Behavioural Considerations in a Ubiquitous Street Environment: Some Observations and Implications

As far as recent developments in economic theory are concerned, "Behavioral Economics" constitutes one of the most promising frontiers in the last ten years, as the Nobel Prize for Economics recently won by the social psychologist Daniel Kahneman and the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal granted to the young economist Matthew Rabin testify. It is then worth asking the following questions: what is, exactly, Behavioral Economics? What are the reasons behind its recent success? This survey aims at providing a first answer, both directly and indirectly, to such questions, by illustrating the main contributions developed within such ambitious research program. Behavioral Economics aims at increasing the explanatory and predictive power of economic analysis through an increase in the degree of realism of the assumptions at the basis of economic models, i.e. by means of a greater and greater integration between economics and psychology (but also between economics and social sciences such as, for example, cultural anthropology). While standard economics assumes that agents are driven by well-defined and stable preferences and act rationally, psychology reveals that it is often the case that such assumptions cannot be taken as an adequate and satisfactory description of human behavior. In this light, Behavioral Economics focuses on markets where some (if not all) economic agents involved make choices which appear to substantially deviate from traditional economic predictions. In this survey we focus on the following two fields of studies within Behavioral Economics: a first field deals with the main cognitive limitations affecting economic behavior (Sections 2 and 3), whereas a second one is related to the role of the so called "social preferences" (Section 4). Both areas aim at incorporating the major results obtained both experimentally and empirically into formal economic analysis. Within the first area, it is assumed, analogously to neoclassical models, that agents act according to the self-interest hypothesis, but also that "rational" behavior is affected by several cognitive limitations (in line with classical contributions on bounded rationality; see, in particular, Simon 1978; 1979; 1992). By contrast, the second area departs from the neoclassical approach by introducing modifications at motivational level. Unlike traditional analyses, social preferences studies focus, at both theoretical and experimental level, on interaction scenarios where players act not on classic selfish preferences but on different types of social preferences. In other words, it is still assumed that individual behavior is rational, but also that various forms of non-selfish rationality get into the picture. In particular, behavioral choices by individual agents (as well as their objective functions) can be (either positively or negatively) affected by "other players'" preferences, intentions, material outcomes and/or behaviors.

The paper investigates how to reconstruct the urban space in the edge of a city in the post-industrial era. The paper is also interested in how the production influences the constitution of a landscape which is thus constantly changed. Shengang, an edge area of Taichung City, is chosen as the site. Through it, an exploration which will combine the consideration between the development of local industry and the stabilization of the community finally makes me propose a strategic plan for the area. And a detailed plan is proposed in a square-kilometer area within Shengang. The paper finds that the change and reconstruction of the urban space is a product of global capitalism. Flexible accumulation leads all economical behaviors and thus becomes the determinant force for the existence (or the disintegration) of a community. The new type of urban space is created both by the social organization and by the production. At the same time, it builds the relationship between the physical environment and the social relationship between the individual and the collective. Through the reconstruction of urban space, the edge of a city is possibly transformed into “the edge city”, which will be the center of the neighboring area with its own identity. The paper is composed of two parts. The first part is the theoretical discourse. Through a critical reading on three kinds of space type in Taiwan, the edge of the city is discovered as a problematic of the paper. The identification of the problematic which goes with the current environmental issues in Taiwan then follows the establishment of criteria of numeral data analysis. The second part is the design. An experimental plan is explored in creating an interdependent relationship between CNC industry and local agriculture for the future 30 year. Based on the interdependent Economy composed of CNC industry and local agriculture, a strategic plan is proposed. The design also includes a detailed plan concerning about the integration among with agriculture, CNC industry, infrastructure, dwelling and green energy. Finally, some simulations are made to anticipate the relationship between the new landscape and future lifestyle.

The article is dedicated to a new field for Ukraine – the acoustic study of the architectural environment, the semantics of sound, and the impact of sound signals on human behavior in urban spaces. The concept of the soundscape, introduced into scientific discourse in the 1970s by R. Murray Schafer and his followers, is explored. They laid the foundation for and initiated acoustic studies of cities in the context of their auditory pollution. The methodology for studying the urban soundscape developed by them became the basis for contemporary practical work and was tested by students of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (Kyiv, Ukraine). Their task involved recording changes in the soundscape according to different types of urban spaces and observing human behavior under the influence of sound signals. All research results were visualized on graphic sound maps. The role of sound in perceiving the architectural space of a city is defined in comparison to the significance of sound in cinema. It is noted that, as in cinema, sound in the urban architectural environment has its own functions: illustration; contrast or counterpoint to the visual sequence; communication; synchronization; structuralization. As in films, sounds can emphasize events (e.g., the sound of a theatrical celebration in a city square), maintain tension in transitional spaces (e.g., the sound of a traffic light), warn of danger, obstacles, or threats (e.g., the sound of a siren), act as a dominant element indicating direction (e.g., a clock on a town hall), convey the novelty of a space or its mystery (e.g., unclear, atypical sounds for a given soundscape), and so on. Based on this, it is hypothesized that the architectural environment can be modeled by programming impressions of its perception and influencing people’s behavior within it. Sound is one of the most powerful tools for shaping the perception of architectural space, and sound compositions become an essential component of the sound environment of a modern city, requiring further research and the development of principles for urban sound design. The authors note that the study of the semantics of sound in general and sound signals in particular, as well as their influence on human behavior, is not yet complete but holds great promise for further development of such research on the architectural environment of cities, particularly in Ukraine.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of hotel employees" perceptions toward e-learning. Although the internet is ubiquitous in South Korea, hotel employees" readiness for e-learning has yet to be fully explored in Korea. This study contributes to the literature in education in three ways. First, the adoption of e-learning is explored from a multi-faceted perspective including attitude to e-learning, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control. Second, this study shows the relative importance of perceived behavior control in the decision to adopt e-learning. Third, the current findings reveal that usefulness and easy to use affect hotel employees" attitude for adopting e-learning. This study describes a conceptual model, based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), which explains how hotel employees" beliefs influence their intention to adopt e-learning in the training. AMOS was used to analyze self-report data from 258 hotel employees. The findings showed that the TPB explained hotel employees’ acceptance of e-learning reasonably well. More specifically, behavioral control, attitude, and subjective norm positively influenced their intention to adopt e-learning. The findings of this study should help practitioners design more user-accepted e-learning systems.

Municipal waste production is one of the most widely recognised environmental issues in society today. In the UK, households are responsible for generating millions of tonnes of waste materials each year, with food waste proving to be a particularly problematic waste stream. Local authorities, who are responsible for waste management, have historically relied on changes to physical infrastructure or informational interventions to drive performance improvements. However, in times of increasing financial pressures, there has been a growing recognition that the transition to a sustainable, resilient and resourceful society will require fundamental changes to the way people think and behave. Indeed, what connects many modern-day sustainability challenges are their roots in human behaviour. While various ‘tools of government’ can be employed to realise strategic public policy objectives, emergent localism and the apparent ineffectiveness of this traditional approach catalysed a shift towards ensuring that statutory requirements were delivered more efficiently than ever before. This led to a widespread application of ‘insights’, synthesised from behavioural sciences, to inform the design, implementation and evaluation of new policy interventions. Enthusiasm to the so-called ‘nudge’ approach, which recognises that behaviour can be strongly and automatically influenced by the context in which it is situated, soon trickled down to local government, creating a growing appetite for the approach. These collective ‘behavioural insights’ provided local authorities with a powerful new set of policy tools that, if used correctly, could be used to influence waste behaviours. This research explored their application by evaluating the efficacy and affordability of those nudges that could feasibly be introduced at scale by local authority practitioners to produce a positive and sustained influence on household food waste recycling behaviour. By adopting a mixed-methods approach it was shown that, by making simple changes to the existing ‘choice environment’ in Surrey, it was possible to ‘nudge’ households towards engaging (more) in food waste recycling behaviour. Further, it was found that prompt-based nudges, using stickers as the medium of delivery, were particularly effective, with effects persisting for far longer than has typically been achieved using more ‘traditional’ informational policy interventions. While popular, the practice of ‘nudging’ has a range of issues, both conceptual and controversial, so it is important for policymakers to be aware of the differing philosophies, efficacy, methodologies and ethics associated with these types of intervention. While nudges may not be the ‘silver bullet’, it is argued that they are, at least for now, useful devices for policymakers to have in their ‘toolkit’.

Agoraphobia consists of a group of fears of public places such as going outside, using public transportation and being in public places, which cause serious interference in daily life. Many studies demonstrated the effectiveness of a multicomponent cognitive-behavioral treatment strategy for panic disorder with agoraphobia. The traditional protocol involves a mixture of cognitive and behavioral techniques which are intended to help patients identify and modify their dysfunctional anxiety-related thoughts, beliefs and behavior. Emphasis is placed on reversing the maintaining factors identified in the cognitive and behavioral patterns. We use Virtual Reality (VR) to support Panic Disorder treatment. The preliminary treatment protocol for Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia, named Experiential-Cognitive Therapy (ECT), was developed at the Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab of Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Verbania, Italy, in cooperation with the Psychology Department of the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. The actual version included the efforts of researchers from the Center for Advanced Multimedia Psychotherapy, California School of Professional Psychology, San Diego (CA), USA, and from the Seoul Paik Hospital, Inje University, Seoul, Korea. The goal of ECT is to decondition fear reactions, to modify misinterpretational cognition related to panic symptoms and to reduce anxiety symptoms. The characteristics of the approach will be presented through the description of the clinical protocol.

The spread of infectious diseases is a spatial process, including Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Cluster infections of COVID-19 have arisen globally in various urban spaces, implying that tracking the spread necessitates a spatial approach to understanding the dynamics of the disease. In this study, we employ an online survey in the Seoul metropolitan area in South Korea to examine changes in the use of urban spaces and factors that affect individual’s choice in using urban spaces in the COVID-19 era. We classify various urban spaces into three activity types according to the previous studies: spaces for mandatory activities, maintenance activities, and discretionary activities. The results show that every type of urban space is visited less than before the COVID-19 outbreak. Factors involved in the use of spaces for mandatory activities include the preference for offline consumption, gender, and risk perception of COVID-19. In the case of non-mandatory activity spaces, factors that commonly influence the use of the spaces are compliance with social distancing regulations, preference for offline consumption, refraining from outdoor activities, risk perception of COVID-19, and perceived safety in the city concerning COVID-19. The present study is significant as it identified not only different factors affecting the choice of mandatory and non-mandatory activity spaces but also distinctive variables determining the choice of urban spaces for maintenance activity and discretionary activity. From the analysis, this study draws policy implications to effectively prevent and control infectious disease in the context of urban spaces.

Base on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1985; 1991), this study integrates a dimension of exercise habit with TPB to develop a research framework for understanding human behavior in sports participation. A total of 287 questionnaires were distributed to those respondents who are competitors in the 2013 AMD Tour of East Taiwan. Structural equation model (SEM) was used to estimate the fit of the overall model and to analyze the relationship between variables. According to the results, behavioral intention was affected by behavioral attitude, and behavior was affected by behavioral intention. Attitude was affected by subject norm behavioral, but subject norm would not affect behavioral intention. Exercise habit both significantly affected behavioral intention and behavior performance. Based on the findings of this study, conclusion and suggestions were proposed.

<i>Psychology seeks to undestand human behavioural processes and mental activities,it just could be done in the way of mind space mechanisms investigation occuring in complicated networks in brain,composing of a large amount of intracting factors,in both unconscious and conscious levels,there is probably a specific interconnection between unconscious and conscious states of human mind,unconscious specific impulses have a special intractive motif with our special conscious states of our mind.Many biological roots are known for specific human behaviours,from molecular mechanisms to macroscale neurophysiological processes.psychodynamic theory helps us to have a holigrative (holistic and integrative) interpretation of human behaviours,in the light of psychoanalyctics.This significant psychological theory,could be matched with other biological roots,to give neuroscientists a deeper and more intricate and precise </i><i>cognizance of human psychological make-up structure and function.I call this holigrative approach,in behavioual analysis as "psychome Hypothesis".psychome hypothesis, seeks to realize deeper essential and indispensible factors influencing our behaviour from both unconscious and conscious states of mind,also tries to integrate all these known factors and make a behavioural graph in order to describe our behaviours completely.</i><i></i>

One of the main goals of aggression research is to examine the conditions that heighten the likelihood of aggressive behavior. Many studies with a variety of laboratory paradigms have been conducted to address this question. However, many of these studies and the applied paradigms suffer from shortcomings, including a large distance between victim and aggressor, demand characteristics or cues permitting the ostensible aggressive behavior, as well as disregard of participants’ affective states, motivations and intentions.&#13;\nIn modern laboratory research some of these shortcomings have been overcome and new paradigms like the Hot Sauce Paradigm – a commonly used paradigm in modern laboratory research – have evolved. Paralleling real assault and child abuse cases, in which hot sauce was put in the food of other people or children with the intention to cause them harm, this paradigm measures aggression via the amount of hot sauce participants allocate to another person that allegedly provoked them beforehand. As most paradigms the Hot Sauce Paradigm still has shortcomings that need to be improved. One major shortcoming the Hot Sauce Paradigm shares with some classical paradigms is that participants are not provided with non-aggressive choice options. Without choice options it is impossible to answer questions about conditions under which people choose to act aggressively, since participants do not actually have a choice in regard to their behavior. It is only possible to answer questions regarding the amount of aggression presupposing that participants do act aggressively.&#13;\nOne of the main goals of this dissertation was to analyze the effect of choice options on aggression in a modified Hot Sauce Paradigm. With 5 studies presented in this dissertation, I attempted to answer the overriding question whether or not the validity of the Hot Sauce Paradigm, as one commonly used paradigm to measure and analyze aggression, could be improved by providing response options (pleasant, neutral, aggressive option) to participants. In general, over the course of five studies I found evidence questioning the traditional paradigm’s validity to capture aggressive behavior but also evidence for an enhanced validity of the paradigm when choice options were included.&#13;\nTo test the effect of choice options on the behavior observed in the Hot Sauce Paradigm I used a modified version of the paradigm in the first study. Participants chose one juice out of three juices (pleasant, neutral, spicy juice) to be consumed by a target person that had allegedly just chosen either a sour (provocation) or neutral (no provocation) juice for them. This condition with choice options was contrasted with three control conditions in which participants could only administer different amounts of either the pleasant, neutral or spicy juice. Provoked participants that were provided with a spicy juice only administered more spicy juice than non-provoked participants, replicating previous findings with the Hot Sauce Paradigm. However, there also was a main effect of provocation on the allocated juice with provoked participants generally allocating larger amounts of any type of juice than non-provoked ones. With choice options, critically, only three of the 18 provoked participants did not choose the pleasant juice and chose the neutral (1 participant) or spicy juice (2 participants) instead. None of the 20 unprovoked participants chose the spicy juice. These findings question the original Hot Sauce Paradigm’s validity to capture aggressive behavior with an intention to harm another person. The low choice rates for the aggressive option also highlight the importance of providing non-aggressive response options to participants to avoid an overestimation of aggressive and an underestimation of non-aggressive behavior.&#13;\nI hypothesized that the main effect of provocation on the allocated amount that I found in Study 1 was due to provoked participants’ higher responsiveness to the paradigm’s demand in the direction of applying more juice resulting from a lowered self-control after experiencing a provoking event. The aim of Study 2 and 3 was to test this assumption. In Study 2, I replicated the result of provoked participants allocating more spicy juice than non-provoked ones in conditions without alternative choice options. However, this effect disappeared with less guiding instructions and thus, again, questioning the traditional paradigms validity. To test whether or not this responsiveness to the demand of the paradigm is associated with the participants’ self-control, I measured participants’ state self-control in both Study 2 and 3, in which I applied the same provocation method as Study 1, and in Study 4, in which I used a more intense interpersonal provocation. In none of these studies I found a difference in self-control between provoked and non-provoked participants after the provocation. This makes the proposed self-control explanation for the allocation amount results unlikely.&#13;\nThe amount of aggressive choices shown in Study 1 was relatively low (2 of 18 provoked participants chose the spicy juice). To test whether a more intense form of provocation would increase aggressive choices, which would make additional analyses and ultimately the application of the modified paradigm in aggression research possible, I used a more intense interpersonal provocation in Study 4. The provocation included waiting for another alleged participant and rude behavior toward the actual participant shown by the unpunctual confederate. To also test the effect of victim visibility – another shortcoming of modern laboratory research – on the behavior shown in the Hot Sauce Paradigm, I orthogonally manipulated the visibility of the victim with the provocation manipulation. To assure that the measured behavior captures aggression, I measured the key aggression defining variable harmful intentions of participants. The results of Study 4 indicated that descriptively aggressive choices occurred more often than in Study 1 and that provoked participants chose the spicy juice significantly more often than non-provoked ones. This effect of provocation on spicy juice choices was mediated by the participants’ harmful intentions indicating the validity of juice choices as a measurement of behavioral aggression. The visibility of the victim was not significantly associated with differences in the juice choices.&#13;\nTo gain further evidence for a connection of juice choices and harmful intentions and to externally validate juice choices as aggression measures I analyzed the perception of intentions behind juice choices from the victim’s point of view in Study 5. In a scenario study, modeled after Study 4, participants imagined to receive a sample of the spicy juice from another participant in a study for which they arrived 15 minutes late. Intentions behind the juice allocation were perceived as more harmful if the person who made the allocation was provided with choice options in comparison to if the person was not provided with choice options (like in the traditional Hot Sauce Paradigm). This finding supports the claim that the inclusion of choice options heightens the paradigm’s validity, since the connection with a key aggression defining construct was strengthened with choice options in comparison to without them.&#13;\nThe present research underlines the importance of providing non-aggressive choice options to participants in laboratory aggression research. Particularly if the conditions under which aggressive behavior occurs are examined, participants have to be able to make a choice of what kind of behavior they want to show. With the modified Hot Sauce Paradigm introduced in this dissertation a research instrument is provided to achieve this goal.

The continuity assumption in the operant tradition, that is, to consider the behavior of all species in terms of the same processes, has induced a confusion of categories that prevents the study and understanding of proper human behavior. Continuity arguments are reviewed, especially those based on scientific simplicity and phylogenetic continuity. Three counterarguments are developed, showing how the possibility of different behavioral processes among species, including the human one, is defensible, without denying that the origins of different species and of the behavior of organisms respond to the same principles. In the end, a proposal is outlined about the possibility of identifying different behavioral processes, as an analysis of behavioral organization, which would allow a more fruitful study of properly human behavior from a behavioral perspective.

The article is devoted to the study of new types of urban spaces that owe their origin to the development of information and communication technologies. An innovative factor that influenced the transformation of public spaces in the XXI century was the emergence of the media and information sphere. The widespread use of personal computers and the home Internet in the 1990s led to a decline in publicity and a crisis in traditional urban social communications. Currently, a new type of personality is being created, prone to limited contacts with other individuals in certain conditions (for example, in social networks). The information technology model of public space transfers social connections to the virtual world, thus reducing the need for the development of physical urban spaces. Information technology has led to the development of new forms of public spaces. Among them we will note such as “smart square”/”smart street”, media spaces and flash mob spaces. The results of the study of the characteristics of these new urban spaces are presented in the article.

Urban public space is the main place for human outdoor activities. Simulating human behavior through the Multi-Agent System (MAS) is one of the most important methods for studying public space. However, most of the research on this topic is concerned with the way people behave and the connection to spatial layouts. It ignores the fact that in outdoor spaces, microclimate factors tend to have a more important impact on human behavior. In this study, microclimate factors were narrowed down into two main factors: outdoor thermal perception and sunshine perception. Both of these factors are integrated into the traditional MAS, together with visual perception as the influence factors of agent action. The new MAS was developed in Processing language and can dynamically and visually show agents activities in the space. Taking Gulou Square in Nanjing, China, as a case, the simulations were carried out with three typical meteorological days of spring equinox, summer solstice, and winter solstice. Through comparing the simulation results at different times, we found that the new MAS exhibits a significant impact of microclimate on human behavior. The new MAS can be used reasonably and effectively for the design and evaluation of urban public space.

This thesis contributes to the field of behavioral economics. Research in behavioral economics investigates whether predictions of theoretical models and their underlying assumptions hold. It thereby enhances the predictive power of economics. While the first chapter provides an introduction and overview, Chapter 2 of this thesis studies whether an intergenerational transmission of risk preferences revealed by occupational choice from parents to children can be observed. The analysis shows that different male generations of a family indeed exhibit similar risky behavior, however, the link is rather weak. Chapter 3 answers the question of whether subjects are aware of the correlation between risk preferences and sociodemographic characteristics and attach informational value to sociodemographics when assessing the risk attitudes of others. The results of the experiment show that subjects recognize the correlation between the sociodemographic variables age, gender, parenthood and family status and risk preferences. Furthermore, subjects attach informational value to sociodemographic characteristics. Chapter 4 analyzes the process of the assessment of risk preferences of others in detail. A major asset is that our sample for the experiments in Chapter 3 and 4, besides student subjects, includes individuals that professionally make decisions on behalf of others every day: senior and junior advisors with differing years of counseling experience in the financial sector. In particular, it is studied whether professional and non-professional advisors are capable of correctly assessing the risk preferences of a specific advisee given sociodemographic information. The results of the experiment show, that when forming beliefs about the risk preferences of others, a false consensus bias of the advisors is present; the advisors' own risk preferences positively correlate with their beliefs about the advisees' ones. The precision of advice increases if more information is available. Professionals outperform non-professionals significantly when forecasting the risk attitudes of others. Chapter 5 of this thesis analyses whether herding out of reputational concerns exists in financial markets. Therefore, the subjects' behavior is studied in two treatments. First, in the role of financial investors, subjects take the decision which of two assets to buy without career concerns. In a second treatment, career concerns are incorporated. While in the first treatment, according to the theory, investors should always follow their own signal and buy the respective asset, in the second treatment with career concerns, investors should engage in herd behavior and neglect their own signal. However, the experimental results indicate that a similar herd behavior can be observed in the treatment with reputational concerns as well as in the treatment without reputational concerns. Moreover, we provide further evidence for investors (irrationally) imitating predecessors.

Since the end of the Cold War, North Korea has been seen as an unstable factor of East Asian security. She not only develops nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, but also maintains a large number of traditional forces, threatens her neighboring states with military force, and is not willing to abandon the possibility of unifying the Korean Peninsula with force. Alongside with these provocative gestures, under the status of isolation and not following the Chinese method of economic reformation, North Korea is not only maintaining her traditional friendship with China and Russia, but is also seeking to normalize her diplomatic relations with the USA and Japan, cooperating with South Korea economically, practicing her “practical diplomacy” against capitalist states, and seeking economic development and foreign investment via establishing economic special zones. The two-handed strategy and the non-transparency of North Korean information caused the international society to misunderstand North Korea as an “irrational”, “provocative”, or “unpredicable”state. On the other hand, in present day academic studies, many scholars see North Korean‟s foreign policies holding pragmatic and realistic characters, and I think the reason causing the previous mentioned misunderstanding is due to the lack of understanding on North Korea‟s domestic factors. Under such assumption, this thesis borrows the research structure of neo-classical realism and attempts to analyze North Korea‟s foreign policy through historical factors, domestic political system and North Korea‟s official ideology, and discuss how these different domestic factors influence North Korea‟s foreign behaviors. At the same time, I also attempt to examine the correlations between the previous mentioned domestic factors and North Korea‟s diplomatic relations with major states, North Korea‟s foreign economic behaviors, and her nuclear and missile diplomacy. The ultimate political goal behind North Korea‟s contradictory foreign behaviors will also examined. Finally, according to these analysis, I argue that during the Kim Jong Il era, North Korea‟s foreign behaviors had the following traits: 1) the foreign relation with the USA is top priority in the Kim Jong Il era; 2) idea factors influence North Korea‟s foreign behaviors deeply and thoroughly; 3) North Korea tends to use unconventional strategies; 4) her foreign-policy decision-making system is highly centralized; and 5) foreign economic behavior plays a subordinate role in achieving her political goal.