Xin Wang, Xiaoling Xu, Zuowan Zhou and Jihua Gou
This paper aims to exploit shape memory polymer (SMP) composite as multifunctional coatings for protecting substrates from surface wear and bacterial. The efficiency of added nano…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to exploit shape memory polymer (SMP) composite as multifunctional coatings for protecting substrates from surface wear and bacterial. The efficiency of added nano or micro-sized particles in enhancing the properties of SMP was investigated. This study also attempts to use a low-cost and effective spraying approach to fabricate the coatings. The coatings are expected to have good conformability with the substrate and deliver multi-functional performance, such as wrinkle free, wear resistance, thermal stability and antimicrobial property.
Design/methodology/approach
High-performance SMP composite coatings or thin films were fabricated by a home-made continuous spray-deposition system. The morphologies of the coatings were studied using the scanning electron microscope and the transmission electron microscope. The abrasion properties were evaluated by Taber Abraser test, and thermo-gravimetric analysis was carried out to investigate the thermal properties of prepared composites. The antimicrobial property was determined by the inhibition zone method using E. coli. The thermally responsive shape memory effect of the resulting composites was also characterized.
Findings
The morphology analysis indicated that the nanoclay was distributed on the surface of the coating which resulted in a significant improvement of the wear property. The wear resistance of the coatings with nanoclay was improved as much as 40 per cent compared with that of the control sample. The thermo-gravimetric analysis revealed that the weight loss rate of composites with nanoclay was dropped over 40 per cent. The SMP coating with zinc oxide (ZnO) showed excellent antimicrobial effect. The shape recovery effect of SMP/nanoclay and SMP/ZnO composites can be triggered by external heating and the composites can reach a full shape recovery within 60 s.
Research limitations/implications
This study proposed a continuous spray-deposition fabrication of SMP composite coatings, which provides a new avenue to prepare novel multi-functional coatings with low cost.
Originality/value
Most studies have emphasized on the sole property of SMP composites. Herein, a novel SMP composite coating which could deliver multi-functionality such as wrinkle free, wear resistance, thermal stability and antimicrobial property was proposed.
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Qinqin Li, Yujie Xiao, Yuzhuo Qiu, Xiaoling Xu and Caichun Chai
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of carbon permit allocation rules (grandfathering mechanism and benchmarking mechanism) on incentive contracts provided by the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of carbon permit allocation rules (grandfathering mechanism and benchmarking mechanism) on incentive contracts provided by the retailer to encourage the manufacturer to invest more in reducing carbon emissions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors consider a two-echelon supply chain in which the retailer offers three contracts (wholesale price contract, cost-sharing contract and revenue-sharing contract) to the manufacturer. Based on the two carbon permit allocation rules, i.e. grandfathering mechanism and benchmarking mechanism, six scenarios are examined. The optimal price and carbon emission reduction decisions and members’ equilibrium profits under six scenarios are analyzed and compared.
Findings
The results suggest that the revenue-sharing contract can more effectively stimulate the manufacturer to reduce carbon emissions compared to the cost-sharing contract. The cost-sharing contract can help to achieve the highest environmental performance, whereas the implementation of revenue-sharing contract can attain the highest social welfare. The benchmarking mechanism is more effective for the government to prompt the manufacturer to produce low-carbon products than the grandfathering mechanism. Although a loose carbon policy can expand the total emissions, it can improve the social welfare.
Practical implications
These results can provide operational insights for the retailer in how to use incentive contract to encourage the manufacturer to curb carbon emissions and offer managerial insights for the government to make policy decisions on carbon permit allocation rules.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature regarding to firm’s carbon emissions reduction decisions under cap-and-trade policy and highlights the importance of carbon permit allocation methods in curbing carbon emissions.
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Humanitarian relief organisations such as charities count on donations to provide assistance to people in need when disasters occur. In the UK, about 11,200 charity shops collect…
Abstract
Purpose
Humanitarian relief organisations such as charities count on donations to provide assistance to people in need when disasters occur. In the UK, about 11,200 charity shops collect second-hand goods from donors to raise funds for their parent charity to support target beneficiaries. As their numbers increase, charity shops are finding it difficult to secure good quality stock. Furthermore, they may need to plan ahead to secure sufficient stock when the economy experiences a downturn. This paper identifies the charity shop's role and its donation flow in the multi-tier supply chain and empirically assesses the barriers that influence intention to donate with a mixed-methods approach.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to explore the charity shop's role within the multi-tier supply chain, this study begins with a literature review and then develops a conceptual model. In order to empirically evaluate the barriers that influence intention to donate, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 charity shop managers and collected 222 usable questionnaires from donors. The interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach was applied to examine the interrelationship among barriers and rank their priority.
Findings
This paper identifies ten significant barriers that influence intention to donate: lack of good quality items for donation; lack of information on how charity shops make use of donations; lack of familiarity with the donation process; lack of information of what items can be accepted by charity shops; lack of awareness of the impact that donations make; the difficulty of being available at the scheduled times for charity shops' free pick-up services; the difficulty of donating during shops' opening hours; the difficulty of finding parking to access charity shops; and living too far away from charity shops. In particular, the questionnaires' results indicate that lack of good quality items is the most significant barrier. This is also reflected in the ISM model, and thus needs more attention.
Practical implications
The results are very useful for charity shops themselves to understand current barriers to securing good quality stock and to develop potential stock-securing interventions based on these barriers' priority.
Originality/value
Although charity shops have been investigated by several researchers, their supply chain remains insufficiently explored. This paper fills this gap by identifying the charity shop's role and its donation flow in the supply chain and by empirically assessing the supply-side barriers with a mixed-methods approach.
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xiaoling Hao, Daqing Zheng, Qingfeng Zeng and Weiguo Fan
– The purpose of this paper is to explore how to use social media in e-government to strengthen interactivity between government and the general public.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how to use social media in e-government to strengthen interactivity between government and the general public.
Design/methodology/approach
Categorizing the determinants to interactivity covering depth and breadth into two aspects that are the structural features and the content features, this study employs general linear model and ANOVA method to analyse 14,910 posts belonged to the top list of the 96 most popular government accounts of Sina, one of the largest social media platforms in China.
Findings
The main findings of the research are that both variables of the ratio of multimedia elements, and the ratio of external links have positive effects on the breadth of interactivity, while the ratio of multimedia features, and the ratio of originality have significant effects on the depth of interactivity.
Originality/value
The contributions are as follows. First, the authors analyse the properties and the topics of government posts to draw a rich picture of how local governments use the micro-blog as a communications channel to interact with the public. Second, the authors conceptualize the government online interactivity in terms of the breadth and depth. Third, the authors identify factors that will enhance the interactivity from two aspects: structural features and content features. Lastly, the authors offer suggestions to local governments on how to strengthen the e-government interactivity in social media.
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Xiaoling Hu, Cuizhen Zhang, Jin‐Li Hu and Nong Zhu
The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficiencies of China's foreign and domestic life insurance providers and to explore the relationship between ownership structure and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficiencies of China's foreign and domestic life insurance providers and to explore the relationship between ownership structure and the efficiencies of insurers while taking into consideration other firm attributes.
Design/methodology/approach
The data envelopment analysis (DEA) method is used to estimate the efficiencies of the insurers based on a panel data between 1999 and 2004.
Findings
The results indicate that the average efficiency scores for all the insurers are cyclical. Both technical and scale efficiency reached their peaks in 1999 and 2000 and gradually reduced for the rest of the period under examination until 2004 when average efficiency were improved again. The Tobit regression results show that the insurers' market power, the distribution channels used and the ownership structures may be attributed to the variation in the efficiencies.
Research limitations/implications
Based on the research findings and the discussion, the study provides several recommendations for policy makers, regulators and senior executives of insurers.
Practical implications
The research results highlight the importance of deregulating the sector to allow a further expansion of each individual insurer or encourage mergers and acquisitions of insurers so more efficient resource utilization can be achieved through economies of scale. It also suggests that it is imperative for insurers to recruit motivated insurance agents and offer them on‐the‐job training as a part of the management strategies for gaining technical efficiency.
Originality/value
The paper reports the development within China's insurance industry and is one of the few studies analyzing the efficiencies of China's insurers.
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Hui Ma, Shenglan Chen, Xiaoling Liu and Pengcheng Wang
To enrich the research on the economic consequences of enterprise digital development from the perspective of capacity utilization.
Abstract
Purpose
To enrich the research on the economic consequences of enterprise digital development from the perspective of capacity utilization.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of listed firms from 2010 to 2020, this paper exploits text analysis of annual reports to construct a proxy for enterprise digital development.
Findings
Results show that enterprise digital development not only improves their own capacity utilization but also generates a positive spillover effect on the capacity utilization of peer firms and firms in the supply chain. Next, based on the incomplete information about market demand and potential competitors when making capacity-building decisions, the mechanism tests show that improving the accuracy of market forecasts and reducing investment surges are potential channels behind the baseline results. Cross-sectional tests show the baseline result is more pronounced when industries are highly homogeneous and when firms have access to less information.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the research related to the economic consequences of digital development. With the development of the digital economy, the real effects of enterprise digital development have also triggered extensive interest and exploration. Existing studies mainly examine the impact on physical operations, such as specialization division of labor, innovation activities, business performance or total factor productivity (Huang, Yu, & Zhang, 2019; Yuan, Xiao, Geng, & Sheng, 2021; Wang, Kuang, & Shao, 2017; Li, Liu, & Shao, 2021; Zhao, Wang, & Li, 2021). These studies measure the economic benefits from the perspective of the supply (output) side but neglect the importance of the supply system to adapt to the actual market demand. In contrast, this paper focuses on capacity utilization, aimed at estimating the net economic effect of digital development by considering the supply-demand fit scenario. Thus, our findings enrich the relevant studies on the potential consequences of digital development.
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Xiaoling Wu, Yichen Peng, Xiaofeng Liu and Jing Zhou
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of private investor's fair preference on the governmental compensation mechanism based on the uncertainty of income for the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of private investor's fair preference on the governmental compensation mechanism based on the uncertainty of income for the public-private-partnership (PPP) project.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the governmental dilemma for the compensation of PPP project, a generalized compensation contract is designed by the combination of compensation before the event and compensation after the event. Then the private investor's claimed concession profit is taken as its fair reference point according to the idea of the BO model, and its fair utility function is established by improving the FS model. Thus the master-slave counter measure game is applied to conduct the behavior modeling for the governmental compensation contract design.
Findings
By analyzing the model given in this paper, some conclusions are obtained. First, the governmental optimal compensation contract is fair incentive for the private investor. Second, the private fair preference is not intuitively positive or negative related to the social efficiency of compensation. Only under some given conditions, the correlation will show the consistent effect. Third, the private fair behavior’s impact on the efficiency of compensation will become lower and lower as the social cost of compensation reduces. Fourth, the governmental effective compensation scheme should be carried out based on the different comparison scene of the private claimed portfolio profit and the expected revenue for the project.
Originality/value
This study analyzes the effects of private investor's fair preference on the validity of governmental generalized compensation contract of the PPP project for the first time; and the governmental generalized compensation contract designed in this study is a pioneering and exploratory attempt.
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Xiaoling Li, Yufang Wang, Liping Fu and Meirong Xu
The purpose of this paper is to explore why the university library should become the incubation center of research innovation literacy (RIL) competency. It states how the library…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore why the university library should become the incubation center of research innovation literacy (RIL) competency. It states how the library develops RIL instruction and how the library impels university students to improve their independent knowledge innovation competence.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reviews some of the research papers on information literacy (IL) instruction. Based on background analysis, it enumerates and states the methods of the effective practice of the library in RIL competency instruction.
Findings
The university library possesses the information resources and advanced web technology, owns the experience in IL instruction, and has an advantage in terms of information instruction and research environment. The university library has the ability and responsibility to practice RIL instruction.
Originality/value
This paper provides a point of view that the university library can develop the RIL instruction based on IL. The university library can play not only an important role in general courses of the university, but can also sufficiently expand the function of librarians.
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Xiaoling Li, Xingyao Ren and Xu Zheng
This paper aimed to analyze the short- and long-term effects of the breadth and depth of seller competition on the performance of platform companies, and investigated the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aimed to analyze the short- and long-term effects of the breadth and depth of seller competition on the performance of platform companies, and investigated the underlying mechanisms of customers’ two-sided marketing tactics on the structure of the competition between sellers.
Design/methodology/approach
A longitudinal research design was adopted by gathering daily market objective data on e-commerce platforms for 250 days, and the dynamic evolution effects was analyzed by using a vector autoregression model which compared the differences between the short- and long-term effectiveness of different customer relationship management (CRM) strategies.
Findings
The breadth of competition amongst sellers improves the performance of platforms, whilst the depth of competition among sellers has a positive effect on the short-term performance. However, it has a negative effect on the long-term performance of their platforms. In both the short and long terms, advertising tactics that attract new buyers contribute more to increases in the breadth of seller competition than those that attract existing buyers do. Subsidies for new sellers decrease the depth of seller competition more than those for old sellers.
Research limitations/implications
Further research could be undertaken to investigate the validity of marketing tactics other than advertising tactics, and thus expand the time windows of the available data.
Practical implications
It is imperative for platform companies to implement effective control over seller competition to balance the interests of the sellers and of themselves.
Originality/value
The dyadic paradigm of CRM research has been extended by considering the perspective of the electronic platform company, how the tactics of exploitation and exploration of two-sided customers impact upon seller competitive structures have been delved into and why new customers have a unique value to platform companies has been identified.
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Yuxiang Chris Zhao, Xiaojuan Xu, Xiaoling Sun and Qinghua Zhu
In the Web 2.0 era, more and more digital immigrants actively participate in blogging, video sharing, online rating, and micro blogging, etc. However, some may be more skilled in…
Abstract
Purpose
In the Web 2.0 era, more and more digital immigrants actively participate in blogging, video sharing, online rating, and micro blogging, etc. However, some may be more skilled in producing and generating online content while others still meet some barriers in doing so. Thus, it is interesting to investigate the online generative capability of digital immigrants in Web 2.0 context. This paper seeks to address this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors selected Shanghai as their target province in this study for its large scale of internet users. An in-depth semi-structured interview was used as their research method. They selected several community clubs as the interview settings. In addition, age was adopted as a threshold to define the Chinese digital immigrants for its convenience in sampling.
Findings
Chinese digital immigrants are playing an important role in content generating, and have a great potential in the future contribution, and a number of digital immigrants regard the content generating as a pretty easy work while some others felt difficulties, even frustrated and exhausted when generating content. About the content type, digital immigrants prefer to generate that content with low granularity. About the motivation, the intrinsic motivation and the extrinsic motivation with an internalized focus play a dominant role. About the generating mode, digital immigrants prefer to generate content individually or collectively.
Originality/value
This paper develops the concept of online generative capability by adapting the notion of generativity from other disciplines to the characteristics of Web 2.0. Then an integrated conceptual framework is built and evaluated. Practically, the paper puts forward some implications for the designers, managers, and information service staff from different perspectives to facilitate the digital immigrant's online generative capability.