Search results

The emergence of mobile health (mHealth) products has created a capability of monitoring and managing the health of patients with chronic diseases. These mHealth technologies would not be beneficial unless they are adopted and used by their target users. This study identifies key factors affecting the usage of mHealth apps based on user usage data collected from an mHealth app.

Using a dataset collected from an mHealth app named mPower, developed for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), this paper investigated the effects of disease diagnosis, disease progression and mHealth app difficulty level on app usage, while controlling for user information. App usage is measured by five different activity counts of the app.

The results across five measures of mHealth app usage vary slightly. On average, previous professional diagnosis and high user performance scores encourage user participation and engagement, while disease progression hinders app usage.

The findings potentially provide insights into better design and promotion of mHealth products and improve the capability of health management of patients with chronic diseases.

Studies on the mHealth app usage are critical but sparse because large-scale and reliable mHealth app usage data are limited. Unlike earlier works based solely on survey data, this research used a large user usage data collected from an mHealth app to study key factors affecting app usage. The methods presented in this study can serve as a pioneering work for the design and promotion of mHealth technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the bull and bear regimes in Chinese stock market and empirically analyze the dynamic relation of Chinese stock price-volume pre- and post- the Split Share Structure Reform.

The authors investigate the price-volume relationship in the Chinese stock market before and after the Split Share Structure Reform using Shanghai Composite Index daily data from July 1994 to April 2013. Using a two-state Markov-switching autoregressive model and a modified two-state Markov-switching vector autoregression model, this study identifies bull or bear market and also examine the existence of regime-dependent Granger causality.

Using a two-state Markov-switching autoregressive model, the authors detect structural changes in the market volatility due to the reform, and find evidence of a positive rather than an asymmetric price-volume contemporaneous correlation. There is a strong dynamic Granger causal relation from stock returns to trading volume before and after the reform regardless of the market conditions, but the causal effects of volume on returns are only seen in the bear markets before the reform. The model is robust when using different stock indices and time periods.

The work is different from previous studies in the following aspects: most of the existing empirical literature focus on the well-developed economies, but our interest lies in the emerging Chinese market that has witnessed rapid growth in the past decade; in contrast to many works in the literature that examine the price-volume relationship during one market condition, the authors compare the relationship in a bull market with that in a bear market, using a two-state MS-AR model; the authors also employ a modified two-state Markov-switching vector autoregression model to examine the existence of regime-dependent Granger causality; as the most massive systematic reform for the Chinese stock market since its inception in 2005, the Split Share Structure Reform has a profound impact on the Chinese stock market, thus it is of vital importance to explore its effects on both the price-volume relationship and the market structure.

City wall is an important symbol of ancient Chinese cities with unique geographical and cultural characteristics. Thus, the preservation of this historic landmark is considered significantly important. However, numerous residential construction activities and changes in ecological environment have destructed a great portion of the city walls in recent years. This study looks into the preservation of the ancient city walls from the systematic perspective and in line with the actual characteristics of Longdong Region to provide guideline measures for the protection and restoration of such landmark. Cognition and preservation are adopted extensively to investigate the specific situation of and the factors that influence the ancient city walls in this region. Preservation strategies for the city walls, including the “Axis-Point” system, planning control, and authenticity readability, are presented. The ancient city walls in Longdong Region can be preserved by protecting the entire region, the city, and the main wall body. The systematic method and preservation strategies at the “macro perspective,” “medium perspective” and “micro perspective” levels can solve the preservation problems of the ancient city walls in Longdong Region effectively.

Urban spatial form influences the social, economic, and ecological development modes of the city. The spatial form during the urbanization of Hanjiang River Basin in Southern Shaanxi needs to be studied. In this study, research methodologies on urban spatial form in China and abroad were summarized. The concept of ecology background was applied, and the research framework for urban spatial form, which integrated the background, framework, core, axis, cluster, and skin, was established. Valley cities in the Hanjiang River Basin in Southern Shaanxi were classified into wide valley, narrow valley, and canyon cities. The spatial form characteristics of these three types of valley cities were discussed. A case study based on a typical city-Yang County-was conducted to discuss the characteristics of the aforementioned six elements of urban spatial form. Finally, spatial form characteristics were summarized. These characteristics provide a basis for the study of the small valley urban spatial form in the Hanjiang River Basin in Southern Shaanxi.

This paper investigates the causal links between financial development and economic growth in China by employing the Granger causality test within a VARECM framework. Bi‐directional causality is found between financial development and growth, suggesting that economic growth and financial development are mutually reinforcing under the open‐door policy.

Significant differences exist in terms of use and demand of urban public space in different districts and communities. In this study, PSPL survey was made in about one year to investigate the type and occurring time of outdoor activities and the visitors' demand difference of Round-City-Park in Xi'an, China. The survey method for collecting data included spatial classification, photographic recording, field observation, questionnaires and interviews. Then a new method of Virtual Typical Day (VTD) was put forward to analyze usage pattern of public space in the daily life. According to our results, laying out more public spaces close to residential area can make a more vigorous city. And the results also reveal that there exist some problems of uneven usage periods in different spaces, various space requirement from different age groups, insufficient support of space and facilities and so on. Based on the survey, an optimizing strategy of adaptive design is proposed such as setting mobile “stage” and providing flexible “props” according to the changing demands. The proposed design approach can encourage people to participate in outdoor activities, improve usage frequency of public spaces, and stimulate vitality of the city. This may also apply to other Chinese cities.

The purpose of this paper is to advance a proactive perspective on business exit and develop a typology of exit strategies.

This is a research paper, which builds on extant theoretical and empirical research.

Business exit, along with entry, is an integral part of corporate strategy that a firm could utilize to reshuffle its business portfolio and embrace new opportunities. In today’s changing environment characterized by high uncertainty and high velocity, it becomes increasingly important for firms to manage business exit deliberately and proficiently. The traditional perspective which generally perceives exits as failures or responses to failures is no longer sufficient. A proactive perspective on exit could be advanced to better inform exit research and practice. Adopting the dynamic capabilities approach, this paper develops a typology of four exit strategies – retreat, redeploy, realign, and reconfigure – and examines the essential tasks of these strategies as well as the corresponding dynamic capabilities required for their successful implementation.

The proactive perspective advanced in this paper systematically coalesces and elaborates on extant research and formally advocates the importance and feasibility of proactive exit. The typology offered not only helps integrate the dynamic capabilities approach with exit research but also helps better inform exit practice.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain the reasonable dimensioning for each part and a full-dimension model of assembly dimensions.

The relational path graph of assembly dimension, the shortest-path spanning tree of functional dimension and a revised spanning tree are established in this paper.

The proposed method can obtain reasonable dimensioning of parts and establishment of dimension model in an assembly.

The proposed method can easily realise by computer and be more suitable to automatic dimensioning and establishment of dimension model of parts.

Endogeneity is a potential threat to the validity of international marketing (IM) research. The purpose of this paper is to draw the attention of IM researchers to issues of endogeneity, to provide a comprehensive overview of the sources of endogeneity, and to discuss the statistical solutions.

The authors conduct the research in two steps. In the first step, the authors review the nature and sources of endogeneity specifically in IM research. In the second step, the authors review 60 IM papers on endogeneity published in the period 1995-2014 and assess the current practice of addressing endogeneity in the IM literature.

Sample selection bias and simultaneity are prevalent sources of endogeneity in IM research. Internationalization-performance relationship and innovation-export nexus are the two most frequently adopted models subject to potential endogeneity. Simply lagging the main independent variable is statistically flawed in dealing with endogeneity despite its popularity in IM research.

First, a careful choice and application of methods are critical when addressing endogeneity. Second, the authors suggest the employment of multiple study methods to address endogeneity robustly. Third, to prevent or solve endogeneity in structural equation modeling, researchers may either collect data on independent and dependent variables from different respondents or employ a two-stage least squares approach. Finally, it is helpful to design dedicated models to prevent proactively potential endogeneity a priori.

The contribution of this study is twofold. First, it is the first in the literature to discuss the endogeneity issue specifically in IM research. In particular, the study elaborates the origins and consequences of the three most frequently confronted types of endogeneity in IM research. Second, the authors assess the four major methods of addressing endogeneity in IM research with a systematic discussion of the literature from the last two decades. The authors offer suggestions on how to minimize endogeneity in model design and empirical implementation for future IM research.

Purpose – Emerging work on returnee entrepreneurs has done little to examine how these individuals coordinate the resources they need to exploit their opportunities. Existing research has recognized the role of context, but this has been quite limited. The chapter provides a novel analytical framework that integrates a resource orchestration perspective with recognition of the heterogeneity of context.

Design/Methodology – The authors build upon returnee entrepreneurship, strategic entrepreneurship theory, and theories relating to context and spillovers to distinguish the implications of temporal, institutional, social, and spatial dimensions of context for resource selection and coordination.

Findings – The authors identify a range of research themes relating to each context. The authors also discuss methodological issues relating to both qualitative and quantitative research.

Originality/Value – The intention is to spur further entrepreneurship, strategy, and international business research.