Unraveling the interplay of review depth,review breadth,and review language style on review usefulness and review adoption

To examine whether long reviews are uniformly more useful to readers, this study utilizes the experimental design approach to investigate the interplay of review depth, review breadth, and review language style on readers’ perceived usefulness and adoption intention of online hotel reviews. Drawing on the results from two experiments, review depth is proven to exert a positive impact on readers’ review usefulness and adoption intention. The moderating role of review breadth is verified, and the positive effect of review depth on review usefulness is attenuated (accentuated) when review breadth is high (low). The moderating role of review language style is also confirmed, and the result shows longer reviews written in literal language are considered more useful to readers than those written in figurative language. Being one of the first studies examining the interplay of review content and review style on review usefulness, this study provides important theoretical and practical contributions.     

How power distance belief,self-construal,and relationship norms impact conspicuous consumption

Building on the idea that luxury products can signal the owner's status to others, this research elucidates how fundamental and pervasive social factors—power distance belief (PDB), self-construal, and relationship norms—dynamically impact consumers' preferences for conspicuous consumption. Through three experiments, we found that (1) high-PDB consumers are more likely to prefer conspicuous consumption compared to low-PDB consumers, and this effect is mediated by their need for status; (2) the relationship between PDB and conspicuous consumption is enhanced under interdependent self-construal, attenuated under independent self-construal, and mediated by consumers' need for status; (3) these effects are moderated by relationship norms, such that the positive effect of PDB on conspicuous consumption under interdependent self-construal is attenuated when communal relationships (vs. exchange relationships) are salient. Our conceptualization and findings contribute to the literature on the dynamics of individuals' status-related behavior in social psychology and related fields, and provide important practical applications for luxury businesses.     

Direct intervention or indirect support? The effects of cooperative control measures on farmers’ implementation of quality and safety standards

In recent years, labor-intensive agricultural products from developing countries have exhibited inferior performance in international trade due to quality and safety incidents, among which pesticide residue is a major issue. Aiming to improve food quality and safety in the context of cooperatives, we introduced three categories of control measures: outcome control, process control and social control. Based on the Pre-Harvest Interval Standard (PHIS), we selected three indices, farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance to PHIS and relative distance to PHIS, to evaluate appropriateness of pesticides use, reduction of pesticide residue and safety improvements of agricultural products. By using random sampling survey data, we empirically analyzed the marginal effects of control measures and their combinations on food quality and safety standards. The empirical results show that implementing process control, namely, unified production standards or supply of unified agricultural inputs, can comprehensively improve farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance and relative distance to PHIS respectively by 34.9%, 3.2 days and 46.0% on average. While the effects of outcome control (safety inspection) and social control (bonus-penalty incentive or training) are restricted to other measures. Therefore, we suggest cooperatives should take farmers’ features, implementation conditions and the effects of control measures into consideration in order to make a sustainable management plan for improving food quality and safety and enhancing competitiveness in international markets.     

When empathy prevents negative reviewing behavior

Previous research has found that peer-to-peer platforms have overly positive reviews. Guided by Construal Level Theory, this research investigates the relationship between social distance, empathy, and tourists’ intention to leave negative online reviews. The first study is a qualitative analysis which compares peer-to-peer settings (i.e., Airbnb) to institutional ones (i.e., Booking.com), and explores whether social closeness hinders tourists’ willingness to provide negative online reviews to express their poor experiences. The second and third study are laboratory studies which show that the mechanism behind reviewing biases is the activation of empathy.This research offers practical implications for both traditional hospitality players, on how to activate empathy, and online platforms operators, on how to increase the reliability of their reputation systems.This article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Peer-to-peer accommodation networks, a special selection of research in this field.     

European financial crisis and bank productivity: evidence from Eastern European Countries

The paper examines the productivity levels of the largest banks operating in the Eastern European countries over the period of the ongoing European financial crisis. Specifically, the analysis covers the periods of U.S. subprime crisis, the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. By adopting a fully nonparametric framework, it provides a probabilistic version of a directional input-oriented Malmquist productivity index alongside with its main decomposition. The results from the analysis suggest that banks have faced a deterioration of their productivity levels between the examined periods. It is evident that during the initiation of European sovereign debt crisis, the banks have weakened their ability to utilize efficiently their inputs of production and their ability to realize scale economies.     

众创空间集聚的连续距离测度及影响因素分析

基于253家浙江省众创空间的微观数据，文章在运用连续距离的测度方法测算众创空间集聚水平的基础上，采用零膨胀负二项回归等方法实证分析众创空间集聚的影响机制。研究发现，众创空间的地理分布存在显著的区域差异，主要分布在杭州和宁波市辖区，选址具有明显的集聚特征。回归结果显示，区域创新能力和生态环境均对众创空间的地理集聚具有促进作用，但两者之间存在明显的替代效应；尽管不能直接促进众创空间的集聚，政策引导与创新能力之间具有较显著的互补效应。据此，文章从培育创新能力和优化创新激励等方面提出了政策建议。     

利用信道状态信息的室内定位技术

多径效应导致基于信号接收强度（RSSI）的室内定位方法精度不高，采用更细粒度的物理层信道状态信息（CSI）可以区分不同路径，提高定位精度。在已有基于CSI室内定位方法的基础上，通过改进对数距离路径损耗模型，得到CSI与传输距离的关系，并结合目标位置所测得的CSI值回归出目标与发射端的距离，最后通过三边定位法预测出目标的位置坐标。实验表明，相比基于RSSI的定位方法以及已有的基于CSI的定位方法，所提方法2 m以内的误差概率提高了将近40%和20%，有效提高了定位精度。     

面源污染视角下江西省耕地利用效率研究

[目的]在面源污染视角下考察耕地利用效率,可以为推动耕地可持续利用提供理论和参考依据。[方法]文章基于2000—2014年我国13个粮食主产省(区)耕地投入产出的面板数据,运用SBM方向性距离函数将耕地面源污染因素纳入到传统的效率分析框架,从省际比较的维度对江西省耕地利用效率进行了测度与分析。[结果]考虑面源污染因素对耕地利用效率测算产生了一定的影响;江西省耕地利用效率值呈现阶段性特征,耕地利用效率排名比较稳定,近年来排名有上升趋势;江西省耕地利用绩效一般,且与最佳实践者存在较大的差距。[结论]忽视面源污染因素的耕地利用效率评估是失真和不符合实际的,宜将面源污染因素纳入到耕地利用效率的测度框架,以此来更科学地量化评估耕地利用绩效;设计和完善相关政策,以有效控制耕地面源污染;加强与先进省(区)的交流与合作,学习其农业可持续耕作技术与管理经验,进一步推动江西省耕地产出与资源、环境协调发展。     

Comparing consumer-produced product reviews across multiple websites with sentiment classification

ABSTRACT

Online consumer reviews have been extensively studied. However, existing literature analyzing online consumer review data mostly relies on a single data source, resulting in potentially biased analytics conclusions. Many websites encourage consumers to post reviews of their purchased products, so that new consumers can evaluate these reviews for the same product across different websites to help them make purchasing decisions. Confusions often arise in this process, because there often exist substantial discrepancies in customer reviews across different retailers on the same product. Clarifying such confusions can help consumers reduce concerns to make up their mind for their purchases, therefore benefiting both consumers and retailers. Through text analytics and sentiment analysis, we comparatively examine the underlying patterns of online consumer reviews of three large retailers including Sears, Home Depot, and Best Buy for a same product. Afterward, we combine online consumer reviews from these large retailers and conduct an overall text analytics and sentiment analysis. The overall results are further compared with the results from individual retailers. The findings show that the sentiment of the online consumer reviews could vary substantially so relying on a single data source to make purchase decision is not a wise idea. Based on the results, we further devise a framework to comparatively examine and integrate multiple data sources for social media analytics of online consumer reviews. This study offers important managerial implications and identifies several new research directions for social media analytics.