Contributions published at Department of Business Administration (Egon Franck)

Objective: Vaccines are an effective means to reduce the spread of diseases, but they are sometimes met with hesitancy that needs to be understood. Method: In this study, we analyzed data from a large, cross-country survey conducted between June and August 2021 in 43 countries (N = 15,740) to investigate the roles of trust in government and science in shaping vaccine attitudes and willingness to be vaccinated. Results: Despite significant variability between countries, we found that both forms of institutional trust were associated with a higher willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Furthermore, we found that conspiratorial thinking and anti-expert sentiments predicted reduced trust in government and science, respectively, and that trust mediated the relationship between these two constructs and ultimate vaccine attitudes. Although most countries displayed similar relationships between conspiratorial thinking and anti-expert sentiments, trust in government and science, and vaccine attitudes, we identified three countries (Brazil, Honduras, and Russia) that demonstrated significantly altered associations between the examined variables in terms of significant random slopes. Conclusions: Cross-country differences suggest that local governments’ support for COVID-19 prevention policies can influence populations’ vaccine attitudes. These findings provide insight for policymakers to develop interventions aiming to increase trust in the institutions involved in the vaccination process.

Objective We examined changes in value interrelations during middle childhood. In line with the Personal Values Theory, we expected a value system, with individuals similarly valuing related motivations, and setting priorities between conflicting motivations. We hypothesized this system to develop dynamically during middle childhood as children deepen their understanding of their own values. Method Using unfolding analysis, we estimated intraindividual value structure coherence, that is, the extent to which the interrelations among a child's values are similar to the hypothesized interrelations. Cross-Cultural Study 1 (N = 4615, 6–12-year-old children) included children from 12 countries. Cross-Sequential Study 2 (N = 629, 6–10-year-old children at Time 1) included three annual measurements. Results In Study 1, we found a curvilinear association between age and intraindividual value structure coherence: Children's values were more coherent at ages 9–10 than before or after. Study 2 confirmed this pattern of within-individual development. Conclusions We propose that development in coherence with the theoretical value structure offers insight into children's understanding of values as well as changes in value priorities.

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Background The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global health crisis, leading to stigmatization and discriminatory behaviors against people who have contracted or are suspected of having contracted the virus. Yet the causes of stigmatization in the context of COVID-19 remain only partially understood. Using attribution theory, we examine to what extent attributes of a fictitious person affect the formation of stigmatizing attitudes towards this person, and whether suspected COVID-19 infection (vs. flu) intensifies such attitudes. We also use the familiarity hypothesis to explore whether familiarity with COVID-19 reduces stigma and whether it moderates the effect of a COVID-19 infection on stigmatization. Methods We conducted a multifactorial vignette survey experiment (2$^{8}$-design, i.e., N$_{Vignettes}$ = 256) in Germany (N$_{Respondents}$ = 4,059) in which we experimentally varied signals and signaling events (i.e., information that may trigger stigma) concerning a fictitious person in the context of COVID-19. We assessed respondents’ cognitive (e.g., blameworthiness) and affective (e.g., anger) responses as well as their discriminatory inclinations (e.g., avoidance) towards the character. Furthermore, we measured different indicators of respondents’ familiarity with COVID-19. Results Results revealed higher levels of stigma towards people who were diagnosed with COVID-19 versus a regular flu. In addition, stigma was higher towards those who were considered responsible for their infection due to irresponsible behavior. Knowing someone who died from a COVID infection increased stigma. While higher self-reported knowledge about COVID-19 was associated with more stigma, higher factual knowledge was associated with less. Conclusion Attribution theory and to a lesser extent the familiarity hypothesis can help better understand stigma in the context of COVID-19. This study provides insights about who is at risk of stigmatization and stigmatizing others in this context. It thereby allows identifying the groups that require more support in accessing healthcare services and suggests that basic, factually oriented public health interventions would be promising for reducing stigma.

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We study how the precision of managers' private post-contract predecision information affects the pay-performance relation. Endogenizing the information environment, we find that firms may optimally tie executive pay closer to firm performance as agency problems become more pronounced. Specifically, varying parameters measuring the severity of the agency problem, we identify parameter regions where firms with more pronounced agency problems optimally combine uninformative signals with a higher incentive rate than firms with less pronounced agency problems that optimally choose a perfect signal. We find this relation for various measures of the agency conflict such as the incongruency of the performance measure, its susceptibility to manipulation, or the agent's degree of risk aversion. Because the pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) is frequently used for measuring the efficiency of real world compensation arrangements, our results provide relevant insights for empirical research studying the determinants of the relation between executive pay and firm performance.

Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question–the focus of the present study–is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neutral valence and increases with both positive and negative valence: a symmetric V-shaped relationship. In the study reported here of self-reported affect during a remembered moment (N = 8,590), we tested the valence-arousal relationship in 33 societies with 25 different languages. The two most common hypotheses in the literature–independence and a symmetric V-shaped relationship–were not supported. With data of all samples pooled, arousal increased with positive but not negative valence. Valence accounted for between 5% (Finland) and 43% (China Beijing) of the variance in arousal. Although there is evidence for a structural relationship between the two, there is also a large amount of variability in this relation.

We are concerned with computing bid prices in network revenue management using approximate linear programming. It is well-known that affine value function approximations yield bid prices which are not sensitive to remaining capacity. The analytic reduction to compact linear programs allows the efficient computation of such bid prices. On the other hand, capacity-dependent bid prices can be obtained using separable piecewise linear value function approximations. Even though compact linear programs have been derived for this case also, they are still computationally much more expensive compared to using affine functions. We propose compact linear programs requiring substantially smaller computing times while, simultaneously, significantly improving the performance of capacity-independent bid prices. This simplification is achieved by taking into account remaining capacity only if it becomes scarce. Although our proposed linear programs are relaxations of the unreduced approximate linear programs, we conjecture equivalence and provide according numerical support. We measure the quality of an approximation by the difference between the expected performance of an induced policy and the corresponding theoretical upper bound. Using this paradigm in numerical experiments, we demonstrate the competitiveness of our proposed linear programs.

Consistent with outcome bias, we replicate the finding of Lefgren et al. (2015) showing that professional basketball coaches in the NBA discontinuously change their starting lineup more often after narrow losses than after narrow wins, even though this outcome is conditionally uninformative. As our paper shows, this pattern is not restricted to the NBA; we find evidence of outcome bias in the top women’s professional basketball league and college basketball. Finally, we show that outcome bias in coaching decisions generalizes to the National Football League (NFL). We conclude that outcome bias is credible and robust, although it has weakened over time.

How might irrelevant events infiltrate voting decisions? The current research introduces a new mechanism - regulatory focus—by which incidental environmental factors can affect vote choice. Regulatory focus theory proposes that there are two fundamental psychological orientations in how people navigate their worlds: A prevention focus tunes cognition towards security, safety, protection, and risk aversion, whereas a promotion focus orients attention toward achieving growth and positive outcomes. We present a model for how wind speed on Election Day affects voting by shifting the regulatory focus of voters. We propose that increased wind speed shifts voters toward selecting prevention-focused options (e.g., restricting immigration, rejecting Brexit, rejecting Scottish Independence) over promotion-focused options (e.g., promoting immigration, favoring Brexit, favoring Scottish Independence). We further argue that wind speed only affects voting when an election clearly offers a choice between prevention and promotion-focused options. Using a mixed-method approach—archival analyses of the “Brexit” vote, the Scotland independence referendum, and 10 years of Swiss referendums, as well as one field study and one experiment - we find that individuals exposed to higher wind speeds become more prevention-focused and more likely to support prevention-focused electoral options. The findings highlight the political importance of incidental environmental factors. Practically, they speak to the benefit of absentee voting and expanding voting periods beyond traditional election days.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled voice assistants (VAs) such as Amazon Alexa increasingly assist shopping decisions and exhibit empathic behavior. The advancement of empathic AI raises concerns about machines nudging consumers into purchasing undesired or unnecessary products. Yet, it is unclear how the machine’s empathic behavior affects consumer responses and decision-making outcomes during voice-enabled shopping. This article draws from the service robot acceptance model (sRAM) and social response theory (SRT) and presents an individual-session experiment where families (vs. individuals) complete actual shopping tasks using an ad-hoc Alexa app featuring high (vs. standard) empathic capabilities. We apply the experimental conditions as moderators to the structural model, bridging selected functional, social-emotional, and relational variables. Our framework collocates affective empathy, explicates the bases of consumers’ beliefs, and predicts behavioral outcomes. Findings demonstrate (i) an increase in consumers’ perceptions, beliefs, and adoption intentions with empathic Alexa, (ii) a positive response to empathic Alexa holding constant in family settings, and (iii) an interaction effect only on the functional model dimensions whereby families show greater responses to empathic Alexa while individuals to standard Alexa.

One reason consumers buy unsustainable products is that judging the environmental impact of food choices is very difficult. This study examines whether using carbon footprint labels to convey relevant impact information increases the tendency to choose low-carbon food items. In a pre-registered online experiment, 1,126 participants chose between low-CO2 and high-CO2 products 14 times (e.g., chili sin carne versus chili con carne or margarine versus butter). The two alternatives were either presented without labels (control), with a label communicating the food alternative’s relative sustainability within its food category (traffic light), with a label communicating the absolute carbon emissions in kg CO2 (absolute), or with a label communicating both the relative sustainability and absolute carbon emissions (combined). The results show that the traffic light label and the combined label increased the chance of choosing a low-CO2 (versus a high-CO2) food item. There were no interactions between carbon footprint labels and environmental concern / cognitive reflection. Our research contributes to the discussion on the effectiveness and practical relevance of carbon footprint labels by testing a specific traffic light design and demonstrating the limited impact of communicating absolute carbon emissions.

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