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Japan is an island arc that sits in the monsoon region, and is under the influence of warm and moist air masses in summer and cool air masses in winter. The moisture that is taken in the lower leaves of the air masses over the sea is poured on the country by typhoons in summer, by snowfall in winter, by the “Bai-u Front” (in Japanese) in June and July, and by depressions and fronts in all seasons. Owing to Japan's slender shape and complicated landform, aerial differences in climate are great. Japan is located on the eastern edge of the monsoonal region of Asia, and its climate varies according to seasonal and regional conditions. Typically, heavy rains occur in various parts of the country, both during the rainy season in June and July and during the typhoon season from August to October. This precipitation is predominantly in the form of locally specific temporary downpours. In winter, the northern part of the country usually receives heavy snowfall that causes prolonged floods in spring from the melting of snow. The average amount of precipitation is 1,800mm (70 inches) a year. This is two or three times the amount received in other areas of the same latitude. In the southern Pacific coast areas, rainfall amounts to 4,000mm (160 inches). Precipitation in Tokyo is twice as much as other large cities in western countries. Some 50–60% of the annual precipitation in the Pacific coast of Japan is concentrated from June to October. Artificial changes in natural environments are rapid and large, accompanying the great increase in economic activity and exploitation (Nakano, Kadomura, Mizutani, Okuda, & Sekiguchi, 1974). Although the country's 10% of land area is flood prone, about 50% of the population lives in floodplains and almost 75% of the property is concentrated in the floodplains (JWF, 2006).

The purpose of the paper is to provide to a better scientific understanding of Indonesia’s domestic gas allocation policy and its effects on the national economy and to answer the question of what best priorities can be set in allocating the natural gas for the domestic market to maximize the benefits for the national economy.

The authors apply a Computabled General Equilibrium (CGE). The Social Accounting Matrix 2008 is used to calibrate the CGE Model. There are two scenarios proposed, each is simulated with certain percentage of gas supply curtailment (50 MMSCFD, Scenario A), (100 MMSCFD, Scenario B).

It is confirmed that government’s current policy to give priority to oil production is not the optimum way to maximize added value of natural gas to Indonesian economy. While oil production generates state revenue, it is industry and petrochemical sector that induces high economic impacts because of strong backward and forward linkages.

Due to the limited data availability, it is assumed that the data on the SAM 2008 are valid for describing the structure of Indonesian economy.

The paper provides recommendation to the government to revise gas allocation policy by changing the rank of consumers’ priority.

This paper provides instruments to measure the impact of Indonesia’s domestic gas allocation policy. Finding the best hierarchy of consumer priorities is essential for maximizing added value of natural gas for the national economy.

This paper deals with the discrimination problem of the states which involve two types of uncertainty: “randomness” and “fuzziness.” This problem is very important in the fields of soft science such as management science, sociology, eta, since the object of discrimination involves these types of uncertainty. In this paper, we propose a discrimination system of fuzzy states on a probability space and derive the decision rule which minimizes the average of error probability of discrimination. In our formulation of the discrimination system there exists the case that a large number of observations does not necessarily make the average of error probability small, so that an index for decision of an upper limit of number of observations is also derived.

The decision rule which minimizes the probability of error, in the discrimination problem, is the Bayes decision rule which assigns x to the class with the highest a posteriori probability. This rule leads to a partial probability of error which is given by Pe(x) = 1−max p(C2lx) for each x e X. Prior to observing X, the probability of error associated with X is defined as Pe = EX [Pe(x)]. Tanaka, Okuda and Asai formulated the discrimination problem with fuzzy classes and fuzzy information using the probability of fuzzy events and derived a bound for the average error probability, when the decision in the classifier is made according to the fuzzified Bayes method. The aim is to obtain bounds for the average error probability in terms of (αβ)‐information energy, when the decision in the classifier is made according to the fuzzified Bayes method.

When we consider a decision problem under randomness and fuzziness, and several fuzzy information systems obtain, a comparison between them becomes interesting. In this paper, it is proposed to compare fuzzy information systems paying attention to the maximization of the “worth of fuzzy information system”.

Although the decision‐making problem at the lower level is generally well‐defined, the decision‐making problem at the higher level would not contain the detail. Much of decision‐making at the higher level might take place in a fuzzy environment, so that it is only necessary to decide roughly what actions, what states and what parameters should be considered. This paper deals with the higher level problem in which we can regard the elements‐states of nature, feasible actions and available information‐as fuzzy objects. Since the uncertainty of meaning of objects is represented by the fuzzy sets and the uncertainty of occurrence of objects is defined by the probability, a specific formulation of the higher level decision problem can be defined by the probability of fuzzy events. From the same aspect, the definitions of worth, entropy and quantity concerning fuzzy information are given in this paper, and we have tried to extend some of the statistical decision theory to the fuzzy decision problem. To explain our formulation, an investment problem is presented as an example.

Not only does the problem of correcting spelling errors by computer have a long history, it is evidently of considerable current interest as papers and letters on the topic continue to appear rapidly. This is not surprising, since techniques useful in detecting and correcting mis‐spellings normally have other important applications. Moreover, both the power of small computers and the routine production of machine‐readable text have increased enormously over the last decade to the point where automatic spelling error detection/correction has become not only feasible but highly desirable.

The traditional literature dealing with statistical decision problems usually assumes that previous information about an associated experiment may be expressed by means of conditional probabilistic information, and the actual experimental outcomes can be perceived with exactness by the statistician. We now consider statistical decision problems satisfying the first assumption above, so that the actual available information cannot be exactly perceived, but rather it may be assimilated with fuzzy information (as defined by Zadeh et al.).

The purpose of the chapter was to examine the impact of customer care chatbots on customer satisfaction levels in the mobile telephony industry in Zimbabwe, with a special focus on the company Econet Wireless. This chapter shows the conceptual framework used. An online questionnaire was administered to a sample of 100 Econet Wireless subscribers who were selected using probability stratified random sampling from Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces. The research data were collected and analysed for correlation, and a multiple regression analysis was carried out to identify the relationship between customer satisfaction and the three customer service improvements brought in by the introduction of customer service chatbots. The study discovered that there is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction levels and each of the three customer service improvements brought in by customer service chatbots, namely customer service convenience, speed of response, and omnichannel strategies. This study thereby proves that the introduction of customer service chatbots in the mobile telephony industry in Zimbabwe can lead to an improvement in customer satisfaction levels. However, addressing service quality only as a determinant of customer satisfaction in isolation is not sufficient to fully improve customer satisfaction levels. Therefore, organisations that seek to improve their customer satisfaction should consider strategies that address all determinants of customer satisfaction, namely price, product quality, service quality, situational factors, and personal factors. This study contributes to the body of knowledge, particularly regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for customer service in developing economies.

The theoretical and empirical relationships between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance are not without controversy. Yet, CSR activities are increasingly undertaken by a large number of firms, not only in developed countries but also in emerging countries. This paper aims to investigate the moderating effect of different aspects of corporate governance, which are foreign and state ownership, board size and board independence, on the relationship between CSR and financial performance.

A sample of Vietnamese listed firms is analyzed. Robust regression analysis is performed using ordinary least squares as well as fixed-effects and two-stage least squares model.

Ordinary least squares regression results show that CSR activities affect the financial performance of firms positively. Furthermore, corporate governance features like foreign ownership, board size and board independence strengthen the positive relationship between CSR and financial performance, but there is no such impact of state ownership.

Previous studies mostly investigate the direct effect of CSR on financial performance. A few studies examine the moderating effect of corporate governance, which is ownership concentration and board gender diversity. As an emerging country, Vietnam has some specific characteristics on corporate governance. This paper contributes by investigating the moderating effect of few major aspects of corporate governance, which are foreign and state ownership, board size and board independence.