Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Accounting and MIS

This dissertation extends the literature of intentional reciprocity in a management control setting. Study 1 investigates how principals' choice of a committed penalty contract or a discretionary penalty contract affects agents' perceptions of principals' intentions. It finds that agents do not seem to perceive principals' choice of a discretionary penalty as negatively as they perceive the choice of a committed penalty contract. Study 2 investigates how principals' choice of a no penalty contract affects agents' perceptions of principals' intentions. It finds that agents' effort is lower when a no penalty contract is chosen by the principals than when a no penalty contract is chosen by the experimenter. This suggests that principals' choice of no penalty is not perceived positively by agents. Study 3 investigates how agents' prior expectation regarding principals' wage offers affect agents' perceptions of principals' intentions. It finds that agents' prior expectation does not seem to cause a significant change in agents' perceptions of principals' intentions. Study 4 investigates how salience of principals' alternative contract choice affects agents' perceptions of principals' intentions. It finds that when principals choose a discretionary penalty contract instead of a no penalty contract, agents' effort is significantly higher when agents' responses are elicited by a strategy method than when they are elicited by a direct response method. However, when principals choose a no penalty contract instead of a discretionary penalty contract, agents' effort is not different between a strategy method and a direct response method. Study 5 investigates how one-way or two-way communication affects agents' perceptions of principals' intentions. It finds that although principals seem to offer the high wage most frequently in one-way communication, agents' effort does not seem to be different between no communication, one-way communication and two-way communication. The main- (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Young (Committee Chair); Douglas Schroeder (Advisor); Anil Arya (Committee Member); John Kagel (Committee Member) Subjects: Accounting

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Economics

My dissertation research uses a combination of theoretical, empirical and experimental methods to identify the psychological factors underlying decision processes and to quantify their effects in market contexts in the industrial organization literature. The first essay, "Modeling Sequential Search with Anticipatory Regret and Rejoicing" models how regret and rejoicing arise when consumers sequentially search for lower prices, and shows that regret and rejoicing can explain why people are generally found to "search too little" compared to the theoretical benchmarks. Anticipatory regret and rejoicing are incorporated into the optimal search problem based on the formal regret theory of Bell (1982) and Loomes & Sugden (1982). Due to the asymmetry in anticipatory regret and rejoicing, the model predicts: First, "search too little" is optimal as long as people are more sensitive towards regret than towards rejoicing. Second, if additional feedback is offered so that people expect to see what the next price would have been had they continued to search, search behaviors become observationally indistinguishable from the benchmarks. In addition, if people's sensitivities towards future regret/rejoicing are strengthened after recently experiencing regret or rejoicing, the model can explain why people rationally recall past prices. The second essay, "Testing Regret in Sequential Search: Evidence from Experimental Data" devices an empirical strategy to test if regret and rejoicing do affect actual search in the way prescribed by the model. An empirical investigation of 673 separate searches from an experimental dataset confirms that people's latent reservation prices are affected by their experiences with regret and rejoicing during search. In particular, regret about the last search being unsuccessful increases the probability of stopping from 18% to 31% in the current round. Two competing explanations for “search too little”, risk aversion and satisficing behaviors, are ev (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Matthew S. Lewis (Committee Chair); Dr. Paul J. Healy (Committee Member); Dr. Lixin Ye (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Economics

This dissertation examines how the outcomes relating to minimum wage and employment subsidy policies may be influenced by the perceptions that workers have about such policies. The psychological effects of policy have not received much attention in the economics literature. Results are presented from laboratory experiments conducted in order to test the effects of policies in markets where employees have preferences for fairness and reciprocity that go beyond the standard model of rational self interest. Results are presented from experiments that introduce minimum wage restrictions into an experimental labor market characterized by gift exchange between employers and employees. Experiment 1 shows that introducing a minimum wage into an ongoing labor market has an overall positive effect on employee effort characterized by a small, statistically insignificant, negative effect on effort at low wages, and a larger, statistically significant, positive effect at higher wages. However, in comparing a labor market that starts with a minimum wage versus one that does not, the minimum wage results in sharply reduced effort. (i) These differences are entirely consistent with the decision theoretic research on reference point effects and (ii) the response to the minimum wage within an ongoing labor market has greater “ecological validity” for evaluating the likely impact outside the lab. Experiment 2, using payoff functions that make gift exchange more costly relative to Experiment 1 to both employers and employees, confirms that the effects of a minimum wage on effort within an ongoing labor market are unlikely to have an adverse effect on employee effort. Another experiment introduces an employment subsidy into a market characterized by substantial unemployment and significant levels of gift exchange. Then, an employment subsidy is introduced into the market to eliminate the unemployment. The results indicate that the subsidized workers do not respond differently from the u (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Kagel (Advisor) Subjects:

PHD, Kent State University, 2012, College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Ambassador Crawford / Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship

Gift exchange is a mechanism by which relationships are created, maintained, and managed. However, research reveals that the gifts givers prefer to give often differ from the gifts recipients prefer to receive, and relies on error in the givers' gift choice to explain giver-recipient gift preference asymmetry. This dissertation adopts an attachment theory perspective of gift exchange to examine givers and recipients' gift exchange preferences. Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1973/1980) explains how individuals' working models of self and other influence their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward relationships. As gift exchange strengthens, confirms, or distances relationship intimacy, the work in dissertation demonstrates that individuals are predisposed toward certain gift preferences in order to influence relationship intimacy in accord with their attachment style. Generally, recipient- and relationship-focused gifts confirm or strengthen relationships, while giver-focused gifts weaken them (Kleine et al., 1995; Ruth et al., 1999). Therefore, this dissertation asserts that attachment style affects the identity-congruence levels givers and recipients prefer in gifts. Based on data from 151 friendship dyads, study 1 uses the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) to investigate how givers' and recipients' attachment styles dyadically affect the levels of identity-congruence preferred in gifts given and received. Study 2 provides a practical investigation into how marketers can influence gift givers' selection of a brand as a gift. Using data collected from 491 participants, study 2 demonstrates how matching an advertising message to an individual's attachment style facilitates persuasion. This dissertation seeks to contribute to theory and practice in several ways. This work establishes the attachment theory perspective of gift exchange as a relationship-level phenomenon and explains how attachment styles dyadically affect preference for gifts expressing d (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Robert Jewell PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Jennifer Wiggins Johnson PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Kristin Mickelson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Marketing