Neighborhood Effects on Decision-Making Processes by Low-Income Adults and Youths

社区对低收入成年人和青少年决策过程的影响

• 批准号: 7874274
• 负责人: Jens Ludwig
• 金额: $ 19.39万
• 依托单位: NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-06-01 至 2012-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7874274
• 关键词: Affect; Americas; Area; Behavior; Behavioral; Characteristics; Crime; Decision Making; Disadvantaged; Drug usage; Economics; Education; Elements; Environment; Evaluation; Evaluation Studies; Exercise; Family; Funding; Goals; Health; Health behavior; Housing; Individual; Injury; Knowledge; Lead; Learning; Life; Light; Low income; Maps; Measures; Mediating; Methods; Modeling; Nature; Neighborhoods; Obesity; Outcome; Outcomes Research; Pattern; Plague; Policies; Process; Psyche structure; Psychology; Public Health; Public Policy; Randomized; Research; Residential Mobility; Respondent; Rest; Risk; Risk Behaviors; Safety; Schools; Series; Site; Social Policies; Societies; Sorting - Cell Movement; Student Dropouts; Survey Methodology; Surveys; Testing; Time; Validation; Variant; Youth; base; cost; criminal behavior; design; discount; economic behavior; effectiveness measure; geographic difference; improved; innovation; interest; neighborhood safety; payment; physical conditioning; preference; programs; public health relevance; research study; response; social; socioeconomics; success; teenage fertility; treatment effect; willingness; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A wide range of social, economic, and health behaviors-such as school dropout, crime, injury, drug use, teen fertility, and obesity-vary dramatically across neighborhoods in America. People who stay in school, or avoid crime, drug use or teen fertility do so because they are willing to delay gratification, and appreciate the risks of these behaviors. The fact that these behaviors vary so dramatically across neighborhoods raises the possibility that neighborhood environments themselves may influence how people form preferences and make decisions that have important consequences for public health. A growing body of research in behavioral economics suggests plausible channels through which neighborhoods might influence elements of decision making. This project would exploit variation in neighborhood conditions generated by a unique HUD-funded randomized housing mobility experiment known as Moving to Opportunity (MTO), in order to study how neighborhood environments affect basic features of decision making and whether this is an important mechanism behind any neighborhood effects on public-health-related behaviors. Since 1994 MTO has randomly assigned some families to a program that enabled them to move to housing in less disadvantaged areas. Random assignment generates comparable groups of low-income families living in different types of neighborhoods, which can be used to overcome the selection problem that plagues most previous research and isolate the causal effects of changes in neighborhood. The long-term evaluation of MTO, currently in the field, collects a series of measures on how individuals think about choices, involving time and risk specifically, and includes an innovative choice experiment for real stakes. This proposal seeks additional funding in order to expand the scope of the analysis of the decision-making portion of the MTO survey beyond the interests or the means of the long-term MTO evaluation study. Among other goals, this project will seek to: map survey responses to preference parameters, in order to make full use of the information in the decision-making questions, improve the power of the treatment estimate, and generate generalizable results; identify the specific neighborhood characteristics that matter for decision-making outcomes in order to better understand the contingent nature of decision-making; and evaluate the effectiveness of the measures and methods used for eliciting time and risk preferences. In order to achieve these goals, this study will model and analyze preference parameters constructed based on response patterns to these survey measures, and probe the robustness of treatment effects estimated using these measures to alternative assumptions and specifications. It will employ modified models of treatment effects that exploit variation across MTO treatment groups and sites to identify the specific neighborhood conditions most responsible for any program effects. And it will perform simple validation exercises to test the effectiveness of the measures themselves. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: A wide range of economic, social, and health outcomes-including public health outcomes such as injuries, obesity, and teen fertility-vary dramatically across neighborhoods within the U.S. Decisions to engage in many of these behaviors hinges on the individual's willingness to delay gratification and to defer risk. This project seeks to exploit the inclusion of a range of decision-making survey measures and even a real-stakes decision making exercise in a large-scale randomized residential-mobility experiment known as Moving to Opportunity, in order to learn more about whether neighborhood environments influence basic features of decision making, and how much of the geographic variation in social outcomes is due to a direct effect of neighborhood conditions, such as neighborhood safety, on how individuals make the type of decisions that lead to these outcomes.

描述（由申请人提供）：多种社会，经济和健康行为，例如学校辍学，犯罪，伤害，毒品使用，青少年生育能力以及肥胖 - 在美国各个社区急剧。留在学校的人，或避免犯罪，吸毒或青少年生育能力，因为他们愿意延迟满足，并欣赏这些行为的风险。这些行为在各个社区之间如此巨大，这一事实增加了社区环境本身可能会影响人们形成偏好并做出对公共卫生带来重要影响的决策的可能性。越来越多的行为经济学研究表明，邻里可能影响决策要素的合理渠道。该项目将利用由HUD资助的独特的随机住房移动性实验所产生的邻里条件变化，称为“移动到机会”（MTO），以研究邻里环境如何影响决策的基本特征，以及这是否是邻里对公共健康相关行为的任何邻里影响背后的重要机制。自1994年以来，MTO随机将一些家庭分配给一个计划，使他们能够在弱势群体中移居住房。随机分配产生了生活在不同类型社区中的低收入家庭的可比组，这些群体可用于克服困扰大多数先前研究的选择问题，并隔离社区变化的因果影响。目前在现场的MTO的长期评估收集了一系列有关个人如何思考选择，特别涉及时间和风险的措施，并包括一个创新的选择实验实验。该提案寻求额外的资金，以扩大对MTO调查的决策部分分析的范围，超过了长期MTO评估研究的利益或手段。除其他目标外，该项目将寻求：对偏好参数的地图调查回答，以便在决策问题中充分利用信息，提高治疗估算的能力并产生可普遍的结果；确定针对决策成果至关重要的特定邻里特征，以便更好地了解决策的偶然性；并评估用于引发时间和风险偏好的措施和方法的有效性。为了实现这些目标，本研究将模拟和分析基于对这些调查措施的响应模式构建的偏好参数，并探究使用这些措施估计的替代假设和规格估算的治疗效果的鲁棒性。它将采用改良的治疗效果模型，以利用MTO治疗组和部位之间的变化来确定最负责任何程序效应的特定邻里条件。它将进行简单的验证练习，以测试措施本身的有效性。 公共卫生相关性：各种经济，社会和健康成果，包括诸如公共卫生结果，例如伤害，肥胖和青少年生育能力 - 在美国境内的跨社区中急剧差异，以促进许多这些行为取决于个人愿意延迟满足和推迟风险的人的意愿。该项目旨在利用一系列决策调查措施，甚至在大规模的随机居住式摩托车实验中进行核对决策练习，被称为移动机会，以更多地了解邻里环境的基本特征，以及在社交状况中的地理差异是否直接造成了社区条件的直接影响，例如，在社区中造成了如何构成确保的范围，例如，这些范围是由这些确定性的，这些范围是由这些决定的，以及这些决定的范围。