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Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to explore the influence of the base option’s price format (just-at vs just-below) on tourists’ upgrade intention. The findings of this research indicated that tourists are more inclined to upgrade the option when the base option’s price is presented in a just-at condition due to the mediating role of tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade option. This study discovered that the just-at (vs just-below) pricing strategy can lower tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade choice. This research further explored the moderating of tourists’ mindsets. It was found the threshold-crossing effect will disappear for tourists with fixed mindsets. This study also provides practical implications for travel service providers to set up appropriate pricing strategies to attract tourists to make upgrade decisions.

To explore the future visions outlined in one of the first academic books on UK tourism to venture into tourism futures. Through today’s lens, their visions are explored through three topics: Future Markets and Destinations; Future Resources; and the Future Organization of Tourism.

Exploring the backstory, key drivers and tipping points of UK tourism development and tourism education during the 1960s and 1970s, they help to understand the rationale for the authors 1974 future visions of UK tourism. These visions are tested against reality, using a mixture of data, softer evidence and the authors’ judgements.

Acknowledging the authors showed courage in presenting their future visions, when so little was known about the development of tourism, let alone tourism futures. The article highlights the successes and failures of their future visions across 20 tourism sectors, through 55 tourism forecasts. The reasons for weaknesses in some of their forecasts, and their foresight in highlighting little known issues are explored, along with key learning points for tourism futurists.

The future visions of UK tourism were tested against data and other evidence, but this was not always possible. Therefore, the success or failures of some of the visions are based on the authors’ judgement.

Over the past 50 years, there has been a steady growth in tourism futures studies. Given the recent increase in awareness of history in driving futures thinking, perhaps now is the time to apply this viewpoint to previously published tourism futures studies because such reviews provide a timely reminder of the transient nature of tourism futures gazing.

Currently, China’s economy is in the critical phase of transforming economic development patterns and replacing old growth drivers with new ones. Whether it can successfully overcome the “middle-income trap” has become a significant issue attracting wide attention.

Driven by underlying digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data, the fourth industrial revolution featuring the booming digital economy has provided significant opportunities for China’s economy to “overtake” and overcome the “middle-income trap”. The transformation of economic development pattern, the optimization of industrial structure, and the change of growth drivers, brought by the deep integration of digital and real economies are the keys to leaping over the “middle-income trap”.

From the supply side, the digital economy can improve the quality and efficiency of the supply side and promote the supply-side structural reform and economic growth from the following three aspects: First, promote the quality, efficiency and diversification of the supply system; second, promote networking, opening-up and synergy in the innovation system and third, promote the socialization, modularization and flexibility of production pattern. From the demand side, the digital economy can boost the new drivers of the “troika” of economic growth consisting of consumption, exports and investment by changing the market investment direction, promoting consumption upgrade and fostering export strengths. However, once these two attributes interact with each other, especially when data is combined with capital, the most adhesive factor in the market economy, a series of new social relations will then be produced based on the technical attribute, resulting in significant adjustments in social relations, involving both positive and negative externalities.

To overcome the “middle-income trap”, it is necessary to adapt to the laws of economic evolution and promote a fundamental change in economic growth drivers; boost the high-quality development of the digital economy by strengthening the support role of data in the digital economy; and accelerate digital industrialization and industrial digitalization to realize the integration of digital and real economies.

Countries in Africa have a common goal policy of industrialisation that is expected to be driven by investing in innovation that yields efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the technical efficiency effects arising from innovation inputs including internal R&D, human capital development (HCD), and foreign technology adoption in manufacturing firms in Africa.

This study uses cross-sectional firm-level survey data from the 2013 World Bank Enterprise Survey and the linked 2013 Innovation Follow-up Survey. A heteroscedastic half-normal stochastic frontier is used for analysing the technical efficiency effects of innovation inputs of 418 firms.

This study reveals that internal R&D, and foreign technology have negative effects on technical efficiency. Notwithstanding, the combination of foreign technology and internal R&D, and foreign technology and HCD reinforce each other’s effects on technical efficiency.

This study provides evidence that whereas individual innovation inputs may not yield positive efficiency outcomes, the combination of absorptive capacity enhancing inputs comprising internal R&D and HCD with foreign technology is vital for enhancing technical efficiency in manufacturing firms in Africa. This study offers important lessons for managers in manufacturing firms in Africa.

This study is virtually the first to investigate the relationship between innovation inputs and efficiency in Africa. This study demonstrates that investing in foreign technology in isolation from absorptive capacity enhancing innovation inputs diminishes efficiency. HCD and internal R&D are imperative for building absorptive capacity that enhances efficiency outcomes arising from foreign technology.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the way technology affects the provision of prehospital emergency care, upgrading the quality of services offered and significantly reducing the risk of premature termination of the patients.

The paper presents the development of the eEKAB, a pilot emergency medical information system that simulates the main services offered by the Greek National Instant Aid Centre (EKAB). The eEKAB was developed on an agile system methodology. From a technical perspective, the features and the technology were mainly chosen to provide reliable and user-friendly interfaces that will attract many users. eEKAB is based on three important pillars for offering health care to the patients: the “On-time Incident Reporting”, the “On-time Arrival at the Incident” and “Transfer to the Health Center”. According to the literature review, the emergency medical services (EMS) systems that combine all the features are very few.

It reduces the total time of the EMS procedures and it allows for an easier management of EMS, by providing a better allocation of human resources and a better geographical distribution of ambulances. The evaluation displayed that it is a very helpful application for the ambulance drivers as it reduces the ambulance response time to arrive in the patient's location and contributes significantly to the general performance of the prehospital medical care system. Also, the survey verified the importance of implementing eEKAB on a larger scale beyond the pilot usage. It is worth mentioning that the younger ambulance drivers had a more positive view for the purpose of the application.

The paper clearly identifies implications for further research. Regarding interoperability, the mobile app cooperates with the Operational Center of EKAB, while further collaboration could be achieved with other operational ambulance handling center, mainly, of the private sector. The system can evolve to include better communications among the EKAB departments. Particularly, the ambulance crew as well as the doctors should be informed with more incident features such as the emergency signal so that they know whether to open the siren, the patient's name, etc. The authors are currently working on implementing some features to provide effective medical health services to the patient in the ambulance.

eEKAB will have very significant implications in case of its enforcement, such as the reduction of the total time of EMS procedures with a corresponding reduction of the operating costs of an accident management system and an ambulance fleet handling system while in parallel informing in time the doctors/clinics. It will provide better distribution of ambulances as well as of total human resources. It will greatly assist ambulance drivers, while reducing ambulance response time to reach the patient's location. In other words, the authors will have a better performance of the whole prehospital care system.

Providing emergency care before the hospital is of great importance for upgrading the quality of health services provided at the accident site, thus significantly reducing the risk of premature death of patients. This in itself has a significant social implication.

The paper demonstrates a solid understanding in the field of the EMS systems and the corresponding medical services offered. It proposes the development of an effective, feasible and innovative EMS information system that will improve the existing emergency health care system in Greece (EKAB). An in depth literature review and presentation of the adopted new technologies and the respective architecture take place. An evaluation and statistical validation were conducted for proving the high applicability of eEKAB in case of real-life running.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the internal interaction mechanism of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth from a systematic perspective, based on which this work forecasts their future development trends.

In this study, a multivariate grey model is applied to the prediction of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth. Considering the impact of the COVID-19 on marine development, this paper introduces the weakening buffer operator into MGM(1,m) and constructs the AWBO-MGM(1,m) model. To verify the validity and accuracy of the new model, this paper uses AWBO-MGM(1,m), MGM(1,m), GM(1,N), GM(1,1), back propagation neural network and linear regression models for simulation and prediction based on the data from 2010 to 2021, respectively.

From the theoretical perspective, the development of marine scientific research and education can accelerate industrial upgrading and promote marine economic growth by providing high-quality talents, promoting marine science and technology progress and reducing transaction costs; while the upgrading of marine industrial structure and marine economic growth can promote the development of marine scientific research and education by guiding social capital, enhancing talent demand and stimulating market vitality. From the empirical analysis, the AWBO-MGM(1,m) model can effectively deal with epidemic shocks and has higher fitting and prediction accuracy than the other five comparative models.

The government should pay attention to the construction of marine scientific research and education, so as to provide high-quality talents and advanced scientific research results for the high-quality development of marine economy. On the basis of using science and technology to firmly build the primary and secondary marine industries, the government should actively guide the labor, capital and other factors of production to the tertiary industry, thereby promoting the optimization and upgrading of marine industrial structure.

On the one hand, the interplay mechanism of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth is analyzed from a systematic perspective; on the other hand, the enhanced AWBO-MGM(1,m) possesses higher forecasting performance and is applicable to the systemic multivariate forecasting problem in the presence of outstanding external shocks.

This paper presents Quick Changeover Design (QCD), which is a structured methodological approach for Original Equipment Manufacturers to drive and support the design of machines in terms of rapid changeover capability.

To improve the performance in terms of set up time, QCD addresses machine design from a single-minute digit exchange of die (SMED). Although conceived to aid the design of completely new machines, QCD can be adapted to support for simple design upgrades on pre-existing machines. The QCD is structured in three consecutive steps, each supported by specific tools and analysis forms to facilitate and better structure the designers' activities.

QCD helps equipment manufacturers to understand the current and future needs of the manufacturers' customers to: (1) anticipate the requirements for new and different set-up process; (2) prioritize the possible technical solutions; (3) build machines and equipment that are easy and fast to set-up under variable contexts. When applied to a production system consisting of machines subject to frequent or time-consuming set-up processes, QCD enhances both responsiveness to external market demands and internal control of factory operations.

The QCD approach is a support system for the development of completely new machines and is also particularly effective in upgrading existing ones. QCD's practical application is demonstrated using a case study concerning a vertical spindle machine.

This study aims to examine the underlying statements with regard to strategic directions and action programmes on tourism found in the state-of-the-nation address (SONA) speeches of six Philippine presidents – from 1987 to 2019. The researchers believe that president SONAs are usually reflective of their plans and are strong indicators of their interest, which could particularly influence the Philippine tourism planning and development. Currently, the lack of guidance in the theoretical framework and research discussion in exploring the Philippine tourism policy and development priorities using presidents’ SONA speeches are found wanting. Scenario planning approach was used as a framework.

Scenario planning approach requires inputs from an advisory group to create scenario drivers. As inputs, the presidents’ SONA speeches were used in this study while the researchers assumed the role of scenario thinkers. The speeches were downloaded and imported into a qualitative data software. Through a series of text search with regard to strategic directions and action programmes on tourism, underlying statements were subjected to content analysis to create nodes. The nodes were used as the basis in creating scenario drivers, which became the basis in creating the model. The models underwent the following validation procedures: researcher, concept and literature review.

Based on the data, there are three identified major drivers of the present and future of Philippine tourism; these are tourism policy, tourism development and prospects for the future (temporal element). It also indicates tourism development and temporal element as dominant, with very few on tourism policies. By combining the tourism policy and tourism development, the development of the tourism policy and development confluence model was created. Meanwhile, the addition of the temporal element provided a third scenario driver that led to the creation of the dimensions of tourism policy and development scenarios.

The developed model can be adapted to many contexts that extend even outside of tourism. The public tourism offices, such as the department of tourism and the regional, provincial, city and municipal tourism offices, can use the model to help them prioritise tourism development programmes and lobby for tourism policy creation.

The model will significantly assist decision-makers and policymakers to be conscious in crafting and enacting their tourism plans and programmes. It presents tourism policy and tourism development as scenario drivers that are interrelated; hence, a mutual relationship between the executive and legislative sectors of the government can be expected.

The study positions its originality and value in three areas: scenario planning, tourism future and president’s interest in tourism. In terms of scenario planning, the study was able to present interaction among three scenario drivers compared to most models that only have two. In the area of tourism future studies, this study claims that qualitative historical data can also be used to predict future scenarios. Despite the limited literature examining the tourism interest of the top-level administration, using speeches made by head of state is found plausible to predict the future of Philippine tourism.

Transport logistics systems in companies with additional public service roles are complex and could benefit from new approaches to performance management. Existing approaches tend to be fragmented; thus, the purpose of this paper is to integrate balanced performance measures, a dynamics model, and the problem-solving method into a new model.

An integrated framework is developed by reviewing literature and synthesising attributes of performance measurement systems, system dynamics and problem-solving methods. The framework is then applied to a multiple-role company’s sea transportation system. The study uses statistical methods to identify performance indicators, management interviews with document study to develop a dynamics model, and simulation methods to formulate an improvement plan.

The performance measurement design stage allowed for the identification of balanced, aligned performance indicators, while the system dynamics model illuminated the impact of the system components’ interrelationships on performance output. The problem-solving method allowed for analysis of system performance, identification of constraints and formulation of a performance improvement plan.

This framework can help transport logistics system stakeholders in multiple-role companies avoid silo thinking, misaligned performance objectives, local optima and short-term solutions.

This study contributes to the existing body of research by introducing a novel framework integrating performance measurement, system dynamics and the problem-solving method. It also addresses a theoretical gap by showing how interconnecting components of sea transportation systems affect transport logistics performance.

This study aimed to provide an exploratory analysis of digitalization processes in small professional service firms (SPSFs) by examining their main drivers and barriers and their impact on customer management practices, considering the intra-organizational, inter-organizational and service offering dimensions.

This study adopted a qualitative, exploratory and inductive research methodology based on in-depth interviews with 19 owners or consultants of small tax/accounting firms, focusing on the role of digitalization in their internal and external processes.

The findings reveal external and internal barriers to and drivers of digitalization, as well as its effects on customer management practices. They also reveal the emergence of tensions related to the intra-organizational, inter-organizational and service offering dimensions.

This work contributes to the research on the role of digital technologies in the professional service sector, with a focus on SPSFs, which has thus far received limited attention. This research highlights the complexity of combining increasingly standardized processes and services with the need to maintain flexibility and informality in internal and external interactions.