Socio-economic Planning Sciences最新文献

This paper constructs a new and proposes a novel hybrid model combining multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model and variability for multi-periods as well as the approaches to select the best specific hybrid model. A case study based on 17 RBCs in three provinces of southwest of China for 2012–2020 indicates that the transformation efficiency of most RBCs is between 0.400 and 0.600. More specifically, 12 out of 17 RBCs have a positive variability direction with the biggest variability value less than 0.039. Sichuan has an obvious downward trend with a decreased rate of 9.13%, while Yunnan and Guizhou increase by 10.50% and 6.43%, respectively. The transformation efficiency of mature cities is the worst, while the only recession city is the best. The transformation efficiency of RBCs has the highest correlation with the freight volume, other indicators including unemployment rate, ratio of GDP growth, fiscal revenue, average annual population and unemployment rate are high correlation with the transformation efficiency.

This paper examines the association between pro-environmental consumption and subjective well-being and tests whether this type of decision could be explained as a utility-maximizing choice under welfare economics, or it is subject to systematic deviations from rational choice. The literature provides evidence for positive and significant effects of pro-environmental consumption on subjective well-being; however, studies describing this relationship and drawing comparisons based on specific dimensions are limited. Here we try to fill the gap by proposing two composite indicators, representing preferences for pro-environmental behaviour in different dimensions. The indicator “proactive behaviour” encompasses the consumption of products with better environmental efficiency, while the indicator “avoidance behaviour” pertains to sustainable choices that involve avoiding – or less frequently engaging in – consumption decisions with negative ecological externalities. The findings, based on data from the Aspects of Daily Life survey conducted in Italy by ISTAT, provide that the former has a stronger effect on subjective well-being compared to the latter. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that environmental satisfaction negatively moderates the relationship between sustainable consumption and life satisfaction.

Under the influence of geopolitical conflicts, extreme weather, and other factors, global food security has been severely impacted. Cultivated land ecological security in China is vital for guaranteeing local food security and sustainable development. Therefore, using provincial data from 2003 to 2020, this research establishes an index system based on the pressure-state-response (PSR) model and assesses its cultivated land ecological security via the entropy weight method. A series of measurements such as Dagum's Gini coefficient and spatial Markov chain are then adopted to reveal changes in regional differences and spatial-temporal characteristics of cultivated land ecological security in China. The findings indicate that this ecological security has risen from insecure to critically secure, but the overall gap has gradually widened, mainly stemming from interregional differences. Cultivated land ecological security exhibits positive spatial clustering characteristics and the phenomenon of club convergence. The amount of water resources, the degree of soil erosion control, and the strength of local financial expenditure on agriculture are the main factors hindering its cultivated land ecological security, and the threats mainly come from the response criterion layer. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen measures for cropland ecological protection, to formulate targeted strategies by combining the regional characteristics, to narrow the intra-regional gap, and to bring into play the spatial radiation effect of high-level provinces.

In this study, we used principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the data and used a hierarchical and K-means clustering technique to stratify counties in Kenya into five clusters. The grouped counties were then projected onto a geographic map to understand the relationship between their location and socioeconomic and health indicators. The results obtained may be useful to the county and state governments in future plans to promote inclusive and sustainable economic development.

High-speed railways play a crucial role in intercity transportation, shaping the spatial interactions within urban agglomerations. However, a mismatch between transportation clusters and the spatial structure of urban agglomerations hampers regional economic integration. To address this issue, this paper proposes a community classification model, employing the Louvain algorithm, to analyze the aggregation of high-speed railway networks (HSRN). It compares central cities in city clusters with HSRN communities in relevant areas, examining the influence of central cities on urban agglomerations. The model is applied to a case study of China's high-speed railway network. The community classifications of HSRN are then compared with planned or future urban agglomerations at the national, provincial, and civic levels. The findings reveal that HSRN in China exhibits distinct clusters that align with the distribution of urban agglomerations. The existing central cities within these agglomerations provide good service levels in the HSRN network. However, HSRN communities within each urban agglomeration are overly scattered and should be integrated to reduce accessibility inequalities. This study offers suggestions for the development planning of HSRN and contributes to the economic integration of urban agglomerations.

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and storms cause numerous human casualties and economic losses every year. Emergency supply pre-positioning and victim evacuation, as two important emergency relief operations, tend to be separately considered in the literature. However, there are intrinsic correlations between the two operations in reality, which calls for an integrated planning of emergency supply pre-positioning and victim evacuation. In this study, we propose a stochastic programming model to optimize, in an integrated way, the deployment of emergency facilities, pre-stocking and distribution of emergency supplies and management of self-evacuated victims under two planning goals, namely cost effectiveness and evacuation fairness. We also formulate four comparison models to highlight the benefits of our integrated planning model. With a case study on the development of an emergency preparedness and response plan in Sichuan Province, China, we not only demonstrate the effectiveness and benefits of our approach but also obtain key managerial insights and policy suggestions for better emergency management practice.

Given the significance of technology to enhance public transit services and its potential for improving access to and the delivery of transportation services, this paper addresses strategic neighborhood mobility improvements to aid the transportation-disadvantaged. A spatial optimization model is presented to identify underserved areas for which transit can be better tailored to meet their mobility needs. The introduction of mobility-on-demand in the Cincinnati metropolitan area to augment and complement existing fixed-route transit is reported. The use of spatial analytics to support targeted neighborhood system design is detailed. The study illustrates how new mobility-on-demand services will substantially enhance travel options for the transport disadvantaged. Further, the use of spatial analytics offers insights for transit service plan development and implementation by more precisely targeting mobility needs in service area delineation and operationalization.

The growing prominence of public–private partnerships featuring concessions has become a focal point in the management realm. Concession agreements, often spanning numerous years, imbue projects with continuity and stability. Through the theory of neo-institutionalism, we analyse the influence of formal and informal institutions on the duration of these projects across diverse countries, showing the pivotal role played by the institutional environment and consensus mechanisms in ensuring the success of such collaborative endeavours. The findings furnish valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers by facilitating the identification of optimal conditions to establish enduring and highly effective concession agreements.

In recent times, as markets undergo rapid evolution, agriculture systems encounter multifaceted challenges and require vibrant critical success factors (CSFs) to enhance productivity, efficiency, and performance. This study aims to examine entrepreneurship-based CSFs and uncover how they impact on Chinese agriculture systems. We identified and prioritized 12 CSFs among a pool of 18 CSFs using the Delphi method. Drawing on a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art literature and validated by expert opinions, we collected six Chinese-listed agriculture firms sample. Subsequently to analyze our data, we employed multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA), and additive ratio assessment (ARAS), utilizing Lingo V.18 and MATLAB. Results suggest that entrepreneurial mindset (coefficient weight >0.97), farmer entrepreneurial awareness (coefficient weight >0.87), and entrepreneurial technology transfer (coefficient weight >0.84) are symbiotic and significantly impact the growth and development of Chinese agriculture system. Moreover, this study provides timely policy recommendations by unveiling the identified CSFs, offering new strategies poised to foster socio-economic growth and development in Chinese rural regions.

Determining the asymptotic distribution of the estimator for parameters of interest when employing complex sampling designs is a methodological issue of extreme importance. This paper addresses the problem of determining the asymptotic distribution of the vector of sample proportions when the survey questionnaire employs multiple-choice questions, as often done in service quality evaluations. Specifically, we consider a stratified sampling design where units within each stratum are selected without replacement, and the multivariate random variable from which the sample is drawn follows a multivariate Bernoulli distribution. The main goal is to obtain a valid asymptotic result under the specific conditions imposed by this design, so as to make statistical inference about the vector of specific parameters of interest, such as the proportion of responses assigned to each subdimension considered in the survey questionnaire.