The effect of macroscopic herd inputs on individual investment behaviour.

Decisions are rarely made in isolation and the role of others' decisions in guiding our own has been observed in a diversity of contexts. This influence is often argued to result from an information cascade, where decisions in a sequential setting are influenced by the early decisions of others. However, the degree to which individuals modify behaviour through the integration of social information (i.e., other people's decisions) varies considerably. While significant literature has been dedicated to understanding individual determinants for this variation, we propose that we should not ignore the aggregate characteristics of the herd itself. Specifically, we examine whether the scale and longevity of the herd itself at the time when an individual decides, defined as macroscopic herd inputs, influence whether individuals integrate social information. By employing data from a social trading platform, we find that macroscopic herd inputs exert a strong influence on individual investment decisions, showing that the influence of others' behaviour on our own is in part dependent on the nature of the herd itself.

Risk perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions to spend on experiences in the post-Corona crisis: Data from Italy, Denmark, China, and Japan.

The dataset provides comprehensive cross-cultural data on individuals' value priorities, risk perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions to spend on experiences in the post-Corona crisis. The questionnaire was designed to incorporate several theoretical concepts around cultural psychology, tourism, and public health as well as specific questions about tourists' behavioral intentions suggested by practitioners from the experience economy sector. The survey sample was collected based on quota sampling representative in terms of age, gender, and geography (gross sample) in the respective countries: China, Denmark, Italy, and Japan. The target sample was set as males and females the age of 18 years old or above in each country who have traveled abroad (either leisure or business) at least once within the past three years. The survey was conducted for the period between the 10th and 24th of July 2020 and collected a total of 4172 respondents divided into the four nationalities: Chinese (n = 1019), Danish (n = 1,028), Italian (n =  1014), and Japanese (n =  1111). Analyzed data are presented with mean, standard deviation, the minimum and maximum range of responses for the scale-based questions, and frequencies and proportions for the categorical questions. Raw data are accessible in 'sav' and 'csv' formats.

Cross-Cultural Bayesian Network Analysis of Factors Affecting Residents' Concerns About the Spread of an Infectious Disease Caused by Tourism.

COVID-19 has had a severe impact globally, and the recovery can be characterized as a tug of war between fast economic recovery and firm control of further virus-spread. To be prepared for future pandemics, public health policy makers should put effort into fully understanding any complex psychological tensions that inherently arise between opposing human factors such as free enjoyment versus self-restriction. As the COVID-19 crisis is an unusual and complex problem, combinations of diverse factors such as health risk perception, knowledge, norms and beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are closely associated with individuals' intention to enjoy the experience economy but also their concerns that the experience economy will trigger further spread of the infectious diseases. Our aim is to try identifying what factors are associated with their concerns about the spread of the infectious disease caused by the local experience economy. Hence, we have chosen a "data-driven" explanatory approach, "Probabilistic Structural Equational Modeling," based on the principle of Bayesian networks to analyze data collected from the following four countries with indicated sample sizes: Denmark (1,005), Italy (1,005), China (1,013), and Japan (1,091). Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the contextual differences in relations between the target variable and factors such as personal value priority and knowledge. These factors affect the target variable differently depending on the local severity-level of the infections. Relations between pleasure-seeking via the experience economy and individuals' anxiety-level about an infectious hotspot seem to differ between East Asians and Europeans who are known to prioritize so-called interpersonal- and independent self-schemes, respectively. Our study also indicates the heterogeneity in the populations, i.e., these relations differ within the respective populations. Another finding shows that the Japanese population is particularly concerned about their local community potentially becoming an infectious hotspot and hence expecting others to comply with their particular social norms. Summarizing, the obtained insights imply the importance of considering both cultural- and individual contexts when policy makers are going to develop measures to address pandemic dilemmas such as maintaining public health awareness and accelerating the recovery of the local experience economy.