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“Building an Effective Crisis Communications Capability in a Changing Media World,” discusses how to build an effective crisis communications capability in a media world that is constantly changing. This chapter will examine how a communications plan is developed and what elements are included in this plan; how information is collected in the field, analyzed, and eventually disseminated to internal and external audiences; and how to identify those messengers (elected officials, Emergency Managers, Public Information Officers, etc.) who can most effectively communicate to internal and external audiences in a crisis. Staffing, training, and exercise requirements will be noted and discussed as will the need to constantly monitor, update, and adapt disaster communications activities.

We conduct a laboratory experiment to test how information about charities’ qualities and its public visibility affect giving. We first show theoretically that a perceived increase in charities’ qualities represents a decrease in the price of charitable output, which could generate both an income and substitution effect on nominal giving. On the one hand positive news about charities’ qualities can increase giving, since donors realize that it is cheaper to generate charitable output. On the other hand positive news can reduce nominal giving because a smaller donation can generate an equal or higher level of charitable output. We then hypothesize and test that such negative income effect may be dominant among image-motivated donors whenever the quality of giving has a social signaling value: donors can “give less, but show that they give smart”. We find that when information is public, 34% of donors trade-off the quality and quantity of their donations. We show that these donors are relatively more motivated by social recognition, and strategically use positive public information to give less. The effect of public information is causal: when information about charities’ qualities is privately received, giving is always increasing in the quality of the news, and bad news has no effect on giving.

This paper presents the results of an investigation into attitudes towards and willingness to fly in pilotless aircraft (PAs) among a sample of 711 UK people known to fly at least occasionally. A problem with past studies in the area is that attitudes have only been measured explicitly, using questionnaire items drawn from literature in the field. Also, distinctions between attitude strength and attitude structure have not been considered. The present investigation employed an implicit measure of attitudes and examined attitudes via (i) a structural topic modelling procedure (in order to measure the structure of attitudes within the sample) and (ii) an Implicit Association Test (to evaluate attitude strength). Outcomes to the Implicit Association Test contributed significantly and substantially to the explanation of the sample members' degrees of willingness to fly in PAs. These are important matters considering the need for airlines, government agencies and aircraft manufacturers to induce public acceptance of PAs. Determinants of attitudes were posited to include self-image congruence, fear of flying, general anxiety syndrome, interest in new technologies, age, gender, and exposure to information about pilotless aircraft. A model containing these variables was assembled and estimated, the results providing a good fit (R2 = 0.58) with data obtained from the sample. Three primary components of attitude emerged from the investigation: risk, excitement and innovation. Four variables exerted the greatest effects on attitude structure, namely self-congruence, interest in new technologies, prior knowledge of PAs, and the age of the participant. Fear of flying and generalised anxiety impacted on the risk element of attitude structure, but not on excitement, innovation or attitude strength. Neither the fear of flying variable nor generalised anxiety had significant influences on attitude strength, although they did have significantly negative effects on willingness to fly in a pilotless airplane. Thirty-one per cent of the sample members disagreed or strongly disagreed with a question (five-point scale) asking whether a person was willing to fly in a pilotless aircraft. The results of the study have important implications for public information campaigns initiated by state agencies and for the marketing activities and promotional messages of airlines that will need to seek public acceptance of pilotless aircraft.

peer-reviewed Road traffic collisions are the leading cause of death for those between the ages of 15–29, according to the World Health Organisation. This study investigates one of the primary reasons for the high fatality rate amongst Young Novice Drivers (YNDs) – their use of smartphones while driving. We gathered responses from a representative sample of YNDs on their behaviour while driving using an updated version of the ‘Behaviour of Young Novice Drivers Scale’. Survey responses totalled 700 YNDs situated throughout Germany. From these responses, we examined the prevalence of certain driving behaviours that are described as ‘distracting’ and compared these driving behaviours to the respondents’ use of specific smartphone features. The responses report that music-related activities (e.g. changing music on a smartphone) are most common amongst YNDs. Speaking on the phone is seldom-reported, although more males than females indicated engagement in this behaviour. We further carried out a correlation analysis and correspondence analysis. On that basis we found that those who report speaking on a smartphone are significantly more likely to engage in driving behaviours with potentially fatal consequences, such as speeding and driving while impaired by prohibited substances (drugs, alcohol). We propose that the results could be used by policymakers for public information implications and to tailor financial penalties for those engaging in smartphone behaviours that are linked to harmful driving behaviours. In addition, our findings can also be used in a Usagebased Insurance (UBI) context to financially incentivise safer driving

Using a novel pairwise measure of firms’ acquisition of rivals’ disclosures, we show that investment opportunities drive interfirm information flows. We find that these flows predict subsequent mergers and acquisitions as well as how and how much firms invest, relative to rivals. Moreover, firms’ use of rivals’ information often hinges on the similarities of their products. Our results suggest that rivals’ public information, far from being unusable, helps facilitate investment and product decisions, including acquisitions and product differentiation strategies. The findings also support a learning mechanism that could partly underlie the emerging literature on peer investment effects.

This study investigates whether sustainability reports indicate corporate sustainability performance—in other words, the extent to which such disclosure is informative. To extract relevant information from sustainability reports, 51 sustainability indicators of practices were compiled from the literature and reporting guidelines on sustainability. These indicators were then scored for 331 companies based on the content of their sustainability reports. A factor analysis carried out on these indicators yielded five constructs: three for environmental sustainability and two for social sustainability. Bloomberg’s environmental and social governance (ESG) ratings and Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DSJI), which use private and public information from companies, served as proxies for actual sustainability performance. Upon testing, the constructs developed from the sustainability reports were found to explain the DJSI and ESG measures of sustainability significantly. Therefore, sustainability reports appear to indicate actual sustainability performance.

This paper uses lab-in-the-field experiments and theory to explore why people give money to governments. We assume that giving is motivated by outcome–oriented or consequentialist norms, and conditional on (a) others’ behavior and (b) beliefs about how competent the government is. The evidence from a lab experiment in Peru is in line with this. On the other hand, we analyze the potential effects of two policies to increase giving, observing that less people give zero if they are informed about (i) two specific government projects (a subway line and a children’s hospital) or (ii) that some well-known Olympic medalist pays punctually her taxes, according to public information released by the Peruvian tax Agency. Our findings contribute to a burgeoning literature on tax morale and are arguably relevant to understand taxpayers’ non-selfish reasons to pay (or evade) their taxes., We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from Instituto de Investigación Científica IDIC at the University of Lima and helpful research assistance by Deyvi Abanto and Christie Awa also at the University of Lima.

Dietary salt intake continues to exceed recommended intakes across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. There are significant health risks associated with high-salt intake, including high blood pressure and increased risk of coronary heart disease and stroke. Governments in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland have recommended that daily salt intake for adults not exceed 6 g/day. National salt reduction initiatives have been implemented to increase consumer knowledge and awareness of salt intake and reduce the salt content of processed food products. Salt intake has reduced by about one-fifth among the UK population. Public information campaigns have had some success in increasing awareness of government recommendations with evidence to demonstrate a reduction in discretionary salt usage. Progress has been made in reducing the salt content of certain food categories, but challenges around reformulation still remain. Targeted approaches to salt reduction are needed in conjunction with national policies to improve overall dietary intake.

A well-managed public information program is crucial to the medical examiner’s reputation and ability to communicate necessary information to the public. Most of the work that forensic professionals do is hidden from the public eye. It is only in widely publicized cases that the public becomes aware of the details of forensic work. Much of the public perception of forensic work comes from how we handle these cases and how they are portrayed in print, television, or electronic media. This chapter is designed to teach participants the principles of providing public information, using lessons learned from high-profile incidents in Los Angeles County over the past 20 years. It is our hope that, by discussing case examples and general principles of public information, this chapter facilitates communication between the medical examiner, the media, and the public.

In social foraging groups some animals are producers; they discover food and find new resources. Others are scroungers that exploit the findings of producers. Scroungers can be either the same species as the producers, as in a pride of lions, or a different species, as in a mixed-species flock of birds. Scrounging is a cost of social behavior.

This chapter, investigates the wide variety of mixed-species associations among animals, by focusing on association types that do not make the “interaction” or the “moving” criteria of our mixed-species group definition. Different kinds of aggregations are summarized, including those in habitat patches or those formed around food resources or predators (or the lack of them); here the extrinsic factors drive the association. Then the chapter highlights situations in which interactions are the primary stimulus to join the group, yet the groups usually do not move (protective nesting associations, mixed-species colonies, and cleaning mutualisms).

Public information is available for other animals, ranging from offspring to competitors to predators, to assess. Private information is concealed, and only revealed to select animals. The evolutionary tension is that animals may seek to uncover private information, making it public, in order to exploit what they discover.

A chemical signal, such as a scent mark, is likely to provide unique and overlapping information about the sender, including its phenotype and genotype, which can be individually distinctive. Thus, the response to scent marks should be context-dependent, allowing receivers to adjust their responses accordingly, depending on the identity of the sender, past associations, and context. The response chosen will, in turn, be modulated by the receiver's neuroendocrine system and cognitive ability. The particular response should represent a balance of the costs and benefits associated with that choice and consider the fact that chemical signals provide inadvertent public information, reflecting the selective pressures placed on participants.

We show that a real-time trading strategy which front-runs the anticipated forced sales by mutual funds experiencing extreme capital outflows generates an alpha of 0.5% per month during the 1990-2010 period. The abnormal return stems from selling pressure among stocks that are below the NYSE mean size and cannot be attributed to the arrival of public information. While the largest stocks also exhibit downward price pressure, their prices revert before the front-running strategy can detect it. The duration of the anticipated selling pressure has decreased from about a month in the 1990s to about two weeks in the most recent decade. Our results suggest that publicly available information of fund flows and holdings exposes mutual funds in distress to predatory trading. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

This chapter provides a background on nuclear and radiological principles, associated health threats, and public health measures that reduce morbidity and mortality. Exposures can result from industrial and transportation accidents, criminal activities, or terrorist attacks. A large exposure to a penetrating external radiation source over a short period of time can result in acute radiation syndrome (ARS). Provision of appropriate care and specialized therapies associated with ARS can be one of the most challenging public health and medical aspects of a response. Cutaneous radiation injury (CRI) can also occur with or without association with ARS. CRI is most frequently found in people who have come in direct contact with an industrial radiation source. There are radiological pharmaceutical resources available to treat internal contamination by transuranic heavy metals including plutonium, americium, and curium. Public health preparedness measures include security and control of radioactive sources, medical countermeasures, planning, training, exercises, and emergency public information and warning systems.

The ethanol industry has been an important contributor to country economies and their energy security strategies besides playing a significant role regarding climate change issues. Its share in the global biobased market represents over USD 55 billion of a total biobased market of about USD 65 billion. Ethanol production is clearly an essential part of that industry which is no longer merely one for the future. Besides the well-established first-generation biofuels industry based on grains, beet and sugarcane (ethanol and biodiesel), investments are currently occurring around the world to produce second-generation biofuels (eg, cellulosic ethanol) and biochemicals (eg, farnesene, propenediol, etc.). Based on market reports, academic studies and public information from industry associations and companies, this work pursues the understanding of cellulosic ethanol business dynamics as a viable alternative to increase global ethanol production. It provides a snapshot of the biobased economy and more granularly explores biofuels and ethanol industry growth challenges.

We analyze an OLG model where agents differ by their random innate abilities. Young agents are screened for their abilities and the screening signals represent public information that affects the educational investment decisions. We find that in the presence of risk sharing markets better information may be harmful if agents are highly risk averse. Moreover, conditions are derived under which better information enhances or obstructs the human capital accumulation process.

Several components of the application package are considered “nonscored” items. These sections contain information that will be used by the NIH for public information purposes should your grant be funded (Project Summary and Project Narrative) or to ensure that your training will be in compliance with NIH guidelines (Responsible Conduct of Research). Although these items do not contribute to the overall score of your grant application, it is still essential that the utmost care be used in writing each of these sections. In addition, this chapter discusses formatting of the grant, which if not followed may result in administrative return of the application without review, and construction of the cover letter, to direct the assignment of the application to the most appropriate study section.

Although the training of civil engineers in earthquake-resistant construction techniques has made much progress over the past decades, its impact on the overall safety of the rapidly growing urban areas in poor countries is often limited. Huge parts of these cities are built by small-scale contractors and private owners with no knowledge of seismic construction techniques and little to no involvement of engineers. In order to address the objective of disaster-risk reduction effectively, the training of masons and awareness raising among the population are of the utmost importance. Based on experience in Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake, in Haiti, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation decided to create a Competence Centre for Reconstruction to achieve more disaster-resistant reconstruction through the training of masons and awareness building. This Haitian experience will be presented in detail in this chapter.

Online investigations are one of the most effective means to place suspects at a specific location at a specific point in time. Online investigations involve Internet searching using basic and advanced methods to find where the suspect lives online. Forums, blogs, websites, and other openly public information where investigators can connect data together to form a picture of the suspect’s activities solve cases.

This paper studies the incentives of rating agencies to reveal the information that they obtain about their client firms. In the model, rating agencies seek to maximize their reputation and protect their market power. They observe public information and obtain either precise or noisy private information about a firm. Reputational concerns dictate that a rating reflects private information when it is precise. However, when private information is noisy, two situations arise. In a monopoly, the rating agency may ignore private information and issue a rating that conforms to public information. Under some conditions, it may even become cautious and issue bad ratings ignoring both types of information. With competition, however, it has incentives to contradict public information as a way to pretend that it holds precise private information. Moreover, it may become more likely to issue good ratings in an attempt to protect market power.

This chapter describes the results of a research study investigating the adoption and use of Twitter as a crisis communication tool by law enforcement agencies from large US cities (cities with populations greater than 300,000). The study consisted of two parts – an analysis of Twitter use based on publicly available posts authored by 30 law enforcement agencies that have active Twitter accounts and an analysis of data collected through 17 semi-structured interviews with law enforcement public information officers and public media specialists.

Individuals acquire information from their environment throughout life, and for some, such information may be applied toward decisions regarding potential mates – resulting in mate-choice learning. Mate-choice learning can be based upon personal experiences with others (private or personal information) or upon the observation of others (public information) and may occur throughout development. Here, we provide a summary of socially influenced mate-choice learning using a framework of private versus public sources of information. We highlight some mechanisms of mate-choice learning and end with a discussion of how mate-choice learning might influence such evolutionary processes as speciation, hybridization, and sexual selection.

We consider a principal-agent problem where the principal wishes to be endorsed by a sequence of agents, but cannot truthfully reveal type. In the standard "herding" model, the agents learn from each other’s decisions, which can lead to cascades on a given decision when later agents’ private information is swamped. We augment the standard model to allow the principal to subject herself to a test designed to provide public information about her type. She must decide how tough a test to attempt from a continuum of test types, which involves trading off the higher probability of passing\ud an easier test against the greater impact from passing a tougher test. We find that the principal will always choose to be tested, and will prefer a tough test to a neutral or easy one.

We use a dataset of more than 11,000 horse racing forecasts from 35 professional tipsters and investigate whether they make excessively original forecasts. We find that tipsters do exaggerate and make forecasts that are excessively distant from the public information given their private information. This result has implications for the efficiency of betting markets.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the role of metacognitive experiences in judgment and decision making, and explores their implications for debiasing strategies and public information campaigns. Human reasoning is accompanied by a variety of metacognitive experiences, which provide experiential information that people systematically use in forming a judgment. These experiences qualify the implications of accessible declarative information, with the result that people's judgments can only be predicted by taking the interplay of declarative and experiential information into account. The chapter emphasizes on two of these experiences—namely, the ease or difficulty with which information can be brought to mind and thoughts can be generated, and the fluency with which new information can be processed. Accessibility experiences refer to the ease or difficulty with which information can be recalled and thoughts can be generated. According to most models of judgment, an object should be evaluated more favorably when many positive attributes are brought to mind, should consider an event more likely when many reasons are generated for its occurrence, and so on.

New and advanced techniques help cyber-spies with more difficult “real world” situations. In addition, potential spies should look beyond PCs for other areas where useful information can be collected to help them build a picture of their adversary's activity. C&A allows us to automatically sniff a switched network, perform MITM attacks, and collect passwords from targeted machines. Techniques from the previous chapters can be combined to obtain difficult to find information, or to help deepen the access into the online life of one's target. A Web server is a great means of remote access to a computer. Personal routers are critical chokepoints in most home networks, and can offer a great deal of information on what goes on inside them. The pervasiveness and communication abilities of cell phones make them an important technology to watch when tracking someone's activity. There is a wealth of online resources ranging from Google to public information databases that can be used to collect information about the target. Social engineering is one of the oldest methods of spying, and it is still very important even with all of the technical means available today.

This chapter discusses how much of the theory developed in the symmetric case is fragile and does not extend to situations in which bidders are asymmetric. The symmetric model with interdependent values and affiliated signals provides important insights into the functioning of different auction institutions. First, three common formats—the first-price, second-price, and English auctions—can be ranked in terms of revenue. Second, the release of public information in any of the three formats erodes the exclusivity of bidders' information, dissipating information rents and leading to higher revenues. When bidders are “ex ante” symmetric, both categories of results hold regardless of the specific valuation function that bidders have and the specific distribution of their signals. The theory is both powerful and elegant. The chapter states the failures of the linkage principles such as: (1) the revenue rankling result from the symmetric model—showing that the English auction out-performs the second-price auction—does not extend to the case of asymmetric bidders, and (2) public information may decrease revenue in case bidders' valuations are asymmetric. With the help of numerous examples, it focuses on topics such as asymmetric equilibria in symmetric second-price auctions, asymmetrically informed bidders, and reserve prices and entry fees.

We derive alternative sufficient conditions for the value of public information to be either positive or negative in a Cournot duopoly where firms technology exhibits constant returns to scale. Publicado

This chapter provides an overview of the origins and development of the public information requirement concerning major accident hazards. The chapter describes the main features of the debate concerning major accident hazards and discusses the precedents to the “Seveso Directive.” The seriousness of the accident became known only by stages, as there were delays from the part of the company to release the full information. This lack of information created delays in the emergency response. The local authorities had to figure out what had actually happened and what needed to be done on the basis of partial and unreliable information. The analyses of the accidents that encouraged the regulatory process showed that the lack of prior information, on both the risks and the appropriate safety measures to be adopted, was one of the major failures in providing adequate safety to the workers, the population, and the environment. A central piece of the legislation is the requirement for public information about risks, safety measures, and appropriate behavior to take in the event of an accident. Thus, the “Seveso I Directive” first enshrined the need or right to know principle for the general public. Prior to it, the principle was recognized only for workers in specific manufactures and/or working processes.

Culminating more than a decade of research, experimentation, and design, construction of Denver Water Department's Potable Water Reuse Demonstration Plant began in 1981 and was completed in 1984. The primary goal of the Reuse Project is to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of reliably producing a high quality drinking water, equal to or exceeding Denver's excellent existing potable water quality, from secondary wastewater effluent. This multifaceted project includes plant operations and maintenance, comprehensive analytical studies, health effects testing, and an extensive public information program. This paper describes aspects of plant instrumentation, presents examples of control strategies, and discusses the computer system and its process monitoring and data handling capabilities.

This chapter presents an overview of public information and participation in the Netherlands. The increased involvement of the public in the work of the authorities in the last few decades and a growing awareness of environmental problems have resulted in an increase of provisions relating to public information and participation in many Dutch laws, including legislation on environmental matters. In this chapter, reference is made to education and information on environmental matters; then, with the help of a description of a number of statutory and nonstatutory procedures some of which relate directly to environmental protection, an idea is given of the role of public information and participation in relation to decisions which are important to the environment. It highlights that the environmental policy in the Netherlands is by no means the concern of a single ministry. Authority in this field is exercised not only by the Ministry of Health and Environmental Protection but also by many other ministries. In the chapter, an account is given of some experiences with public information and participation in connexion with experiments on environmental impact assessment which were conducted in preparing for the introduction of environmental impact assessment in the Netherlands.