Information and Knowledge as Antecedents of Consumer Attitudes and Intentions to Buy and Recommend Fair-Trade Products

The authors propose and empirically test a causal model to understand how the availability of fair-trade information and consumer knowledge about this issue affect consumers’ attitudes and intentions toward fair-trade products. The model is built upon the attitude-behavior paradigm and the premises of agency theory. It is tested through structural equation modeling with a sample of 292 Spanish consumers. The findings are that consumers do not have good knowledge about fair trade and that this is significantly determined by the lack of information about this in the market. It is also observed that consumers’ perceptions about the availability of fair-trade information have negative effects on their concern about this issue and that such information as is available is not effective in reducing consumer skepticism. The research represents an extension of previous fair-trade literature because the role of information and communication in improving consumer attitudes and buying intentions has rarely been explored in the case of ethical products.     

基于改进Transformer模型的文本摘要生成方法

传统的文本摘要方法，如基于循环神经网络和Encoder-Decoder框架构建的摘要生成模型等，在生成文本摘要时存在并行能力不足或长期依赖的性能缺陷，以及文本摘要生成的准确率和流畅度的问题。对此，提出了一种动态词嵌入摘要生成方法。该方法基于改进的Transformer模型，在文本预处理阶段引入先验知识，将ELMo(Embeddings from Language Models)动态词向量作为训练文本的词表征，结合此词对应当句的文本句向量拼接生成输入文本矩阵，将文本矩阵输入到Encoder生成固定长度的文本向量表达，然后通过Decoder将此向量表达解码生成目标文本摘要。实验采用Rouge值作为摘要的评测指标，与其他方法进行的对比实验结果表明，所提方法所生成的文本摘要的准确率和流畅度更高。     

Machine learning for financial transaction classification across companies using character-level word embeddings of text fields

An important initial step in accounting is mapping financial transfers to the corresponding accounts. We devised machine-learning-based systems that automate this process. They use word embeddings with character-level features to process transaction texts. When considering 473 companies independently, our approach achieved an average top-1 accuracy of 80.50%, outperforming baselines that exclude the transaction texts or rely on a lexical bag-of-words text representation. We extended the approach to generalizes across companies and even across different corporate sectors. After standardization of the account structures and careful feature engineering, a single classifier trained on 44 companies from 28 sectors achieved a test accuracy of more than 80%. When trained on 43 companies and tested on the remaining one, the system achieved an average performance of 64.62%. This rate increased to nearly 70% when considering only the largest sector.     

Perceived hygiene attributes in the hotel industry: customer retention amid the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a crisis in the hotel industry worldwide, but few studies have suggested methods to retain customers. This study proposes hygiene management as a means to minimize the indirect damage from COVID-19 to the hotel industry. It identifies perceived hygiene attributes and explores their influence on hotel image, word of mouth, and revisit intentions. This study identifies and validates three types of perceived hygiene attributes through qualitative and quantitative methods. It uses structural equation modeling to validate hypotheses and concludes that there are significant relationships of influence between the proposed variables. This study provides important and meaningful insights into hotel image and customer behavior through perceived hygiene attributes.     

风险投资异质性与政府补贴创新效应——“锦上添花”还是“画蛇添足”?

在中国实现“创新大国”转向“创新强国”的政策背景下，增强企业创新需要政府和风险资本市场的积极支持。本文采取多元回归分析方法，以2009—2016年中国554家创业板上市公司为样本，研究政府补贴对企业创新“数量”和“质量”的影响。结果显示：政府补贴对企业创新“数量”和“质量”均有显著的促进作用；创新数量在政府补贴对创新质量的影响中起部分中介效应。进一步研究发现，风险投资异质性对政府补贴创新效应具有显著调节作用，其中风险投资的参与会减弱政府补贴对创新质量的正向影响，是“画蛇添足”的行为；国有背景风险投资的参与能显著增强政府补贴对创新质量的正向影响，是“锦上添花”的行为。本文拓展了政府补贴对企业创新影响的研究，丰富了宏观经济政策与微观企业行为的相关文献。本文的研究结论为理性认识国家创新驱动发展战略背景下政府补贴的创新效应，充分发挥风险资本市场的积极效应，实现政府和市场的双重驱动提供了经验证据。     

Contrasting user generated videos versus brand generated videos in ecommerce

This empirical research (n = 177) compared the impact of user generated videos and brand generated videos on online shopper perceptions, attitudes and purchase intentions. The study was guided by the technology acceptance model. Source of videos was a between-subjects factor. The findings indicated that online shoppers did not differentiate between the two video sources when evaluating the perceived usefulness of the videos. Conversely, user generated videos had a significantly greater impact on attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand than brand generated videos. Further, there was no significant main effect of video source on shopper purchase intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

政府补助企业的主要动机研究——基于我国A股上市公司面板数据的实证检验

上市公司获得的政府补助数额巨大且逐年增长，引起了广泛的质疑，而现有研究对政府补助企业的动机尚无一致的结论。基于理性经济人理论，考虑制度更改和环境变化的影响，以2007—2015年我国上市公司为研究样本，实证检验政府补助企业的主要动机，结果表明：政府补助企业的主要动机在于扩大就业和帮助上市公司“保牌”，最终目的是促进经济的增长；而增加税收和帮助上市公司达到配股要求不是政府补助企业主要考虑的因素，也没有明显证据证明国有企业比民营企业更容易获得政府补助。应完善资本市场退市制度，加强对政府补助的审批和监管，提高政府补助的资源配置效率，并积极引导政府补助发挥更好的社会效益。     

浅析工程资料在建筑工程预结算中的作用

编制工程预结算中一个重要的依据来源就是工程资料,它直接影响着此项编制工作的质量。文章对工程资料包含的几个方面进行分析,探讨了工程资料的重要性以及编制要求,供相关工程技术人员参考。     

Trade-off relationship between modern agriculture and biodiversity: Heavy consolidation work has a long-term negative impact on plant species diversity

Human-driven land-use changes often cause a decline in biodiversity. Although traditional agricultural practices maintained biodiversity at high levels, recent land-use changes may have negative consequences on species composition. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that land consolidation, which is a major recent land-use change in agricultural areas, decreases plant species diversity over the long term (the so-called negative legacy). To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationships between consolidated areas and the occurrence of threatened plant species across Japan and at the prefecture scale. Twenty-three threatened plant species were selected, all of which were formerly common. Our results show that areas containing records of threatened plant species rarely experienced consolidation at whole-country and prefectural scales. Breakdown analysis showed that unconsolidated agricultural areas contained significantly more threatened species than consolidated agricultural areas. These results suggest that threatened plant species require unconsolidated agricultural areas (i.e., these species could not grow in consolidated areas). Thus, we propose that consolidation history could be used as an indicator of the potential for biodiversity recovery. We also suggest that consolidated agricultural areas should be used for food production rather than for the restoration of biodiversity, for reasons of cost efficiency.     

Responding to negative online reviews: The effects of hotel responses on customer inferences of trust and concern

Our research examines the perceptions and evaluations of prospective customers toward an online negative review and any accompanying hotel response. The study explores two main issues: whether the presence (versus absence) of an organizational response to negative customer reviews affects the inferences potential consumers draw about the target business, and which aspects of responses affect their impressions. We test the effects of four variables associated with a response: source of response, voice of responder, speed of response, and action frame on two outcomes variables (i.e., customer concern and trust inferences). The provision of an online response (versus no response) enhanced inferences that potential consumers draw regarding the business's trustworthiness and the extent to which it cares about its customers. Using a human voice and a timely response yielded favorable customer inferences. Inferences did not vary with response source or action frame. Implications are drawn for effective management of negative online reviews.