This dissertation comprises three lines of work addressing societal challenges related to safe water access, fair incentive design, and secure data sharing, utilizing mathematical modeling to propose comprehensive solutions. These projects collectively advocate for universal resource and information access while prioritizing equity and fairness for marginalized communities. The first project centers on optimizing water storage decisions, considering factors such as cost, water quality, and wastage, with the core objective of promoting equitable access to safe drinking water, particularly for those facing severe water scarcity. In the second project, we address deficiencies in current incentive mechanisms for fairness, introducing quantitative definitions rooted in fairness principles to prevent harm to specific groups and encompass disadvantaged segments of society. Lastly, the third project delves into the intricacies of responsible scientific data sharing, presenting a novel cybersecurity insurance contract to incentivize healthcare providers while safeguarding privacy and livelihoods, especially for vulnerable populations. In sum, this research strives to develop solutions that facilitate equal and inclusive access while mitigating risks, with the goal of addressing cultural and societal issues concerning resource allocation and information sharing for underserved communities.

The prevailing incentive within organizations often comes in the form of money. While extensive research has studied the effectiveness of monetary incentives, the psychological and interpersonal consequences of these incentives remain relatively underexplored. This dissertation aims to fill this gap by exploring the effects of monetary performance incentives on people’s perceptions and social interactions. We then propose a novel alternative: time-based performance incentives, suggesting that this type of incentive has better implications for psychological well-being compared to traditional monetary incentives. First, we examine the impact of monetary performance incentives on people’s perceived instrumentality, and how they shape social interactions (Studies 1-5). Across five studies, we find evidence that exposure to monetary performance incentives encourages individuals to spend more time with work colleagues, even if it prevents them from spending time with friends and family. We document perceived instrumentality as a mechanism for these results: monetary performance incentives lead individuals to perceive their work relationships as more instrumental. We then explore a related construct, perceived objectification, exploring how this perception diminishes the authenticity of social interactions among colleagues (Studies 6-8). We find consistent evidence that people who are exposed to monetary performance incentives perceive themselves and their colleagues as instrumental objects, which is one mechanism that leads people to perceive themselves as less authentic and engage in less authentic social interactions. Finally, in Studies 9-11, we examine aspects of ‘time’ as a performance incentive that enhances people’s feeling of humanness. We find that people who receive a bonus of vacation days experience greater humanness than people who receive an equivalent monetary bonus. One reason is because vacation bonuses, compared to traditional monetary bonuses, are uniquely positioned to allow temporal segmentation from the objectifying work contexts, which then increases feelings of humanness. This work provides important implications for organizations by demonstrating the psychological well-being benefits of rewarding employees with more time off in lieu of more money.

This report summarizes the major findings from a field study of the Region 8 Headquarters building for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Denver CO. This report constitutes one of three case studies we are conducting. The overall goal of these studies is to collect whole-building performance data from selected operational buildings that are using underfloor air distribution (UFAD) as their primary means of space conditioning. By conducting a series of field investigations, the overall performance of underfloor air distribution (UFAD) buildings can be assessed with a consistent protocol that includes collecting data from utility-bills, occupant surveys, performance data from an advanced portable measurement cart, plus other available information on design, commissioning, operations, and lessons learned from conditions in the field. To conduct such case studies, CBE developed a performance assessment protocol [Bauman 2008] that includes the approaches that are briefly described below; the respective key findings accompany each discussion. A glossary of the UFAD terms used in this report is included in Appendix C.