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In Belief, They Thrive: Comparative Studies Examining the Moderating Role of Machine Heuristic in the Perceived Authenticity and Credibility of Virtual and Human Influencers in Product Advertising and Charitable Campaigns
No full textAs virtual influencers continue to emerge as novel tools in strategic communication, the psychological mechanisms underlying their persuasive effectiveness call for investigation across diverse domains. In particular, there has been a need to examine the conditions and contexts under which they can serve as effective alternatives to human influencers. To expand the existing literature, this study reports two experimental studies examining how individuals evaluate virtual influencers compared to human influencers in both commercial and prosocial contexts. Drawing on the authenticity management framework and the modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability model, Study 1 investigates how influencer type (virtual vs. human) is associated with consumers’ perceptions of authenticity, and how these perceptions influence trust and product purchase intention. Importantly, we examine whether individuals’ machine heuristic moderates the relationship between influencer type and authenticity perception. Results (N = 130) revealed that virtual influencers were unexpectedly perceived as more authentic than human influencers. This effect was moderated by the machine heuristic—Individuals with stronger beliefs in machine capabilities perceived virtual influencers as more authentic than those with weaker beliefs. In turn, authenticity was positively associated with trust, which predicted purchase intentions. Based on the social media influencer value model, the modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability model, and the heuristic-systematic model of information processing, Study 2 shifted the context to charitable donation appeals. This study examined how influencer type (virtual vs. human) relates to perceived credibility (i.e., expertise and trustworthiness) and donation intention, while also testing the moderating role of the machine heuristic. Results (N = 241) showed that virtual influencers were also evaluated as more credible than human influencers, with machine heuristic significantly moderating this effect. Furthermore, perceived credibility was positively associated with cognitive elaboration, which in turn was curvilinearly associated with charitable intention, suggesting a threshold beyond which elaboration no longer improves persuasion. Together, these studies offer theoretical and practical implications for understanding how individuals’ beliefs about machines influence their evaluations of artificial agents across diverse message contexts. While prior research has often found that human influencers are generally perceived as more authentic or credible due to ontological differences, our findings suggest that, under certain conditions, virtual influencers may be viewed equally or even more favorably than human influencers. These results provide unique contributions to the existing literature and suggest the need for more context-sensitive future investigation
Family Ties: NBA Draft Position and Player Performance
No full textThis study aims to investigate the role, if any, that nepotism plays in the careers of players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Career performance is compared between the 780 players drafted from 2007-2019 with familial relationships considered. Ordinary Least Squares and logistic regression models are specified to estimate the effect of having a relative on the success of an NBA player’s career. We find that siblings of NBA players earn more and reach minimum games played thresholds more often, while sons of NBA players earn more, but generally do not reach games played thresholds more often than similarly-drafted peers
The Basics of the Mundlak and Chamberlain Projections
No full textOne of the best-known results in panel data econometrics, due to Mundlak (1978), is the equality of the random-effects and fixed-effects estimators when the individual effects are correlated with the means over time of the regressors. Chamberlain (1980) showed that the same result holds when the individual effects are correlated with the regressors for all moments in time separately. In this chapter, we review basic elements of the Mundlak and Chamberlain projections. We emphasize the simplicity that is often obtained when the model is transformed into the within and between-model, following Arellano (1993). Topics that we discuss include the augmented regression model, the Hausman test, minimum-distance estimation and its link to GMM, unbalanced data, and higher-dimensional data
Education and Fertility: Evidence from an Instrumental Variable Approach Using Higher Education Expansions in Turkey
No full textThis paper examines the impact of higher education on women’s fertility behavior in Turkey. To address the endogeneity of education we use the plausibly exogenous variation in college availability in Turkey between 1983 and 2000. We find that increased education of women in Turkey significantly reduced the number of children and increased the probability of childlessness at the end of the fecund period. The effect of education on fertility worked through a postponement in first births at ages following college graduation until the age of 35, an improvement in women’s labor market outcomes, better marriage market outcomes, and use of modern contraceptive methods. These findings suggest that education reduces fertility at the intensive and extensive margin through a combined incarceration and human capital effect and health knowledge in Turkey
ROLES OF SEX AND EDUCATION LEVEL WITH ALCOHOL USE MILESTONE ATTAINMENT AND PROGRESSION
No full textEmerging adults report the highest rates of alcohol use, with drinking patterns varying by sex and education level. Few studies have explored how these factors relate to the attainment and progression of alcohol use milestones. The current study addresses this gap by examining the associations between sex, education level and alcohol use milestone progression and attainment in emerging adults. Secondary data analyses were conducted using National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III (NESARC-III) data (N = 36,309, Mage = 45.63 [SD = 17.53], female = 56%, 53% White, 21% Black, 19% Hispanic and 2% Multiracial). Ordinal regressions indicated males had higher odds of milestone attainment than females (OR = 1.49, 95% CI [ -.13, .94]), while individuals in the lowest education level had significantly lower odds of attaining milestones than those with higher education (OR = 0.59, 95% CI [-.85, -.19]). Survival analyses revealed significant main effects of study variables. Males progressed more quickly than females to initiation and first intoxication (TR = 1.03 and 1.02), and females reached first 5+ drink episode earlier than males (TR = 0.91). Compared to the lowest education group, college graduates reached initiation and first 5+ episode earlier (TR = 1.03 and 1.04), and individuals with some graduate education reached first 5+ drink episode earlier (TR = 1.06). Results suggest complex risk patterns by sex and education level across alcohol milestones, underscoring the need for prevention efforts tailored to developmental stage and demographic risk factors to reduce alcohol related harms in emerging adulthood. Key Words: Alcohol use milestones, emerging adulthood, education level, se
Co-catalyst Modified Mn-Doped Semiconductor Hybrid Nanostructures for Enhanced Photocatalysis
No full textSemiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) are sought after for their applications in photocatalysis and photovoltaics and due to their impressive optical and electronic properties. In photocatalysis, an important green energy transformation is sunlight utilization to produce hydrogen gas via photocatalytic water splitting. However, the photocatalytic performance of pristine semiconductors is low due to their inherent fast charge recombination. The use of co-catalysts with semiconductor NCs leads to enhanced photocatalytic product generation; noble metal co-catalysts, such as Pt, Au, Ag, and Cu and noble-metal-free metal hydroxide co-catalysts on either chalcogenide CdS or perovskite CsPbX3 (X = Cl, Br) semiconductors were synthesized to study the changes in photophysical properties. Yet, co-catalysts alone are not enough to improve the photocatalytic properties of the semiconductor hybrids. Therefore, Mn2+ dopants are introduced, which have a significantly longer lifetime (∼ms) than that of host excitons (∼ns), facilitating charge separation for resulting enhancement of the photocatalytic performance. The long-lived lifetime from the Mn2+ dopants is on a similar timescale of surface photocatalytic reactions, which resulted in significant enhancement of photocatalysis. The Mn2+ dopants act as a bridge between the light harvesting semiconductors and the active site co-catalyst during photocatalysis. Furthermore, we studied the changes in the Mn2+ doped semiconductors’ photovoltaic properties upon addition of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) active co-catalysts. When LSPR interacts with Mn2+ dopants, the photophysical properties of the semiconductor hybrid can be altered to enhance specific properties such as emission yield. Controlling the interactions between co-catalysts and Mn2+ dopants in semiconductors is fundamentally important for altering the photocatalytic and photovoltaic properties of semiconductors
FERTILE, SOCIAL, DANGEROUS, SACRED, GIFT, AND SYSTEM: RELIGION, SALT CITY HARVEST FARM, AND THE FUTURE OF HUMAN SHIT
No full textShit, the taboo term for the human excreta that exits the anus, can be understood as sacred. Shitting, the vulgar verb to describe the act of discarding solid excreta, can likewise be understood as religious ritual activity. This counters the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) in the United States (US) of the placement of shit as profane, and shitting as unceremonial. An aim of this dissertation is to reclaim the word shit from the realm of what the DSP has rendered invisible and unspeakable, and spark rigorous academic discussion about it in the context of Religion and Environmental Studies. The DSP is the set of widely held values, practices, and frameworks that shape a society\u27s worldview and influence its institutions. In the current US, the genealogy of the DSP comes from the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD), manifesting as the societal hegemony of cisheteronormative white Christian supremacist patriarchy. The DSP influences how people shit, and how they think and write about shitting (or don’t). A focus on shit in Chapters 1-3 exposes gaps and ambiguities in the categories created by three foundational scholars in the academic study of Religion (Durkheim, Douglas, and Otto). Though like other facets of Religion which chart aspects of human life as material beings and our social organization, shit and shitting have been understudied in the canonical literature, to the detriment of the categories that we inherit. The work of contemporary scholar-activists Chapters 4-5 (Kimmerer and Macy) reconnects the field of Religion to the field of Environmental Studies, helping to make space for the discussion of excreta. Shit humans produce has implications for both areas as the inner and outer lives of each person as an excreting individual, and our collective life on planet Earth. Closing the poop loop, that is, re-cycling all discarded nutrients, is key to the survival of humanity. Yet environmental efforts need approaches Religion offers because solutions to the global sanitation crisis are not only technical, but are questions of orientation, worldview, and values. Dealing with our crap collectively begins with breaking the taboo on poo in order to see and speak alternatives, as well as to analyze the systems of wasting and power operating in US society. The ethnographic component of this dissertation reveals how the treatment of shit (marked as disposable) is replicated in the treatment of people (when they are marked disposable). The field site is Salt City Harvest Farm (SCHF), an organization serving refugee farmers in upstate New York (unceded Onondaga land). The farmers are in the process of making a collective decision regarding which excreta infrastructure technology (ExIT) system is ideal to construct at their farm site, in the future. Refugee farmers are treated like shit by US society, partially because they are ambiguous in citizenship, legal status, racialization, and cultural de/assimilation practices, etc. This parallels shit’s ambiguity. In being both alive and dead, fertilizer and poison, attractive and repulsive, shit, like refugees, cannot be neatly categorized. This causes great discomfort in the DSP which has come to prominence in its ability to enforce its categorizations and classifications, not in the least upon places perceived as “shithole countries,” from whence refugees come to the US, arriving at this political moment
PLACE, POLICY, POWER: New and Continuous Destinations and the Influence of State-Level Policy on Immigrant Outcomes
No full textThis research focuses on how state level policies influence the ability of immigrants to enhance their socioeconomic status in both continuous and new immigrant destinations. To accomplish this, this project will draw on IPUMS American Community Survey (ACS) census data, combined with state level policy data. Specifically, this work will examine the impact of state policy concerning: 1) driver’s license and state identification accessibility, 2) security and border patrol, and 3) access to social welfare programs. There are three specific aims of this research: to explore differences in socioeconomic outcomes by new/continuous immigration destination locations, to explore the impact of policy on immigrant socioeconomic outcomes, and to unpack the interactions between place (new/continuous destination) and policy in immigrant socioeconomic outcomes