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: 8074051
• 负责人: Jens Ludwig
• 金额: $ 16.34万
• 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 2013-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8074051
• 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; Mental Health; Methods; Modeling; Nature; Neighborhoods; Obesity; Outcome; Pattern; Plague; Policies; Process; Psychology; Public Health; Public Policy; Randomized; Research; Residential Mobility; Respondent; Rest; Risk; Risk Behaviors; Safety; Schools; Series; Site; Social Behavior; 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）：广泛的社会、经济和健康行为——如辍学、犯罪、伤害、吸毒、青少年生育和肥胖——在美国的各个社区差别很大。那些留在学校、避免犯罪、吸毒或青少年生育的人之所以这样做，是因为他们愿意推迟满足，并意识到这些行为的风险。这些行为在不同社区之间的差异如此之大，这一事实提出了一种可能性，即社区环境本身可能会影响人们如何形成偏好并做出对公共卫生有重要影响的决定。越来越多的行为经济学研究表明，社区可能通过一些合理的渠道影响决策要素。该项目将利用独特的hud资助的随机住房流动性实验所产生的社区条件的变化，即移动到机会（MTO），以研究社区环境如何影响决策的基本特征，以及这是否是任何社区影响公共健康行为背后的重要机制。自1994年以来，MTO随机分配了一些家庭参加一个项目，使他们能够搬到条件较差的地区居住。随机分配产生了生活在不同类型社区的低收入家庭的可比较群体，这可以用来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。MTO的长期评估，目前在该领域，收集了一系列关于个人如何思考选择的措施，具体涉及时间和风险，并包括一个创新的选择实验。这项建议寻求额外的资金，以便扩大对MTO调查的决策部分的分析范围，使其超出长期MTO评价研究的利益或手段。除其他目标外，该项目将寻求：绘制调查对偏好参数的反应图，以便在决策问题中充分利用信息，提高治疗估计的能力，并产生可推广的结果；识别对决策结果有影响的特定邻域特征，以便更好地理解决策的偶然性；并评估用于诱导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，本研究将对基于这些调查措施的响应模式构建的偏好参数进行建模和分析，并探讨使用这些措施估计的治疗效果对替代假设和规范的稳健性。它将采用改进的治疗效果模型，利用MTO治疗组和地点之间的差异来确定对任何计划效果最负责的特定社区条件。它将执行简单的验证练习来测试措施本身的有效性。