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Background In health care interventions aimed at increased physical activity, the individual’s time spent on exercise is a substantial input. Time costs should therefore be considered in cost-effectiveness analyses. The aim of this study was to estimate the cost of time spent on exercise among 333 primary health care patients with metabolic risk factors receiving physical activity on prescription. Methods Based on a theoretical framework, a yardstick was constructed with experience of work (representing claim of salary as compensation) as the lower anchor-point, and experience of leisure activity forgone due to extended exercise time (no claim) as the higher anchor-point. Using this yardstick experience of exercise can be valued. Another yardstick was constructed with experience of cleaning at home in combination with willingness to pay for cleaning as the lowest anchor-point. Results The estimated costs of exercise time were between 14 and 37% of net wages, with physical activity level being the most important factor in determining the cost. Among sedentary individuals, the time cost was 21–51% of net wages while among individuals performing regular exercise it was 2–10%. When estimating the cost of time spent on exercise in a cost-effectiveness analysis, experience of exercise, work, leisure activity forgone, and cleaning at home (or other household work that may be relevant to purchase) should be measured. The individual’s willingness to pay for cleaning at home and their net salary should also be measured. Conclusions When using a single valuation of cost of time spent on exercise in health care interventions, for employed participants 15–30% of net salary should be used. Among unemployed individuals, lower cost estimation should be applied. Better precision in cost estimations can be achieved if participants are stratified by physical activity levels. Trial registration The study was conducted as a survey of existing clinical physical activity on prescription work, and was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Gothenburg, Sweden (ref: 678-14)

Consider any single graded marketing organization where depletion of manpower occurssince decisions, exit of personnel etc.. There is an assumption that the depletion due to voluntary exit is correlated. By assuming that the inter-involuntary exit times, inter-breaking decision times forms different modified renewal processes, estimate dmean and estimated variance of time to recruitment are determined. The stochastic model assuming that intercontact times between successive contacts as correlated random variables are proposedShock models with intercontact time have been obtained by assuming the threshold distribution as exponential. In this paper, it is assumed that threshold follows exponentialgeometric distribution.

Flexible work arrangements and retirement options provide one solution for the challenges of unemployment and underemployment, aging populations, and unsustainable public pension systems in welfare states around the world. We examine the relationships between well-being and job satisfaction on the one hand and employment status and retirement, on the other, using Gallup World Poll data for several European countries and the United States. We find that voluntary part-time workers are happier, experience less stress and anger, and have higher job satisfaction than other employees. Using statistical matching, we show that late-life workers under voluntary part-time or full-time arrangements have higher well-being than retirees. There is no well-being premium for involuntary late-life work and self-employment compared to retirement, however. Our findings inform ongoing debates about the optimal retirement age and the fiscal burdens of public pension systems.

If voluntary action is followed by an effect with a short time delay, the time interval between action and effect is often perceived to be shorter than it actually is. This perceptual time compression is termed intentional binding or temporal binding. We investigated age-related changes in adulthood considering temporal binding and its dependence on action body parts (i.e., hand vs. foot). This experiment included 17 young adults (mean age: 21.71 ± 3.14 years) and 27 older adults (mean age: 74.41 ± 3.38 years). Participants performed a button press task using their index fingers (hand condition) or toes (foot condition). The results showed that older participants exhibited a strong time compression comparable to young participants in the voluntary condition. Older participants also showed a strong time compression in involuntary action, which was induced by a mechanical device, differently from young participants. In line with previous research, the present age-related differences in time compression considering involuntary action suggest that causal belief significantly influences event perception rather than the associated intention of action or sensory afferents. The present results also suggest that the nature of action body parts has no significant influence on temporal binding, independent of age group.

Voluntary physical distancing is essential for preventing the spread of COVID-19. We assessed the role of political partisanship in individuals’ compliance with physical distancing recommendations of political leaders using data on mobility from a sample of mobile phones in 3,100 counties in the United States during March 2020, county-level partisan preferences, information about the political affiliation of state governors, and the timing of their communications about COVID-19 prevention. Regression analyses examined how political preferences influenced the association between governors’ COVID-19 communications and residents’ mobility patterns. Governors’ recommendations for residents to stay at home preceded stay-at-home orders and led to a significant reduction in mobility that was comparable to the effect of the orders themselves. Effects were larger in Democraticthan in Republican-leaning counties, a pattern more pronounced under Republican governors. Democratic-leaning counties also responded more strongly to recommendations from Republican than from Democratic governors. Political partisanship influences citizens’ decisions to voluntarily engage in physical distancing in response to communications by their governor.

Voluntary simplicity (VS) refers to a minimalistic lifestyle of conscious, ecological, and ethical consumption, which is conducive to individual, societal, and environmental well-being. For policymakers and business managers, a key to leveraging this consumer shift is to promote persuasive appeals effectively. This research theorizes that the two forms of VS appeals are systematically associated with distinct temporal landmarks. In particular, we demonstrate that consumers are more likely to engage in biospheric voluntary simplicity (BVS) when priming a temporal landmark as the start of a time period. In contrast, consumers are more likely to participate in egoistic voluntary simplicity (EVS) when priming a temporal landmark as the end of a time period. Notably, the matching effects are driven by distinct mechanisms, such that the effect of a match between a start temporal landmark and BVS appeals is driven by self-transcendence, whereas the effect of a match between an end temporal landmark and EVS appeals is motivated by self-enhancement. Beyond their substantive theoretical significance, our findings provide marketing campaigns with tools to enact strategies that support voluntary simplicity.

Explicit knowledge about upcoming target or distractor features can increase performance in tasks like visual search. However, explicit distractor cues generally result in smaller performance benefits than target cues, suggesting that suppressing irrelevant information is less effective than enhancing relevant information. Is this asymmetry a general principle of feature-based attention? Across four experiments ( N = 75 each) we compared the efficiency of target selection and distractor ignoring through either incidental experience or explicit instructions. Participants searched for an orientation-defined target amidst seven distractors—three in the target color and four in another color. In Experiment 1 , either targets (Exp. 1a ) or distractors (Exp. 1b ) were presented more often in a specific color than other possible search colors. Response times showed comparable benefits of learned attention towards (Exp. 1a ) and away from (Exp. 1b ) the frequent color, suggesting that learned target selection and distractor ignoring can be equally effective. In Experiment 2 , participants completed a nearly identical task, only with explicit cues to the target (Exp. 2a ) or distractor color (Exp. 2b ), inducing voluntary attention. Both target and distractor cues were beneficial for search performance, but distractor cues much less so than target cues, consistent with previous results. Cross-experiment analyses verified that the relative inefficiency of distractor ignoring versus target selection is a unique characteristic of voluntary attention that is not shared by incidentally learned attention, pointing to dissociable mechanisms of voluntary and learned attention to support distractor ignoring.

Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) provides significant reductions in the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission. Since 2007, VMMC has been a key component of the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief's (PEPFAR) strategy to mitigate the HIV epidemic in countries with high HIV prevalence and low circumcision rates. To ensure intended effects, PEPFAR sets ambitious annual circumcision targets and provides funding to implementation partners to deliver local VMMC services. In Kenya to date, 1.9 million males have been circumcised; in 2017, 60% of circumcisions were among 10-14-year-olds. We conducted a qualitative field study to learn more about VMMC program implementation in Kenya. The study setting was a region in Kenya with high HIV prevalence and low male circumcision rates. From March 2017 through April 2018, we carried out in-depth interviews with 29 VMMC stakeholders, including \"mobilizers\", HIV counselors, clinical providers, schoolteachers, and policy professionals. Additionally, we undertook observation sessions at 14 VMMC clinics while services were provided and observed mobilization activities at 13 community venues including, two schools, four public marketplaces, two fishing villages, and five inland villages. Analysis of interview transcripts and observation field notes revealed multiple unintended consequences linked to the pursuit of targets. Ebbs and flows in the availability of school-age youths together with the drive to meet targets may result in increased burdens on clinics, long waits for care, potentially misleading mobilization practices, and deviations from the standard of care. Our findings indicate shortcomings in the quality of procedures in VMMC programs in a low-resource setting, and more importantly, that the pursuit of ambitious public health targets may lead to compromised service delivery and protocol adherence. There is a need to develop improved or alternative systems to balance the goal of increasing service uptake with the responsible conduct of VMMC.

Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty, and prevents crime. We've all heard this kind of empowerment talk from nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these programs really accomplish? InMaking Volunteers, Nina Eliasoph offers an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside youth and adult civic programs. She reveals an urgent need for policy reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that empowerment programs aim to teach. With short-term funding and a dizzy mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. Eliasoph describes the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their resumés, and what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly through short-term projects. She looks at adult \"plug-in\" volunteers who, working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become like beloved aunties to youth. Eliasoph indicates that adult volunteers can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and long-term commitments from volunteers. Based on participant research inside civic and community organizations,Making Volunteersillustrates what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more effective.

We compare the voluntary contribution mechanism with any mechanism attaining Pareto-efficient allocations when each agent can choose whether he/she participates in the mechanism for the provision of a non-excludable public good. We find that, in our participation game, the voluntary contribution mechanism, because of its higher participation probability in the unique symmetric mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, may perform better than any Pareto-efficient mechanism in terms of the equilibrium expected provision level of the public good and the equilibrium expected payoff of each agent. Our results suggest that the voluntary contribution mechanism, which cannot realize Pareto-efficient allocations under compulsory participation, might be superior to any Pareto-efficient mechanism if we allow agents to voluntarily choose participation in the mechanism.