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A semiparametric stochastic frontier model is proposed for panel data, incorporating several flexible features. First, a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production frontier is considered without log-transformation to prevent induced non-negligible estimation bias. Second, the model flexibility is improved via semiparameterization, where the technology is an unknown function of a set of environment variables. The technology function accounts for latent heterogeneity across individual units, which can be freely correlated with inputs, environment variables, and/or inefficiency determinants. Furthermore, the technology function incorporates a single-index structure to circumvent the curse of dimensionality. Third, distributional assumptions are eschewed on both stochastic noise and inefficiency for model identification. Instead, only the conditional mean of the inefficiency is assumed, which depends on related determinants with a wide range of choice, via a positive parametric function. As a result, technical efficiency is constructed without relying on an assumed distribution on composite error. The model provides flexible structures on both the production frontier and inefficiency, thereby alleviating the risk of model misspecification in production and efficiency analysis. The estimator involves a series based nonlinear least squares estimation for the unknown parameters and a kernel based local estimation for the technology function. Promising finite-sample performance is demonstrated through simulations, and the model is applied to investigate productive efficiency among OECD countries from 1970–2019.

Following the increasing trend of artificial intelligence (AI) research in hospitality literature, this critical reflection paper aims to identify AI-assisted mindfulness as a critical yet under-investigated issue and to contribute feasible directions for future research.

The authors first conceptualize a framework explaining the effects of mindfulness design in AI interventions on improving human mindfulness. The authors then identify opportunities for interventions in AI-assisted mindfulness for the tourism, hospitality and events industries. Finally, the authors propose potential themes for AI-assisted mindfulness research.

This study contributes three major conceptual works. First, we conceptualize a framework of AI-assisted mindfulness, showcasing that the scope of AI-assisted mindfulness spans from AI interventions to state mindfulness and then to trait mindfulness. Second, the authors offer two approaches to strategic thinking, one from mindfulness (i.e. mindfulness-focused niche markets and activities) and one from AI applications (i.e. AI-facilitated devices and platforms), to identify opportunities for AI-assisted mindfulness interventions. Third, for both management- and marketing-oriented AI-assisted mindfulness research, the authors propose 18 themes.

This critical reflection paper offers directions for future knowledge creation in AI-assisted mindfulness in the tourism, hospitality and events industries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this critical reflection paper serves as the first in hospitality and tourism literature to systematically propose the research issue of AI-assisted mindfulness, offering directions and themes for future research.

This study explores the intricate relationship between inventory leanness, financial constraints and digital transformation in listed Chinese manufacturing firms.

Using a large panel data collected from 2,563 Chinese listed manufacturing enterprises over the period from 2012 to 2021, this research employs the instrumental variable method combined with two-stage least squares estimators to explore the U- shaped relationship between inventory leanness and financial constraints. Furthermore, the moderating role of digital transformation is demonstrated.

Contrary to traditional assumptions, our research uncovers a U-shaped relationship between inventory leanness and financial constraints, indicating that excessive inventory reduction can exacerbate financial constraints. Digital transformation plays a significant moderating role, particularly in highly digitalized environments.

Our findings have practical significance for top managers and policymakers. We advocate for a balanced approach to lean inventory management to mitigating financial constraints. The study emphasizes the pivotal role of digital transformation in alleviating the impact of inventory leanness on financial constraints, highlighting the need for digital transformation strategies.

This research provides a comprehensive analysis of inventory leanness, financial constraints and digital transformation dynamics. It challenges conventional thinking by revealing the nonlinear nature of the inventory leanness–financial constraints relationship. The concept of moderation highlights the moderating effect of digital transformation. This study offers practical guidance for practitioners and policymakers.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the environmental efficiency level and trend of the transportation sector in the upper–mid–downstream of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the JingJinJi region in China and assess the effectiveness of policies for protecting the low-carbon environment.

This study uses the meta-frontier slack-based measure (SBM) approach to evaluate environmental efficiency, which targets and classifies specific regions into regional groups. First, this study employs the SBM with the undesirable outputs to construct the environmental efficiency measurement models of the four regions under the meta-frontier and group frontiers, respectively. Then, this study uses the technology gap ratio to evaluate the gap between the group frontier and the meta-frontier.

The analysis reveals several key findings: (1) the JingJinJi region and the downstream of the YEB had achieved the overall optimal production technology in transportation than the other two regions; (2) significant technology gaps in environmental efficiency were observed among these four regions in China; and (3) the downstream region of the YEB exhibited the lowest levels of energy consumption and excessive CO₂ emissions.

To evaluate the differences in environmental efficiency resulting from regions and technological gaps in transportation, this study employs the meta-frontier model, which overcomes the limitation of traditional environmental efficiency methods. Furthermore, in the practical, the study provides the advantage of observing the disparities in transportation efficiency performed by the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei regions.

This study investigates the relationship between leaders’ collectivist orientation and employees’ innovative behavior, as well as the mediating effects of employees’ collectivist orientation and servant leadership.

Based on a survey of 40 leaders and 219 employees in 12 technologically innovative enterprises in Jiangsu Province, China, a hierarchical linear modeling is used.

The results show that leaders’ collectivist orientation significantly positively affects employees’ innovative behavior. Moreover, leaders’ collectivist orientation significantly positively affects employees’ collectivist orientation/servant leadership, employees’ collectivist orientation/servant leadership significantly positively affects employees’ innovative behavior, and employees’ collectivist orientation/servant leadership partially mediates the relationship between leaders’ collectivist orientation and employees’ innovative behavior.

In response to the lack of research on the relationship between leadership cultural orientation and employees’ innovative behavior, this study sheds light on the effectiveness and mechanism of the influence of leaders’ collectivist orientation on employees’ innovative behavior, thus expanding and deepening the boundaries of theoretical research on leadership, culture and innovation management.

In complex environments, a spherical robot has great application value. When the pendulum spherical robot is stopped or disturbed, there will be a periodic oscillation. This situation will seriously affect the stability of the spherical robot. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a control method based on backstepping and disturbance observers for oscillation suppression.

This paper analyzes the mechanism of oscillation. The oscillation model of the spherical robot is constructed and the relationship between the oscillation and the internal structure of the sphere is analyzed. Based on the oscillation model, the authors design the oscillation suppression control of the spherical robot using the backstepping method. At the same time, a disturbance observer is added to suppress the disturbance.

It is found that the control system based on backstepping and disturbance observer is simple and efficient for nonlinear models. Compared with the PID controller commonly used in engineering, this control method has a better control effect.

The proposed method can provide a reliable and effective stability scheme for spherical robots. The problem of instability in real motion is solved.

In this paper, the oscillation model of a spherical robot is innovatively constructed. Second, a new backstepping control method combined with a disturbance observer for the spherical robot is proposed to suppress the oscillation.

This study aims to examine the role of mindfulness in promoting customers’ purchase intentions, especially with the mediation effects of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness toward online ride-hailing services. As such, several recommendations for ride-hailing service providers and researchers are suggested for better implementation in a practical and theoretical context.

The data collection process is carried out online during the period of February 2022 to March 2022, with a sample of 237 respondents being analyzed by the covariance-based structural equation modeling approach.

First of all, mindfulness had a direct influence on perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, as well as an indirect influence on purchase intention through the mediation role of perceived usefulness. Besides, perceived usefulness is found to have a positive influence on the customer’s purchase intention, while perceived ease of use positively affects both perceived usefulness and intention.

This study just ends with customers’ intentions to adopt ride-hailing services; nevertheless, the actual behavior has not been examined. Further research might consider actual usage as a dependent factor when investigating the topic of ride-hailing services.

This study is notably different from the existing literature by filling the literature gap on the role of mindfulness in promoting customers’ purchase intentions toward ride-hailing services.

Este estudio tiene como objetivo examinar el papel del mindfulness en la promoción de las intenciones de compra de los clientes, especialmente con los efectos de mediación de la facilidad de uso percibida y la utilidad percibida hacia los servicios de transporte en línea. De este modo, se sugieren varias recomendaciones para los proveedores de servicios de transporte en coche y los investigadores para una mejor aplicación en un contexto práctico y teórico.

El proceso de recopilación de datos se lleva a cabo en línea durante el período de febrero de 2022 a marzo de 2022, con una muestra de 237 encuestados que se analizan mediante el enfoque CB-SEM.

En primer lugar, mindfulness tuvo una influencia directa sobre la facilidad de uso percibida y la utilidad percibida, así como una influencia indirecta sobre la intención de compra a través del papel de mediación de la utilidad percibida. Además, se observa que la utilidad percibida influye positivamente en la intención de compra del cliente, mientras que la facilidad de uso percibida afecta positivamente tanto a la utilidad percibida como a la intención.

Este estudio se limita a analizar la intención de los clientes de adoptar los servicios de transporte rápido; sin embargo, no se ha examinado el comportamiento real. En futuras investigaciones se podría considerar el uso real como un factor dependiente a la hora de investigar el tema de los servicios de transporte rápido.

Este estudio es notablemente diferente de la literatura existente al llenar el vacío bibliográfico sobre el papel de mindfulness en la promoción de las intenciones de compra de los clientes hacia los servicios de ride-hailing.

本研究旨在探讨 “正念 “在促进顾客购买意向方面的作用, 尤其是在感知易用性和感知有用性对在线叫车服务的中介效应方面。因此, 本研究为叫车服务提供商和研究人员提出了若干建议, 以便在实践和理论背景下更好地实施这些建议。

数据收集过程于 2022 年 2 月至 2022 年 3 月期间在线进行, 采用 CB-SEM 方法对 237 个受访者样本进行分析。

首先, 正念对感知易用性和感知有用性有直接影响, 并通过感知有用性的中介作用对购买意向产生间接影响。此外, 还发现感知有用性对顾客的购买意向有积极影响, 而感知易用性对感知有用性和购买意向都有积极影响。

本研究仅对顾客采用打车服务的意向进行了分析, 但并未对实际行为进行研究。在研究叫车服务时, 进一步的研究可能会将实际使用情况作为一个因果因素。

独创性 本研究填补了关于正念在促进顾客乘车服务购买意向方面作用的文献空白, 与现有文献有明显不同。

The importance of service firms cooperating with digital platforms is widely acknowledged. The authors study three contractual relationships (fixed-cost, cost-sharing, and profit-sharing) between service firms (specifically hotels) and digital platforms in a highly fragmented service supply chain to examine which of these contract types optimizes profits.

The authors extend prior models analyzing the optimal expected total profit from the travel service firm (hotel)–digital platform relationship, providing new insights into each contract type’s ability to coordinate decentralized systems and optimize profits for both parties.

This study finds that fixed cost contracts cannot coordinate the decentralized system. Cost-sharing contracts can coordinate the decentralized system but only allow one channel profit split. In contrast, profit-sharing contracts may not always perfectly coordinate the decentralized system but support alternative profit allocations. Practically, both profit-sharing and cost-sharing contracts are preferable to fixed-cost contracts.

The paper includes implications for travel service firm managers to consider when structuring contracts with digital platforms to focus on profit optimization. Profit-sharing contracts are most preferable when cost and revenue data are fully shared between parties, while cost-sharing contracts are preferable over fixed-cost contracts.

This study extends prior investigations into the utility of different contract types on the optimal profit of a travel service firm (hotel)-digital platform provider relationship. The research fills a gap in the literature concerning the contracts used in these relationship types.

The purpose of this paper Computing is a recent emerging cloud model that affords clients limitless facilities, lowers the rate of customer storing and computation and progresses the ease of use, leading to a surge in the number of enterprises and individuals storing data in the cloud. Cloud services are used by various organizations (education, medical and commercial) to store their data. In the health-care industry, for example, patient medical data is outsourced to a cloud server. Instead of relying onmedical service providers, clients can access theirmedical data over the cloud.

This section explains the proposed cloud-based health-care system for secure data storage and access control called hash-based ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption with signature (hCP-ABES). It provides access control with finer granularity, security, authentication and user confidentiality of medical data. It enhances ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) with hashing, encryption and signature. The proposed architecture includes protection mechanisms to guarantee that health-care and medical information can be securely exchanged between health systems via the cloud. Figure 2 depicts the proposed work's architectural design.

For health-care-related applications, safe contact with common documents hosted on a cloud server is becoming increasingly important. However, there are numerous constraints to designing an effective and safe data access method, including cloud server performance, a high number of data users and various security requirements. This work adds hashing and signature to the classic CP-ABE technique. It protects the confidentiality of health-care data while also allowing for fine-grained access control. According to an analysis of security needs, this work fulfills the privacy and integrity of health information using federated learning.

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology and smart diagnostic implants have enhanced health-care systems by allowing for remote access and screening of patients’ health issues at any time and from any location. Medical IoT devices monitor patients’ health status and combine this information into medical records, which are then transferred to the cloud and viewed by health providers for decision-making. However, when it comes to information transfer, the security and secrecy of electronic health records become a major concern. This work offers effective data storage and access control for a smart healthcare system to protect confidentiality. CP-ABE ensures data confidentiality and also allows control on data access at a finer level. Furthermore, it allows owners to set up a dynamic patients health data sharing policy under the cloud layer. hCP-ABES proposed fine-grained data access, security, authentication and user privacy of medical data. This paper enhances CP-ABE with hashing, encryption and signature. The proposed method has been evaluated, and the results signify that the proposed hCP-ABES is feasible compared to other access control schemes using federated learning.

The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ attitudes, self-efficacy and emotional behaviour associated with online learning and the effectiveness of online learning.

A research model was formulated and analysed with the structural equation modelling technique. The respondents consist of 843 students pursuing their studies at a private university’s foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A two-step systematic approach was used using the SmartPLS version 3 software to conduct statistical analysis and draw meaningful insights.

The study’s findings have demonstrated that students’ attitudes and self-efficacy exhibit a positive relationship with online learning behaviour (OLB). It is observed that the students’ emotions are related to online learning effectiveness (OLE) and mediate the relationship between OLB and OLE. Furthermore, OLB partially mediates the relationship between attitude and OLE and between self-efficacy and OLE.

The operational instructions and digital resources have proven to be highly effective in providing valuable learning experiences to the students. As a result, the students are now expanding and applying their new encounters to a broader range of learning opportunities. This study has provided valuable insights for stakeholders, including scholars, higher education institutions and the Ministry of Higher Education, in providing the ideas of online learning or Web-based education.

The originality of this study sheds light on the role of OLB as a mediator. It was underlined that emotion is critical in improving students’ OLE. Thus, students’ attitudes and self-efficacy have been essential in reassuring OLB and enhancing OLE.