Scholarly Works, Real Estate
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Browsing Scholarly Works, Real Estate by Author "Boyle, Kevin J."
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- Early Warning Systems, Mobile Technology, and Cholera Aversion: Evidence from Rural BangladeshPakhtigian, Emily L.; Aziz, Sonia; Boyle, Kevin J.; Akanda, Ali S.; Hanifi, M. A. (Elsevier, 2024-05)In Bangladesh, cholera poses a significant environmental health risk. Yet, information about the severity of cholera risk is limited as risk varies over time and changing weather patterns make historical cholera risk predictions less reliable. In this paper, we examine how households use geographically and temporally personalized cholera risk predictions to inform their beliefs and behaviors related to cholera and its aversion. We estimate how access to a smartphone application containing monthly cholera risk predictions unique to a user’s home location affects households’ beliefs about their cholera risk and their water use and hygiene behaviors. We find that households with access to this application feel more equipped to respond to environmental and health risks and reduce their reliance on surface water for bathing and washing – a common cholera transmission pathway. We do not find that households invest additional resources into drinking water treatment, nor do we find reductions in self-reported cholera incidence. Further, households with a static, non-personalized app containing public health information about cholera exhibit similar patterns of beliefs updating. Taken together, our results suggest that access to risk information can help households make safer water choices, yet improving design and credibility remain important dimensions for increasing application usability.
- Early Warning Systems, Mobile Technology, and Cholera Aversion: Evidence from Rural BangladeshPakhtigian, Emily L.; Aziz, Sonia; Boyle, Kevin J.; Akanda, Ali S.; Hanifi, M. A. (Resources for the Future, 2022-10)In Bangladesh, cholera poses a significant health risk. Yet, information about the nature and severity of cholera risk is limited as risk varies over time and by location and changing weather patterns have made historical cholera risk predictions less reliable. In this paper, we examine how households use geographically and temporally personalized cholera risk predictions to inform their water use behaviors. Using data from an eight month field experiment, we estimate how access to a smartphone application containing monthly cholera risk predictions unique to a user’s home location affects households’ knowledge about their cholera risk as well as their water use practices. We find that households with access to this application feel more equipped to respond to environmental and health risks they may face and reduce their reliance on surface water for bathing and washing—a common cholera transmission pathway. We do not find that households invest additional resources into drinking water treatment, nor do we find reductions in self-reported cholera incidence. Access to dynamic risk information can help households make safer water choices; tailoring information provision to those at highest risk could reduce cholera transmission in endemic areas.
- Property value effects of the Hemlock wooly adelgid infestation in New England, USALi, Xiaoshu; Boyle, Kevin J.; Preisser, Evan L.; Holmes, Thomas P.; Orwig, David (Elsevier, 2022-04)We investigate residential property-price effects of the spread of the Hemlock wooly adelgid infestation northward through central portions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, USA. We find that hemlock trees and the accompanying adelgid infestation within 0.1 km buffers of properties affect sale prices, but the results do not extend to buffers of 0.5 and 1.0 km's. Further, within the 0.1 km buffer, only the healthiest hemlock trees contribute positively to property values. We investigated the robustness of the results to three data interpolation methods, Kriging, Inverse Distance Weighting and Spline, and while there was some minor difference in outcomes the results are robust to these interpolation methods. Two property-price models were estimated, a traditional hedonic model with spatial fixed effects and a repeat sale model. The models provide substantially different property-price impacts and care needs to be taken when interpreting these estimates. Both approaches are limited but in different ways; the hedonic by potentially omitted variables and the repeat-sales by a limited number of observations. Our results provide some support for the repeat-sale model as the hedonic model with spatial fixed effects underperformed when both models were estimated using the same data.