Faculty Research

The Walkability Paradox: Why Being Close Isn't Enough to Get People Out of Cars

Kelsey Cipolla — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:09:00 +0000

The Walkability Paradox: Why Being Close Isn't Enough to Get People Out of Cars Kelsey Cipolla Mon, 02/16/2026 - 11:09

Nathan Thompson

New Leeds research analyzes millions of data points to optimize city layouts for "walk appeal" and urban vibrancy.

While urban planners have long chased the "15-minute city," proximity alone doesn't always lead to more pedestrians. Research from Leeds School of Business Assistant Professor of Operations Management Sentao Miao utilizing data from millions of travel records in Beijing reveals that the arrangement of facilities—not just their distance—is the true driver of walkability.

By applying advanced discrete choice modeling and optimization algorithms, this study provides a blueprint for cities to transition from car-centric designs to vibrant, pedestrian-first neighborhoods.

Video transcript

Sentao Miao: Have you ever wondered if the true secret to walkable neighborhoods is not just about how close things are—but how the experience of walking is designed to invite you out of your car and onto the street?

For decades, urban planning has focused on car-centric development, leading to congestion, pollution and less healthy lifestyles. The “15-minute city” concept—where daily needs are within a short walk—has gained traction. But traditional planning tools often focus only on accessibility: how close are shops, services, and amenities? Our research, however, asks a deeper question: what makes people actually choose to walk? To answer this, we developed a data-driven framework that goes beyond simple distance metrics.

We partnered with a major map service provider in China, analyzing millions of anonymized travel records from Beijing. This allowed us to observe real-world walking and driving patterns across the city. We used a latent class logit model—a type of discrete choice model—to estimate how different facility layouts influence people’s decisions to walk, accounting for the fact that not all trips are the same. Some trips are utilitarian, like commuting or errands; others are hedonic, like leisure or shopping. Our model captures this heterogeneity by classifying trips into these categories based on land use and temporal patterns. Our model predicts the probability of a resident choosing to walk for a given trip as a function of both objective factors—like distance and public transit—and subjective factors—such as the density and type of facilities along the route. We found, for example, that shopping facilities strongly increase walk appeal for leisure trips, while dining facilities can sometimes have a negative effect due to sidewalk crowding.

We formulated a choice-based facility layout optimization problem. This is a complex, nondeterministic polynomial time problem, so we developed an efficient greedy algorithm with provable performance guarantees, leveraging the concept of weak submodularity. Our approach allows us to determine the optimal placement of different facility types to maximize the aggregate walking probability of all residents. We tested our framework in the Wudaokou neighborhood of Beijing. Compared to traditional distance-based methods, our approach significantly improved walk appeal, with minimal impact on accessibility.

Interestingly, we found that in already walkable environments, dispersing facilities leads to higher walk appeal. But in less walkable areas, clustering amenities along central streets is more effective. Our results also revealed a “wisdom of crowds” effect in existing layouts and emphasized the importance of neighborhood context in shaping optimal design patterns. Our research demonstrates that designing for walkability requires more than just proximity. By integrating large-scale mobility data, advanced choice modeling, and optimization algorithms, we can create neighborhoods that not only function well, but also feel inviting and vibrant for pedestrians.

So, the next time you walk through your neighborhood, consider: is it designed for cars, or for people? With data-driven tools, we can help cities make walking the easy—and enjoyable—choice.

More Leeds research >>

Leeds researcher Sentao Miao explains how different amenities influence walking choices.

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The impact of poverty on base of the pyramid operations: Evidence from mobile money in Africa.

Erik William Jeffries — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 18:33:53 +0000

The impact of poverty on base of the pyramid operations: Evidence from mobile money in Africa. Erik William J… Fri, 09/05/2025 - 12:33

Balasubramanian, Karthik; Drake, David F.; Urrea, Gloria. The impact of poverty on base of the pyramid operations: Evidence from mobile money in Africa. Journal of Operations Management. Jun2023, Vol. 69 Issue 4, p616-642.

Business models designed to serve those at the "base of the pyramid" are an effective means to create employment and improve quality of life. However, the effect that poverty has on the performance of such businesses is not well‐understood. We address this gap through the context of "mobile money," an electronic currency ecosystem designed as a secure, reliable way for those at the base of the pyramid to store and transfer money. Using data from Kenya and Uganda, and instrumenting for potentially endogenous regressors, we examine the effect poverty has on operational decisions (inventory and price transparency) and market dimensions (network density and demand). Our results suggest that mobile money, as a base of the pyramid business model, is well‐positioned to serve those in poverty up to a point, with demand increasing in poverty when the concentration of poverty is sufficiently low. However, our results indicate that, where poverty is more pervasive, inventory costs increase in poverty while per agent demand and agent network density both decrease. In short, the business case for mobile money degenerates in regions where it, arguably, is needed the most. We conclude with thoughts on how to buttress mobile money's business case in these high poverty settings.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/joom.1227

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Technology license agreements as public–private partnerships for economic development: evaluations using surveys, input–output modeling, and regression analysis

Erik William Jeffries — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:15:12 +0000

Technology license agreements as public–private partnerships for economic development: evaluations using surveys, input–output modeling, and regression analysis Erik William J… Fri, 07/18/2025 - 09:15

Raile, Eric D.; Austin, Eric K.; Wallner, Michael P.; Peterson, Jeffrey; Lewandowski, Brian; Kapps, Derek; Sellegren, Bridger; Hutton, Joe. Journal of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. 2/3/2025, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p1-23.

Technology license agreements as public–private partnerships for economic development: evaluations using surveys, input–output modeling, and regression analysis. Raile, Eric D.; Austin, Eric K.; Wallner, Michael P.; Peterson, Jeffrey; Lewandowski, Brian; Kapps, Derek; Sellegren, Bridger; Hutton, Joe. Technology license agreements as public–private partnerships for economic development: evaluations using surveys, input–output modeling, and regression analysis. Journal of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. 2/3/2025, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p1-23. We evaluate license agreements as a form of technology transfer that constitutes a public–private partnership (PPP) with the primary goal of economic development. These license agreements permit entrepreneurs and other businesses to turn government innovations into earnings. We constructed a complete database of all license agreements between the U.S. Department of Defense and private industry from 2000 to 2021. We first surveyed the companies involved, achieving a 96% response rate. The subsequently anonymized responses allowed us to generate sales numbers and to model a variety of other national economic impacts. We tallied approximately $32 billion in direct sales across 590 license agreements. While the majority of license agreements with sales belong to smaller companies (which often attract additional investment), some large companies generate higher revenues. Further statistical modeling with the heavily anonymized data identifies features of license agreement situations that influence economic outcomes. Technology license agreements are a form of PPP that performs well against its goal of economic development without the downsides of some PPPs. Importantly, entrepreneurs can use this form of PPP to attract investment and to generate jobs and other societal benefits.

https://innovation-entrepreneurship.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13731-025-00467-y

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The demotivating impact of absenteeism in nursing homes.

Erik William Jeffries — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:21:44 +0000

The demotivating impact of absenteeism in nursing homes. Erik William J… Thu, 07/03/2025 - 15:21

Roussillon Soyer, Claude; St‐Onge, Sylvie; Igalens, Jacques; Balkin, David B. The demotivating impact of absenteeism in nursing homes. Journal of Nursing Management. Sep2021, Vol. 29 Issue 6, p1679-1690.

Aim: The study explores how prevailing absenteeism frustrates or thwarts nurses' and nursing assistants' basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness), using self‐determination theory. Background: Our study responds to the call to investigate how organisational characteristics influence employees' psychological need, satisfaction and their attitudes and behaviours. Method: We conducted a semantic analysis of the discourse of 42 nurses and nursing assistants working in nursing homes for older dependent people in France. Results: The analysis subdivides participants' discourse into four themes: short‐term absenteeism, lack of competence, lack of recognition and work overload. These themes are all linked to participants' perceived deficits or threats concerning their psychological needs. Conclusions: The prevailing absenteeism has a harmful spiral impact on nurses' and nursing assistants' attitudes and behaviours, and, ultimately, on the quality of care received by the patients. Implications for Nursing Management: Our study confirms the need to adopt various managerial actions to address the following interrelated issues: controlling short‐term absences, reducing work overload and giving training and recognition.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33772934/

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Investor memory of past performance is positively biased and predicts overconfidence.

Erik William Jeffries — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:19:50 +0000

Investor memory of past performance is positively biased and predicts overconfidence. Erik William J… Thu, 07/03/2025 - 15:19

Walters, Daniel J.; Fernbach, Philip M. Investor memory of past performance is positively biased and predicts overconfidence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 9/7/2021, Vol. 118 Issue 36, p1-8.

We document a memory-based mechanism associated with investor overconfidence. In Studies 1 and 2, investors were asked to recall their most important trades in the recent past and then reported investing confidence and trading frequency. After the study, they looked up and reported the actual returns of these trades. In both studies, investors were biased to recall returns as higher than achieved, and larger memory biases were associated with greater overconfidence and trading frequency. The design of Study 2 allowed us to separately investigate the effects of two types of memory biases: distortion and selective forgetting. Both types of bias were present and were independently associated with overconfidence and trading frequency. Study 3 was an incentive-compatible experiment in which overconfidence and trading frequency were reduced when participants looked up previous consequential trades compared to when they reported them from memory.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2026680118

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Methodological Advances in Consumer Research. Advances in Consumer Research

Erik William Jeffries — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 20:29:13 +0000

Methodological Advances in Consumer Research. Advances in Consumer Research Erik William J… Thu, 07/03/2025 - 14:29

André, Quentin. Methodological Advances in Consumer Research. Advances in Consumer Research. 2021, Vol. 49, p821-826.

Noise in the Process: A Meta-Analysis of Mediation Effects in Marketing Journals Aaron Charlton, College of Business, Illinois State University, USA Amanda Montoya, Department of Psychology, University of California Los Angeles, USA John Price, WU, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria Joe Hilgard, College of Arts and Sciences, Illinois State University, USA Paper #2: The same year, Simonsohn, Simmons and Nelson's "False-Positive Psychology" (2011) showed that common practices in behavioral research (e.g., not reporting all conditions and measures, or deciding when to stop data collection) allowed researchers to provide significant evidence for impossible results (e.g., that listening to "When I'm 64" by The Beatles can lower people's age by more than a year). Like the afore-mentioned meta-analyses, the current research examines the average power of mediation tests through analysis of reported statistics-specifically confidence intervals from mediation tests. To simulate true effects, we created a series of 3-variable datasets with a weak population-level indirect effect (ß=.O4) that fully mediated the relationship between X and Y. We settled on ß=.O4 because it allowed us to achieve desired power levels using sample sizes that are similar to those reported in marketing journals.

https://www.proquest.com/docview/3090688396?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Conference%20Papers%20&%20Proceedings

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Beliefs about Whether Spending Implies Wealth

Erik William Jeffries — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:41:03 +0000

Beliefs about Whether Spending Implies Wealth Erik William J… Tue, 07/01/2025 - 18:41

Kappes, Heather Barry; Gladstone, Joe J; Hershfield, Hal E. . Journal of Consumer Research. Jun2021, Vol. 48 Issue 1, p1-21.

Spending is influenced by many factors. One that has received little attention is the meaning that people give to the act of spending. Spending money might imply that someone is relatively wealthy—since they have money to spend—or relatively poor—since spending can deplete assets. We show that people differ in the extent to which they believe that spending implies wealth (SIW beliefs). We develop a scale to measure these beliefs and find that people who more strongly believe that SIW spend their own money relatively lavishly and are, on average, more financially vulnerable. We find correlational evidence for these relationships using objective financial-transaction data, including over 2 million transaction records from the bank accounts of over 2,000 users of a money management app, as well as self-reported financial well-being. We also find experimental evidence by manipulating SIW beliefs and observing causal effects on spending intentions. These results show how underlying beliefs about the link between spending and wealth play a role in consumption decisions, and point to beliefs about the meaning of spending as a fruitful direction for further research.

https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/48/1/1/6031914?redirectedFrom=fulltext

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Stars in Their Constellations: Great Person or Great Team?

Drew Buckingham — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:43:50 +0000

Stars in Their Constellations: Great Person or Great Team? Drew Buckingham Tue, 03/18/2025 - 09:43

Mindruta, Denisa; Bercovitz, Janet; Mares, Vlad; Feldman, Maryann. Management Science. Mar2025, Vol. 71 Issue 3, p2170-2191. Mindruta, Denisa; Bercovitz, Janet; Mares, Vlad; Feldman, Maryann. Stars in Their Constellations: Great Person or Great Team? Management Science. Mar2025, Vol. 71 Issue 3, p2170-2191.

Although much attention is accorded to star performers, this paper considers the extent to which stars, themselves, benefit from the contribution of their collaborators (the constellation). By considering stars, constellations, and the synergies between them, we address a key question: To what extent is collaboration performance driven by the great individual or by great constellations? We introduce a novel approach that uses a matching model to uncover the complementarities driving collaboration formation. We use formal value-capture theory to estimate the relative contribution of stars and constellations to joint value creation. Analyzing a sample of academic research collaborations, we document that stars' relative contribution exceeds that of their constellations in less than 15% of collaborations, although constellations provide a greater relative contribution in 9%. In most collaborations, neither party dominates: Innovation is a collective endeavor driven equally by the star and the constellation. Joint value creation and relative contribution are explained by the subtle interplay between complementarities in joint work and the substitutability of collaborative parties in the market. Joint value creation increases with the strength of complementarities between parties in a match. Relative value creation, and hence dominance, increases with the substitutability of one's collaborative partner. Interestingly, joint value creation is greatest in collaborations where both stars and constellations offer bundles of rare attributes and where neither the star nor the constellation dominates.

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2021.01969

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Self-organization and governance in digital platform ecosystems: An information ecology approach.

Drew Buckingham — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:41:28 +0000

Self-organization and governance in digital platform ecosystems: An information ecology approach. Drew Buckingham Tue, 03/18/2025 - 09:41

Engert, Martin; Hein, Andreas; Maruping, Likoebe M.; Thatcher, Jason Bennett; Krcmar, Helmut. MIS Quarterly. Mar2025, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p91-122. Self-organization and governance in digital platform ecosystems: An information ecology approach. Engert, Martin; Hein, Andreas; Maruping, Likoebe M.; Thatcher, Jason Bennett; Krcmar, Helmut. Self-organization and governance in digital platform ecosystems: An information ecology approach. MIS Quarterly. Mar2025, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p91-122.

This research investigates the interplay of top-down control and bottom-up self-organization within digital platform ecosystems (DPEs), focusing on the formation and management of complementor coalitions. Although these coalitions can increase a DPE's generativity, they can also threaten its integrity. We investigate this tension by employing information ecology (IE) theory, which allows us to examine complementor coalitions as holons that navigate between self-assertiveness and integration within the structural hierarchies of DPEs. Utilizing an inductive, embedded case-study approach, we analyze the interplay between top-down control exerted by platform owners and the bottom-up selforganization of complementors in two enterprise software platform ecosystems. Our findings identify three distinct interaction modes—mandated, supported, and autonomous self-organization—each presenting hierarchical trade-offs between platform owner control and complementor autonomy. Our findings extend the prevalent owner-centric theory of platform governance by highlighting the significant impact of bottom-up self-organization on the governance and evolution of DPEs. We propose an integrated theory that accommodates these new dynamics, suggesting soft power as an effective governance mechanism. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexities in governing DPEs and offers practical insights for managing top-down control and bottom-up self-organization in the evolving landscape of enterprise software DPEs.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/misq/vol49/iss1/8/

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Do Crowds Validate False Data? Systematic Distortion and Affective Polarization.

Drew Buckingham — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:39:31 +0000

Do Crowds Validate False Data? Systematic Distortion and Affective Polarization. Drew Buckingham Tue, 03/18/2025 - 09:39

Pienta, Daniel A.; Somanchi, Sriram; Vishwamitra, Nishant; Berente, Nicholas; Thatcher, Jason Bennett. MIS Quarterly. Mar2025, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p347-365. Do Crowds Validate False Data? Systematic Distortion and Affective Polarization. Pienta, Daniel A.; Somanchi, Sriram; Vishwamitra, Nishant; Berente, Nicholas; Thatcher, Jason Bennett. Do Crowds Validate False Data? Systematic Distortion and Affective Polarization. MIS Quarterly. Mar2025, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p347-365.

This research note examines how sociocognitive influences can systematically distort crowdsourced ground truth in event-centric data through subgroups. The "wisdom of the crowd" is based on the assumption that consensus drives accuracy. While existing research addresses the tendencies of the overall crowd, this research note shows that identifiable subgroups within the crowd can systematically influence crowdsource validation. We conducted an immersive experiment to investigate whether crowd consensus can be systematically distorted by subgroup-based sociocognitive influences, such as affective polarization. In the experiment, raters from a range of subgroups with varying levels of affective polarization were asked to view and validate crisis data from a violent public riot in the year 2020. Relying in part on double debiased machine learning techniques, we analyzed heterogeneous treatment effects across subgroups. The results show that affective polarization and more extreme raters, via the constructs of loyalty and betrayal, distort consensus-based ground truth in different ways. This research note demonstrates how subgroup-based sociocognitive influences can systematically distort the results of consensus-based crowdsourced validation. Additionally, it provides guidance for research and practice on how to account for identifiable subgroups in the crowd. These findings challenge key assumptions about the wisdom of crowds and the accuracy of crowdsourced ground truth in event-centric situations.

https://misq.umn.edu/do-crowds-validate-false-data-systematic-distortion-and-affective-polarization.html

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Faculty Research

The Walkability Paradox: Why Being Close Isn't Enough to Get People Out of Cars

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The impact of poverty on base of the pyramid operations: Evidence from mobile money in Africa.

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