11 Jun 12 People are rational; no they aren’t
What makes (or forces/allows, depending on the situation) a person or a group of people to take an action? What impels (or propels/liberates, again depending on the situation) someone to act a certain way? It’s not always clear. I am fascinated by these questions because often the answer is the right set of incentives.
Two articles crossed my desk* and they show how complex incentives for people really are.
On the one hand, there is a really cool initiative happening over at my alma mater. A piece in the today’s New York Times highlights the work of Balaji Prabhakar, a professor in EE and CS. Essentially Prof. Prabhakar realized that rush hour on Stanford campus was bad. He also realized that “congestion pricing” — that is, charges for driving to peak places during peak hours — is unpopular with drivers, though is a common tactic to fight congestion. So rather than a disincentive from driving at busy times, he developed an incentive structure. You enter a lottery when you drive or park off-peak and can win up to $50. Simple.
It’s brilliant since it cuts down on wasted time, creates less rush hour pollution and is also flexible in how it scales. It’s a brilliant move and from an incentive standpoint, totally logical: people are willing to change their behavior in order to receive a benefit, in this case, money.
On the other hand, an even loftier goal is afoot to help improve obesity and public health in Philadelphia. Context: the US spends $147B treating obesity each year. That’s more than the GDP of New Zealand. Of America’s big cities, Philadelphia has the highest obesity rate and poorest population.
Unfortunately, access to healthy food in a neighborhood has no causal link to improved health outcomes wapo.st/JS4caz
— Christian L. Tom (@cltom) June 12, 2012
The new program to combat this is to turn the local corner grocery into a greengrocery. The city is working with 900+ stores to stock healthy items. To me, this sounds great since it stands to reason that greater access to healthy food (particularly in poorer neighborhoods where it’s not otherwise available) will increase selection of healthy food and increase healthy outcomes. Making it easier to buy healthy food should be a huge incentive to making one and one’s family healthier.
Except not. Emphasis mine:
“In the U.K., we’d started making policy about this before there was any empirical evidence,” says Neil Wrigley, a professor of geography at Southampton University in England, who works on urban planning research. “Time to time, this happens, where you get policies that outstrip the evidence. Then the evidence needs to catch up.”
Wrigley conducted one of the first studies of a food desert intervention, looking at what happened when a grocery store was brought into an underserved part of Leeds, an industrial city in northern England. Of shoppers surveyed, 45 percent switched to the new store. Their habits, however, barely changed: Consumption of fruits and vegetables increased by one-third of a cup per day — about six grapes or two broccoli florets.
“The results came out quite small, a very modest increase in consumption of nutritious foods,” Wrigley says. “It seemed an almost nonexistent improvement.”
Similar research in the United States shows much the same.
There are some good explanations for this. For example, access to food is not also only dependent on proximity to home but also about distance from public transit.
Still, when presented with two options — healthy food and not (selling apples is not mutually exclusive with selling candy) — people often choose the candy, simply because they want the candy.
Maybe the problem is this program in Philadelphia really only removes a barrier without providing a kick. And with the Stanford driving experiment, there is a good catalyst in cash rewards. Still, I look at these articles and I see two behaviors that are trying to be changed. It seems like both could be successful (and both are, after all, just starting so success is not predetermined). I read these excited about them both. And while initial trials at Stanford have gone well, the skepticism by experts regarding the Philadelphia work worries me since it’s rational, it’s too logical.
Note: Also check out the awesome Dan Pink TED talk from a few years ago about extrinsic and intrinsic motivators which I posted to this blog last year.
*proverbially
Tags: apples, Balaji Prabhakar, candy, catalyst, cs, driving, food, food desert, greengrocery, grocery, incentives, obesity, parking, philadelphia, public health, Stanford
09 Jun 12 Some Local Restaurant Favorites
I have lived in the Gramercy/Flatiron/Union Square neighborhood for the past 3 years and I love it. It’s convenient and lively and the nexus of a lot of fun places to eat.
View RT/PS – Gramercy/Flatiron/Union Square in a larger map
I’ve evaluated the top restaurants within a 5-minute walk from my place. How did I decide upon them? They fit in a matrix which I’m calling the RT/PS Matrix™.
It’s a 3×3 grid, thus 9 slots where I’ve managed to fit in 11 restaurants. The RT/PS stands for Rich & Trendy/Poor & Simple since the matrix spans that range (from top-left to bottom-right). Here are all possible combinations:
Sufficiently complex? Here’s the chart for my neighborhood:
The Rich/Poor scale is my inelegant way of denoting how much you should expect to pay. The Trendy/Simple scale is meant to denote how cool the place is and evaluate newness vs. incumbent status, not sophistication of the food (I like all of these places, so it’s not about good/bad restaurants — rather, it’s about price range and mood and your personality). Want to learn more? Excellent, away we go!
- Casa Mono - Grab some small plates, try a bottle of wine and keep them both flowing. This is a great spot and the fresh, creative tidbits from your waiter and sommelier will keep you at a small table in the corner for hours. Or sit at the bar and be enthralled as you watch your food cooked up to order in front of you.
- Craft - The dining room and food are beautiful in their simplicity. Execution defines the dining experience, too. For example, try the sea scallops and be deceived by the sea salt crystals lingering on the top of the perfectly seared pieces.
- Gramercy Tavern - It’s a boringly obvious choice but that’s because it’s the right answer. Do it. If you are feeling Rich & A Bit Less Trendy (and in for an amazing meal), Danny Meyer and friends will take care of you. The crowd skews a bit older (so A Bit Less Trendy) but the restaurant and food are anything but simple.
- Pipa - Pipa is built into ABC on 19th Street and has fun tapas and sangria. Patatas bravas are always good, here they do not fail to please. Mood lighting is provided by ABC Home’s inventory which means everything is, I think, technically purchasable. Regardless, the setting is #romantic and is a great start to a night.
- Eataly - Eataly is a market with 12 different restaurants and counters to choose from. Manzo is a formal dinner while Il Pesce and Le Verdure are more casual (they don’t take reservations) and specialize in fish and vegetarian options, respectively. Walk around the expansive floor and if nothing suits your fancy, head up to the roof to the Birreria, a year-round open air beer garden (with a roof for the winter) with food and drink.
- The House - Another #romantic spot, The House is in a free standing building on 17th Street and has plenty of charm (see picture below).
- Tarallucci E Vino – You’ll find a pretty decor (one friend kept saying she envisioned it as the ideal place for a wedding party) and with fresh pastries and warm drinks, it’s the place to go for a dependable Italian meal with flair. Of the pastas, I’m a big fan of the $16 paccheri with duck sauce and parmigiano reggiano.
- Coffee Shop – This is a coffee shop on Union Square West. It is what is sounds like. That’s what makes it in the “Poor” line. Why the “Trendy” column? It’s well-known that many cute models/actors (male and female) work here as waiters. Get a table outside and do some people watching. Try during the weekend during the boozy brunch hour and you will have fun.
- The Soft Serve Fruit Co. – Fruit, water, cane sugar. It’s like sorbet and it’s really refreshing, with strong and genuine fruit flavors. Plus, it’s vegan and gluten-free. For something more substantial, try one of their smoothies, with flavors such as PPJC: banana soft serve, hot natural peanut butter, chocolate or carob chips, fresh banana & strawberries.
- Dos Toros - Craving some Bay Area taqueria? Grab a chicken plato or burrito made to order, add on all the fixins and take it to Union Square to eat outside in the park. Can’t go wrong with some sour cream and guacamole on there, too.
- Maoz – This is not on the list simply because I needed to fill this box in the matrix. I love all of these places and Maoz is no different. Apparently part of a European chain, Maoz is really more about value than simply “cheap.” Pro Tip: get a falafel sandwich and then take advantage of the free self-serve salad bar with carrots, beets, greens and all the tahini and garlic sauce you could ask for.
- Maialino (RT)
- Shake Shack (PT)
- ABC Kitchen (RT)
Tags: abc home, birreria, burrito, casa mono, coffee shop, craft, danny meyer, dos toros, eataly, falafel, flat iron, food, gramercy, gramercy tavern, il pesce, le verdure, manzo, maoz, models, paccheri, patatas bravas, pipa, poor, restaurants, rich, simple, small plates, soft serve fruit co, tahini, taqueria, Tarallucci E Vino, trendy, union square, wine
12 Dec 11 How SeamlessWeb shows you which neighbors are stingy
Want to know what areas in NYC are Scrooges this Christmas? Visual.ly analyzed more than 3.5M orders on Seamless.com and looked at three things: 1) cuisine ordered 2) tip size 3) neighborhood.
From this, they were able to determine popularity of cuisines and average tip percentages by region of NYC (data includes Manhattan districts plus Brooklyn and Queens).
For example, below is popularity of Chinese food. It’s most popular (on a relative basis) in UWS, Midtown West and Murray Hill — where it makes up 7% of all orders.
But it’s in Queens where people are most generous with Chinese food (again, on a relative basis). The average tip on Chinese food there is 16.28% of the bill compared 11.56% for all cuisines in that borough.
You can dissect this data in a number of fun ways; the Visual.ly team did a great job making this user-friendly). You can also, I’m sure, poke some holes in the findings and talk about variables unaccounted for, etc.
Even so, it’s fun to play with. Amanda Erickson of Atlantic Cities pulled out a fun tidbit:
Wall Street, it turns out, has the worst tippers in Manhattan, averaging just 12.31 percent per meal. Their neighbors in the West Village pay the most – an average of 14.24 percent.
Tags: brooklyn, chinese food, delivery, food, infographic, manhattan, nyc, order, queens, seamless, tipping, tips, visual.ly
16 Jan 11 Values of the Millennials
New York Times’ Well blog asks:
Are young people addicted to feeling good about themselves?
What is the source of such a cynical lede/article set-up, you might ask.
University of Michigan scientists have determined that “when given the choice, young bright college students said they’d rather get a boost to their ego — like a compliment or a good grade on a paper — than eat a favorite food or engage in sex.”
I read this totally differently from the Times. Why are we being chastised for choosing something wholesome and long-lasting over something materialistic and ephemeral?
I can only imagine if the study had found students chose the food or the sex over the compliment or good grade: the headlines would scream, “College students prefer carb loading and hedonism to values and self-worth!”
The New York Times post then goes on to quote the rise of recent books such as “The Narcissism Trend,” which point to our apparently latent self-absorbsion.
As I see it, all this study does is affirm that Millennials have a different set of values from the Boomers who preceded them. We as a generation are not fixated on wealth or material status. And, if this study is to believed, not even the much-bem
oaned hook-up culture is affecting us when we are forced to decide between sex and something like a good grade or a compliment.
One day, we may look back fondly on either the high mark in school or an off-hand compliment from a friend. That shows some appreciation and perspective — a perspective which I feel like we’re constantly told we don’t have in this culture of easy connections on Facebook or Twitter. But apparently students are saying in this study that we do have that perspective.
Most surprisingly, somehow this article seems to ignore that (last I checked) it’s a good thing that students want to do well…in school. So why is it in any way negative that students chose to get a good grade in school over sex? Why is this negatively spun the way it is? Can someone help me understand, please!
Tags: boomers, ego, facaebook, food, grades, millennials, narcissism, nytimes, paper, sex, Twitter, umich, university of michigan
