David A. Savage

University of Newcastle Australia · Discipline of Economics

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several governments tried to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, with lockdowns that prohibited leaving one’s residence unless carrying out a few essential services. We investigate the relationship between limitations to mobility and mental health in the UK during the first year and a half...

The ambiguous phenomenon of corruption has long been the cause of great theoretical debate in economics. By using Structural Equation Modelling, with the two types of corruption as a latent variable, this paper employs causal and indicative variables to the Latin American region to test for rent seeking and systemic corruption during 1980–2018. The...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments struggled to find the right balance between re-strictive measures to contain the spread of the virus, and the effects of these measures on people’s psychological wellbeing. This paper investigates the relationship between limitations to mobility and mental health for the UK population during the COVID-19 pa...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have struggled to find the right balance between restrictive measures to contain the spread of the virus, and the effects of these measures on people's psychological wellbeing. This paper investigates the relationship between limitations to mobility and mental health for British population during the COVID-...

The legacy of the 1999 Columbine School shooting has resulted in increased political elements in subsequent shootings and the line between these school shooters and terrorists has blurred. Current research comparing terrorists and school shooters has largely focused on the similarities between the perpetrators using largely qualitative methods. Wit...

A multi-modal and multi-dimensional technology interaction framework is constructed to systematically and dynamically model and simulate the dimension, extent, and modes of multi-technology interactions. Using the Technological Innovation System (TIS), it is argued that a TIS' internal dynamics couple with the internal dynamics of neighbouring TISs...

The ambiguous phenomenon of corruption has long been the cause of great theoretical debate in economics. By using Structural Equation Modelling, with the two types of corruption as a latent variable, this paper employs causal and indicative variables specific to the Latin American region to test for rent seeking and systemic corruption in the perio...

The current COVID-19 pandemic is a global, exogenous shock, impacting individuals' decision making and behavior allowing researchers to test theories of personality by exploring how traits, in conjunction with individual and societal differences, affect compliance and cooperation. Study 1 used Google mobility data and nation-level personality data...

The empirical question of voting preferences and how these may change (swing) is yet to be answered, as there is little first-hand microeconomic evidence on swing voting. We focus on the interactions between voters’ age and political cynicism. Towards this end, we apply a stated and revealed preference framework to assess swing voting, using data f...

Renewable energy appears to be the most optimal alternative to fossil fuel and the widely accepted pathway towards climate change mitigation. However, the costs of adopting renewable energy are high, and it appears the wealth of nations, the stages of economic development and growth and institutional willingness and quality are important in winning...

Sporting events can be seen as controlled, real-world, miniature laboratory environments, approaching the idea of "holding other things equal" when exploring the implications of decisions, incentives, and constraints in a competitive setting (Goff and Tollison 1990, Torgler 2009). Thus, a growing number of studies have used sports data to study dec...

Corruption literature within economics has long returned ambiguous results with no concise cause or impact of corruption identified. This meta-analysis aims to find synergy within the corruption literature by assessing macroeconomic empirical studies that evaluate whether corruption 'greases or sands' the wheels of economic development. The meta-an...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the policy measures to control its spread-lockdowns, physical distancing, and social isolation-has coincided with the deterioration of people's mental well-being. We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to document how this phenomenon is related to the situation of working parents who now have to manag...

This article investigates the impact that information has on subject selection, if the information available to students during subject selection was considered adequate and if this was related to the increasing number of students taking an academic shopping approach to selection. Applying the theory of asymmetric information to a survey of 413 und...

This article investigates inter-technology relationships in the early stage of technology life cycle. Adopting the Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework, we consider each technology as a TIS and argue that the entrepreneurial dynamics of TISs can become coupled with each other vis-à-vis what we refer to as 'entrepreneurial co-dynamics'. B...

Achieving energy efficiency and economic growth while reducing carbon emissions has been the policy goal of most economies. The role of economic institutions in economic growth has increasingly attracted scholarly attention; the extent to which economic institutions are shaping the global move toward sustainable energy consumption and carbon emissi...

Societal attitudes and behaviours of suicide and euthanasia often cannot be compared leaving policy makers without informative understanding of how social indicators such as social norms, attitudes, behaviours, identity and culture shape the relationships held to socio-demographic indicators of pro end-of-life attitudes. Applying social indicator p...

Behavioural responses to pandemics are less shaped by actual mortality or hospitalisation risks than they are by risk attitudes. We explore human mobility patterns as a measure of behavioural responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicate that risk-taking attitudes are a critical factor in predicting reductions in human mobility and s...

Behavioural responses to pandemics are less shaped by actual mortality or hospitalization risks than they are by risk attitudes. We explore human mobility patterns as a measure of behavioural responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicate a strong negative relationship between mobility reduction and risk-taking preferences. We find th...

This chapter explores the research methodologies and insights currently used by and envisioned for the future research into human behavior in disaster environments and situations, from a behavioral economics viewpoint. This includes comparative and narrative analysis, experiments (field, laboratory, and natural), multivariate regression analysis, s...

Confidence in the health care system implies an expectation that sufficient and appropriate treatments will be provided if needed. The COVID-19 public health crisis is a significant, global, and (mostly) simultaneous test of the behavioral implications arising from this confidence. We explore whether populations reporting low levels of confidence i...

The green knowledge-based economy has complicated the dynamical knowledge interactions in the multi-technology sector of transportation that involves a constellation of interrelated powertrain technologies, including the internal combustion engine, hybrid and battery electric vehicles (ICEV, BEV, and HEV). Based on the biological ecology perspectiv...

An era of ferment marks discontinuous changing and an uncertain environment in which the socio-technical dimensions of emerging and incumbent technologies co-evolve and interact with each other. Combining the technological innovation system (TIS) approach and a biological ecology perspective, we propose a multi-dimensional and multi-modal framework...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the policy measures to control its spread-lockdowns, physical distancing, and social isolation-has coincided with the deterioration of people's mental well-being. We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to document how this phenomenon is related to the situation of working parents who now have to manag...

Purpose – Given the importance of green construction for reducing the negative environmental impact of the construction industry, and the numerous policies instituted by governments around the world to motivate building construction stakeholders, why is there still a limited level of adoption? Design/methodology/approach – Building on studies that...

To measure the importance of personality and individual characteristics in such extreme environments as high-altitude mountaineering, this study investigated how physical, physiological, and/or hormonal markers provide insights into individual predilections for competitive and risk-taking behaviours. Because climbing outcomes depend on the ability...

Trust in the health care system requires being confident that sufficient and appropriate treatments will be provided if needed. The COVID-19 public health crisis is a significant, global, and (mostly) simultaneous test of the behavioral implications arising from this trust. We explore whether populations reporting low levels of confidence in the he...

Patent bibliometrics data are the most reliable business performance metric for applied research and development activities when investigating the knowledge domains or the technological evolution of vehicle powertrain technologies in the automotive industry. Our paper describes a global patents dataset for the internal combustion engine vehicles (I...

An evaluation of the nudging measures in Metro Manila’s major train systems to provide behavioral insights in understanding why some nudges fail and how we can make them work.

The numerous policy mechanisms aimed at promoting the adoption of green construction are having a limited impact. This paper draws on insights from behavioural economics and the broad social sciences to explore five considerations hindering the adoption of green construction and develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of a survey instrumen...

Understanding the scale and direction of emerging and incumbent vehicle powertrains is critical for accelerating the transition to the green mobility economy. Our aim is to explore the dynamic influences between the conventional, electric and hybrid vehicle powertrains on a global market scale. Based on the Technological Innovation System framewor...

The powertrain technologies of conventional, battery and hybrid vehicles are known by competence-sustaining,-destroying and-expanding innovations, respectively. We aim to study how they influence one another in terms of scientific knowledge growth. Using the Technological Innovation System framework and the Lotka-Volterra model, we argue that a pow...

Behavioral responses to pandemics are less shaped by actual mortality or hospitalization risks than they are by risk attitudes. We explore human mobility patterns as a measure of behavioral responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicate that risk-taking attitude is a critical factor in predicting reduction in human mobility and increa...

Behavioral responses to pandemics are less shaped by actual mortality or hospitalization risks than they are by risk attitudes. We explore human mobility patterns as a measure of behavioral responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicate that risk-taking attitude is a critical factor in predicting reduction in human mobility and increa...

The current COVID-19 pandemic is a global exogenous shock, impacting individuals’ decision making and behaviour allowing researchers to test theories of personality by exploring how traits, in conjunction with individual and societal differences affect compliance and cooperation. Study 1 used Google Mobility data and nation-level personality data f...

Competition in the already highly competitive automotive industry intensified in the early 1990's. The ubiquitous internal combustion engine began to be challenged by the upstart alternatives of battery and hybrid electric vehicles, which has led to an intricate web of knowledge development. Our research aims to qualify and quantify the dynamic rel...

A pandemic is not only a biological event and a public health disaster, but it also generates impacts that are worth understanding from economic, societal, historical, and cultural perspectives. In this contribution, we argue that as the disease spreads, we are able to harness a valuable key resource: people who have immunity to coronavirus. This v...

A pandemic is not only a biological event and a public health disaster, but it also generates impacts that are worth understanding from a societal, historical, and cultural perspective. In this contribution, we argue that as the disease spreads, we are able to harness a valuable key resource, namely people who have immunity to Corona. This vital re...

This article explores the impact that belief in an infinite afterlife has on end-of-life decisions, specifically on those viewed at the extreme, such as martyrs, suicide bombers and self-immolators. We extend a simplified expected utility-based model to include variations of infinitely rewarding afterlife’s and explore how this may impact the expec...

Confidence in the health care system implies an expectation that sufficient and appropriate treatments will be provided if needed. The COVID-19 public health crisis is a significant, global, and (mostly) simultaneous test of the behavioral implications arising from this confidence. We explore whether populations reporting low levels of confidence i...

The emergence of networks is a crucial channel for automotive organisations to build and diffuse the required environmental innovations in the transportation sector and accelerate the transition to the green mobility economy. This article contains the dataset regarding the global patents networks shaped both within and between the three vehicle pow...

Several academic researchers have investigated the barriers inhibiting the adoption of green construction. Numerous interventions including raising awareness through educational forums, monitoring and enforcement programmes, and financial incentives have been recommended as strategies to encourage the wider adoption of green construction. However,...

Available from: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1aFLD3QCo9UxkP —The transition to the green mobility economy has encouraged organisations to both collaborate and compete for building the environmental innovations required in vehicle powertrains. This study aims to uncover the inhibitive and supportive impacts traded between vehicle powertrains over...

In this paper, we have drawn on the concept of bounded rationality (of Behavioural Economics) to explain why there is a misalignment between the high level consensus for the attainment of sustainable cities and communities, and the willingness of building construction stakeholders to adopt sustainable or green technologies.

This paper outlines why a move towards a complex adaptive systems model of behaviour is required if the goal is to generate better understanding of how individuals and groups interact with their environment in a disaster setting. To accomplish this objective, a bridge must be built between the broader social sciences and behavioural economics to in...

There is widespread agreement among building construction stakeholders about the need to reduce the negative environmental impact of construction activities. Globally, a wide range of policies has been instituted by governments to encourage the adoption of sustainable (green) technologies and practices to help in the attainment of sustainable citie...

There is widespread agreement among building construction stakeholders about the need to reduce the negative environmental impact of construction activities. Globally, a wide range of policies has been instituted by governments to encourage the adoption of sustainable (green) technologies and practices to help in the attainment of sustainable citie...

This paper explores the gap between the acceptance of the green construction agenda and its slow adoption and implementation. From a behavioural economics viewpoint, we apply insights from game theory, particularly, the 'Stag Hunt' game model to explain the individual building construction stakeholder's decision-making process in order to understan...

Rule changes have offered a natural experimental setting in the sports environment and beyond for many years. However, an understanding of human behavioural adaptation processes after repeated rule changes is missing from the extant literature. The NBA offers a unique setting in which the three-point line was moved (shortened) for a period of three...

The unwillingness to adopt green construction is a continuing concern due to the devastating environmental damage arising from construction activities. A lot of studies have explored the reasons for building construction stakeholders' reluctance to adopt green construction. What is missing is the explanation of the decision making process which lea...

This paper examines the impact of health status and shocks on Euthanasia using the future discounted utility model, including a function to capture degenerative illnesses, uncertainty and health shocks. This examines the rationality of decisions faced by individuals with degenerative illnesses or random health shocks with uncertain consequences, bo...

This paper outlines the relationships required to in order to move towards a Complex Adaptive Systems model of behaviour in disaster environments, by including insights from across the social sciences and behavioural economics. By building a bridge between the broader social sciences we can create a deeper understanding of both individual and group...

This paper undertakes a multi-factor analysis of the economic fertility rate hypothesis within Africa from a replacement versus redundancy strategy. The analysis includes a broad range of factors that are likely to impact on fertility decisions, such as: conflict and fatalities; GDP; economic aid; AIDS/HIV; poverty rates; and child mortality rates....

As informal sperm donation becomes more prevalent worldwide, understanding donor psychology and interactions is critical in providing effective policy, equitable legislative frameworks and frontline health support to an ever-growing number of global participants. We analyse data of informal sperm donors who were members of the connection website Pr...

This work examines the relationship between national identity and conflict during international sporting tournaments and the impact of referees as an institutional countermeasure. The empirical analysis covers the FIFA World, Confederations and Under 20's World Cups and Olympic tournaments from 1994 to 2014, resulting in 1152 individual matches. We...

This paper examines the rationality of other regarding preferences on end-of-life decisions such as euthanasia and suicide, by extending the discounted future utility model. The discussion shows that individuals with other regarding preferences may act upon choices contrary to their ex-ante preferences, such that they are choosing to remain alive r...

These are the thoughts, notes and poor attempts at keeping a diary during the three months I spent in Namche Bazar, doing research on climbers as a part of a project. As a word of advice to any of his future student, be careful what you do with a good idea, if you tell your supervisor and they like it, they may fi�nd a way to make it happen. Now th...

While behavioural economics has become part of mainstream economic theory, showing systematic deviations from the standard homo economicius in normal environments, there has been little exploration of behaviour in the extreme – such as conflict, disasters or war zones. This has led to the underdevelopment of behavioural theory examining the choices...

This paper examines the impact of health status and shocks on Euthanasia using the future discounted utility model, including a debilitation function to capture de-generative illnesses and uncertainty and health shocks. This shows the rationality of decisions faced by individuals with degenerative illnesses or random health shocks with uncertain co...

This paper examines the determinants of aggressiveness – proxied alternatively by the number of penalties issued by the referee and by a related measure- on the soccer pitch in 463 matches from FIFA (World Cup) and UEFA (Euro Cup) tournaments spanning from 1994 to 2012. We highlight the role of several measures of international rivalry between co...

This paper sets out to investigate and extend the discussion on the end of life choices of both Euthanasia and Suicide using the Hamermesh and Soss (1974) model for utility and discounted future value. This work demonstrates that future utility estimates need to be negative in order elicit a suicide attempt, not zero an previously held and that the...

This paper sets out to investigate and extend the discussion on the end of life choices of both Euthanasia and Suicide using the Hamermesh and Soss (1974) model for utility and discounted future value. This work demonstrates that future utility estimates need to be negative in order elicit a suicide attempt, not zero an previously held and that the...

This paper proposes an alternative experimental trust game design to reflect an expanded view, which includes an outside option available to the Responder. This game is based on a confessional model, where something is entrusted to the Responder, which has little direct value to the Responder but has great value for the Proposer if kept secret but...

This narrative and empirical analysis investigates Hilary's claim that in his day they would not have left a man behind to die. The authors examine over 60 years of Himalayan climbing data and stories in order to test the changes in cooperation in this extreme life and death environment.

This paper examines the determinants of aggressiveness on the soccer pitch in 463 matches from FIFA (World Cup) and UEFA (Euro Cup) tournaments spanning from 1994 to 2012. We highlight the role of several measures of international rivalry between countries on the players' aggressive behaviour

Savage and Torgler stress that results should be treated with some trepidation and explore alternate hypotheses to check soundness. For example, knowledge and technological changes could affect survivability, explaining the changes over time among non-commercial groups but not the death/success relationship difference between the groups. It is poss...

Savage and Torgler investigate the explosion of commercialization that occurred in late 1980 and the reasons for its growth. They examine the relationship between commercial operators, their clients and the traditionalist climbers, which are being complicated by the very nature of each group’s identity, the existence of motivational differences, is...

Savage and Torgler explore the foundations of the mountaineering traditions and social norms, beginning with the early 19th-century involvement of the British gentlemen and the adoption of their attitudes and beliefs. They explore how these attitudes and behaviours were transferred across generations to became the norm (‘brotherhood of the rope’) a...

Savage and Torgler find in their descriptive analysis that after a death commercial expeditions go on to record a successful climb in 80.6 per cent of cases while non-commercial expeditions are only successful 37.8 per cent of the time. This result is supporting in the multivariate analysis (likelihood of success is 2.5 times lower among non-commer...

Savage and Torgler provide detailed descriptive statistics for the data analysis and an in-depth discussion of the data and analytical technique. The analysis covers both the commercial and non-commercial periods using a broad range of control variables, which include death, injury, peak height, season, gender, age, expedition duration, size of exp...

Analysing emotional states under duress or during heightened, life-and-death situations is extremely difficult, especially given the inability of laboratory experiments to adequately replicate the environment and the inherent biases of post event surveys. It is in this area that natural experiments come to the fore by combining the randomization th...

This paper attempts to determine if the introduction of a competing social institution has had a significant effect and shifted the pro-social behavior in the extreme (life-and-death) environment of mountaineering in the Hi-malayan Mountains over the last sixty years. We apply an analytic nar-ratives approach to empirically investigate the link bet...

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between workplace factors and the intentions of police officers to quit their current department. Design/methodology/approach – Data from a survey of Baltimore officers, designed to examine the relationship between police stress and domestic violence in police families...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between workplace factors and the intentions of police officers to quit their current department. Design/methodology/approach Data from a survey of Baltimore officers, designed to examine the relationship between police stress and domestic violence in police families were used. U...

Baron von Richthofen (the Red Baron) arguably the most famous fighter pilot of all time painted his plane the vividest of red hues, making it visible and identifiable at great distance, showing an aggressive pronouncement of dominance to other pilots. Can colour affect aggression and performance and if so is it observable within team sports? This s...

There is a notable shortage of empirical research directed at measuring the magnitude and direction of stress effects on performance in a controlled environment. One reason for this is the inherent difficulties in identifying and isolating direct performance measures for individuals. Additionally, most traditional work environments contain a multit...

This study explores people's risk attitudes after having suffered large real-world losses following a natural disaster. Using the margins of the 2011 Australian floods (Brisbane) as a natural experimental setting, we find that homeowners who were victims of the floods and face large losses in property values are 50% more likely to opt for a risky g...

There is a notable shortage of empirical research directed at measuring the magnitude and direction of stress effects on performance in a controlled environment. One reason for this is the inherent difficulties in identifying and isolating direct performance measures for individuals. Additionally, most traditional work environments contain a multit...