Search results

The purpose of this study is to gather insights into digital consumer behaviour related to Chinese restaurents by examining visual contents on Tripadvisor platform.

Using the deep learning approach, this research assessed consumer-posted online content of dining experiences by implementing image analysis and clustering. Text mining using word cloud analysis revealed the most frequently repeated keywords.

First, 4,000 photos of nine Chinese restaurants posted on Tripadvisor’s website were analyzed using image recognition via Inception V3 and Google’s deep learning network; this revealed 12 hierarchical image clusters. Then, an open-questionnaire survey of 125 Chinese respondents investigated consumers’ information needs before visiting a restaurant and after purchasing behavior (motives to share).

This study contributes to culinary marketing development by introducing a new analysis methodology and demonstrating its application by exploring a wide range of keywords and visual images published on the internet.

This research extends and contributes to the literature regarding visual user-generated content in culinary tourism.

This paper aims to conduct research to examine the impact of Internet adoption on the productivity of firms in non-urban China.

The study investigates the impact of Internet adoption on firms' productivity in non-urban China. More specifically, the authors conduct a comprehensive and rigorous study while addressing concerns related to firm-level endogeneity by utilizing firm-level panel data. Information on firms in non-urban areas is collected from China's Annual Surveys of Industrial Firm data. For robustness, the authors implement the instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching estimations to strengthen the evidence for suggestive causal inference. Furthermore, the authors also examine the mechanisms and group heterogeneity.

Evidence indicate that the adoption of Internet technology positively impacts the total factor productivity (TFP) of firms in non-urban areas. According to the heterogeneity analysis, the marginal effect of Internet adoption is more significant and pronounced for labor-intensive, private and small-scale manufacturing firms. Moreover, additional evidence suggest that Internet adoption is beneficial for non-urban firms in expanding their business and enlarging their market. It has also been found that the positive effect of Internet adoption on firms' TFP is amplified by expanding public infrastructure.

The current study supports that the informatization strategy benefits non-urban firms and promotes rural revitalization. The findings suggest the possibility of firms borrowing market size from the closest cities and supporting the ongoing policies of investing in broadband infrastructure to narrow the urban-rural digital gap in China.

Effectuation, which articulates the process of entrepreneurial action based on nonpredictive control logic, is receiving extensive scholarly attention. What drives the effectual entrepreneurship is featured with high complexity. However, existing studies ignored the complex driving forces underlying entrepreneurial decision-making. Building on a configurational perspective, the purpose of this study was to examine the combinative effects of environmental uncertainty and entrepreneurs’ means on effectual entrepreneurship.

Drawing on 54 entrepreneurs who are launching new ventures in China, this study adopts a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to investigate two sets of antecedent conditions and how they form different combinations for a highly effectual entrepreneurship.

Our findings disclose four highly effectual entrepreneurship paths involving novice–specialist effectual entrepreneurship in a highly uncertain environment, socialite–specialist effectual entrepreneurship in a highly uncertain environment, pure-specialist effectual entrepreneurship and resourceful effectual entrepreneurship, and one path of barefoot noneffectual entrepreneurship in a highly uncertain environment, which reveals the complex nature of environmental uncertainty and entrepreneurs’ means in driving entrepreneurs to adopt effectuation.

Our study makes the following contributions. First, by taking a configurational perspective, we are able to obtain an elaborate view of the combined effects of environmental uncertainty and entrepreneurs’ means on effectual entrepreneurship. Second, we expand prior thinking on the relationship between environmental uncertainty and effectuation. Third, our study offers a more delicate understanding of entrepreneurs’ means in driving effectuation by splitting means into three separate factors.

This paper attempts to analyze the relationship between the complementarity degrees of imperfect complementary products and sales strategies and give appropriate sales strategies for a two-stage supply chain.

With respect to two-stage supply chain consisting of two manufacturers who produce imperfect complementary products and one retailer who sells the products, aiming at bundling sales strategy, the authors define complementarity elasticity of products and use it to measure the degree of complementary between two products. Based on Stackelberg game and cooperation, the authors analyze the relationship between the complementarity degrees of imperfect complementary products and appropriate sales strategies.

As the impact of complementarity degree on sales strategy decision-making is better, the authors can pinpoint out which sales decision-making is optimal and which bundling sales strategy is the best for a two-stage supply chain. Considering that the degree of complementarity has a significant impact on the product sales strategy, the authors can point out which sales decision-making is optimal, that is, which bundled sales strategy is the optimal in the secondary supply chain of selling complementary products.

An innovative bundling can expand the sales of existing products and new products. It helps a retailer transcend and defeat competitors by reducing marketing expenses while increasing profits. Proper use of bundling can improve consumers utility and create an overall positive effect for both the enterprises and consumer.

The research can help some retailers to make many appropriate bundling sales strategies.

This study aims to determine whether inter-organisational communication, based on four communicational dimensions (willingness, behaviour, commitment and quality), influences the performance of strategic alliances.

To achieve this objective, from a relational perspective, a qualitative approach was adopted, resorting to five small and medium-sized enterprises (SME)/cases in Portugal. Interviews with the key informants of these SMEs and documentary analysis were used to collect data.

Based on the cases analysed, the results show that communication is fundamental, valued and implemented in the SMEs studied. However, this is informal communication, reflecting the cooperation established and not based on contracts. In these SMEs, communication is the basis for understanding the alliance’s objectives and their fulfilment, which creates satisfaction in the partners and the alliance’s success. Communication also allows an alliance to be maintained and develop continuously, creating bonds between the partners.

Without that communication, alliance performance will not be possible. The study is relevant as it indicates management practices in strategic alliances based on inter-organisational communication, aiming for good performance. Therefore, it contributes to advancing knowledge about strategic alliances through the innovative link with inter-organisational communication and its applicability.

This study is new and innovative because it contributes to the literature in the area of strategic management, as it presents phenomena to do with inter-organisational communication and its relation with strategic alliances in SMEs, as well as advancing knowledge about the relational perspective. In addition, the application and development of inter-organisational communication, in all its communicational dimensions, are the basis for maintaining alliances over time and their performance.

This paper aims to study the agent learning from expert demonstration data while incorporating reinforcement learning (RL), which enables the agent to break through the limitations of expert demonstration data and reduces the dimensionality of the agent’s exploration space to speed up the training convergence rate.

Firstly, the decay weight function is set in the objective function of the agent’s training to combine both types of methods, and both RL and imitation learning (IL) are considered to guide the agent's behavior when updating the policy. Second, this study designs a coupling utilization method between the demonstration trajectory and the training experience, so that samples from both aspects can be combined during the agent’s learning process, and the utilization rate of the data and the agent’s learning speed can be improved.

The method is superior to other algorithms in terms of convergence speed and decision stability, avoiding training from scratch for reward values, and breaking through the restrictions brought by demonstration data.

The agent can adapt to dynamic scenes through exploration and trial-and-error mechanisms based on the experience of demonstrating trajectories. The demonstration data set used in IL and the experience samples obtained in the process of RL are coupled and used to improve the data utilization efficiency and the generalization ability of the agent.

To accelerate the development of low-carbon industry in Zhaoqing City, transform the mode of economic growth, and promote industrial transformation and upgrading, the SWOT analysis method was applied. From the four aspects of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the feasibility of developing a low-carbon economy in Zhaoqing was systematically analyzed. From the adjustment of industrial structure, the optimization of energy structure, the promotion of low-carbon tourism, the development of circular economy, and the enhancement of carbon sink capacity, the development path of low-carbon economy was explored. Based on the above analysis, a low carbon development plan was prepared. From the implementation of low-carbon development strategy, the choice of low-carbon economy pilot, and the low-carbon economic security system, the implementation steps of Zhaoqing's low-carbon economy were discussed in detail. The results showed that the low-carbon economy concept provided some ideas for Zhaoqing's economic development. Therefore, Zhaoqing is still in its infancy. The city's transportation system is not perfect. To develop a low-carbon economy, governments, enterprises, and individuals need to participate actively.

Previous studies have produced inconsistent findings regarding the effects of resource constraints on corporate illegal behavior. This study aims to explore how entrepreneurial firms can overcome the difficulties generated by resource constraints.

Drawing on insights from general strain theory and focusing on listed entrepreneurial firms, this study proposes that failure to obtain enough resources through listing generates strain in the managers of listed entrepreneurial firms, driving them to resort to corporate financial fraud as a solution. Nevertheless, such relationships between resource constraints and the likelihood of corporate financial fraud can be weakened by innovation capability, because innovation capability can generate more confidence in their managers and relieve their strains, thereby dissuading them from engaging in corporate financial fraud.

According to our empirical results, both financial and human resource constraints are positively related to the likelihood of corporate financial fraud in listed entrepreneurial firms, but such effects can be mitigated by innovation capability.

This study provides practical implications for both regulators and managers by indicating that although entrepreneurial firms with resource constraints are more likely to commit financial fraud, innovation capability could be a strategic approach to enhance managers’ confidence and relieve the strain.

Our study contributes to the literature by enriching our understanding of the consequences of resource constraints in entrepreneurial firms and highlighting the strategic importance of innovation capability in mitigating such effects.

This study aims to determine the key indicators affecting the resilience of the construction supply chain to flooding and calculate the resilience of the urban construction supply chain in three cases city.

This study combines expert opinions and literature review to determine key indicators and establish a fuzzy EWM-GRA-TOPSIS evaluation model. The index weight was calculated using the entropy weight method, and GRA-TOPSIS was used for comprehensive evaluation.

The results of the study show that the three cities are ranked from the high to low in order of Hangzhou, Hefei and Zhengzhou.

The innovative method adopted in this study comprising EWM-GRA-TOPSIS reduced the influence of subjectivity, fully extracted and utilized data, in a way that respects objective reality. Further, this approach enabled the absolute and relative level of urban construction supply chain resilience to be identified, allowing improvements in the comprehensiveness of decision-making. The method is relatively simple, reasonable, understandable, and computationally efficient. Within the approach, the entropy weight method was used to assign different index weights, and the GRA-TOPSIS was used to rank the resilience of the construction supply chain in three urban cities. The development of resilience provides a robust decision-making basis and theoretical reference, further enriching research methods, and having strong practical value. The study serves to improve risk awareness and resilience, which in turn helps to reduce losses. It also provides enhanced awareness regarding the future enhancement of supply chain resilience for urban construction.

The purpose of this paper is to study the variance risk premium in corn and soybean markets, where the variance risk premium is defined as the difference between the historical realized variance and the corresponding risk-neutral expected variance.

The authors compute variance risk premiums using historical derivatives data. The authors use regression analysis and time series econometrics methods, including EGARCH and the Kalman filter, to analyze variance risk premiums.

There are moderate commonalities in variance within the agricultural sector, but fairly weak commonalities between the agricultural and the equity sectors. Corn and soybean variance risk premia in dollar terms are time-varying and correlated with the risk-neutral expected variance. In contrast, agricultural commodity variance risk premia in log return terms are more likely to be constant and less correlated with the log risk-neutral expected variance. Variance and price (return) risk premia in agricultural markets are weakly correlated, and the correlation depends on the sign of the returns in the underlying commodity.

Commodity variance (i.e. volatility) risk cannot be hedged using futures markets. The results have practical implications for US crop insurance programs because the implied volatilities from the relevant options markets are used to estimate the price volatility factors used to generate premia for revenue insurance products such as “Revenue Protection” and “Revenue Protection with Harvest Price Exclusion.” The variance risk premia found implies that revenue insurance premia are overpriced.

The empirical results suggest that the implied volatilities in corn and soybean futures market overestimate true expected volatility by approximately 15 percent. This has implications for derivative products, such as revenue insurance, that use these implied volatilities to calculate fair premia.