Hotel Corporate Social Responsibility: Guest Satisfaction, and Repeat Purchase Intention in China's Domestic Hotel Market

The fast development of China’s economy in the past two decades has created a series of CSR related problems, for instance, customer and employee rights, environmental pollution, natural resource shortage, and community relations. The effects of these issues on Chinese society have, to a degree, become a focus of a public debate aided by the emergence of the mobile Internet. Consequently corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies are being adopted by a growing number of Chinese companies, including those in the hotel sector. By adopting a composite methodology of qualitative and quantitative approaches, this thesis aims to obtain an understanding of hotel CSR policies in China from the guest’s perspective by identifying their assessments of a hotel’s CSR performance and the impacts that may follow for repeat purchasing intentions of hotel accommodation. Based on a literature review, this thesis first proposed a four dimensional CSR scale, which covers customer, environment, employee and community, and then attempted to measure how customers perceive hotel CSR policies and the relevant consequences for their future patronage of a hotel. Additionally this thesis also introduced for the first time as far as the author is aware, the concept that a guest’s familiarity with CSR is a possible determinant of future repeat patronage. Subsequently a research model was proposed to reveal the influence of hotel CSR policies determining guests’ choice of hotel. A total of 817 valid questionnaires were collected, and the dataset was analyzed by SPSS 19.0 using reliability and validity analysis, exploratory factor analysis, cluster and discriminant analysis, ANOVA, multi-approach regression analysis and structural equation modeling. The followings results were obtained. First, social demographic factors, that is gender, age, education background, occupation, income and marital status do not play significant roles in affecting customers’ purchase intention under the influence of CSR. Second, five distinct types of customers were found to have different attitudes towards hotel CSR policies, which could positively affect their satisfaction level and future purchase intention. This result showed the diversity of customers in terms of CSR, and laid a theoretical foundation for hotel marketers to offer customers customized CSR policies in order to retain guests. Third, two community related variables, namely hotels’ effort to provide local people with job opportunities and their respecting local culture and customs were found to be significant for guests’ purchase intention. Hotel managerial expertise was also found to have significance. The findings of other research that Chinese hoteliers’ efforts to create environmental friendly hotels is not a compelling reason for guests to book with a particular hotel, is also supported by this research. Fourth, hotels’ efforts to market their CSR practices or policies could potentially exert direct impact over customers’ future purchase intention by making guests aware of the importance of CSR polices if basic guest needs are being met. Last but not least, based on the results obtained from this research, suggestions for hotel management on how to enhance customers’ repeat consumption from a CSR standpoint were given, and future possible directions of similar research were also provided

Adaptively loaded IM/DD optical OFDM based on set-partitioned QAM formats

We investigate the constellation design and symbol error rate (SER) of set-partitioned (SP) quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats. Based on the SER analysis, we derive the adaptive bit and power loading algorithm for SP QAM based intensity-modulation direct-detection (IM/DD) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). We experimentally show that the proposed system significantly outperforms the conventional adaptively-loaded IM/DD OFDM and can increase the data rate from 36 Gbit/s to 42 Gbit/s in the presence of severe dispersion-induced spectral nulls after 40-km single-mode fiber. It is also shown that the adaptive algorithm greatly enhances the tolerance to fiber nonlinearity and allows for more power budget

The Research on Performance of Industrial Innovation System

The concept of industrial innovation system has been applied for explaining industrial development power. How about is operating ability and performance of an industrial innovation system? How evaluates performance of an industrial innovation system? Those problems raise attention of scholars and governors. The paper puts forward indicators system and method for evaluating performance of industrial innovation system. We evaluate 29 industrial innovation system applying those indicators and method. We conclude: 1st, Different industries have different operating ability and they have different performance. 2nd, If synthesizing ability of an industrial innovation system is stronger, this is not meaning its each part stronger. 3rd, There is not a model that can fit each industrial innovation system. Key words: Industrial innovation system, Principal Component Analysis, Indicators Résumé: Le concept de système d’innovation industriel a été appliqué pour expliquer la capacité de développement industriel. Comment sont la capacité opérationnelle et la performance d’un système d’innovation industriel ? Comment évaluer sa performance ? Ces questions attirent l’attention des savants et des gouverneurs. L’article présent propose un système d’indicateurs et une méthode pour l’évaluation de la performance du système d’innovation industriel. A la suite de l’évaluation de 29 systèmes d’innovation industriels qui appliquent ces indicateurs et méthode, on tire les conclusions suivantes : 1st, De différentes industries ont de différentes capacités opérationnelles. 2nd, Le fait que la capacité synthétique d’un système d’innovation industriel est grande ne signifie pas que chacune de ses parts est forte. 3rd, Il n’y a pas une méthode universelle qui peut s’adapter à touts les systèmes d’innovation industriels. Mots-Clés: système d’innovation industriel, composante principale d’analys

Evidence for active maintenance of inverted repeat structures identified by a comparative genomic approach

Inverted repeats have been found to occur in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. Usually they are short and some have important functions in various biological processes. However, long inverted repeats are rare and can cause genome instability. Analyses of C. elegans genome identified long, nearly-perfect inverted repeat sequences involving both divergently and convergently oriented homologous gene pairs and complete intergenic sequences. Comparisons with the orthologous regions from the genomes of C. briggsae and C. remanei show that the inverted repeat structures are often far more conserved than the sequences. This observation implies that there is an active mechanism for maintaining the inverted repeat nature of the sequences

Human Resource Role In Work-Life Balance: A Case Of High Technology Knowledge Workers In Taiwan

This case involves the problems that young people in Taiwan are facing in high tech companies. Employees are spending many hours in their jobs and making high salaries as a result, but their social lives are suffering greatly. This paper examines the relationship between the work and social life of young Taiwanese workers in high tech firms. Although salaries and compensation packages are high, the social lives of these workers have diminished greatly. This study provides a comprehensive viewpoint from the perspective of an employee within the Human Resource department of one of these companies

Infall, Fragmentation and Outflow in Sgr B2

Observations of H$_{2}$CO lines and continuum at 1.3 mm towards Sgr B2(N) and Sgr B2(M) cores were carried out with the SMA. We imaged H$_{2}$CO line absorption against the continuum cores and the surrounding line emission clumps. The results show that the majority of the dense gas is falling into the major cores where massive stars have been formed. The filaments and clumps of the continuum and gas are detected outside of Sgr B2(N) and Sgr B2(M) cores. Both the spectra and moment analysis show the presence of outflows from Sgr B2(M) cores. The H$_{2}$CO gas in the red-shifted outflow of Sgr B2(M) appears to be excited by a non-LTE process which might be related to the shocks in the outflow.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Published in J. Physics Conference Serie

A genomic signature for accurate classification and prediction of clinical outcomes in cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint blockade immunotherapy

Tumor mutational burden (TMB) is associated with clinical response to immunotherapy, but application has been limited to a subset of cancer patients. We hypothesized that advanced machine-learning and proper modeling could identify mutations that classify patients most likely to derive clinical benefits. Training data: Two sets of public whole-exome sequencing (WES) data for metastatic melanoma. Validation data: One set of public non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) data. Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) machine-learning and proper modeling were used to identify a set of mutations (biomarker) with maximum predictive accuracy (measured by AUROC). Kaplan-Meier and log-rank methods were used to test prediction of overall survival. The initial model considered 2139 mutations. After pruning, 161 mutations (11%) were retained. An optimal threshold of 0.41 divided patients into high-weight (HW) or low-weight (LW) TMB groups. Classification for HW-TMB was 100% (AUROC = 1.0) on melanoma learning/testing data; HW-TMB was a prognostic marker for longer overall survival. In validation data, HW-TMB was associated with survival (p = 0.0057) and predicted 6-month clinical benefit (AUROC = 0.83) in NSCLC. In conclusion, we developed and validated a 161-mutation genomic signature with outstanding 100% accuracy to classify melanoma patients by likelihood of response to immunotherapy. This biomarker can be adapted for clinical practice to improve cancer treatment and care

Advances in Smart Materials and Applications

This is one of a series of special issues published in Advances in Materials Science and Engineering, focusing on the latest advances of smart materials and their applications. Evolution of engineering materials is strongly depending on the growing transformation of complexity in engineering products. New materials being designed are required to provide specific properties and demonstrate certain functional characteristics by manipulating their dimension, chemistry, and structure through various advanced technologies.Therefore, “smartness” of a material has become the topic of interest. Properties of smart materials may change accordingly to the applied external stimuli. Under the direction of the editorial team, we showcase advances of organic and inorganic based smart materials and their applications in areas of specific interest such as energy, environment, and health. A total of 9 articles are published in this special issue. Six articles are focused on production, synthesis, and optimization of smart materials; and the remaining are dedicated to application of smart materials

Adaptive Transmission Range Based Topology Control Scheme for Fast and Reliable Data Collection

An Adaptive Transmission Range Based Topology Control (ATRTC) scheme is proposed to reduce delay and improve reliability for data collection in delay and loss sensitive wireless sensor network. The core idea of the ATRTC scheme is to extend the transmission range to speed up data collection and improve the reliability of data collection.The main innovations of our work are as follows: (1) an adaptive transmission range adjustment method is proposed to improve data collection reliability and reduce data collection delay. The expansion of the transmission range will allow the data packet to be received by more receivers, thus improving the reliability of data transmission. On the other hand, by extending the transmission range, data packets can be transmitted to the sink with fewer hops.Thereby the delay of data collection is reduced and the reliability of data transmission is improved. Extending the transmission range will consume more energy. Fortunately, we found the imbalanced energy consumption of the network.There is a large amount of energy remains when the network died. ATRTC scheme proposed in this paper can make full use of the residual energy to extend the transmission range of nodes. Because of the expansion of transmission range, nodes in the network form multiple paths for data collection to the sink node.Therefore, the volume of data received and sent by the near-sink nodes is reduced, the energy consumption of the near-sink nodes is reduced, and the network lifetime is increased as well. (2)According to the analysis in this paper, compared with the CTPR scheme, the ATRTC scheme reduces the maximum energy consumption by 9%, increases the network lifetime by 10%, increases the data collection reliability by 7.3%, and reduces the network data collection time by 23%