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Objective: Despite widespread perceptions that SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is no longer a significant threat, the virus continues to loom, and new variants may require renewed efforts to control its spread. Understanding how individual preferences and attitudes influence vaccination behaviour and policy compliance in light of the endemic phase is crucial in preparation for this scenario. Method: This paper presents descriptive data from a global stated choice survey conducted in 22 countries across 6 different continents between July 2022 and August 2023, and reports the methodological work developed to address the need for comparable data. Results: This study included 50,242 respondents. Findings indicated significant heterogeneity across countries in terms of vaccination status and willingness to accept boosters. Vaccine hesitancy and refusal were driven by lower trust in public health bodies, younger age, and lower educational levels. Refusers and hesitant people reported lower willingness to take risks compared to those fully vaccinated (p<0.05). Lower mental health levels were found for the hesitant cohort (p<0.05). Conclusions: Insights from this database can help public health authorities to gain a new understanding of the vaccine hesitancy phenomenon, support them in managing the transition from the pandemic to the endemic phase, and favour a new stream of research to maximise behavioural response to vaccination programs in preparation of future pandemics.

Increasing the tax compliance of self-employed business owners—particularly of trade-specific service providers such as those involved in construction and repair work—remains an ongoing challenge for tax authorities. From a compliance point of view, cash transactions are particularly problematic when services are paid for on the spot, as these exchanges are difficult to audit. We present experimental evidence testing ten different policy strategies rooted in the enforcement, service, and trust/social paradigms, in a setting that allows payment either via a transaction that directly reports income for tax collection purposes or in cash, where taxes are only collected on reported income. Our sample includes both a typical subject pool of students, as used in most previous studies, and non-students who are active within service industries characterised by the opportunity to engage in cash transactions. While our comparative results show that, for both student and non-student participants, interventions that rely on greater enforcement by the tax authority have the greatest effect on compliance in our cash economy setting, treatments involving cooperative elements may be similarly effective in enhancing tax compliance. Given their effectiveness, cooperative approaches should therefore be considered for addition to the policy mix if implemented at relatively low costs, making both carrot and stick approaches promising to increase compliance in an environment where cash-for-service payments offer a common benefit for small businesses and their customers from implicit collusion that enables tax evasion.

Background and Aims Controversies exist in relation to the benefits and the most appropriate approach for pre-procedural COVID-19 testing (e.g., Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) or Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) or real time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR)) for outpatients undergoing diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, such as gastrointestinal endoscopy, to prevent COVID-19 infections among staff. Guidelines for protecting health care workers (HCW) from SARS-CoV-2 infection via outpatient procedures varies across medical professional organizations. This study provides an evidence-based decision support tool for key decision-makers (e.g., clinicians) to respond to COVID-19 transmission risks and reduce the effect of personal biases. Methods A scoping review was used to identify relevant factors influencing COVID-19 transmission risk relevant for gastrointestinal endoscopy. From 12 relevant publications, eight factors were applicable: test sensitivity, prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in the population, age adjusted SARS-CoV-2 prevalence in the patient cohort, proportion of asymptomatic patients, risk of transmission from asymptomatic carriers, risk reduction by Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), vaccination rates of HCW. The probability of a serious adverse event (SAE), such as workplace acquired infection resulting in HCW death, under various scenarios with pre-procedural testing is determined and informs decision makers of expected costs of reductions in SAEs. Results In a setting of high community transmission, without testing and PPE, 117·5 SAE per million procedures would occur and this is reduced to between 0·079 to 2·35 SAE per million procedures with use of PPE and pre-procedural testing. Utilising these variables and testing a range of scenarios the probability of an SAE is low even without testing but is reduced by pre-procedural testing. Conclusions Under all scenarios tested, pre-procedural testing reduces the SAE risk

This thesis investigated how communication in online crowdfunding influences monetary contributions to projects and project creators' behaviours in second projects. Underlying cues such as sustainability signals and monetary discussion affected contributions on Kickstarter, while research categorisation of projects on Experiment.com did not, whilst feedback from past project outcomes influenced project creators' willingness to create further projects on Kickstarter. Moreover, the feedback also caused changes in the information provided on subsequent projects.

We explore the effects of the quantity of information on the tendency to contribute to crowdfunding campaigns. Using the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, we analyze the campaign descriptions and the performance of over 70,000 projects. We look empirically at the effect of information quantity (word count) on funding success (as measure by amount raised and number of backers). Within this empirical approach, we test whether an excessive amount of information will affect funding success. To do so, we test for the non-linearity (quadratic) effect of our independent variable (word count) using regression analysis. Consistent with the hypothesis that excess information will negatively affect funds raised and number of contributors, we observe a consistent U-shaped relationship between campaign text length and overall success which suggest that an optimal number of words exists within crowdfunding texts and that going over this point will reduce a project’s chance of fundraising success.

Objective Despite widespread perceptions that SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is no longer a significant threat, the virus continues to loom, and new variants may require renewed efforts to control its spread. Understanding how individual preferences and attitudes influence vaccination behaviour and policy compliance in light of the endemic phase is crucial in preparation for this scenario. Method This paper presents descriptive data from a global stated choice survey conducted in 22 countries across 6 different continents between July 2022 and August 2023, and reports the methodological work developed to address the need for comparable data. Results This study included 50,242 respondents. Findings indicated significant heterogeneity across countries in terms of vaccination status and willingness to accept boosters. Vaccine hesitancy and refusal were driven by lower trust in public health bodies, younger age, and lower educational levels. Refusers and hesitant people reported lower willingness to take risks compared to those fully vaccinated (p<0.05). Lower mental health levels were found for the hesitant cohort (p<0.05). Conclusions Insights from this database can help public health authorities to gain a new understanding of the vaccine hesitancy phenomenon, support them in managing the transition from the pandemic to the endemic phase, and favour a new stream of research to maximise behavioural response to vaccination programs in preparation of future pandemics.