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"Natural experiments"
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Online Social Interactions: A Natural Experiment on Word of Mouth Versus Observational Learning
Consumers' purchase decisions can be influenced by others' opinions, or word of mouth (WOM), and/or others' actions, or observational learning (OL). Although information technologies are creating increasing opportunities for firms to facilitate and manage these two types of social interaction, to date, researchers have encountered difficulty in disentangling their competing effects and have provided limited insights into how these two social influences might differ from and interact with each other. Using a unique natural experimental setting resulting from information policy shifts at the online seller Amazon.com, the authors design three longitudinal, quasi-experimental field studies to examine three issues regarding the two types of social interaction: (1) their differential impact on product sales, (2) their lifetime effects, and (3) their interaction effects. An intriguing finding is that while negative WOM is more influential than positive WOM, positive OL information significantly increases sales, but negative OL information has no effect. This suggests that reporting consumer purchase statistics can help mass-market products without hurting niche products. The results also reveal that the sales impact of OL increases with WOM volume.
Journal Article
Natural disasters : investigate Earth's most destructive forces : with 25 projects
Examines natural disasters throughout history, discussing what caused them, their impact on civilization, and how people cope with them.
Book
Uncovering the complex relationships between political risk and MNE firm legitimacy: Insights from Libya
Using the before-after natural experiment occasioned by the Arab Spring in Libya, we explore how market and non-market activity affect foreign firm legitimacy in times of political turmoil. Although all MNEs in Libya had to cultivate strong ties to Qadhafi to succeed during his 40 years of rule, we found that those that also invested in social-benefit projects and in social ties with families with few ties to the Qadhafi family earned a broad-based legitimacy that helped them survive Qadhafi's overthrow. Our findings contribute to the political risk and political behavior literature the notion that the pursuit of firm legitimacy in general, and especially in the eyes of social-sector actors, is an effective hedge against political risk. More theoretically, our findings support the addition of a social-sector-based path to firm legitimacy in the host country that complements and may at times substitute for, the government-based path to foreign firm legitimacy. Practically, our findings suggest that MNEs' facing severe political risk can improve their prospects for survival by investing in relationships with influential social groups and by offering goods or services that are perceived as socially valuable.
Journal Article
Hands-on projects for wildlife watchers
\"Calling all wildlife watchers! These hands-on projects will help you observe animals like never before. Make animal print casts to preserve outdoor animal tracks. Build a bug hotel to keep and observe insects before releasing them. Craft goggles to peek underwater. Use your creations on your next outdoor adventure!\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
The REVAMP natural experiment study: the impact of a play-scape installation on park visitation and park-based physical activity
Background
Designing parks that optimise visitation and support visitors to be active is important for public health. Yet there is very little evidence about whether playground refurbishment achieves these objectives. This study examined the impact of the installation of a play-scape in a large metropolitan park in Melbourne, Australia.
Methods
Natural experiment study (intervention vs control). At both parks, park visitation and physical activity were assessed before (T1, 2013) and after the intervention at 12 (T2, 2014) and 24 months (T3, 2015). At each time point, measures included: observations of park visitors using the System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities on four weekdays and four weekend days, objective monitors to record usage of the walking paths and the number of cars entering the park; and intercept surveys with adult park visitors. Cross-sectional surveys were conducted with local residents at T1 and T3.
Results
The observational data showed a 176% increase in park visitor counts from T1 to T2 (Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR) = 2.76, 95% CI = 1.04–7.33), at the intervention park relative to the control park. The intervention park had a 119% increase in counts of visitors observed engaging in MVPA from T1 to T2 (IRR = 2.19, 95% CI = 1.14–4.20), and a 128% increase from T1 to T3 (IRR = 2.28, 95% CI = 1.19–4.38), relative to the control park. The relative increases in visitation at the intervention park play-scape compared with the control park playground were highly statistically significant from both T1 to T2 (IRR = 18.12, 95% CI = 5.51–59.59) and T1 to T3 (IRR = 15.05, 95% CI = 4.61–49.16). Similarly, there was a significant interaction between time and park with regard to the number of visitors observed engaging in MVPA in the play-scape/playground areas. The intercept survey data showed an increased odds of children’s regular visitation to the intervention park at T2 (OR = 2.67, 95% CI = 1.08, 6.64), compared with T1, relative to the control park. The remaining results from the intercept survey, objective monitors and resident surveys showed no significant differences in visitation between the two parks.
Conclusions
These findings confirm that a well-designed play-scape installation has the potential to increase park visitation and encourage visitors to be physically active.
Trial registration
Current controlled trial
ISRCTN50745547
.
Journal Article
Evaluating the impact of improvements in urban green space on older adults’ physical activity and wellbeing: protocol for a natural experimental study
Background
Creating or improving urban green space has the potential to be an effective, sustainable and far-reaching way to increase physical activity and improve other aspects of wellbeing in the population. However, there is a dearth of well-conducted natural experimental studies examining the causal effect of changing urban green space on physical activity and wellbeing. This is especially true in older adults and in the United Kingdom. This paper describes a natural experimental study to evaluate the effect of four small-scale urban street greening interventions on older adults’ physical activity and wellbeing over a 1-year period, relative to eight matched comparison sites. All sites are located in deprived urban neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester, United Kingdom.
Methods
Components of the interventions include tree and flower planting, and artificial tree decorations. Eight unimproved comparison sites were selected based on a systematic process of matching using several known objective and subjective environmental correlates of physical activity in older adults. The outcome measures are physical activity and two other behavioural indicators of wellbeing (Connect: connecting with other people; and Take Notice: taking notice of the environment), collected using a newly developed observation tool. The primary outcome is Take Notice behaviour due to largest effects on this behaviour being anticipated from improvements in the aesthetic quality of green space at the intervention sites. Baseline data collection occurred in September 2017 before the interventions were installed in November 2017. Follow-up data collection will be repeated in February/ March 2018 (6 months) and September 2018 (12 months).
Discussion
The present study permits a rare opportunity to evaluate the causal effects of small-scale changes in urban green space in an understudied population and setting. Although the interventions are expected to have small effects on the outcomes, the present study contributes to developing natural experiment methodology in this field by addressing key methodological weaknesses causing high risk of bias in previous natural experimental studies. Key improvements to reduce risk of bias in the present study are rigorous matching of multiple comparison sites and appropriate statistical control of key confounders.
Trial registration
Retrospectively registered with study ID
NCT03575923
. Date of registration: 3 July 2018.
Journal Article
Natural history collector : hunt, discover, learn!
\"Coming home from the beach or a walk in the woods with a fine collection of rocks, shells, pinecones, and seed pods is easy. The trick is to know what to do with them once you get them back to your room. What's fun is that identifying, preserving, and displaying your treasures will let you learn all about them and get you started on becoming a true natural history collector. This book is full of hands-on, kid-friendly projects for the budding naturalist. The opening chapter introduces kids to different ways of creating their personal field guides for keeping track of what they see, when and where they see it, and what makes it interesting. They'll move on to techniques for cleaning and caring for treasures, such as drying flowers, pressing leaves, and desalinizing rocks and shells. The book's drawings and photographs will help kids discover what to look for when they examine feathers, seeds, and minerals (and recognize the difference between sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic). Extra projects focus on display; making shadow boxes, creating collectors' cases from egg cartons and candy boxes, labeling, hanging, and mounting collections\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Evidence of Perceptual Factors in the Multiple-Category Discount
Extant work shows that market actors who span multiple social categories tend to be devalued relative to their more specialized peers. Scholars typically explain this pattern of results with one of two arguments. Some contend that perceptual factors—namely, the difficulties that buyers have in making sense of category spanners—contribute to the observed pattern of devaluation. Others argue that the penalty for category-spanning stems from the fact that those who do not focus their efforts narrowly tend to offer products that are of lower quality. Because these two mechanisms often co-occur, it has been difficult to provide definitive evidence of the perceptually driven component of the multiple-category penalty. We employ a natural experiment on a peer-to-peer crowd-funding website to address this gap. Difference-in-difference analyses on matched samples show that category spanning is perceived negatively and can result in devaluation, even in the absence of underlying quality differences. This result supports the argument that perceptual issues contribute to the penalty for category spanning.
Journal Article