2023年12月四级第1套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

Female employees consistently pay lower airfares than men do for the same flights because they tend to book earlier.

女性员工在同一航班上支付的机票价格始终低于男性，因为她们倾向于更早预订。

We compared the airfare paid by employees in the same position within a company for the same class of travel and used a common statistical technique to account for other factors that might affect differences in airfares. We found that women paid on average $18 less per ticket than their male colleagues. Further investigation allowed us to conclude that this gap is largely explained by the fact that women tended to book earlier than men, 1.8 days on average.

我们比较了同一公司内相同职位员工在同一旅行等级中支付的机票价格，并使用了一种常见的统计技术来解释可能影响机票差异的其他因素。我们发现，女性平均每张机票比男性同事少支付18美元。进一步调查让我们得出结论，这一差距在很大程度上是由于女性比男性更早预订，平均提前1.8天。

We wanted to determine what was causing these gender differences in booking business trips so we tested a variety of possible explanations, such as women choosing to plan ahead or male frequent travelers being inclined to book late. None of these explained away the gender gap, so we applied data collected from surveys that express consumer preferences that play a central role in economic decisions, such as patience and risk avoidance.

我们想确定是什么导致了预订商务旅行中的这些性别差异，因此我们测试了多种可能的解释，例如女性选择提前计划或男性频繁旅行者倾向于晚预订。这些都无法解释性别差距，所以我们应用了从调查中收集的数据，这些调查表达了在经济决策中起核心作用的消费者偏好，如耐心和风险规避。

We found that only the concept of "negative reciprocity"—in which an employee who feels unfairly treated engages in negative behaviors, such as spending their company's money less carefully- explains these differences. The surveys showed men tend to exhibit more of these negative behaviors than women. This isn't to say that all men engage in these behaviors or that booking relatively late is a sign of abnormal behavior. It only means that the gender gap disappears when we plug in the negative reciprocity variable.

我们发现，只有“负面互惠”的概念——即员工感到不公平对待时会采取负面行为，如不太谨慎地花费公司资金——能解释这些差异。调查显示，男性比女性更倾向于表现出这些负面行为。这并不是说所有男性都从事这些行为，或者相对较晚预订是异常行为的标志。这仅仅意味着当我们加入负面互惠变量时，性别差距就消失了。

Prior research on negative reciprocity among workers found that it can result in lower employee motivation, business performance and workplace morale (士气) and culture.

先前对员工负面互惠的研究发现，它可能导致员工动机、业务绩效以及职场士气和文化下降。

Our results show another way these negative behaviors can manifest themselves, like in airline bookings, and add to evidence that women are less likely to engage in them.

我们的研究结果展示了这些负面行为可能表现出来的另一种方式，如在机票预订中，并增加了证据表明女性不太可能从事这些行为。

Companies spend significant sums of money on business travel. While that $18 difference per ticket may seem small, it adds up. Our analysis suggests early booking by women can translate into savings of $1 million a year for a large multinational company with 20,000 regular travelers.

公司在商务旅行上花费大量资金。虽然每张机票18美元的差异可能看起来很小，但它会累积起来。我们的分析表明，对于拥有20,000名定期旅行者的大型跨国公司来说，女性提前预订可以转化为每年100万美元的节省。