~The elusive context effects:
When do irrelevant alternatives alter choices or preferences?
M.Sc. Candidate: Reut Regev
Instructors: Prof. Joachim and Meir Dr. Erez Shmueli
The lecture will be heldon
Tuesday, June 15, 2021, at 14:00
Room 206, Wolfson Building, Tel Aviv University

Abstract:
The “context effect” is the phenomenon that the valuation of items in a choice set or the choices among items
can depend on properties of other items in the set, even if these are clearly dominated. From a theoretical
point of view, this is a violation of the basic assumption of “Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives” in decision
making. In practical terms, the phenomenon can be exploited in marketing or other online settings, in which
people choose among alternatives.
Over the last forty years, considerable research dealt with context effects, but recent studies questioned the
general existence of these effects, proposing that they occur under restricted settings rather than robust
conditions. We conducted several experiments to study the conditions in which context effects arise. In
particular, we looked at the local effect, which is the effect of the items in the specific set the person sees, and
the global effect, which is the effect of having encountered items with extremely desirable or undesirable
properties. We show evidence for both effects, with the global effect at times mitigating the local effect.
The analysis of the responses reveals that context effects do exist in some of the experimental settings but not
in all of them.
Bio:
Reut Regev is a M.Sc. student at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel Aviv University. Her research
focuses on studying context effects and the conditions in which they exist by analyzing experimental responses
with statistical tools. The research is supervised by Prof. Joachim Meyer and Dr. Erez Shmueli, in collaboration
with Dr. Johan Ugander (Stanford University), as part of Digital Living 2030 project, funded by the Koret
foundation.
Reut holds a B.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering from Tel Aviv University

~Balancing autonomous vehicle car – sharing systems
M.Sc. Candidate: Shir Tavor
Instructors: Prof. Tal Raviv
The lecture will be heldon
Tuesday, June 15, 2021, at 14:00
Room 206, Wolfson Building, Tel Aviv University

Abstract:
In a vehicle-sharing system, users can rent a car from a fleet of vehicles scattered throughout the
service area of the system, use it for a short trip and return it anywhere in the system's service area.
The rental and return process is carried out independently by the passengers using technological
means (usually a mobile app). In a traditional car-sharing system based on human-driven vehicles
(HDV), the users need to locate a nearby car and walk to it before starting their journeys. In a futuristic
car-sharing system based on driverless automated vehicles (AV), the requested cars can travel to the
passengers. In that sense, the AV based system resembles a ride-hailing (taxi) service. Both types of
car-sharing systems tend to go off balance, and cars are likely to accumulate at locations where they
are less needed while shortages occur at the high demand areas. This phenomenon may decrease
cars' availability to passengers, prolong the walking distances (in HDV systems) and waiting times (in
AV system). In the case of AV based car-sharing systems, the operator may locate cars in advance,
where and when they are expected to be requested. In this study, we devise an algorithm for
rebalancing an AV based car-sharing system. Moreover, we demonstrate the merits of relocating cars
in advance in terms of the system's quality of service and the fleet's effective utilization.
Bio:
Shir Tavor is an M.Sc. student at the department of Industrial Engineering in Tel Aviv University,
specializing in Business Analytics and in logistics. Shir holds a B.Sc. Cum laude in Industrial
Engineering from Tel Aviv University. Shir has been working on her master's thesis under the
supervision of Prof. Tal Raviv. Her research focuses on balancing autonomous vehicle car-sharing
systems.