ILS Lunch Seminar with Prof. Jean-Pierre van der Rest and Maria Berghuis
The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars unite the several Institutes situated within Leiden Law School. On Thursday 15 February 2018 from 12:00 hrs until 13:00 hrs in KOG B0.41, the next edition of the ILS Lunch Seminars will take place.
In June 2016, Prof. Willem van Boom, Prof. Jean-Pierre van der Rest, Prof. Kees van den Bos and Dr. Mark Dechesne presented “Buyers Beware: Online Pricing in Operation! How the Framing of Mandated Behavioral Pricing Disclosure Influences Intention to Purchase” at the First conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Europe (CELSE). In the upcoming ILS Lunch Seminar, Prof. van der Rest will once more expound on this topic, giving an ‘update’ on his initial paper. In this presentation, Prof. van der Rest will explain how consumers respond if businesses were under a duty to disclose the use discriminatory behavioral pricing techniques to customers, drawing attention to a potentially unanticipated effect of regulatory intervention.
The second presentation will be given by Maria Berghuis, PhD candidate in Criminology at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. She will present her doctoral research on determinants and consequences of prison visitation in “Visitation in Dutch prisons: a study on determinants and consequences of prison visitation”. Prison visitation can impact behavior during imprisonment and after release, by reducing feelings of stress, loss and isolation. Berghuis will explain her thoughts and findings on this topic thus far using survey data from the Life in Custody study, prison administrative data and data she collected about visitation policies in Dutch prisons.
The abstracts of both presentations can be found underneath. There is no need to register, just join! Lunch is provided at the monthly seminars.
Please contact Daila Gigengack to sign up as a speaker at an ILS lunch seminar or for more information.
An Update on “Buyers Beware: Online Pricing in Operation!” How the Framing of Mandated Behavioral Price Discrimination Disclosure Influences Intention to Purchase
Online businesses collect a wealth of data on customers, often without properly informing them. Sometimes these data are used for behavioral price discrimination: the secret utilization of behavioral customer information and profiling techniques in online B2C commerce to set a price that optimally captures the price an individual customer is willing to pay, and which in reality may be different from the reservation prices offered to others. This article explores how consumers respond if businesses were under a duty to disclose the use of discriminatory behavioral pricing techniques to customers. Using different disclosure frames, it studies the effects of disclosure on purchase intention and purchase probability. The findings indicate that specific disclosure frames affect purchase intentions and that different frames have different effects. Interestingly, it is not so much the frame per se, but rather the content of the information disclosure that affects purchase intentions. Specifically, a disclosure frame that is relatively more in line with self-interest, was found to increase purchase intention. The frame indirectly affected intention to purchase through its effect on the perception that the use of behavioral pricing information served self-interest. In this way, the study draws attention to a potentially unanticipated effect of regulatory intervention. Implications for future research and legal policy are discussed.
Key words: Behavioral Price Discrimination; Mandatory Disclosure; Warning Frames; Intention to Purchase
Visitation in Dutch prisons: a study on determinants and consequences of prison visitation
During the lunch seminar, I will discuss my doctoral research on determinants and consequences of prison visitation. Prison visitation has been proposed to be an important experience that impacts behavior during imprisonment and after release. Visitation can reduce the feelings of stress, loss and isolation during incarceration which may help with adjustment to prison life. Additionally, social control theory posits that inmates with fewer social ties display greater aggression and conduct problems during imprisonment. Furthermore, visitation is one of the few opportunities inmates have to maintain bonds to family and friends which, after release, may restrain inmates from re-offending and help them manage the many challenges associated with reentry. Not only do inmates’ social networks provide emotional strength but they also give prisoners access to social capital, such as finding a job or housing. Most research has focused on the aforementioned effects of visitation, however, there is a gap in this literature, namely that little research identifies who gets visited. The aforementioned ‘positive’ effects, and any proposed improvements in this area, are dependent on understanding who gets visited and under which circumstances they are more or less likely to be visited. Additionally, a lack of visitation can be seen as an additional punishment, which may hit certain groups harder than others. During the seminar I will share my thoughts and findings (thus far) on this topic using survey data from the Life in Custody study, prison administrative data concerning visitation and data I collected about visitation policies in Dutch prisons.