Search results

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm, assimilation-accommodation mixed continuous ant colony optimization (ACACO), to improve the accuracy of Takagi-Sugeno-Kang-type fuzzy systems design.

The original N solution vectors in ACACO are sorted and categorized into three groups according to their ranks. The Research Learning scheme provides the local search capability for the best-ranked group. The Basic Learning scheme uses the ant colony optimization (ACO) technique for the worst-ranked group to approach the best solution. The operations of assimilation, accommodation, and mutation in Mutual Learning scheme are used for the middle-ranked group to exchange and accommodate the partial information between groups and, globally, search information. Only the N top-best-performance solutions are reserved after each iteration of learning.

The proposed algorithm outperforms some reported ACO algorithms for the fuzzy system design with the same number of rules. The performance comparison with various previously published neural fuzzy systems also shows its superiority even with a smaller number of fuzzy rules to those neural fuzzy systems.

Future work will consider the application of the proposed ACACO to the recurrent fuzzy network.

The originality of this work is to mix the work of the well-known psychologist Jean Piaget and the continuous ACO to propose a new population-based optimization algorithm whose superiority is demonstrated.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which central government in resource-constrained environments collaborates with local government to utilize the available resources at hand to set up 300 Digital Opportunity Centers (DOCs) in 168 remote areas in Taiwan through co-management to bricolage new resources and new capabilities, gradually bridging the urban-rural digital divide to co-create values for local development.

This study adopted an in-depth case study. The authors selected Taiwan’s DOC, the largest public information service infrastructure project in Taiwan, to explore issues related to bricolage-based resource co-management.

From the integrating relevant literature, the generic process of bricolage-based resource co-management can be inferred to consist of four major steps. Applying this body of knowledge as a theoretical lens to analyze the case of Taiwan’s DOC, a process model of bricolage-based resource co-management is inductively derived to address the research questions.

A common criticism of this methodology is its lack of generalizability since a case study cannot prove itself in a statistical sense.

This study is significant in that it provides a comprehensive and empirically supported framework. The authors hope that practitioners who face resource constraints when conducting large-scale IT projects can use the process model developed in this study as a detailed roadmap to identify the most appropriate actions and steps to undertake.

This study provides an empirically grounded framework that contributes toward addressing the lack of empirical studies in bricolage-based, resource co-management research.

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the association between Experience Use History (EUH) and types of substitution choices of hikers with the perspectives of activity involvement and place attachment. On-site surveys were distributed by systematic sampling technique to obtain a representative sample of hikers with 51% response rate. The theoretical expectation was confirmed by these data. Findings indicated that among four EUH classifications, Veterans and Visitors who perceived higher levels of activity involvement and relatively lower levels of place attachment tended to make resource substitutability, while Locals who scored highest on place attachment chose to make temporal substitutability and Beginners who scored lower on both activity involvement and place attachment were apt to make both resource and activity substitutability. Suggestions and managerial implication are further discussed.

The purpose of this article is to explore the three types of water-based recreationists' (nonmotorized, motorized, and dual participants) perception on recreation conflict as well as their use of coping mechanisms and further understand the influence of specialization level on their choice of coping mechanism. Recreationists were divided into three groups based on the concept of experience use history. Data were collected between June and September 2007 at entry of five intra-site water recreation areas with every five individuals selected. Study findings partly supported the predictive relationships. Among all three groups (motorized, nonmotorized, and dual participants), less conflict was reported for nonmotorized participants than motored participants. Moreover, the data also suggest that coping mechanisms are widely employed in outdoor recreation. Implications for future research and practice were discussed.

This case study aim to investigate the impacts of insurance agents’ positive attitude toward inappropriate product recommendations on the insurance agents’ intention to make the inappropriate product recommendations. This study further checks how the attitude and intention could be enhanced by the insurer’s manipulation of sales compensations, the agents’ perception of information asymmetry between customers and insurance agents and the insurer’s sales orientation.

Full-time insurance agents from the life insurance industry in Taiwan were surveyed. To test the hypotheses, hierarchical regression analyses were used in the study.

The main results showed that the respondents’ positive attitude toward inappropriate product recommendations was the influential predictor of the respondents’ behavioral intention. Nevertheless, the positive attitude was enhanced by the manipulation of sales compensations and the insurer’s sales orientation.

Very few studies have investigated the relationships among information asymmetry between customers and agents, management’s sales orientation, management’s manipulation of sales compensations and the problems of selling unsuitable insurance products to customers. This study may contribute to the relevant literature by discussing these issues.

Due to the rapidly increasing volume of users and products in virtual worlds, recommender systems are an important feature in virtual worlds; they can help solve information overload problems. Virtual world users are able to perform several actions that promote the enjoyment of their virtual life, including interacting with others, visiting virtual houses and shopping for virtual products. This study aims to concentrate on the following two important factors: the social neighbors’ influences and the virtual house bandwagon phenomenon, which affects users’ preferences during their virtual house visits and purchasing processes.

The authors determine social influence by considering the interactions between the target user and social circle neighbors. The degree of influence of the virtual house bandwagon effect is derived by analyzing the preferences of the virtual house hosts who have been visited by target users during their successive visits. A novel hybrid recommendation method is proposed herein to predict users’ preferences by combining the analyses of both factors.

The recommendation performance of the proposed method is evaluated by conducting experiments with a data set collected from a virtual world platform. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the conventional recommendation methods, and they also exhibit the effectiveness of considering both the social influence and the virtual house bandwagon effect for making effective recommendations.

Existing studies on recommendation methods did not investigate the virtual house bandwagon effects that are unique to the virtual worlds. The novel idea of the virtual house bandwagon effect is proposed and analyzed for predicting users’ preferences. Moreover, a novel hybrid recommendation approach is proposed herein for generating virtual product recommendations. The proposed approach is able to improve the accuracy of preference predictions and enhance the innovative value of recommender systems for virtual worlds.

This study aims to explore how social media help promote environmental education and pro-environmental behaviours by analysing how young adults access social media and traditional media to obtain environmental information differently, how environmental ideas are disseminated through social media and how people perceive and realise environmentalism.

This is a qualitative study based on a semi-structured interview with student participants. The questions used in the interview were developed by on the integrated waste reduction model by Nishio and Takeuchi (2005) and the enhanced model proposed by Ho et al. (2019).

The results indicate that young adults agree and accept that living environmentally friendly lifestyles is an important goal. Although they acquire environmental information from social media, they seldom share or interact with those social media posts. This behaviour implies that they are information receivers when dealing with such contents.

The finding of this study provides insight for stakeholders on how to promote related knowledge and encourage people to be “greener” more often and construct a friendlier atmosphere for fostering more in-depth environmental discussions on social media.

This study aims to investigate whether higher value creation leads to higher value appropriation and to identify the boundary conditions in a buyer–supplier relationship that can explain why a particular supplier can appropriate higher value than others.

The study uses questionnaire surveys. The sample of the survey has 150 publicly-listed supplier firms in Taiwan. The unit of analysis is the buyer–supplier relationship.

In the buyer–supplier relationship, suppliers’ bargaining power, partnership and a supplier’s original brand manufacturing (OBM) business can strengthen the positive relationship between value creation and value appropriation.

This study adopts the unilateral viewpoint of suppliers; however, some constructs might require dyadic evaluation. This study only explores the spillover effect of OBM business on the relationship between value creation and appropriation.

The spillover effect of a supplier’s OBM business in a buyer–supplier relationship allows the buyer to share more common benefits and the supplier to capture more private benefits as compensation. By broadening its customer base, a supplier can increase its bargaining power. A supplier can also maintain a strategic partnership with each essential buyer.

To avoid the dark-side effect of partnership, the model provides the contingency that a supplier can capture more value from a buyer–supplier relationship.