Contributions in Merlin

The effectiveness of Voting Advice Applications (VAA) is often compromised by the length of their questionnaires. To address user fatigue and incomplete responses, some applications (such as the Swiss Smartvote) offer a condensed version of their questionnaire. However, these condensed versions can not ensure the accuracy of recommended parties or candidates, which we show to remain below 40%. To tackle these limitations, this work introduces an adaptive questionnaire approach that selects subsequent questions based on users’ previous answers, aiming to enhance recommendation accuracy while reducing the number of questions posed to the voters. Our method uses an encoder and decoder module to predict missing values at any completion stage, leveraging a two-dimensional latent space reflective of political science’s traditional methods for visualizing political orientations. Additionally, a selector module is proposed to determine the most informative subsequent question based on the voter’s current position in the latent space and the remaining unanswered questions. We validated our approach using the Smartvote dataset from the Swiss Federal elections in 2019, testing various spatial models and selection methods to optimize the system’s predictive accuracy. Our findings indicate that employing the IDEAL model both as encoder and decoder, combined with a PosteriorRMSE method for question selection, significantly improves the accuracy of recommendations, achieving 74% accuracy after asking the same number of questions as in the condensed version.

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.

Many blockchain consortia have been established to build blockchain information systems. While the developed blockchain information systems were promising, few have reached market entry. Indeed, blockchain consortia often lost development focus due to high system complexity and a lack of understanding of how to create a system that will serve the needs and bring value to all stakeholders. Thus, stakeholders struggled to leverage blockchain information systems' full value. Prior studies demonstrated that blockchain systems pose not only technical but also organizational challenges. Analysing six blockchain consortia, we identify their value mechanisms, organizational problems, and organizational solutions that successful blockchain consortia experience while organizing themselves for value. As a result, we propose a new organizational form, i.e., a layered organization, for blockchain consortia to achieve better value creation.

Temperament is claimed to be the basis for personality; therefore, discovering the temperamental underpinnings of borderline personality disorder and its facets is crucial for understanding this personality disorder. In this article, we explore these underpinnings by using a new model of temperament, based on the Regulative Theory of Temperament, the Big Two of temperament, and the Circumplex of Personality Metatraits. Two studies were conducted on adults—the first was in a general population sample (N = 315) and the second was in a clinical sample (N = 113) in people with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. The following measurements were used: The Screening Instrument for Borderline Personality Disorder (SI‐Bord), the Five‐Factor Borderline Inventory‐Short Form (FFBI‐SF), and the Temperament Metadimensions Questionnaire (TMQ). General borderline was explained by Reactivity (high Sensitivity) and Activity (high Dynamism). At the facet level, the Borderline Internalizing Facet was mainly explained by Reactivity (high Sensitivity), while the Borderline Externalizing Facet was explained by Activity (high Dynamism) in addition to Reactivity (high Sensitivity). The results of our study revealed specific temperamental underpinnings of borderline and its facets. Reactivity underlies all borderline facets, while Activity differentiates between the Borderline Externalizing Facet and Borderline Internalizing Facet.

Retailers, service providers, and manufacturers have discovered that complementary optional insurance is an attractive source of profit and frequently charge substantial insurance prices compared to the price of the product to be insured. The implicit assumption behind this pricing strategy is that product purchase decisions are independent of the insurance offer. The authors question this assumption and propose that consumers interpret the price of insurance as a risk signal with respect to the underlying product. Perceived risk, in turn, negatively affects consumers’ decision to purchase the product in a given purchase situation. The results of a survey, three online experiments, and two studies using transactional data provide evidence for the proposed insurance price risk signal. The findings reveal that perceived risk mediates the link between the relative insurance price level and consumers’ decision to purchase the underlying product. Offering other optional add-ons and providing objective risk information weakens the insurance price risk signal.

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the evolving rules in international tennis tournaments, focusing on the sport’s adaption to technological advancements, shifts in playing styles, and the increasing need to enhance global spectatorship. Tracing the progression from the historical “Jeu de paume” to modern play, the strategic depth of its scoring system and potential future implications are examined. Reviewing statistical analysis and recent research, this study documents modifications to the scoring system, including the no-ad game and proposed “short games,” designed to shorten match lengths while simultaneously boosting competitiveness and spectator involvement. These innovations seek to balance tradition with modern audience expectations. Central to the analysis is the game-theoretic perspective, which offers insights into the trade-off between game complexity and spectator satisfaction. Through an extensive review, the article discusses the adaptability and continuous evolution of the rule system. This is shown by an examination of the strategic significance of the serve and potential rule changes such as single-service games or granting starting advantages to lower-ranked players.

We propose and implement a procedure to optimally hedge climate change risk. First, we construct climate risk indices through textual analysis of newspapers. Second, we present a new approach to compute factor-mimicking portfolios to build climate risk hedge portfolios. The new mimicking portfolio approach is much more efficient than traditional sorting or maximum correlation approaches by taking into account new methodologies of estimating large-dimensional covariance matrices in short samples. In an extensive empirical out-of-sample performance test, we demonstrate the superior all-around performance delivering markedly higher and statistically significant alphas and betas with the climate risk indices.

Emotion regulation is important for psychological health and can be achieved by implementing various strategies. How one regulates emotions is critical for maximizing psychological health. Few studies, however, tested the psychological correlates of different emotion regulation strategies across multiple cultures. In a preregistered cross-cultural study (N = 3,960, 19 countries), conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed associations between the use of seven emotion regulation strategies (situation selection, distraction, rumination, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, expressive suppression, and emotional support seeking) and four indices of psychological health (life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, and loneliness). Model comparisons based on Bayesian information criteria provided support for cultural differences in 36% of associations, with very strong support for differences in 18% of associations. Strategies that were linked to worse psychological health in individualist countries (e.g., rumination, expressive suppression) were unrelated or linked to better psychological health in collectivist countries. Cultural differences in associations with psychological health were most prominent for expressive suppression and rumination and also found for distraction and acceptance. In addition, we found evidence for cultural similarities in 46% of associations between strategies and psychological health, but none of this evidence was very strong. Cultural similarities were most prominent in associations of psychological health with emotional support seeking. These findings highlight the importance of considering the cultural context to understand how individuals from diverse backgrounds manage unpleasant emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Recommender systems can help web users find more relevant content, improve their online experience, and support them in the discovery of new Points-of-Interest (POI). Yet, challenges persist in dealing with the cold-start problem and in recommendation explainability. To address these, we have created ScrollyPOI, an interactive POI recommender system based on Data Humanism principles. Utilizing scrollytelling, we address the cold-start problem by engaging users in reflecting on previous positive experiences. Additionally, ScrollyPOI enhances explainability through input and output explanations. The system uses stacked bar charts and word clouds to explain how user preferences inform recommendations (input). Finally, ScrollyPOI employs a multi-layered approach to explain why specific POIs are recommended (output). We have evaluated ScrollyPOI’s interface and experience through a preliminary study, highlighting its potential for transparent explanations in the POI recommendation domain. Our findings underscore ScrollyPOI’s efficacy in collecting preferences and enhancing recommendation transparency, positioning it as a platform for studying explainability goals in the POI domain.

Climate physical risk assessment is crucial to inform adaptation policies and finance. However, science-based and transparent solutions to assess climate physical risks are limited, compounding the adaptation gap. This is a main limitation to fill the adaptation gap. We provide a methodology that quantifies physical risks on geolocalized productive assets, considering their exposure to chronic and acute impacts (hurricanes) across the scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Then, we translate asset-level shocks into economic and financial losses. We apply the methodology to Mexico, a country highly exposed to physical risks, recipient of adaptation finance and foreign investments. We show that investor losses are underestimated up to 70% when neglecting asset-level information, and up to 82% when neglecting tail acute risks. Therefore, neglecting the asset-level and acute dimensions of physical risks leads to large errors in the identification of adaptation policy responses, investments and finance tools aimed to build resilience to climate change.