ISSN 2512-6660 (Online) ISSN 1478-9906 (Print)
CN 10-1192/N
CN 10-1192/N
Efficient cross-border tourism flows are a critical dimension of a country’s economic integration into the global economy. This paper introduces an innovative application of the stochastic frontier gravity model (SFGM) to analyze and measure international tourism efficiency. By integrating natural determinants (e.g., geographical distance, economic size, and price indices) with man-made factors (e.g., social, political, economic, and policy preferences), the study provides a comprehensive framework for assessing tourism efficiency relative to theoretical gravity frontier levels. The findings reveal that, while China has achieved approximately 80% of its tourism potential on average, significant inefficiencies persist, particularly across different origin countries and regions. The study highlights the complementary relationship between human and goods flows, emphasizing the importance of cultural proximity and trade intensity in reducing inefficiencies. Furthermore, it demonstrates the robustness of the SFGM framework in capturing the dynamic and uneven patterns of tourism efficiency over time. By addressing gaps in the application of SFGM to tourism research, this paper advances the theoretical and methodological understanding of tourism efficiency and provides actionable policy recommendations for enhancing China’s tourism market integration.
This study develops a systematic framework to evaluate regional service science and technology innovation (SSTI) in China. It aims to address the “manufacturing paradigm” bias in existing evaluations. Drawing on the national innovation system (NIS)theory, a multi-level indicator system is constructed with three dimensions: Innovation input, innovation output, and innovation environment. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to determine indicator weights, and the SSTI performance of eight provinces and municipalities in China from 2011 to 2023 is systematically measured and comparatively analyzed. The results reveal a sustained upward trend in the overall level of SSTI. However, a pronounced stratified pattern of “the strong get stronger” persists, reflecting significant and widening regional disparities. Moreover, regional innovation modes exhibit marked structural heterogeneity. These findings advance the operational evaluation of SSTI and provide diagnostic insights for identifying systemic bottlenecks, optimizing resource allocation, and formulating region-specific innovation strategies.
We introduce a mathematical model for a voting system called fuzzy threshold voting (FTV) intended for use primarily in cryptocurrency governance systems. The main difference between this voting model and approval voting is that the voting outcome depends not only on the scores of candidates but also on other factors—budgets of the corresponding projects (actually, projects are the candidates). The proposed FTV voting model is considered to be some generalization of the yes-no voting model with expanded features. In addition to building an adequate mathematical model for the new voting system, we also analyze its main properties, such as the optimality (in some sense) of the voting procedure, existence of admissible strategies, advantages of sincere voting, and necessity of secret voting. We demonstrate that the presented FTV system satisfies one of the most important properties of the voting systems—the monotone rule, and prove several statements regarding possible voting strategies.
In the global financial market system, gold, as a special safe-haven asset with monetary, commodity, and financial attributes, exhibits characteristics of non-linear and highly complex price fluctuations. Accurate short-term prediction of gold futures prices can provide investors with important decision-making references. Firstly, this paper takes gold futures prices as the research object and constructs a multi-dimensional prediction factor system, using the SHAP method to screen and conduct interpretability analysis on the prediction factors. Secondly, using the screened prediction factors, a TCN-LSTM model is established to conduct point prediction of gold futures prices and perform ablation experiments. Finally, adaptive bandwidth kernel density estimation is employed to fit the probability density function of point prediction errors and conduct interval prediction as well as interval prediction ablation experiment analysis. The empirical results show that the SHAP method can effectively screen out gold futures price prediction factors with strong explanatory power. Using the screened prediction factors for point prediction and interval prediction significantly improves the accuracy of gold futures price prediction. The ablation experiments of point prediction and interval prediction indicate that the same prediction factor has certain differences in improving the performance of point prediction and interval prediction.
This paper examines the impacts of retailer fairness concern and consumer fairness concern on the profit under a supply-chain framework consisting of a manufacturer and multiple retailers. Firstly, the case in which the manufacturer declares a unified wholesale price under retailer fairness concern is discussed. The results show that the profit of the manufacturer decreases and the total profit of retailers increases under retailer fairness concern. In the meanwhile, an interesting phenomenon is revealed: Despite a constraint of retailer fairness concern is added to the supply chain, the total profit rises rather than falls. Secondly, we consider both retailer fairness concern and consumer fairness concern. In this case, the manufacturer declares a unified wholesale price, and all retailers declare a unified retail price. Compared with the case in which only retailer fairness concern is considered, consumer fairness concern lowers the total profit of all retailers, while the profit of the manufacturer remains unchanged. Because pricing coordination is needed during the unified pricing of retailers, this study puts forward the definition of extreme-value-proportion, and synthetically applies Nash bargaining solution and proportion sharing solution to obtain the profit distribution scheme for the retailer-pricing alliance based on absolute value average and relative value average.
In this paper, based on the advantages of bipolar fuzzy sets (BFSs) and hesitant fuzzy set (HFS), the concept of dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy sets (DHBFSs) is introduced and their operation rules and properties are discussed. The objective of this paper was to develop some novel Heronian Mean (HM) operators for any dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy elements (DHBFEs). The advantage of employing Heronian Mean operator mainly lie in considering the interrelationships between parameters and handling uncertainty and ambiguity information that exist in the real world. Thus, based on the DHBFS environment, we develop a family of dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy Heronian Mean aggregation operators, such as the generalized dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy Heronian Mean (GDHBFHM)operator, the generalized dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy weighted Heronian Mean (GDHBFWHM) operator, the dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy geometric Heronian Mean (DHBFGHM) operator, the dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy weighted geometric Heronian Mean (DHBFWGHM)operator. And the properties of these proposed operators are studied. Furthermore, an approach based on the GDHBFWHM operator and the DHBFWGHM operator is proposed for multiple attribute decision making problems under dual hesitant bipolar fuzzy environment. Finally, a numerical example and comparative analysis is given to illustrate the application of the proposed approach.
Shared mental models are a compelling concept that highlights the importance of shared understanding among team members to achieve improved team performance. This study aimed to extract individual mental models from social media posts and explore differences in the shared mental models of successful and unsuccessful teams on example of the FIBA 3x3 Basketball World Cup 2023. Mental models were derived through semantic network analysis employing the textual analytical software Automap. The sample consisted of 368 posts from 39 team members, collected from platforms such as Facebook, X and Instagram. Significant disparities between successful and unsuccessful teams were uncovered, with the former displaying a greater number of concepts and statements, having larger shared cognitive maps. Additionally, the analysis offered insights into gender specific team sharedness, revealing that even though male team members were less verbal, they exhibited a higher degree of sharedness compared to their female counterparts. This study demonstrates the potential of social media data for constructing shared mental models and offers two key contributions: 1) It provides empirical evidence to the literature, and 2) it highlights the viability of social media as a tool for evaluating shared mental models, opening new avenues for research in the field.
Under the background of the rapid development of express industry and building China’s strength in postal, understanding the structure and connection of the current express network is helpful to optimize the layout and construction of the express network. Based on the improved logistics gravity model and social network analysis method, this paper analyzes the structural characteristics and spatial connection of express delivery network in 39 national logistics hub cities. The results show that the express logistics links between hub cities are more intensive, but the overall spatial distribution of express network is unbalanced. In the express delivery network, the status of hub cities is obvious, and the core hub cities have an important influence on the network structure. Some hub cities highly depend on the core hub cities, and the media and driving role played by core hub cities in different regions are different. Shanghai, Jinhua, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Wuhan and Zhengzhou play significant roles in the overall express network, and have strong radiation ability. They are suitable for being a global international postal express logistics hub. Changsha, Nanjing, Ningbo, Yichang, Suzhou and other important hub cities can be preferred as regional international postal express hubs. The hub cities that are not prominent are more suitable as national postal express hubs.
