This research examines the extent to which proactivity in handling flight overbooking reduces negative electronic word-of-mouth (NeWOM) and the required costs of compensation, thus increasing firm profitability. It answers recent calls to use a multimethod approach (i.e., we include archival data, qualitative interviews, seven experiments, and a Monte Carlo simulation for a total of 10 studies) and to adapt recovery to specific contexts (i.e., airlines) and heterogeneous customers (i.e., voluntary/involuntary bumping or offloading). The preliminary studies indicate that overbooking and offloading are pervasive and that a proactive approach is both feasible and desirable. The experiments show that, compared to the default reactive approach (informing passengers at the gate), a proactive approach (informing them before they leave for the airport) substantially reduces NeWOM and the sought compensation. Further, a very reactive approach (informing them in the plane) significantly increases NeWOM and the sought compensation, especially when offloading occurs involuntarily. We also unveil the mechanism explaining the effects of proactivity on NeWOM, through the serial mediation of justice and betrayal. Finally, the results of a Monte Carlo simulation show that offering reduced compensation through a proactive approach allows more aggressive overbooking, higher capacity utilization, and increased net revenue of up to 1.3%.

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Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a complex multifactorial disorder caused by the interplay of both genetic and non-genetic risk factors. Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are one way to aggregate the effects of a large number of genetic variants upon the risk for a disease like PD in a single quantity. However, reassessment of the performance of a given PRS in independent data sets is a precondition for establishing the PRS as a valid tool to this end. We studied a previously proposed PRS for PD in a separate genetic data set, comprising 1914 PD cases and 4464 controls, and were able to replicate its ability to differentiate between cases and controls. We also assessed theoretically the prognostic value of the PD-PRS, i.e., its ability to predict the development of PD in later life for healthy individuals. As it turned out, the PD-PRS alone can be expected to perform poorly in this regard. Therefore, we conclude that the PD-PRS could serve as an important research tool, but that meaningful PRS-based prognosis of PD at an individual level is not feasible.

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