Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that Web surveys are becoming a popular mode of data collection (Couper, 2000). Although attention has been paid to potential mode effects in Web surveys (e.g., Dillman, 2000), little has focused on other factors that may impact Web response rates and data quality. For example, the influence of the sponsor’s identity has been examined in surveys conducted using other data collection modes (e.g., Presser; Blair; & Triplett, 1992), but not in web surveys. Moreover, the effect of perceived security of Web data on response rates and data quality have been discussed (Yu, 2001) but few studies have explored these effects (see Peoples, 2001 for one exception). The present study will examine the impact of these two factors on response rates and data quality in an establishment survey conducted over the Web. Moreover, we hypothesize that perceived data security may be influenced by the sponsor’s identity and therefore these two factors may have an interactive impact on the dependent variables. We will conduct a Web survey of American companies that participated in government-funded joint venture projects (N = 250). A random half of respondents will be solicited by NIST, the government agency which funded the joint venture projects, the other half of respondents will be solicited by Westat, under contract to NIST. Of the web respondents, half will receive detailed information regarding the security of the data they will submit, while the other half will receive no such detailed information. The impact of the identity of the sponsor and the perceived security of the data on response rates and data quality will be examined.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Research on corporate philanthropy has largely focused on the relationship between the firm and the state, e.g., the influence of federal tax rates on corporate contributions. With few exceptions, little attention has been paid to institutional pressures on corporate giving. By incorporating hypotheses derived from both neoclassical and institutional theories, this paper seeks to explain the creation of company-sponsored foundations among Fortune 500 firms, 1950-2000. In this study, 1,523 firms are analyzed using a discrete-time logit model to estimate the hazard rate for establishing a company-sponsored foundation. I find that the inception of company-sponsored foundations is driven not only by tax policies and market forces, but can be explained by institutional pressures such as peer influence, press coverage, and public perception.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: While economic theory predicts that workers bear the cost of rising health insurance premiums with reductions in wages and/or other benefits, empirical evidence on the existence of a wage-health insurance tradeoff has been mixed. Empirical analyses have been hampered by the fact that individuals with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) are usually more skilled and have higher wages than those without insurance. For instance, a simple regression of wages on the presence of health insurance typically leads to a positive, rather than a negative relationship.

Several recent studies have used difference-in-differences strategies to explore this topic across geographic areas with differing health care costs or inflation rates. For instance, Sheiner (1999) finds evidence that age-wage profiles are flattest in high-health cost areas, reflecting the incidence of health costs on workers’ wages. Sommers (2005) finds evidence that when employers are faced with rising premiums, the increased insurance costs can be better absorbed through wage adjustments in areas with high general inflation or by high wage workers. Both of these studies analyzed household level survey data.

We extend this literature using employer level data from the 1997-2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – Insurance Component (MEPS-IC), a large, nationally representative survey of employers and their health insurance plans. We also extend prior work in that we use difference-in-differences strategies to examine the effect of high premium growth on a wider set of health insurance outcomes: the likelihood that an employer will offer insurance, the levels of employee premium contributions and the generosity of benefits. Our strategies involve comparing areas with varying levels of premium growth, general inflation and employers with different wage distributions.

To form premium-specific inflation measures, we predict values from a hedonic regression of MEPS-IC premiums on various MSA-level measures of health care costs as well as plan type and benefits. MSA-level predictions are then formed by fixing plan type and benefits, so that the only source of variation is health care costs. To categorize employers by wage distribution, we augment the MEPS-IC with aggregated employee level wage information from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Databases (LEHD). The LEHD data contain information on employees at MEPS-IC establishments obtained by directly linking federal and state administrative databases to MEPS-IC employers. To identify areas with varying levels of inflation, we combine the MEPS-IC data with the following price information: 1) the CPI for Metropolitan Statistical Areas (which provides MSA-specific inflation rates over time) and, 2) price data from the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers’ Association (which provides price level data by MSA for comparisons across MSAs and across time).

The MEPS-IC data are arguably better suited for studying many aspects of the ESI market than are widely-used household data sources such as the CPS or the MEPS-Household Component. Moreover, when augmented by the LEHD and price measures, the MEPS-IC provides a rich data resource for exploring a wide range of hypotheses regarding the impact of premium growth on the presence and generosity of ESI offers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Most studies about advertisement in the interactive media have been done in regard of the World Wide Web, but little, if any, has been done with video games. In the present study, participants played a video game and were exposed to advertising logos, varying in the horizontal and vertical distance from the primary focal area. There were three levels of repetitions. The results indicated that horizontal distance and number of repetition affected recognition significantly while vertical distance did not. There was a three-way interaction among the factors, suggesting that at low numbers of repetitions, ads closer to the focal area on both axes were especially well encoded. User attention to the primary task negatively encoding, whereas gaming experience facilitated message encoding. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive processing and the limited capacity model of mediated message processing.