Search results

China's increasing income inequality might cause a series of problems, such as the slowdown of economic growth, social and economic tension, the decline of the ecological environment quality and the threat to citizens' health. Consequently, income inequality will inevitably affect the ecological well-being performance (EWP) level of China's provinces through the above aspects. Analyzing the impact of income inequality on EWP and its spatial spillover effects are conducive to improving the level of EWP in China. Therefore, the research purpose of this paper is to use China's provincial data from 2001 to 2017 to analyze the impact of income inequality on EWP and the spatial spillover effect based on the evaluation of the EWP value of each province.

At first, this study utilizes the super efficiency slacks-based measure model (Super-SBM model) to calculate the EWP values of 30 provinces in China, which can evaluate and rank the effective decision units in the SBM model and make up for the defect that the effective decision units cannot be distinguished. Then this study applies the spatial Durbin model and Tobit regression model (SDM-Tobit model) to explore the impact of income inequality and other influencing factors on EWP and the spatial spillover effects in adjacent areas.

Firstly, the average EWP in China fluctuated slightly and showed a downward trend from 2001 to 2017. In addition, the EWP values of the provinces in the western region are usually weaker than those in the eastern and central regions. Moreover, income inequality is negatively correlated with EWP, and the EWP has a spatial spillover effect, which means the EWP level in a region is affected by EWP values in the adjacent regions. Furthermore, the industrial structure and urbanization level are both negatively related to EWP, while technology level, investment openness, trade openness and education level are positively related to EWP.

Compared with the existing research, the possible contribution of this research is that it takes income inequality as one of the important influencing factors of EWP and adopts the SDM-Tobit model to analyze the impact mechanism of income inequality on EWP from the perspective of time and space, providing new ideas for improving the EWP of various provinces in China.

Aside from a few groundbreaking studies, there has been little empirical exploration into the structure of American police organizations. Traditional organizational inquiries have suggested that structural characteristics can be differentiated between those that represent complexity or differentiation within the organization and those that represent control mechanisms to coordinate and manage the complexity. This research investigates whether these various structural elements are indicative of two latent constructs by developing and testing measurement models representing structural complexity and control. Organizational scholars have also argued that structural complexity increases the demand for structural control. Maguire investigated this issue in the context of police organizations and found little support for the hypothesis. The paper reexamines this relationship by extending and replicating Maguire’s analysis to ascertain if a different specification and sample sustain his conclusion. Utilizing data from the 1997 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey and a survey conducted by Edward Maguire, the paper explores these issues using a sample of 401 large, municipal police organizations in the USA. The results indicate that structural control is unidimensional, while structural complexity is not. This study also provides modest evidence supporting an association between structural complexity and control.

China intends to enhance its environmental regulations, which will affect many industries, because of the serious environmental pollution that the country faces. This study aims to investigate the influence of environmental regulations on China’s provincial tourism competitiveness.

A vertical-and-horizontal scatter degree method is used to construct provincial-level tourism competitiveness and environmental regulation indices in China. Thereafter, a spatial econometric model is established to empirically assess the influence of environmental regulations on China’s provincial tourism competitiveness and investigate the spatial spillover effects of environmental regulations.

Environmental regulations and China’s provincial tourism competitiveness exhibit a “U”-shaped relationship, mainly because of the indirect effects of environmental regulations (spatial spillover effects). The environmental regulation indices of the majority of the provinces have crossed the turning point. Thus, improving environmental regulations has a positive effect on tourism competitiveness. This effect mainly originates from the positive spatial spillover effects.

Tourism development plays an important role in promoting economic growth. However, increasing environmental pollution may constrain the development of tourism. Therefore, the possible influence of environmental regulations on tourism development should be understood.

At present, no research has explored the influence of environmental regulations on China’s tourism competitiveness. The current study considers the nonlinear effects of environmental regulations and investigates their spatial spillover effects.

The purpose of this paper is to review the topic “urban green space” focusing on its social benefits and measure techniques in terms of monetary value and accessibility. It suggests potential research direction by using an integrated valuation and measurement framework, and concludes that urban green space valuation in the providers’ perspective as well as accessibility analysis in the consumers’ perspective are useful tools that provide significant measure techniques in urban green space planning.

The paper uses a systematic approach to build up a conceptual framework that quantifies social benefits of green space from provider and consumer perspectives. The literature review indicates some limitations of existing techniques of valuation and accessibility analyses, which entails an integrated model of measurements.

The paper explores social benefits of urban green space, which includes recreational opportunities, aesthetic enjoyments, adjusting psychological well‐being and physical health, enhancing social ties, and providing educational opportunities. To analyze existing evaluation and measure techniques of urban green space, the paper points out that a single measurement only evaluates certain aspects of urban green space, which may not always be suitable to comprehensively assess social benefits from both providers’ and consumers’ perspectives. Considering this limitation, the paper offers an integrated model to measure urban green space that may deal with current limitations.

The originality of the study resides in designing an integrated model including valuation and measure techniques. It certainly offers an important avenue to evaluate social benefits of urban green space.

The large-scale construction of China’s transportation infrastructure has driven the flow of elements between regions, which has provided convenient conditions for the accumulation of advantageous resources.

Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China in the past 2003-2017 years, this paper applies the spatial econometric model and partial differential method and empirically analyzes the spatial spillover effect of transportation infrastructure on employment in the service industry under four spatial weighting matrices.

The results show that for every 1 per cent increase in the level of transportation infrastructure, the employment density of the service industry in the region can be increased by 0.1274 per cent. It is worth noting that roads promote the employment of the service industry more than railways and inland waterways. However, inland waterways have not shown positive effects. The results on spatial spillover of transportation infrastructure indicate that railway has obvious promotion effect on the employment level of service industry in the surrounding area, while the highway has hindered the effect. The spatial spillover effect of inland waterway is not obvious.

The value of this paper is to consider the impact of China’s transportation infrastructure on employment in a particular industry, especially in the service industry. The research will help to provide empirical evidence for policymakers. The government needs to invest and build transportation infrastructure based on the stage and development potential of the employment development of the regional service industry.

Taking 30 provincial samples from 2001 to 2017 in mainland China as the research objects, this paper aims to evaluate the impact and effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the urban–rural income gap and reveals heterogeneity across regions.

Firstly, the Theil index is used to measure the income gap between 30 provinces in mainland China from 2001 to 2017, then the spatial econometric model is used to empirically test the impact of foreign direct investment on China’s urban–rural income gap and its heterogeneity across regions. Finally, a robustness test is performed.

The results show that there is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between FDI and the urban–rural income gap in China. That is, FDI expands the urban–rural income gap in the short term and helps to converge it in the long term. In the eastern region, FDI has a convergence effect on the urban–rural income gap in the short term, which increases the long term. However, in the central and western regions, the relationship between FDI and urban–rural income gap has a weak inverted U shape.

By assessing the impact of FDI on the urban–rural income gap, this work provides decision-making support for China and other developing countries to improve investment policies and income distribution policies.

The implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy is of practical significance for improving the quality and efficiency of economic growth and accelerating the transformation of economic development mode. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of innovation-driven strategies on marine industry agglomeration and industrial transformation.

In traditional grey correlation analysis, when the positive and negative areas cancel each other out during the integration process, the calculation result of the correlation degree is often inconsistent with the qualitative analysis. For this reason, from the perspective of curve similarity, this paper constructs two response curves through the relative change area of the two curves and the relative area change ratio of similar degree, thus constructing an improved grey relational model.

The authors find that the innovation investment has a better correlation with marine industrial agglomeration. It also found that Guangdong Province has the highest degree of correlation between innovation indicators and marine industrial agglomeration. Much beyond the authors’ expectation, in the areas where marine industrial agglomeration is high, the synergistic effect is not obvious by using the location entropy method.

The improved grey correlation analysis method can effectively overcome the phenomenon that the positive and negative areas cancel each other in the integration process of the original algorithm, and it can also effectively measure the negative correlation between variables. This paper explores the impact of innovation drive on the agglomeration of marine industries, which is of great significance to the sustainable development of marine economy.

Since 2000, China, along with the USA, UK, France, Japan and many other developed countries have drawn up new blueprints for the development of a marine economy. At present, international marine economics research has entered into a new period of development, and the research methods of ocean econometrics are becoming more complex and mature. The purpose of this paper is to review the progress of international marine econometrics research and gives the development direction of marine econometrics.

The Web of Science core collection database was utilized, harvesting data from 1996 to May 2018, measuring the marine economy research from 1,489 articles as its sample, using CiteSpace visualization analysis tools.

Mapping the knowledge map from annual international marine economic metrology, literature identification, keywords, involving disciplines and related journals, countries (regions) and research and analyzing the research status of reveals the research frontiers of international marine economy measurement (learning) by using CiteSpace.

The conceptions and characteristics of marine econometrics are defined and analyzed, and the theoretical method of marine econometrics is sorted out. Mapping the knowledge diagram of marine econometrics and discussing the research status of international marine economics, and clarifying the existing problems, future opportunities and challenges of international marine econometrics research.

The multidimensional effects of farmland transfer in China have been profoundly unstudied. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights on the effects of the intermediary role of agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) of farmland transfer on agricultural economic growth in China.

Based on the agricultural data of 30 provinces in China over the period 2005–2018, this paper uses the intermediary effect model to test the relationship between farmland transfer, agricultural TFP and agricultural economic growth. This paper employed an intermediary effect test model to investigate the intermediary role of agricultural TFP in the influence of farmland transfer on agricultural economic growth.

The findings indicated that farmland transfer has a significant effect on promoting agricultural economic growth. There is a significant “inverted U-shaped” relationship between farmland transfer and agricultural TFP. The sample value of 84.3% of farmland transfers in China is still within the TFP promoting effect range. In addition, farmland transfer has an indirect impact on agricultural economic growth through the channel of agricultural TFP. Agricultural TFP plays a significant intermediary role, but the effect is relatively low

This paper is the first to provide fundamental evidence on the impact of farmland transfers on agricultural economic growth in China, driven by agricultural TFP as an intermediary factor. Agricultural TFP can reduce the involution effect of farmland transfer and promote an indirect effect on agricultural economic growth.

Measurement uncertainty calculation is an important and complicated problem in digitised components inspection. In such inspections, a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) and laser scanner are usually used to get the surface point clouds of the component in different postures. Then, the point clouds are registered to construct fully connected point clouds of the component’s surfaces. However, in most cases, the measurement uncertainty is difficult to estimate after the scanned point cloud has been registered. This paper aims to propose a simplified method for calculating the uncertainty of point cloud measurements based on spatial feature registration.

In the proposed method, algorithmic models are used to calculate the point cloud measurement uncertainty based on noncontact measurements of the planes, lines and points of the component and spatial feature registration.

The measurement uncertainty based on spatial feature registration is related to the mutual position of registration features and the number of sensor commutation in the scanning process, but not to the spatial distribution of the measured feature. The results of experiments conducted verify the efficacy of the proposed method.

The proposed method provides an efficient algorithm for calculating the measurement uncertainty of registration point clouds based on part features, and therefore has important theoretical and practical significance in digitised components inspection.