Jiasen Sun, Shuqi Xu and Guo Li
The power industry is the pillar industry of the Chinese economy, and also a major carbon emitter. The performances of both the production and operation of the power industry are…
Abstract
Purpose
The power industry is the pillar industry of the Chinese economy, and also a major carbon emitter. The performances of both the production and operation of the power industry are crucial for a harmonious development of society. This study proposes an improved data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to analyze the sustainable performance of China's power supply chain (PSC).
Design/methodology/approach
To analyze the sustainable performance of PSC systems in China's provincial regions, this study proposes a two-stage directional distance function (DDF) model. The proposed model not only considers the leader–follower game relationship between the power-generation system and the retail system, but also considers the factors that measure the sustainability level of the PSC.
Findings
The proposed model is applied to assess the sustainable performance of the PSCs of China's provincial regions. The findings are valuable and mainly include the following aspects: First, compared with other models, this study regards the intermediate variable of the power system as a freely disposable variable; therefore, the efficiency of the proposed model is more realistic. Second, the average efficiency of China's power retailing system is generally lower than the average efficiency of its power-generation system. Third, significant regional differences affect the power-generation efficiency, while the regional differences in power retail efficiency are not significant. The power-generation performances of PSCs in East China and Northeast China are generally higher than in other regions.
Originality/value
This study introduces the convex technique into a DEA model and thus proposes an improved two-stage DDF DEA model. In response to the game-theoretic inherent in power systems, this study also introduces the leader–follower game into the two-stage model. In addition to the theoretic novelty, all PSCs can be classified with this model. Moreover, specific recommendations for each type of PSCs are proposed based on the efficiency results, thus providing vital guidance for the practice.
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RuiZeng Zhao, Jiasen Sun and Xinyue Wang
Financial technology (FinTech) has enhanced the inclusivity and accessibility of traditional finance, offering a novel pathway for rural revitalization and development. The paper…
Abstract
Purpose
Financial technology (FinTech) has enhanced the inclusivity and accessibility of traditional finance, offering a novel pathway for rural revitalization and development. The paper aims to assess the rural revitalization development level in prefecture-level cities in China and investigate the potential impact mechanism of FinTech.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops an index system to evaluate the rural revitalization level across 279 cities in China from 2011 to 2021. In addition, multi-mediation and threshold models are employed to analyze how FinTech influences rural revitalization.
Findings
The results reveal that, first, FinTech has significantly promoted rural revitalization. Second, entrepreneurial activeness, innovation capability, and industrial structure advancement are intermediary factors within the benchmark path. Third, FinTech exhibits varied threshold effects in entrepreneurial activeness, innovation capability, and industrial structure advancement, influencing rural revitalization with diverse impacts.
Originality/value
First, this paper expands the rural revitalization evaluation to include 30 indexes, enhancing overall measurement comprehensiveness. Second, in contrast to previous research concentrating on provincial-level assessments, this paper explores rural revitalization across 279 cities in China from 2011 to 2021, broadening the study’s scope and timeline. Third, this paper delves into empirical evidence illustrating how FinTech contributes to rural revitalization through entrepreneurial activeness, urban innovation capability, and industrial structure advancement, thereby deepening research in this domain.
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Junfei Chu, Jie Wu, Qingyuan Zhu and Jiasen Sun
Resource scheduling is the study of how to effectively measure, evaluate, analyze, and dispatch resources in order to meet the demands of corresponding tasks. Aiming at the…
Abstract
Purpose
Resource scheduling is the study of how to effectively measure, evaluate, analyze, and dispatch resources in order to meet the demands of corresponding tasks. Aiming at the problem of resource scheduling in the private cloud environment, the purpose of this paper is to propose a resource scheduling approach from an efficiency priority point of view.
Design/methodology/approach
To measure the computational efficiencies for the resource nodes in a private cloud environment, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is incorporated and a suitable DEA model is proposed. Then, based on the efficiency scores calculated by the proposed DEA model for the resource nodes, the 0-1 programming technique is introduced to build a simple resource scheduling model.
Findings
The proposed DEA model not only has the ability of ranking all the decision-making units into different positions but also can handle non-discretionary inputs and undesirable outputs when evaluating the resource nodes. Furthermore, the resource scheduling model can generate for the calculation tasks an optimal resource scheduling scheme that has the highest total computational efficiency.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed method may also be used in studies of resource scheduling studies in the environments of public clouds and hybrid clouds.
Practical implications
The proposed approach can achieve the goal of resource scheduling in private cloud computing platforms by attaining the highest total computational efficiency, which is very significant in practice.
Originality/value
This paper uses an efficiency priority point of view to solve the problem of resource scheduling in private cloud environments.
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Xiaohong Liu, Yue Du, Jiasen Sun, Rui Yang and Feng Yang
To dilute the financial difficulties in agricultural production and operation, the Chinese government has actively explored and developed rural supply chain finance (RSCF) service…
Abstract
Purpose
To dilute the financial difficulties in agricultural production and operation, the Chinese government has actively explored and developed rural supply chain finance (RSCF) service systems. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and analyze the performance of RSCF systems in China.
Design/methodology/approach
To evaluate the performance of RSCF systems in China, this study proposes a two-stage data envelopment analysis model. Compared with other models, the model proposed in this study considers not only the technical gap between RSCF systems but also the maximization of intermediate output to conform to the practice of RSCF.
Findings
Based on the empirical analysis, this study draws the following four conclusions. First, the overall efficiency of China's RSCF systems is low, and there remains great potential for improvement. Second, the technology gap ratio index score and meta-frontier efficiency of RSCF systems in Central China are the lowest in all regions, indicating that the technical level of RSCF systems in Central China is the lowest. Third, the relationship between rural residents' disposable income and the efficiency of RSCF systems is U-shaped, and the efficiency of RSCF systems in the high-income group is far greater than that of other income groups. Finally, the main reason for the lack of efficiency in RSCF seems to lie in management and technology.
Originality/value
This study divides all RSCF systems into four types according to management potential and technical potential, and recommend corresponding improvement suggestions for different kinds of RSCF systems.
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Jiasen Sun, Shuqi Xu and Guo Li
To improve the sustainable performance of the power supply chain system (PSCS), the Chinese government proposed a series of relevant policies and promoted the application of…
Abstract
Purpose
To improve the sustainable performance of the power supply chain system (PSCS), the Chinese government proposed a series of relevant policies and promoted the application of various technologies in the power industry. This study analyzes the sustainable performance and technology levels of PSCSs in various regions of China.
Design/methodology/approach
To quantify the technological heterogeneity between PSCSs, this study incorporates a meta-frontier into the performance evaluation model. To increase the performance of inefficient PSCSs, this study also proposes a series of performance improvement path indexes.
Findings
Empirical analysis of China's provincial PSCSs, using data from 2014 to 2017, has yielded several key findings. First, the average performance of PSCSs of all provinces in China is 0.7192, indicating that PSCSs in China have great potential for improvement. Second, independent of power generation subsystem (PGS) or power retail subsystem (PRS), regional differences affect the technological heterogeneity of PSCSs in China. Third, for PGS, the technological level of PSCSs in the eastern region displays a high level, while the management level can still be greatly improved. Fourth, only the PSCS of Beijing is best in both PGS and PRS. The two subsystems of the PSCSs in the other provinces are either insufficiently managed or technologically inadequate.
Originality/value
Compared with the traditional performance model, the model proposed in this study considers the technological heterogeneity between PSCSs. In addition, the path indexes proposed in this study clearly indicate an improvement direction and the specific improvement level for inefficient PSCSs.