We analyze the decision to participate in community-based universal prevention programs through the framework of prospect theory, with family functionality, and related risk status, providing the reference point. We find that participation probability depends on the relative ratios of the...

An extensive literature relating patients’ expectations to treatment outcomes has not addressed the determinants of these expectations. We argue that treatment history is part of a reference point that influences patients’ expectations of how effective further treatment might be, thus...

As shown by Tversky and Kahneman (1991), framing an outcome as a loss causes individuals to expend extra effort to avoid that outcome. Since classroom performance is a function of student effort in search of a higher grade, we seek to use loss aversion to encourage student effort. This field...