Reaching informed agreement in multispecialist cooperation

Very often, complex decisions must be made by a group of specialists rather than a single decision maker. To make an effective decision, the combination of the group's expertise must be brought to bear on the situation. Fusing expertise where individuals have very detailed knowledge in their own areas and much weaker understanding of others is characterized by many difficulties: (1) agents cannot communicate their expertise in an intelligible way to nonexperts because of differences in vocabulary and conceptual content; (2) the process allows for incorrect inferences; and (3) no one knows what anyone else needs to know. This impasse cannot be broken until shared mental models are developed to provide a level of agreement in evaluating alternatives needed to focus the activity of the group. This article presents a model of decision making by teams of specialists in which agents' evaluations confound expert and naive inferences in judging alternatives. A partitioning of agent knowledge into expert and naive models is proposed. The naive portion of agents' models provides both a common language and the inferential skeleton needed for the development of shared models. Communications are categorized into types of evaluation or justification based on their form and the entities they involve within the agent models. A process of model refinement is outlined, linking communications among agents to modifications of the naive/ shared portions of their models. The process of cooperative problem solving by a team of specialists is characterized as a search among alternatives in which model refinement continually alters the agents' evaluations, leading to progressively greater accuracy and more precisely directed search. The model is intended as a research tool for investigating multiagent problem solving among people and machines.     

Travel blogs on China as a destination image formation agent: A qualitative analysis using Leximancer

The Internet spreads tourism information around the world and specifically travel blogs function as an online version of word-of-mouth (eWOM). This research explored the role of blogs as a destination image formation agent for China's inbound tourism. Data were collected from 630 bloggers who wrote on two blog websites about their travels within China in 2011 and 2012. The bloggers on TravelBlog.org and TravelPod.com were mainly from English-speaking countries. Qualitative analysis using Leximancer software was applied and identified nine major textual themes and the relationships among these themes. In order of relative importance, the themes were place, Chinese, people, food, train, city, hotel, China, and students. The research indicated that international tourists tended to have positive images of China.     

Commuters route choice behaviour

The paper reports laboratory experiments with a two route choice scenario. In each session 18 subjects had to choose between a main road M and a side road S. The capacity of M was larger. Feedback was given in treatment I only on the subjects' own travel time and in treatment II on travel time for M and S. The main results are as follows:

• Mean numbers on M and S are near to pure equilibrium.

• Fluctuations persist until the end of the sessions.

• The total number of changes is significantly greater in treatment I.

• Subjects' road changes and payoffs are negatively correlated.

• A direct response mode results in more changes for bad payoffs whereas a contrary response mode shows opposite reactions.

• Simulations of an extended payoff sum learning model fits the main results of the statistical evaluation of the data.

旅游者旅游交通方式选择行为研究——以杭州城市旅游边缘区为例

根据在包括富阳、临安、萧山及余杭等区域在内的杭州城市旅游边缘区共计585份问卷的分析和处理,得到了前往杭州城市旅游边缘区游览的旅游者旅游交通方式选择的特征。同时,本文还通过问卷的分析和处理,认为前往杭州城市旅游边缘区游览的旅游者旅游交通方式选择受到旅游者年龄结构、旅游者家庭收入及其他相关因素的影响,并对此进行了分析。     

高职旅游专业人才职业素质培养研究与实践

改革开放以来,我国旅游业获得长足的发展,为国民经济建设做出了巨大的贡献。但在旅游业获得快速发展的同时,我国旅游业也面临越来越多的问题和挑战,其中最大的问题是具有较高职业素质的人才缺乏。这就要求高等职业院校要认真研究旅游职业素质的构成、培养现状,从而为旅游专业人才职业素质的培养找到有效途径。     

Macroeconomic implications of financial policy

This paper studies the effects of financial policy in a model with heterogeneous agents, incomplete markets and portfolio restrictions. For an economy calibrated to replicate key aspects of the U.S. wealth distribution, we find that the quantitative effects of financial policy are relatively small. The reason is that the households determining aggregate behavior are relatively well insured and can therefore offset the actions of the firm by modifying their portfolio allocations. However, financial policy has important effects on asset prices. Whereas a higher level of debt in the capital structure of the firm introduces more risk into the economy by increasing the volatility of the equity return, it enhances the liquidity of households by increasing the supply of bonds. In an economy with a substantial amount of heterogeneity, this last effect dominates and leverage leads to a decrease in the equity premium. This is in contrast to the findings in representative agent models, in which leverage unambiguously increases the premium through a higher equity return volatility.     

政府支农专项资金监管的博弈模型分析

通过构建不完全信息的静态和动态博弈模型对舞弊者与检查者收益函数进行了合理设计，并对二者之间的关系进行了详细分析。分析结果表明，与政府自查相比，独立第三方监管可以更好地降低检查成本，提高发现舞弊的能力和投资绩效。但不能片面重罚舞弊者或片面加大对监管者的奖惩力度，否则会使支农专项资金监管存在激励悖论。同时，应考虑检查者的学习效应，综合运用加大检查频率、持续提高检查能力、降低检查成本等措施，最终提高惠农政策的效果。     

导游人员离职影响因素分析及对策研究——以广东南湖国际旅行社为例

导游人员是旅游业的灵魂,导游人员离职率居高不下,引起业界的广泛关注。以广东南湖国际旅行社为例,在问卷调查和个案访谈的基础上分析影响导游离职的关键因素,并通过研究借鉴南湖国旅应对导游流失的策略,探讨其改进措施,为其他旅行社企业控制和改善导游人员的流失问题提供有效的对策。     

集体主义内涵嬗递式发展的动因分析

集体主义内涵的嬗递式发展有其深刻的社会基础和内外动因。它是一个以经济体制为根据、以适应社会需要为己任、以传统文化发展为依托,在保持自身历史传承性,坚持与时俱进理论品质的基础上,按照自身发展逻辑,并与实践交互作用,不断成长、成熟的过程。     

The impact of online reviews on hotel booking intentions and perception of trust

A growing reliance on the Internet as an information source when making choices about tourism products raises the need for more research into electronic word of mouth. Within a hotel context, this study explores the role of four key factors that influence perceptions of trust and consumer choice. An experimental design is used to investigate four independent variables: the target of the review (core or interpersonal); overall valence of a set of reviews (positive or negative); framing of reviews (what comes first: negative or positive information); and whether or not a consumer generated numerical rating is provided together with the written text. Consumers seem to be more influenced by early negative information, especially when the overall set of reviews is negative. However, positively framed information together with numerical rating details increases both booking intentions and consumer trust. The results suggest that consumers tend to rely on easy-to-process information, when evaluating a hotel based upon reviews. Higher levels of trust are also evident when a positively framed set of reviews focused on interpersonal service.