Simultaneous allocation of buffer capacities and service times in unreliable production lines.

Simultaneous allocation of service times and buffer capacities in manufacturing systems in a random environment is a NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problem. This paper presents a sophisticated simulation-based optimisation approach for the design of unreliable production lines to maximise the production rate. The proposed method allows for a global search using a Genetic Algorithm (GA), which is coupled with Finite Perturbation Analysis (FPA) as a local search technique. Traditional techniques based on perturbation analysis optimise decision variables of the same nature (e.g. service time only, buffer capacity only), whereas the proposed technique simultaneously provides an allocation of service times and buffer capacities. One of the main focuses of this paper is the investigation of the persistence or absence of the buffer and service rate allocation patterns which are among the most essential insights that come from designing production lines. The results show the superiority of the combined GA-FPA approach regarding GA and FPA in terms of solution quality and convergence behaviour. Moreover, considering instances ranging from 3 to 100 machines, our numerical experiments are in line with the literature for small instances (as similar allocation patterns are identified in our work), but important differences are highlighted for medium/large instances.

Occupational Balance and Emotional Regulation in People With and Without Serious Mental Illness.

Background. Serious mental illness affects daily functioning, including occupational balance. Purpose. This study aims to compare occupational balance and emotional regulation between people with serious mental illness and the healthy population and to examine the relationship between occupational balance and emotional regulation. Method. A cross-sectional study was performed. Occupational balance and emotional regulation were measured using the Occupational Balance Questionnaire and the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, respectively. A multivariate analysis (analysis of covariance) was conducted. Findings. The sample consisted of 112 individuals, divided into two groups: the serious mental illness group (n = 55); and the healthy group (n = 57). People with serious mental illness reported lower occupational balance and lower cognitive reappraisal than the healthy population. Furthermore, the higher cognitive reappraisal, the higher the occupational balance, and the higher the expressive suppression, the lower the occupational balance. Conclusion. The results provide preliminary evidence of the relationship between occupational balance and emotional regulation.

(No) time to be healthy: Optimal policy with time and monetary investments in health.

Time is often an important ingredient of a healthy lifestyle. Starting from this observation, this paper studies optimal public policy concerned with promoting healthy choices taking into account both monetary and time investments in health. Individuals tend to underestimate the importance of their health while making decisions, which makes their investments too low compared to the first-best. While the decentralization of the first-best requires personalized subsidies on both time and monetary investments, this may be problematic due to informational issues. In a second-best world where individual productivities and time investments are publicly unobservable, whereas monetary investments are observable in an anonymous way, the paper considers a policy with a non-linear income tax and a linear subsidy on monetary health investments. If there are no incentive concerns, all other things equal, monetary investments complementary (substitutable) to time investments should be subsidized more (less) than those independent of time use. The addition of incentive concerns demonstrates that optimal subsidization of monetary health investments is less straightforward than one might think. Overall, the time ingredient in the production of health does play a role in the optimal policy design, affecting not only the subsidy on monetary health investments but also the income taxation.

Is household shock a boon or bane to the utilisation of preventive healthcare for children? Evidence from Uganda.

This paper investigates how poor households in low-income countries trade off time investment in their children's preventive healthcare vis-à-vis labour force participation during household-level health shocks. By using the reported illness or death of any household member as the indicator for an adverse health shock, I examine its effect on the intake of Vitamin A Supplementation (VAS) by children. Using four waves of the Uganda National Panel Survey, I find that children between 12-24 months are significantly more likely to get VAS when the household is under a health shock. I argue that this effect works through an economies of scale mechanism, by which the household adult(s) utilise the released time from the labour force during the shock to access remedial care from the healthcare facility and simultaneously obtain VAS for their children during the same visit. This arguably results from the high opportunity cost of time-constrained households, which is exacerbated by a mediocre service delivery side. To distinguish the unique mechanism of the health shock in this context, the effect and channels of an income shock are also explored. By proxying a negative income shock with the household-reported incidence of flood or drought, the study cautiously hints that VAS adoption may increase among the relatively wealthy who experience a dominating substitution effect of the income shock.

The rhythms of transient relationships: allocating time between weekdays and weekends.

A fundamental question of any new relationship is, will it last? Transient relationships, recently defined by the authors, are an ideal type of social tie to explore this question: these relationships are characterized by distinguishable starting and ending temporal points, linking the question of tie longevity to relationship finite lifetime. In this study, we use mobile phone data sets from the UK and Italy to analyse the weekly allocation of time invested in maintaining transient relationships. We find that more relationships are created during weekdays, with a greater proportion of them receiving more contact during these days of the week in the long term. The smaller group of relationships that receive more phone calls during the weekend tend to remain active for more time. We uncover a sorting process by which some ties are moved from weekdays to weekends and vice versa, mostly in the first half of the relationship. This process also carries more information about the ultimate lifetime of a tie than the part of the week when the relationship started, which suggests an early evaluation period that leads to a decision on how to allocate time to different types of transient ties.

Maternal time investment in caregiving activities to promote early childhood development: evidence from rural India.

Introduction: Intervention strategies that seek to improve early childhood development outcomes are often targeted at the primary caregivers of children, usually mothers. The interventions require mothers to assimilate new information and then act upon it by allocating sufficient physical resources and time to adopt and perform development promoting behaviours. However, women face many competing demands on their resources and time, returning to familiar habits and behaviours. In this study, we explore mothers' allocation of time for caregiving activities for children under the age of 2, nested within a cluster randomised controlled trial of a nutrition and care for development intervention in rural Haryana, India. Methods: We collected quantitative maternal time use data at two time points in rural Haryana, India, using a bespoke survey instrument. Data were collected from 704 mothers when their child was 12 months old, and 603 mothers when their child was 18 months old. We tested for significant differences in time spent by mothers on different activities when children are 12 months of age vs. 18 months of age between arms as well as over time, using linear regression. As these data were collected within a randomised controlled trial, we adjusted for clusters using random effects when testing for significant differences between the two time points. Results: At both time points, no statistically significant difference in maternal time use was found between arms. On average, mothers spent most of their waking time on household chores (over 6 h and 30 min) at both time points. When children were aged 12 months, approximately three and a half hours were spent on childcare activities for children under the age of 2 years. When children were 18 months old, mothers spent more time on income generating activities (30 min) than when the children were 12 years old, and on leisure (approximately 4 h and 30 min). When children were 18 months old, less time was spent on feeding/breastfeeding children (30 min less) and playing with children (15 min). However, mothers spent more time talking or reading to children at 18 months than at 12 months. Conclusion: We find that within a relatively short period of time in early childhood, maternal (or caregiver) time use can change, with time allocation being diverted away from childcare activities to others. This suggests that changing maternal time allocation in resource poor households may be quite challenging, and not allow the uptake of new and/or optimal behaviours.

Understanding the Effects of Widowhood on Health in China: Mechanisms and Heterogeneity.

This paper analyzes the impact of widowhood on the health of mid-aged and older individuals in China using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) data. Our results show that widowhood significantly increases the risk of depression, chronic diseases, and body pain while reducing cognitive function, sleeping time, and daily activity functions. The effects on depression and daily functions are immediate, that on chronic diseases is lagged, and the effects on cognitive function and sleeping hours persist over time. We find that rural widows are particularly vulnerable to negative health outcomes due to their weaker economic positions, for whom widowhood leads to more grandchild care responsibility and corresponding workforce and social withdrawals. Moreover, rural widows' income loss is not compensated by children, either by co-residence or financial transfers, leading to reduced living standards. Overall, our findings suggest that China needs to strengthen economic security for older people, especially among rural women, in order to avoid significant negative consequences of widowhood.

Faculty Time Expenditure Across Research, Teaching, and Service: Do Gender Differences Persist?

Faculty members are continually confronted with a multitude of activities among which they must divide their time. Prior research suggests that while men and women academics spend the same number of weekly hours working, women tend to expend more time on teaching and service relative to men while men expend more time on research relative to women. Based on cross-sectional survey data from a sample of 783 tenured or tenure-track faculty members from multiple universities, we examine gender differences in time spent in research, teaching, and university service. Regression analyses show that gender differences in time allocation continue to persist after controlling for work and family factors. More specifically, women report more time on teaching and university service than do men, while men report more time spent on research than do women. Results provide evidence that gendered differences in faculty time allocation are robust across time. Potential implications for policy are discussed.

The impact of weather on time allocation to physical activity and sleep of child-parent dyads.

PURPOSE: Previous studies showed that unfavourable weather conditions discourage physical activity. However, it remains unclear whether unfavourable weather conditions have a differential impact on physical activity in children compared with adults. We aim to explore the differential impact of weather on time allocation to physical activity and sleep by children and their parents. METHOD: We use nationally representative data with time use indicators objectively measured on multiple occasions for >1100 Australian pairs of 12-13-year-old children and their middle-aged parents, coupled with daily meteorological data. We employ an individual fixed effects regression model to estimate the causal impact of weather. RESULTS: We find that unfavourable weather conditions, as measured by cold or hot temperatures or rain, cause children to reduce moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity time and increase sedentary time. However, such weather conditions have little impact on children's sleep time or the time allocation of their parents. We also find substantial differential weather impact, especially on children's time allocation, by weekdays/weekends and parental employment status, suggesting that these factors may contribute to explaining the differential weather impact that we observed. Our results additionally provide evidence of adaptation, as temperature appears to have a more pronounced impact on time allocation in colder months and colder regions. CONCLUSION: Our finding of a negative impact of unfavourable weather conditions on the time allocated to physical activity by children indicates a need to design policies to encourage them to be more physically active on days with unfavourable weather conditions and hence improve child health and wellbeing. Evidence of a more pronounced and negative impact on the time allocated to physical activity by children than their parents suggests that extreme weather conditions, including those associated with climate change, could make children vulnerable to reduced physical activity.

Male attention allocation depends on social context.

Allocation of attention, typically a limited capacity, is a mechanism used to filter large amounts of information and determine what stimuli are most relevant at a particular moment. In dynamic social environments as found in almost all species, including humans, multiple individuals may play a pivotal role in any given interaction where a male's attention may be divided between a rival, a current mate, and/or future potential mates. Although clearly important, the role of the social environment on attention in animals is not well understood. Here, we investigated impacts of the social environment on attention allocation using male sailfin mollies, Poecilia latipinna, which are a part of a sexual-unisexual mating system with the Amazon molly, Poecilia formosa. We asked: 1) Does the species of female influence the amount of attention a male allocates to her? And 2) Is a male's attention towards his mate influenced by different social partners? We show that males perceive a larger male as a more relevant stimulus to pay attention to compared to a smaller male, and a conspecific female (either a partner or audience) as a more relevant stimulus compared to a heterospecific female. Our results show that differential allocation of attention is dependent upon multiple components of the social environment in which an individual interacts. Understanding what qualities of rival males or potential mates provide enough meaning to males to cause a shift in attention away from a mating opportunity is essential to understanding the influence of the social environment in sexual selection.

The Association Between Screen Time and Outdoor Time on Adolescent Mental Health and Academic Performance: Evidence from Rural China.

Purpose: We examine how adolescent free time allocation-namely, screen time and outdoor time-is associated with mental health and academic performance in rural China. Methods: This paper used a large random sample of rural junior high school students in Ningxia (n = 20,375; age=13.22), with data collected from self-reported demographic questionnaires (to assess free time allocation), the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (to assess mental health), and a standardized math test (to measure academic performance). We utilized a multivariate OLS regression model to examine associations between free time allocation and adolescent outcomes, controlling for individual and family characteristics. Results: Our sample's screen time and outdoor time both averaged around 1 hour. About 10% of the sample adolescents reported behavioral difficulties, while a similar percentage (11%) reported abnormal prosocial behaviors. Adolescents with higher levels of screen time (>2 hours) were 3 percentage points more likely to have higher levels of behavioral difficulties (p<0.001), indicating that excessive screen time was associated with worse mental health. Meanwhile, outdoor time was associated with better mental health, and positive correlations were observed at all levels of outdoor time (compared to no outdoor time, decreasing the likelihood of higher levels of behavioral difficulties by between 3 and 4 percentage points and of lower prosocial scores by between 6 and 8 percentage points; all p's<0.001). For academic performance, average daily screen times of up to 1 hour and 1-2 hours were both positively associated with standardized math scores (0.08 SD, p<0.001; 0.07 SD, p<0.01, respectively), whereas there were no significant associations between outdoor time and academic performance. Conclusion: Using a large sample size, this study was the first to examine the association between adolescent free time allocation with mental health and academic performance, providing initial insights into how rural Chinese adolescents can optimize their free time.

Roles and Functions of School Mental Health Professionals Within Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems.

Mental health concerns are on the rise among youth, contributing to a growing need for school-based mental health services. However, challenges to service provision arise due, in part, to workforce shortages, service fragmentation, and inefficient allocation of staff time. The current study describes the professional competencies and time allocation of four school-based mental health professions (i.e., school counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, and school nurses) in order to demonstrate how schools can leverage the skills of their existing staff to coordinate a comprehensive approach to support student mental health. First, we identified the core clinical competencies needed to implement the key features of comprehensive school mental health systems. Then, we crosswalked these clinical competencies with the training standards of the four professions. Finally, we conducted a systematic review of the literature to understand how these professionals' time is allocated, as well as their responsibilities related to the provision of mental health services. Results demonstrated that, although all four professions receive training in most of the core competencies needed to implement comprehensive school mental health services, their skillsets are often underutilized in day-to-day practice. Thus, we concluded that there are at least two untapped opportunities for school leaders to support student mental health-first, maximize the use of school mental health professionals through task-shifting (i.e., reassigning tasks less central to mental health service delivery to other staff), and second, implement an integrated model of school mental health services to efficiently leverage the mental health training of professionals. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12310-022-09535-0.

Participating in a Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Intervention Is Not Associated with Less Maternal Time for Care in a Rural Ghanaian District.

Background: Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) interventions may increase farm-related work for mothers, with consequences for child nutrition. The Nutrition Links (NL) intervention provided mothers with poultry, gardening inputs, technical support, and education to improve livelihoods and child nutrition outcomes in rural Ghana. Objectives: Our objective was to compare time allocated to child care by a cross-section of mothers in the intervention group of the NL intervention with the control group (NCT01985243). Methods: A cross-section of NL mother-child pairs was included in a time allocation substudy [intervention (NL-I) n = 74 and control (NL-C) n = 69]. In-home observations of the mother-child pair were conducted for 1 min, every 5 min, for 6 h. Observations were categorized into 4 nonoverlapping binary variables as follows: 1) maternal direct care, 2) maternal supervisory care, 3) allocare, and 4) no direct supervision. Allocare was defined as care by another person in the presence or absence of the mother. Any care was defined as the observation of maternal direct care, maternal supervisory care, or allocare. Generalized linear mixed models with binomial data distribution were used to compare the child care categories by group, adjusting for known covariates. Results: Maternal direct care (OR = 1.07; 95% CI: 0.89, 1.28) and any care (OR = 1.56; 95% CI: 0.91, 2.67) did not differ by intervention group. However, there was a higher odds of allocare (OR = 1.36; 95% CI: 1.04, 1.79) in NL-I than in NL-C women. Conclusions: Maternal participation in an NSA intervention was not associated with a decrease in time spent directly on child care but was associated with an increase in care from other household and community members.The clinicaltrials.gov number provided is for the main NL intervention and not this current substudy.

Who's cooking tonight? A time-use study of coupled adults in Toronto, Canada.

Understanding how coupled adults arrange food-related labor in relation to their daily time allocation is of great importance because different arrangements may have implications for diet-related health and gender equity. Studies from the time-use perspective argue that daily activities such as work, caregiving, and non-food-related housework can potentially compete for time with foodwork. However, studies in this regard are mostly centered on individual-level analyses. They fail to consider cohabiting partners' time spent on foodwork and non-food-related activities, a factor that could be helpful in explaining how coupled partners decide to allocate time to food activities. Using 108 daily time-use logs from seventeen opposite-gender couples living in Toronto, Canada, this paper examines how male and female partners' time spent on non-food-related activities impact the total amount of time spent on foodwork by coupled adults and the difference in time spent on foodwork between coupled women and men. Results show that both male and female partners took a higher portion of foodwork when their partner worked longer. When men worked for additional time, the couple-level duration of foodwork decreased. Without a significant impact on the gender difference in foodwork duration, women's increased caregiving duration was associated with a reduction of total time spent on foodwork by couples. An increase in caregiving and non-food-related chores by men was associated with an increased difference in duration of foodwork between women and men, which helped secure a constant total amount of foodwork at the couple level. These behavioral variations between men and women demonstrate the gender differences in one's responsiveness to the change of partners' non-food-related tasks. The associations found among non-food-related activities and foodwork are suggestive of a need to account for partners' time allocation when studying the time-use dynamics of foodwork and other daily activities.

The effect of siblings' sex ratio on physical capital, human capital, and gendered time use among adolescents in Ethiopia.

We examine the role of siblings' sex ratio on adolescents' physical and human capital development, as well as gendered time allocation using data from the Young Lives project in Ethiopia. We use BMI-for-age and Weight-for-age to measure physical capital and grade attainment and scores in Mathematics and English tests as human capital indicators. Gendered time use is proxied by the hours per day the adolescent spends doing traditionally female-specific chores. Our identification strategy relies on the absence of sex-selective reproduction in our study area which implies that for a given number of siblings, their sex ratio should be exogenous. Our results show that having relatively more brothers than sisters increases both physical and human capital for adolescents, typically with a stronger effect for boys. Yet it also increases girls' time spent on traditionally female-specific tasks, especially in the rural areas. This points to a complex relationship between siblings' sex composition and long-term life outcomes for women.

[Behavioral response pattern of Aythya baeri under different weather conditions during wintering]. / 不同天气条件下青头潜鸭越冬期行为的响应模式.

We observed behavior response of overwintering Aythya baeri to different weather conditions by using fixed point-based observation and scanning sampling methods, at Henan Minquan National Wetland Park during November to December 2018. The results showed that, on sunny days, the dominant behaviors of A. baeri were resting, flying, and locomotion (65.5%), the second were foraging and maintaining (31.9%). The daily behavioral rhythm was foraging in the morning, resting at noon, and foraging and maintain in the afternoon. The flying usually occurred before the peak of foraging. The locomotion behavior was mostly accompanied by other behaviors, which positively associated with foraging and negatively correlated with resting. A. baeri increased resting and foraging in rainy days compared with that in sunny days. The dominant behaviors were resting, foraging and locomotion (76.5%), and maintaining and flying were the secondary (20.3%). The peaks of foraging and resting postponed to the evening, while the flying and maintaining were significantly decreased. Compared with the sunny days, the resting, foraging, locomotion and maintaining behaviors were increased in mist days, and flying was decreased. The peak of foraging delayed to the noon and afternoon, and that of resting postponed to the afternoon. The dominant behaviors were resting, locomotion and foraging (70.6%), while maintaining and flying behavior were the secondary (27.5%). In summary, there are variations in time allocation of A. baeri behaviors, activity rhythm and dominant behaviors due to the change of weather conditions during wintering. To overcome the bad weather conditions in rainy and mist days, A. baeri would allocate more time on foraging for increasing energy intake, and more resting time for reducing energy consumption.

Second Chances in Learning: Does a Resit Prospect Lower Study-Time Investments on a First Test?

Previous studies have shown that the prospect of a resit opportunity lowers hypothetical study-time investments for a first exam, as compared to a single-chance exam (i.e., the resit effect). The present paper describes a first experiment in which we aimed to generalize this effect from hypothetical study-time investments to a learning task allowing for the optimization of actual study-time investments while participants studied pairs of pseudowords for a subsequent multiple-choice test, given either a single chance or two chances to pass. Against our expectations, the results of the experiment showed no resit effect for the amount of actual time participants spent studying the materials in the experimental learning task. To better allow for the optimization of study-time investments, the learning task was adapted for a second experiment to include an indication of passing probability. These results, however, also did not show a resit effect. A third experiment addressed whether it was the investment of actual time that led to this absence of a resit effect with the learning task. The results suggested, however, that it was most likely the lack of a priori deliberation that caused this absence of the effect. Taken together with findings from a fourth questionnaire study showing that students seem to take a resit prospect into account by indicating they would have studied more for an exam if the option to resit would not have been available, these findings lead us to argue that a resit prospect may primarily affect advance study-time allocation decisions.

Impacts of COVID-19 lockdown on time allocation for sedentary and physical activities - The context of Indian university students.

Introduction: Covid-19 pandemic has impacted individuals' time allocation decisions. As it is known that university students display behaviors different from the general population, very few studies have examined their activity participation and time allocation behavior during the pandemic. The present study investigates the changes in time allocations to sedentary, physically active, and eat-sleep activities before and during the pandemic. Methods: The study hypothesizes that active mode (walk, bicycle) and transit users would compensate for the physical efforts by increasing physical activities at home during the lockdown. Students' perception of personal well-being, anxiety, and individual leisure during the pandemic and their impacts on time allocation decisions after controlling for demographic variables and temporal effects are also explored. A pan India behavioral data of 203 samples collected using an online survey conducted between May to July 2020, during India's lockdown phase, is used for analysis. A series of segmented analyses (using ANOVA's and Kruskal-Wallis Test) and empirical modeling (linear mixed-effect regression) were conducted based on the time use distribution. Results: Findings showed that university students from low-income households and students who own a bicycle show a higher tendency to spend time in physical activities during lockdown periods. Students accessing college using active modes (before lockdown) allocate less time to sedentary and eat-sleep activities than physical activities during the lockdown period. Students' perception of Leisure items among those who use active modes is significantly different from those of private and public mode users. Conclusions: From a policy viewpoint, such investigation would help implicitly understand and publicize the health benefits of active modes and transit and encourage their use. For instance, policymakers and transport planners can temporarily allocate less-used motorized streets (due to the pandemic) to students who prefer walking and cycling as universities still function online in India.

On the Similarity Between the Reinforcing and the Discriminative Properties of Intracranial Self-Stimulation.

Rats work very hard for intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) and tradeoff effort or time allocation for intensity and frequency parameters producing a sigmoidal function of the subjective reward magnitude of ICSS. Previous studies using electrical intracranial stimuli (ICS) as a discriminative cue focused on estimating detection thresholds or on the discrimination between intensities. To our knowledge, there is no direct comparison of the reinforcer tradeoff functions with the discriminative functions. Rats were trained to press and hold the lever for ICSS using the maximum reinforcing intensity below motor alterations or avoidance behavior. First, rats were trained to hold the lever for 1 s; after stability, they undergo trials where intensity or frequency was decreased on 0.1 log step. Thereafter, they undergo further training with a hold of 2 and later of 4 s to determine tradeoff with intensity or frequency. The same rats were trained on a discrimination task where the previously used ICSS signaled a lever where a 1 s hold response was followed by a reinforcing ICSS; on randomly alternating trials, a -0.6 log ICS signaled an alternate lever where a similar hold response led to a reinforcer. After mastering discrimination, generalization tests were carried out with varying intensity or frequency. Rats completed training with 2 and later 4 s hold response. After the completion of each task, the rats had different doses of a pimozide challenge while their intensity and hold-down requirement were varied. With regards to the rats' tradeoff response time allocation as a function of intensity or frequency, sigmoid functions were displaced to the right when long responses were required. Rats that learned the discrimination task attained a discrimination index of 90-98%. Discrimination accuracy decreased slightly with the increase of hold requirement, but generalization gradients were not displaced to the right as a function of the response requirement. Pimozide induced a dose-dependent displacement of the time-allocation gradients, but it did not affect the generalization gradients. It is concluded that rats integrate response requirements as part of the reinforcement tradeoff function, but the response cost is not integrated into the discriminative function of ICSS.

Choice and allocation characteristics of faculty time in Korea: effects of tenure, research performance, and external shock.

Academics generally should meet both teaching duty and research performance requirements. Since their work time is finite, academics need to allocate time for research, teaching, and other types of work. This means that universities or governments might enhance the efficiency of their faculty systems or educational policies by understanding academics' preferences for choice and allocation of their work time. We analyzed the work time allocation preferences of 450 Korean academics in science and engineering fields based on the multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model. We classified work time into either of research, teaching, or other tasks and investigated the relationship between academics' preferences in choosing and allocating their work time and faculty system (e.g., tenure), individual characteristics (e.g., research productivity) and external shock (e.g., COVID-19). Analysis results show that academics with either of tenure, higher research productivity, or commercialization experience preferred to allocating their work time firstly to research, i.e., rather than to teaching or other tasks, while this was not the case for the academics after the pandemic. In general, academics appeared not to prefer allocating their work time firstly to teaching. Implications of our study are twofold. First, the higher education sector needs to incentivize academics' teaching time allocation for enhanced effectiveness of education. Second, universities and governments urgently need systems and policies to facilitate academics' research time allocation for enhanced research productivity as we find deteriorated preference for research time allocation after COVID-19.