraine as a key term in defining a simplified of taxation, accounting and reporting, but it remains unjustified in terms of theoretical construction and semantic origin. However, even in the absence of a scientific definition, the special taxation has its practical application, as it participates in distributive relations in the implementation of financial and economic activities by micro, small and agricultural enterprises. The purpose of the article is to reveal the essence of a special taxation and its place in defining the Ukrainian simplified taxation system. The author connects the simplified taxation with the system category and its inherent elements. The structure of the simplified taxation was clarified. The differences between the different interpretations of the term were determined. According to the author, the special taxation is a separate scientific category. The hierarchical influence of the tax and the special taxation under the conditions of functioning of the simplified taxation system, accounting and reporting was revealed. The intermediary role of the special taxation between the tax policy of support and development of microenterprise, small and agricultural entrepreneurship and the simplified taxation was proved. The content of the concepts of special, mechanism, and the phrase mechanism of tax and was characterized. The meaning of the concept of collection of taxes and was expanded to include the procedure of and accrual. The content of the phrases voluntary payment and self-payment of taxes and fees was differentiated. The author described the special taxation in the conditions of functioning of the simplified taxation system. The expediency of using a special taxation as a key phrase in the legislative definition of a simplified taxation system, accounting and reporting was justified.

Implications of the Advancing American Kidney Health Initiative for kidney transplant centers.

The announcement of the Advancing American Kidney Health (AAKH) Initiative on July 10, 2019 was met with a mix of excitement and trepidation, befitting a proposed radical reconfiguration of the delivery of kidney disease care. Aspiring to reduce the incidence of end-stage renal disease, increase the prevalence of home dialysis, and double the number of organs available for transplant, the AAKH payment models primarily focus on incenting behaviors of general nephrologists, though actualizing positive incentives will require the active cooperation of dialysis providers and transplant centers. Here, we review the AAKH initiatives' potential impact on all stakeholders and opine on financial and regulatory pressures on kidney transplant programs, outlining areas of uncertainty and concern, and suggest key points of reflection for clinical and administrative leaders of kidney transplant centers weighing participation in any of the voluntary payment models.

Capacity expansion of neutral ISPs via content provider participation: The bargaining edge

Many Internet service providers (ISPs) operate under network neutrality regulations that forbid differential QoS or differential pricing. This leads to lower profitability for ISPs. However, increasingly bandwidth-hungry content is making the consumers demand significantly improved ISP infrastructure. With the risk of poor consumer experience on them, ISPs have to invest in their infrastructure, but with limited scope for monetization. Hence, they are asking content providers (CPs) to contribute towards ISP capacity expansion. In this paper, we explore network neutral capacity expansion sponsored by voluntary contributions from CPs.We consider the scenario where CPs contribute to ISP capacity expansion via a voluntary payment. Since ISP capacity expansion can benefit all the CPs, and possibly even the ISP, selfish CPs will determine their contributions strategically. We consider three models for CPs to interact in determining their payments—a cooperative model, a non-cooperative model, and a bargaining model. Our analysis reveals a rather surprising result. We show that the bargaining model leads to a higher investment in the ISP infrastructure than even the cooperative model. This leads us to recommend the creation of transparent platforms for CPs to contribute directly to Internet capacity expansion.

Addressing the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials: Developments and Challenges within the Canadian Legal Landscape

AbstractWith 2018 marking the twentieth anniversary of Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, an opportunity presents itself to take stock of both developments and challenges for the legislative scheme. As demonstrated by a review of the parliamentary record, the desire to enact legislation to criminalize the offering of an inducement to a foreign public official to secure a business advantage was decidedly international in nature, with Canada aiming to bolster the efforts of others to create a level playing field for companies operating abroad. Yet, despite good intentions, as well as amendments to strengthen the Act in 2013 and the passage of additional transparency obligations in 2014, Canada’s legislative scheme has not kept pace with the international and multi-jurisdictional realities of the problem to be addressed. Renewed interest needs to be paid to the demand side of a foreign bribery transaction. In addition, the confiscation or forfeiture of any ill-gotten gains must become a priority, with the touting of success in securing the voluntary payment of sizeable fines failing to provide for a sufficient accounting for the wrongs done, particularly if the victims of corruption, even as a class that needs clearer definition, are to be made a true concern of the Act. The challenges posed by matters of immunity and the need to improve matters of multi-jurisdictional cooperation also need further attention.

An Insurer's Program To Incentivize Generic Oncology Drugs Did Not Alter Treatment Patterns Or Spending On Care.

The high and rising costs of anticancer drugs have received national attention. The prices of brand-name anticancer drugs often dwarf those of established generic drugs with similar efficacy. In 2007-16 UnitedHealthcare sought to encourage the use of several common low-cost generic anticancer drugs by offering providers a voluntary incentivized fee schedule with substantially higher generic drug payments (and profit margins), thereby increasing financial equivalence for providers in the choice between generic and brand-name drugs and regimens. We evaluated how this voluntary payment intervention affected treatment patterns and health care spending among enrollees with breast, lung, or colorectal cancer. We found that the incentivized fee schedule had neither significant nor meaningful effects on the use of incentivized generic drugs or on spending. Practices that adopted the incentivized fee schedule already had higher rates of generic anticancer drug use before switching, which demonstrates selection bias in take-up. Our study provides cautionary evidence of the limitations of voluntary payment reform initiatives in meaningfully affecting health care practice and spending.

Norm Uncertainty and Voluntary Payments in the Field

We investigate behavioral reactions toward exogenous changes of implicit norm-relevant information in a natural field setting where customers are free to choose if and how much to pay for a service. Customers’ voluntary payments are significantly affected by subtle information cues: cues that signal a high rather than a low payment norm increase payments by some 27%. Consistent with the conjecture that this effect is in large part driven by customers’ uncertainty about the actual norm, responses are mitigated when explicit norm-relevant information is provided. Additional treatments suggest that the reactions to the cues are not driven by mere saliency but by the information deduced from the cues in the presence of uncertainty. Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2937 . This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.

Voluntary pricing mechanisms for green product purchase: altruistic versus self-enhancing consideration

ABSTRACTVoluntary pricing mechanisms, such as Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW), could be a better pricing strategy to substitute for cash discount promotions. They can effectively promote the sales of conventional goods and services, while being influenced by socio-psychological variables. However, there is no clarity on the relative assessment of the impact of pricing frames, such as PWYW and Mark-Off-Your-Own-Price (MOYOP), on the consumers’ purchase of green products, where the purchase consideration might vary as the environment protection (altruistic) consideration versus the self-interest (self-enhancing) consideration. Further, there remains ambiguity on when and why such pricing mechanisms will work. This study, through an experiment, examines the buyers’ varied responses for the PWYW price frame versus the MOYOP price frame versus the fixed price frame under the environment protection (altruistic) consideration versus the self-interest (self-enhancing) consideration. It shows that although buyers do not show any difference in the mean voluntary payment between PWYW versus MOYOP frames as such; they prefer PWYW price frame under the environment protection (altruistic) consideration and MOYOP price frame under the self-interest (self-enhancing) consideration. The results show that the perception of price fairness mediates the relationship between pricing mechanism and willingness to buy (WTB). Furthermore, this study finds that price consciousness impacts the indirect effect of pricing mechanisms on WTB via perceived price fairness. The present study is the first to examine and analyze different considerations when the buyers’ preference varied for the PWYW versus MOYOP pricing frames. This study has suggested the underlying role of the perception of price fairness and price consciousness in the participative pricing mechanism on purchase.

Nudging tourists to donate for conservation: Experimental evidence on soliciting voluntary contributions for coastal management

This research examines the donation behavior of tourists who are asked to donate to coastal conservation aimed at addressing a bundled mix of land and sea issues. Historically, the governance and financing of land and sea conservation have been separated; yet coastal tourism directly involves a mix of activities and development challenges which link land and sea together on the coast. Marine parks, and numerous studies examining their funding schemes, have typically focused on mandatory user fees targeting specific types of activities. For example, many studies focus only on scuba divers' willingness to pay (WTP) for marine conservation. Alternative funding mechanisms, such as voluntary contributions, may be preferred, or even necessary, to traditional government imposed fees, but much less is known about effective implementation. Relatively few studies focus on bundled cross-boundary conservation activities (i.e., land and sea conservation) from all visitors of a marine park (i.e., beachgoers, surfers, boaters, snorkelers) and its encompassing coastal area. In this study we target tourists visiting a popular island and employ field experimental methods to explore the optimal donation request mechanism and pricing levels that influence real voluntary payments for conservation. The field experiment examines voluntary payments under the treatment conditions: open-ended, a set of several suggested donation amounts, and default opt-in and opt-out at two price levels. The field experiment was conducted with tourists on the island of Gili Trawangan, Indonesia. Results reveal that tourists are willing to donate to bundled land-sea conservation issues and that there is a significantly higher propensity to donate in all treatment conditions compared to the open-ended condition. The default opt-out conditions garnered the highest rate of donations at 75% and 62% respectively for the lower and higher set amounts. The mean donation amount was largest in the higher default opt-out condition. Our results suggest that the optimal method of requesting voluntary donations is a set default amount requiring users to opt-out if they do not wish to donate. Implementing a default opt-out eco-donation targeting all types of visitors represents a significant source of funding and illustrates the potential for donations to finance land and sea conservation efforts, an important avenue for future investigation in many interconnected systems that have been historically governed and financed separately.

Informal taxes for the provision of public goods in Russian regions

The article studies the example of informal taxes in Russia — a phenomenon when citizens provide voluntary payments for financing local public goods. This so-called “self-taxation” has attracted attention in 2017 upon the adoption of the changes to the local government law, which simplified the procedure for local referendum. The article outlines institutional reasons for the emergence of this mechanism and its risks for Russia and other countries. The empirical analysis exploits the data by the Russian Statistical Agency and the Russian Treasury. Our results reveal a positive relationship between the coefficient of regional cofinancing of municipal projects and the growth in the share of voluntary payments in the non-tax revenues of local budgets. Therefore, self-taxation by citizens may be viewed as a signalling tool for enhancing the quality of local public goods.

Characteristics of Hospitals Exiting the Newly Voluntary Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Program

In 2018, Medicare made participation in the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) program, which had been mandatory for all hospitals in 67 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), voluntary in the 33 of 67 MSAs with the lowest historical costs. CJR was designed to hold hospitals accountable for the cost and quality of care during hip or knee replacement episodes, defined as hospitalization and 90 days of post-discharge care. We compared hospitals that stayed with the CJR program against those that withdrew. This information is important for understanding the effects of voluntary payment models.

Can a bonus overcome moral hazard? Experimental evidence from markets for expert services

Interactions between players with private information and opposed interests are often prone to bad advice and inefficient outcomes, e.g. markets for financial or health care services. In a deception game we investigate experimentally which factors could improve advice quality. Besides advisor competition and identifiability, we add the possibility for clients to make a voluntary payment, a bonus, after observing advice quality. While the combination of competition and reputation concerns achieves the highest rate of truthful advice, we observe a similar effect, when the bonus is combined with one of them. Thus, our results suggest that a voluntary component can act as a substitute for either competition or reputation, decreasing moral hazard.

Business attitudes towards funding ecosystem services provided by urban forests

Urban trees and woodlands provide a wide range of ecosystem services (ES) to society, for example, flood risk reduction, air purification, and moderation of urban heat islands. Despite this, local government budgets for tree planting and maintenance have declined in many cities throughout the world. Thus far, the academic literature has largely ignored whether businesses are willing to help fund urban forests and the ES they provide. Business financing via payments for ecosystem services (PES) within the urban realm is also under-researched and lacking in practice. This study aims to address these research gaps. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 30 businesses of varying sizes and sectors, operating in Southampton, UK. Respondents thought a public-private partnership would be feasible, with a focus on voluntary payments towards enhancing air quality, reducing flood risk, and improving aesthetics. Respondents would prefer to choose from a list of location-specific, cost-effective, monitored projects to fund directly, for marketing and/or corporate social responsibility purposes. To facilitate business funding of urban forest-based ES, clear communication of the expected environmental benefits and a strong business case are required, drawing on the experience of similar initiatives. From our findings, we recommend the piloting and analysis of such PES schemes.