Willingness to Pay for Solar Lanterns: Does the Trial Period Play a Role?

Where electricity access is limited, solar lanterns are a viable and relatively inexpensive source of basic lighting for households. However, the creation of commercially viable business models for solar lanterns is difficult because the customers are poor and make decisions under tight liquidity constraints. To understand the economics of technology adoption in the case of solar lanterns, we conduct a field experiment on willingness to pay (WTP) for solar lanterns in rural Uttar Pradesh. Applying the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak method of eliciting WTP, we evaluate the ability of a trial period and postponed payment to increase sales. We find no evidence for the effectiveness of the trial period and only weak evidence for the positive effect of postponed payment. Overall, WTP for the product among the customers is low. There is no clear evidence for concerns about the uncertain quality of the product, liquidity constraints, or present‐bias. In this context, policies to subsidize very small solar lanterns would not correct a market failure, as people appear to have only a limited interest in the product.     

Child-related leave and women’s labour market outcomes: towards a new paradigm in the European Union?

The current European Union (EU) legislative framework on child-related leave is facilitating an imbalance in the take-up of leave by women over men. There is a consolidated EU right to maternity leave for mothers but there is no parallel EU right to paternity leave for fathers. The EU right to parental leave is for both working mothers and fathers, but its design does not encourage an equal take-up by women and men. The aim of this article is to gain insight into the effects of child-related leave on women’s labour market outcomes. On the one hand, it reviews and analyses economic literature which points to the adverse consequences of leave on women’s earnings, and even on women’s labour market participation when the absences from work are very prolonged. On the other hand, it underlines the new direction followed by the European Commission towards greater equality between men and women at home and at work.     

Reproductive Governance in Nordeste/Northeast (Juan Solanas, 2005, Argentina/France/Belgium/Spain)

Juan Solanas's 2005 film Nordeste/Northeast problematised maternity by presenting two female characters who conform to cultural or trans-cultural norms of the Global North and South and personify the narratives of transnational trade. As Lynn M. Morgan and Elizabeth F. S. Roberts argue, ‘reproductive governance’ is a useful analytical tool for understanding how political rationalities affect the reproductive lives of women in Latin America and globally. Reproductive governance can also be used as a lens to analyse how contradictions and ambivalences are built into the lived experience of abortion and adoption as the complexity of maternity.     

Citizen's adoption intention toward contact tracing apps: An analysis using innovation resistance theory

This study explores the factors that prevent citizens from using contact tracing apps (CTA). It uses the innovation resistance theory to construct a parsimonious data analysis model. Data are collected from 440 users of CTA, and an analysis using structural equation modeling is done. Moderation analysis is performed to measure the influence of trust on the relationship between independent and dependent variables. The results reveal that privacy concerns, functional complexity, and benefit ambiguity are the main factors causing hindrance in the adoption of CTAs. The study carries implications for public authorities and technology professionals for promoting and increasing the uptake of public-oriented mass-consumption technology.