W.Y. Grace Cheng, S.M. Lo, Z. Fang and C.X. Cheng
Buildings erected in ancient China were often of wood and thatch and were particularly flammable. The ancient world developed a number of ways to minimize the damage caused by…
Abstract
Buildings erected in ancient China were often of wood and thatch and were particularly flammable. The ancient world developed a number of ways to minimize the damage caused by fire. An analysis of the architecture of ancient construction and urban planning, has revealed over a hundred fire prevention features. These items could be categorized into three groups, namely: symbolic features, building construction and urban planning. In the earlier literature of ancient China in which people had limited knowledge of fire, symbolic features based on their religious belief were emphasized. With the increase in construction experience, more tangible means of fire prevention were included in building design and urban planning. This paper briefly explores the changes of fire prevention means from early ancient period to Qing Dynasty. The reduction of damage caused by unwanted fire revealed the effectiveness of the evolution of fire prevention from symbolic features to urban planning.
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Noel Scott, Brent Moyle, Ana Cláudia Campos, Liubov Skavronskaya and Biqiang Liu
Adrija Majumdar and Arnab Adhikari
In the context of sharing economy, the superhost program of Airbnb emerges as a phenomenal success story that has transformed the tourism industry and garnered humongous…
Abstract
Purpose
In the context of sharing economy, the superhost program of Airbnb emerges as a phenomenal success story that has transformed the tourism industry and garnered humongous popularity. Proper performance evaluation and classification of the superhosts are crucial to incentivize superhosts to maintain higher service quality. The main objective of this paper is to design an integrated multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) method-based performance evaluation and classification framework for the superhosts of Airbnb and to study the variation in various contextual factors such as price, number of listings and cancelation policy across the superhosts.
Design/methodology/approach
This work considers three weighting techniques, mean, entropy and CRITIC-based methods to determine the weights of factors. For each of the weighting techniques, an integrated TOPSIS-MOORA-based performance evaluation method and classification framework have been developed. The proposed methodology has been applied for the performance evaluation of the superhosts (7,308) of New York City using real data from Airbnb.
Findings
From the perspective of performance evaluation, the importance of devising an integrated methodology instead of adopting a single approach has been highlighted using a nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test. As per the context-specific findings, it has been observed that the price and the number of listings are the highest for the superhosts in the topmost category.
Practical implications
The proposed methodology facilitates the design of a leaderboard to motivate service providers to perform better. Also, it can be applicable in other accommodation-sharing economy platforms and ride-sharing platforms.
Originality/value
This is the first work that proposes a performance evaluation and classification framework for the service providers of the sharing economy in the context of tourism industry.
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Barrie O. Pettman and Richard Dobbins
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.
Abstract
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.