Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Best–worst scaling (BWS)'

Les progrès récents de l’insonorisation des habitacles dans l’automobile ainsi que l’avènement de la motorisation électrique, silencieuse, ont durablement transformé l’expérience sonore de l’utilisateur et remettent en question les acquis du confort, et notamment du confort sonore. Cette thèse a pour objectif d’explorer le confort sonore dans cet environnement. Pour cela un travail de littérature scientifique permet de clarifier et définir cette notion de confort sonore, et de mettre en évidence les outils adaptés pour traiter et identifier l’émergence de sources sonores, auparavant masquées ou inexistantes tout en prenant en compte la place particulière du son dans un milieu comme l’automobile. Cette thèse se structure en trois parties distinctes et complémentaires. La première aborde le point de la description de l’environnement sonore à travers un travail d’interviews avec des spécialistes automobiles du son, sur les descripteurs du son. Ce travail aboutit à la construction d’un lexique en suivant un paradigme élaboré au sein de l’équipe PDS (Perception et Design Sonores), le paradigme SpeaK [1, 2]. La deuxième partie de la thèse s’attelle à améliorer le confort sonore d’une situation sonore précise, comportant un son décrit comme désagréable ou gênant. La solution explorée consiste à ajouter des sons conçus suivant différentes typologies de masquage, appelées masquage énergétique, masquage par habillage et masquage attentionnel. Parmi ces différentes typologies, des masques sont alors créés grâce à un synthétiseur paramétrique développé spécifiquement pour cette tâche. Une étude perceptive en atmosphère contrôlée, utilisant une méthodologie Best-Worst Scaling est alors menée. Cette étude, menée avec 50 participants, permet de quantifier les différences entre ces typologies sur deux dimensions évaluées : la détectabilité du défaut et l’agréabilité de l’environnement sonore [3]. À l’issue de cette étude, une perspective d’expérience in-situ pour confronter les résultats, ainsi que la mise en lumière de limites et d’améliorations possibles de la méthode expérimentale sont proposées<br>Recent advances in cabin soundproofing in automobiles, along with the generalization of electric motors, silent, have profoundly transformed the user’s auditory experience and challenged established notions of comfort, particularly sonic comfort. This thesis aims to explore the concept of sonic comfort in this context. To achieve this, a review of the scientific literature is conducted to clarify and define this notion of sonic comfort. This also enables to identify the tools suited to analyze and detect the emergence of sound sources that were previously masked or nonexistent, while considering the unique role of sound in the automotive environment. This thesis is structured into three distinct and complementary parts. The first part addresses the description of the sound environment through a series of interviews with sound automotive specialists, focusing on sound descriptors. This work results in the development of a lexicon based on a paradigm designed within the PDS (Perception et Design Sonores) team, known as the SpeaK paradigm [1, 2]. The second part of the thesis focuses on improving the sonic comfort of a specific situation characterized by a sound described as unpleasant or bothersome. The proposed solution involves adding sounds designed according to different masking typologies, referred to as Energetic, Habillage, and Attentional masking. Among these typologies, masks are created using a parametric synthesizer developed specifically for this purpose. A perceptual study in a controlled environment, employing a Best-Worst Scaling methodology, is then conducted. This study, carried out with 50 participants, quantifies the differences between these methodologies across two evaluated dimensions : defect detectability and scene pleasantness [3]. Following this study, a perspective for in situ experiments to validate the results, as well as insights into the limitations and possible improvements of the experimental method, are proposed

Non-motorised transport (NMT) such as cycling and walking has multiple social, economic, environmental, climate and public health benefits and is integral to the agenda of sustainable development. There is considerable potential for more cycling mobility in South Africa, especially in low-income communities (LICs). Barriers to cycling mobility were investigated in Masiphumelele, a LIC in Cape Town, in order to inform recommendations for promoting cycling as a mode of transport in this community and beyond. A mixed methods design of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. A focus group discussion (FGD) with local bicycle shop customers informed the design of a cross-sectional cluster sampling questionnaire and a Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) stated choice survey of 100 household residents. The BWS survey used 10 choice sets of 4statements each to rank the relative importance to study participants of 20 potential barriers to cycling mobility on their average Best-Worse (B-W) scores.

Customer overall satisfaction towards a public transport system depends mainly on two factors: how satisfied they are with different aspects that make up the service and how important each of the service aspects is to the customer. Traditionally, researchers use revealed preference surveys and ordered probit/logit models to estimate the contribution of each service attribute towards the overall satisfaction. This paper aims to verify the possibility of replacing the traditional method with the more cost-effective best-worst case 1 method, using a customer survey recently conducted in Santander, Spain. The results show that the satisfaction level obtained from these alternative methods are remarkably similar. The relative importance of each attribute delivered by the two methods differ, with the Best-Worst approach showing more intuitive and consistent results with the literature on public transport customer satisfaction. A regression method is developed to derive customer satisfaction with each service attribute from Best-Worst modelling results.

This Ph.D. aims to investigate how women’s groups, aimed at reducing maternal and neonatal mortality in Malawi, affect quality of life. Quality of life was measured in 534 women, com- prising 179 women’s group members in 36 different communities, 174 non-members in the same communities and 181 women in 36 control communities. The WHOQoL-BREF, a 26-item ques- tionnaire developed by the WHO to measure quality of life from a broad perspective, was used. The WHOQoL-BREF has the following six domains: overall quality of life, overall health, phys- ical, psychological, social relationships and environment; and is compatible with the capability approach of economic evaluation. It was first translated into Chichewa, the main local lan- guage of Malawi, and validated for future use as part of this Ph.D. This Ph.D. also makes methodological contributions via adaptation of Discrete Choice Experiment best-worst scaling exercises for use in poor rural communities; and adapting Contingent Valuation techniques using time and maize flour as alternative payment methods to money. The choice experiments were employed to provide relative preference-weights to each WHOQoL-BREF attribute as an altern- ative to respondents indicating how important each attribute is on a scale not requiring them to trade-off attributes against each other. The results of the choice experiments were modelled using the newly-developed Sequential Best-Worst Multinomial Logit Model. The Contingent Valuation study contributes empirical data on whether, how much, and why the women in the three study arms value the women’s group intervention. This Ph.D. also explores philosoph- ical, political, psychological and economic literature surrounding measurement of quality of life, decision-making, economic evaluation and allocative efficiency. It hopes to contribute toward valuation of women’s groups in Malawi, and, more broadly, toward methods of cost-benefit ana- lysis of health interventions in low-income countries via the consideration of non-health costs and benefits.

Food-borne illness is a significant burden both with regard to public health and financially. Efforts to reduce the level of food-borne illness continue to concentrate on the full food supply chain with particular regard given to Campylobacter, the most commonly reported zoonosis and the greatest burden to public health. The focus of this research is domestic food safety practises, where there is no regulation. Food safety is reliant on people’s knowledge or awareness, their ability to adopt safe food handling practises and for the correct behaviours to achieve this, to be routine. The elicitation of awareness and perceptions with regard to food safety are problematic due to the complexities of human nature, including the presence of several forms of bias, such as social desirability bias and optimistic bias. The research was designed in order to try to minimise such biases, whilst further understanding influences on food safety preparation behaviour. Food safety preparation behaviours and kitchen hygiene were investigated between people who had campylobacteriosis in comparison to people who had not had food poisoning. Whilst no difference was noted in the kitchen hygiene between the two groups, significant differences were noted in self-reported food preparation behaviours. Optimistic bias was exhibited by both groups but when tested again after six months had elapsed, the group who had not had food poisoning increased their optimism, introducing a significant difference in optimistic bias between the two groups. Awareness of a number of unsafe food behaviours was explored for individuals and groups of people using a method developed as part of the research. This method of hazard awareness uses video as a stimulus, creating an interactive survey, combined with attitudinal and demographic data. Changes were made to perceptions of knowledge and risk following the hazard perception challenge, with the number of hazards missed, influencing this movement in perception. The risk perception of unsafe food handling behaviours was examined using a novel technique Best-Worst Scaling, in order to identify relative risks. This technique, in conjunction with latent class modelling, demonstrated a difference in perceptions between food safety experts and members of the general public. However, these differences are nuanced and demonstrate that heterogeneity exists both within and across the groups. Taken together, these findings have extended the research on domestic food safety behaviour and risk perceptions. It has done so by developing and testing novel methods to elicit relative risk perceptions and hazard perception with regard to food safety behaviours. The results provide valuable evidence for stakeholders particularly with regard to the novel methods used in identifying the heterogeneity and influences of food safety behaviour between groups of people. It also provides important tools for stakeholders, risk managers and communicators to use in future research, communication and education.

Organic food is claimed to be one of the fastest growing food categories worldwide, with annual sale growth rates of 20-30%. While the uptake of organic foods is higher in G7 countries, organic consumption rates in Australia are significantly lower than other comparable Western markets, despite general positive attitudes towards organics, and significant organic production areas. Impediments to organic food uptake have been identified previously from both a supply- and demand-side perspective. Impediments include availability, pricing and certification. The aims of this research are twofold. First, this research seeks to understand what Australian consumers currently understand about organic certification schemes and labelling. Second, it incorporates a large-scale national survey that examines preferences for organic alternatives. This research applies a choice-based method, best-worst (BW) scaling, in three organic food categories to understand the trade-offs that respondents are willing to make.<br>Thesis (PhD Doctorate)<br>Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)<br>Griffith Business School<br>Griffith Business School<br>Full Text

This thesis focuses on two under-researched areas of consumer behaviour: conflict handling styles and consumer bargaining. As illustrated in this thesis, consumer bargaining is a substantial and important behaviour that has rarely been studied from a consumer perspective. Further, conflict handling, which is considered an important and wellresearched phenomenon in an organisational context, has been rarely applied to consumer behaviour, despite the potential for conflict in many areas. The aims of this thesis were to a) examine consumer bargaining behaviour across a variety of culturally diverse nations; b) develop and validate a new instrument to measure conflict handling styles; and c) examine the relationships between the likelihood of consumer bargaining, preferred conflict handling styles, and personal values. Consumer bargaining was found to be common in both developed and developing nations. Respondents from Australia and Germany reported bargaining for a broad range of products that vary in their prices, including cars, electronics, appliances, clothing, and computers. Bargaining in South Korea was even more common, including everyday purchases like clothing, and food and drink. Finally, bargaining in Brazil was almost as common as in South Korea, and also included expensive consumer durable purchases, such as electronic products and cars, in addition to everyday purchases, such as clothing, and food and drink. The conflict handling style instrument developed in this project had convergent validity with existing ratings scales, reproduced the theorised structure of the dual-concerns model of conflict handling, and had predictive validity in a service recovery context. The benefits iii of the new scale over existing ratings scales include: a) capturing relative preference for the conflict handling styles; b) reduction of sources of common method variance; c) reduction of ratings scale response biases; and d) reduction of numerical effect biases, such as different perceived distances between response categories. The newly developed scale was also used to assess the hypothesised relationships between personal values, conflict handling styles, and consumer bargaining intensity in a developed Western country (Germany). As expected, the dominate conflict handling style was positively related, while the avoid conflict handling style was negatively related to consumer bargaining intensity. Although no relationship was found between personal values and consumer bargaining intensity, personal values were found to be an antecedent of conflict handling styles. Specifically, the power value type was found to be a positive predictor of the dominate conflict handling style, while benevolence and social universalism were found to be positive predictors of the integrate conflict handling style.

En tant qu’animaux sociaux, les humains communiquent entre eux en se transmettant divers types d’information sur le monde et sur eux-mêmes. Au cœur de ce processus, la voix permet la transmission de messages linguistiques dénotant un sens strict qui peut être décodé par l’interlocuteur. En transmettant d’autres informations telles que des attitudes ou des émotions qui connotent le sens strict, la voix enrichit et facilite le processus de communication. Au cours des dernières décennies, l’importance des technologies numériques dans nos vies n’a cessé de croître. Dans de nombreuses situations quotidiennes, nous délaissons les claviers, les souris et même les écrans tactiles au profit d’interactions avec des assistants vocaux ou même des agents virtuels qui permettent de communiquer avec les machines comme on le fait avec nos congénères. Avec l’émergence d’un monde hybride où coexistent réalités physique et virtuelle, il devient crucial de permettre aux machines de capter, d’interpréter et de reproduire les émotions et les attitudes véhiculées par la voix humaine. Cette recherche se concentre sur les attitudes sociales de la parole, qui peuvent être définies dans un contexte d’interaction comme des dispositions vocales envers les autres, et vise à développer des algorithmes pour leur conversion. Pour atteindre cet objectif, des données - c’est-à-dire une collection d’enregistrements audio d’énoncés véhiculant diverses attitudes vocales - sont nécessaires. Cette recherche est donc construite à partir de cette étape initiale de collecte d’une matière première, à savoir un jeu de données dédié aux attitudes sociales de la parole. La conception d’algorithmes de conversion des attitudes vocales implique de comprendre ce qui les définit, à la fois en termes de production - comment les individus utilisent-ils leur appareil vocal pour produire des attitudes ? - et de perception - comment décodent-ils ces attitudes dans la parole?. Nous avons donc mené deux études, une première mettant en évidence les stratégies de production des attitudes vocales et une seconde - basée sur une expérience de Best Worst Scaling (BWS) - mettant principalement en évidence les biais impliqués dans la perception de ces attitudes vocales, fournissant ainsi une double compréhension de la manière dont les attitudes vocales sont communiquées par les individus français. Ces résultats nous ont permis de motiver notre choix de représentation du signal vocal ainsi que nos choix d’architecture et d’optimisation pour la conception d’algorithmes de conversion des attitudes vocales. Afin d’étendre à l’ensemble de la base de données les connaissances sur la perception des attitudes vocales recueillies lors de cette seconde étude, nous avons travaillé à l’élaboration d’un BWS-Net permettant la détection des attitudes mal communiquées, fournissant ainsi des données propres pour l’apprentissage de la conversion. Afin d’apprendre à convertir les attitudes vocales, nous avons adopté une approche basée sur un réseau transformer dans un paradigme de conversion many-to-many utilisant le mel-spectrogramme comme représentation du signal de parole. Les premières expériences ayant révélé une perte d’intelligibilité dans les échantillons convertis, nous avons proposé un conditionnement linguistique de l’algorithme de conversion en lui incorporant un module de reconnaissance de parole. Des mesures objectives et subjectives ont montré que l’algorithme résultant obtient de meilleures performances que le transformer de référence aussi bien en termes d’intelligibilité et d’attitude véhiculée<br>As social animals, humans communicate with each other by transmitting various types of information about the world and about themselves. At the heart of this process, the voice allows the transmission of linguistic messages denoting a strict meaning that can be decoded by the interlocutor. By conveying other information such as attitudes or emotions that connote the strict meaning, the voice enriches and enhances the communication process. In the last few decades, the digital world has become an important part of our lives. In many everyday situations, we are moving away from keyboards, mice and even touch screens to interactions with voice assistants or even virtual agents that enable human-like communication with machines. In the emergence of a hybrid world where physical and virtual reality coexist, it becomes crucial to enable machines to capture, interpret, and replicate the emotions and attitudes conveyed by the human voice.This research focuses on speech social attitudes, which can be defined - in a context of interaction - as speech dispositions towards others and aims to develop algorithms for their conversion. Fulfilling this objective requires data, i.e. a collection of audio recordings of utterances conveying various vocal attitudes. This research is thus built out of this initial step in gathering raw material - a dataset dedicated to speech social attitudes. Designing such algorithms involves a thorough understanding of what these attitudes are both in terms of production - how do individuals use their vocal apparatus to produce attitudes? - and perception - how do they decode those attitudes in speech? We therefore conducted two studies, a first uncovering the production strategies of speech attitudes and a second - based on a Best Worst Scaling (BWS) experiment - mainly hinting at biases involved in the perception such vocal attitudes, thus providing a twofold account for how speech attitudes are communicated by French individuals. These findings were the basis for the choice of speech signal representation as well as the architectural and optimisation choices for the design of a speech attitude conversion algorithm. In order to extend the knowledge on the perception of vocal attitudes gathered during this second study to the whole database, we worked on the elaboration of a BWS-Net allowing the detection of mis-communicated attitudes, and thus provided clean data for conversion learning. In order to learn how to convert vocal attitudes, we adopted a transformer-based approach in a many-to-many conversion paradigm with mel-spectrogram as speech signal representation. Since early experiments revealed a loss of intelligibility in the converted utterances, we proposed a linguistic conditioning of the conversion algorithm through incorporation of a speech-to-text module. Both objective and subjective measures have shown the resulting algorithm achieves better performance than the baseline transformer both in terms of intelligibility and attitude conveyed

Les systèmes de santé accordent une attention croissante au point de vue des usagers dans l’organisation de l’offre de soins. L’instauration d’une offre de soins sensible aux besoins et préférences des patients constitue un enjeu majeur de qualité et d’efficacité des soins. Ce travail analyse le point de vue des patients pour l’offre de soins de médecine générale en utilisant différentes méthodes permettant d’obtenir des informations complémentaires en termes d’expérience de soins, de satisfaction, d’importance ou encore de préférences. Il s’agit des méthodes Delphi, de classement du meilleur au pire et de révélation des préférences par les choix discrets. Ces méthodes sont appliquées sur deux échantillons : en population générale pour la première et chez des patients poly-pathologiques pour les 2 autres afin d’identifier les principaux enjeux actuels et à venir de la réorganisation de l’offre de soins de médecine générale du point de vue des patients. Les résultats montrent le rôle central de la relation médecin-patient et plus particulièrement de l’échange d‘informations entre le médecin et le patient. Cependant une relation médecin-patient de qualité ne doit pas pour autant être réalisée au détriment de la qualité technique du soin et de la coordination de la prise en charge du patient. Ce travail montre également l’importance de prendre en compte l’expérience de soins des patients lors de l’analyse de leur point de vue, et plus particulièrement de leur disposition au changement. L’évaluation systématique et régulière des préférences des patients en pratique quotidienne peut permettre d’améliorer la communication médecin-patient ainsi que le contenu de l’offre de soins du point de vue des patients<br>The healthcare systems are paying a great interest to the patients’ perspective for the organization of health care provision. Healthcare system which is accountable and responsive of patients’ needs and preferences is a major issue for the quality and efficiency of care. In this thesis, we analyze the views of patients for the supply of GP care in using different complementary methods about patients’ experience, satisfaction, importance or preferences. These methods are applied to a sample of patients in GP and to a sample of chronically ill patients in order to identify current and future major issues for the reorganization of GP care from the patients’ perspective. The results show the main role of the doctor-patient relationship and especially of the information exchange between doctor and patient and between patient and doctor. However the quality of the doctor-patient relationship is not enough. The technical quality of care (i.e. thoroughness) and the coordination are of high importance for patients. This work highlights that it is necessary to take into account the patients’ experiences in the analysis of their perspective (e.g. preferences) to fully and appropriately understand the results, especially in terms of willingness to change. The systematic and regular screening of patient preferences in daily GP practice can improve the doctor-patient communication and the content of the provision of care from the perspective of patients

Professional Doctorate - Clinical and Health Psychology<br>The length of waiting time to see a health care professional is often cited as a key consideration when evaluating the provision of health care services. Although there has been a considerable amount of research on waiting time itself, there has been little research on how important it is when compared to other attributes and even less research on patients’ perceptions of these attributes. A moderate amount of research has been carried out on therapist characteristics and although this feeds into the attributes of ‘expertise’ and to a lesser extent ‘thorough care’, there is again, a paucity of research on patients’ perceptions of these attributes, particularly thoroughness of care, and a dearth of research on the attribute of ‘convenience’ and how important it is to patients. The importance of obtaining feedback from patients is increasingly being acknowledged as vital when considering improving the quality of, and satisfaction with, health sector services. Added to the limited amount of information that is available, is its lack of robustness, primarily due to the problems that have been associated with traditional methods of gathering feedback. This study notes the limitations of traditional self report scales and has utilised a relatively new method to gather and analyse responses, namely, Best-Worst Scaling (BWS). BWS sits under the broad umbrella of Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs), which have been shown to produce valuable information in health research. DCEs involve asking respondents to select between different types of services (or products) described in terms of various attributes. The current study aims to highlight the considerable contribution that BWS can make to research in this field.

Although data collection through discrete choice experimentsconducted using surveys are commonly used in research, aimingto improve data quality is still serviceable and necessary. Three distinct experiments were conducted with the objectives of improving data quality by better tailoring experiments to market conditionsas well as decreasing complexity and fatigue. First, consumer willingness-to-pay(WTP) for yogurt attributes was estimatedusing a survey targeted to be nationally representative of the US.A novel approach was used to allow for self-selection into the choice experiment for commonly purchased types of yogurt.On average, respondentswere willing-to-paya positive amount for requiring pasture access and not permitting dehorning/disbudding for both traditional and Greek yogurt. Respondents had positive WTPfor Greek yogurt labeled free of high fructose corn syrup, and were willing-to-pay morefor low-fat yogurt when compared to nonfat for both yogurt types.<div><br></div><div> Second, anew WTP data collection method, employing component discrete choice experiments in place of traditional larger experimental designs,was proposedand compared to the traditional method to elicit yogurt consumer’s WTP for attributes in yogurt. The new WTP data collection method was designed with the objective of decreasing complexity by having respondents participate in fewer choice scenarios. Incidences of attribute non-attendance (ANA), a potential simplifying heuristic that results from complexity, occurred less frequently for all attributes in the new WTP data collection method with one exception. Exhibiting ANA for any attribute was negatively correlated with the time respondents took to complete the choice experiment.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Finally, through the use of a newbest-worst scaling(BWS)data collection method,consumer preferences for fluid dairy milk attributes were elicited and results as well as measures of data quality were compared to the traditional method of BWS. Nine attributes of fluid milk were included in this study: container material, rbST-free, price, container size, fat content, humane handling of cattle, brand, required pasture access for cattle, and cattle fed an organic diet. The top (price) and bottom (container material) attributes in terms of relative ranking did not change between the new BWS data collection method and the traditional BWS method. The new BWS data collection method resulted in fewer incidences of ANA for all attributes except one. There was not a statistical difference in the number of transitivity (an axiom of consumer theory) violators,between the new and traditional BWS methods.<br></div>

Wellbeing as a measure for evidence-based policy has gained prominence internationally and nationally. There is now widespread recognition that wellbeing is multidimensional and contextually and culturally constructed. Despite this, the tendency has been to establish universal criteria and indicators for the measurement of wellbeing. One problem with such universal applications is that the different meanings and understandings of what constitutes wellbeing that are held by different peoples can be overlooked. This is particularly true for Indigenous peoples around the world where parameters of their wellbeing tend to be defined on their behalf. While this in part reflects the power imbalance between Indigenous peoples and nation-states, it is also simply the lack of adequately nuanced data on what constitutes ‘wellbeing’ for Indigenous peoples. This situation can be attributed to the difficulty of creating measures that can be both ‘relevant’ and ‘usable’. ‘Relevance’ involves giving priority to Indigenous worldviews concerning wellbeing while concerns for ‘usability’ can steer researchers and policy makers toward a reliance on existing normative datasets and methodologies. As a result, a disconnection persists between Indigenous peoples’ aspirations for wellbeing and the policies and reporting frameworks aimed at improving Indigenous wellbeing. This disconnect can be usefully framed in the ‘recognition space’. Operationalising this space requires a focus on how wellbeing is conceptualised, by what process are wellbeing measures decided, for what purposes, and who makes those decisions. This thesis has the ambitious aim of operationalising the recognition space, to conduct research that addresses the challenge of bringing closer the often opposing concerns for ‘relevance’ and ‘usability’ in the development of wellbeing measures. A substantial component of the thesis is therefore focused on process, not just outcomes. The operationalising of the recognition space involved a two-fold process Firstly, existing approaches are extended by incorporating Indigenous worldviews in the framing of wellbeing evaluation. As an approach, it is a step in the direction of making visible the aspects of Indigenous wellbeing which tend to be at the margins of ‘usability’ accounts. But ultimately, such an approach remains imperfect. Conceptualising Indigenous wellbeing that is both ‘relevant’ and ‘usable’ requires an alternative approach. In the second part of the thesis, an alternative approach starting from Indigenous perspectives is explored, working with the Yawuru community in Broome, Western Australia. The Yawuru case study employed a participatory mixed-methods approach whereby narratives and expressions of wellbeing by Yawuru women and men informed the development of measures and indicators used to represent and evaluate their wellbeing. There are two innovative contributions of this case study. Firstly, conceptualisation of Yawuru wellbeing starting with mabu liyan, Yawuru’s philosophy of wellbeing; and secondly the use of Best-Worst Scaling as a way to elicit Yawuru priorities. Together, the objects of value and the importance attached to the various objects of value for Yawuru are determined. This approach has the benefit of transforming the way that data and information is presented and collected, by actively involving those who know their lives best, those on the ground living in communities.

Using the E. coli vaccine as a case study, this thesis examines the factors affecting the adoption of technologies with positive spillover (externality) effects related to food safety. Positive spillovers occur when the benefits from a technological innovation extend beyond the firm (farm) adopting the technology or they do not flow to the adopter. If there are insufficient incentives for the firm to adopt the new technology, adoption levels are sub-optimal, resulting in forgone benefits to society. These benefits include the avoidance of potential health costs, productivity loss and premature death costs as a result to exposure to E. coli O157:H7. Therefore, if the market incentives to adopt the technology are strengthened, adoption levels of the technology could reach socially optimal levels resulting in an improvement in food safety. This has been the case in the Canadian cattle industry, where the uptake of the E. coli vaccine by cow-calf producers has been very low. As such, a number of potential incentives to increase adoption of the vaccine were identified and assessed through a survey of cow-calf producers on the Prairies. Data from the survey were analyzed using a stated preference methodology, Best-Worst Scaling, and Latent Class cluster analysis. A Binary Probit Model was also used to examine the factors affecting willingness to adopt the vaccine. The results suggest that a significant number of producers were not aware of the existence of the E. coli vaccine. In addition, producers were most likely to be influenced in their adoption decisions by market/supply chain oriented incentives and government intervention incentives in the form of subsidies. On the other hand, incentives that were least likely to influence cow-calf producers’ decisions to adopt included government intervention through recommending use of vaccine and neighbours (other cow-calf producers) adopting the vaccine. The Latent Class cluster analysis revealed the existence of three unique producer clusters with different attitudes towards these incentives. Several socio-demographic variables and individual characteristics utilized in the Probit analysis were found to be determinants of a producer’s willingness to adopt an E. coli vaccine. The implications of this research are such that producer education and awareness campaigns may be utilized as tools for disseminating information on food safety technologies such as the E. coli vaccine. Furthermore, the market/supply chain incentives may be used to form potential market-based solutions to address the current low adoption rates. The existence of three unique producer clusters suggest that a one-size fits all strategy to encourage the adoption of the E. coli vaccine might be difficult to implement and thus a more targeted approach may be a feasible alternative.

The agri-food supply chain is currently far from being sustainable due to its negative contribution to environmental degradation, climate change, public health and social equity. Individuals as consumers play a key role in favouring the transition towards a sustainable food system. Switching towards more sustainable food consumption patterns can trigger changes on the supply side and contribute to policy efforts aimed at pursuing sustainable development. In this context, the aspects such as the drivers and barriers to sustainable consumption, consumer behaviour towards sustainable choices and how to effectively tackle unsustainable food habits have become paramount. Therefore, to fill the research gaps in the existing literature, this thesis aims to provide a better understanding of the effect of environmental and social sustainability attributes on food choices and investigate the decision-making process adopted by food consumers when choosing sustainable products.

The emerging financial industry of asset-backed short-term finance was investigated by this study. Literature indicated that banks, locally and globally, are forced by regulation and the use of information technology, to rely less on human judgement and more on programmed decision-making, when evaluating loan applications. This leads to time-consuming processes with non-standard loan applications and loss of opportunities for business persons. Asset-backed short-term finance is a market response to this tendency. Due to the emerging nature of this industry, no previous academic description of or investigation into this industry could be found – a gap in academic literature which this study aims to fill. The industry is strategically positioned in relation to banks by focusing on functionality for urgent non-standard loan applications (period between application and decision, and access to decision-makers) as value proposition, where banks are found lacking. Relatively high interest rates form the profit proposition, as firms in this industry have limited access to funds. Collateral is central as risk-mitigating strategy, forming a part of the profit proposition. The people proposition is essential, as the industry is distinguished by individualised decision-making. A survey among customers of this industry identified four clusters of potential customers: The first had no needs unfulfilled by banks, while the other three clusters were attracted by either functionality, or the evaluation of collateral in contrast to repayment ability, or a combination of the two. A survey among providers revealed hesitance to supply information and a low level of agreement on strategic matters – possibly due to the emergent nature of the industry. It is asserted that the basis for further study was laid.<br>Business Management<br>D. Com. (Business Management)