Impacts of Economic Development on the Living Conditions of Ethnic Minority People in the Border Region of Northern Vietnam

Purpose:   In this study, we examine the effects of the economic development policies of the Vietnamese government on the living conditions of ethnic minority people in the border region of Northern Vietnam.   Theoretical framework: We examine the impact of economic changes, societal changes, and environmental improvements on the living conditions of ethnic minority people in the border region of Northern Vietnam.   Design/Methodology/Approach: The collected data was subsequently cleaned and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with the aid of SPSS 20 software.     Findings: The results show that the current Vietnamese government’s policies on developing agriculture, industry, trade, and service for ethnic minority people have a diverse impact on their living conditions. In general, agriculture, trade, and service are major fields that benefit the living conditions of ethnic minorities. In contrast, the industry seems to have no effects on improving the standard of living of ethnic minority people in Northern Vietnam.   Research, practical & social implications: The results of this study provide suggestion to Vietnamese government on promoting living conditions of ethnic minority people in the border region of Northern Vietnam.   Originality/Value: This is the first paper evaluates the impact of the economic development policies of the Vietnamese government on the living conditions of ethnic minority people in the border region of Northern Vietnam

PROVISION CAPACITY OF SERVICE DELIVERY FACILITIES FOR CHILDREN WITH HEARING LOSS IN HAI PHONG, VIETNAM

Objective: Hearing loss is a commonly occurring disability that affects 466 million people worldwide. This study aimed at determining the actual situations of early intervention delivery facilities for children with hearing loss. Out of this affected population, 7% are children (34 million) who, along with their families, grapple with the serious lifelong problems that accompany the disease. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with facilities investigated consisting of a school for the deaf, hospitals, an audiology center, and a social agency in Hai Phong province from January 2013 to December 2014. A sample composed of 353 children was also recruited. Results: The examined facilities suffer from shortcomings in provision capacity, which manifest in deficient materials, supplies and equipment, and human resources; the lack of interdisciplinary coordination of activities; inadequate community awareness; and the unaddressed need for early detection and intervention. The conditions of most of the children (98%) were detected by their families, and among those who were clinically diagnosed, the majority (76.8%) received such diagnosis at central hospitals. Hearing impairment among the children were detected, diagnosed, and subjected to intervention at a very late stage (on average, at ages 22.3, 34, and 32.5 months, respectively), thereby compelling up to 63.6% of the families to struggle with their children’s hearing loss. Conclusion: Solutions to current interventions are needed to enhance service delivery systems and guarantee early detection as well as timely and appropriate treatment

The Impact of Digital Transformation on Customer Satisfaction to Digital Banking Service of Commercial Banks in Vietnam

The present study focuses on examining the interplay and correlation between the digital transformation process as assessed by the digital banking service quality components (Ease of use, Effectiveness, Interoperability, Privacy/ Security, Empathy, Responsiveness, Reliability, Service portfolios, Service charge) and customer satisfaction for digital banking services at commercial banks in Vietnam. The predictors (independent variables) for this study are the aforementioned service quality aspects and moderator is Service charge. The outcome variable (dependent variable) is customer satisfaction. The authors combined qualitative and quantitative research techniques to develop observed variables and assess the model's fit. This study can help banking leaders evaluate and improve the quality of digital banking services in the context of financial liberalization and globalization. Keywords: Digital transformation, Digital Banking, Banking service quality, Customer satisfaction DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-6-04 Publication date:March 31st 202

Impacts of Economic Development on the Awareness of Cultural Preservation of Ethnic Minority People in the Border Region of Northern Vietnam

Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine how the Vietnamese government's economic development strategies affect ethnic minority people's knowledge of cultural preservation in the border area of Northern Vietnam.   Theoretical framework: The study focuses on three main driven factors of the awareness of cultural preservation that are economic changes, societal changes, and environmental changes from three economic fields: agriculture, industry, and trade and services.   Design/methodology/approach: The research sample was taken from ethnic minorities in Northern Vietnam's border area. For questionnaire administration, interviewees are selected at random from the population. Face-to-face, drop-off, and phone-calling approaches were used to disseminate the questionnaire. We received 544 completed returns out of 725 surveys sent out. The data was then cleaned and analyzed with SPSS 20 software using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM).   Findings: The results of a study of ethnic minority communities in seven provinces in Northern Vietnam's border region show that the development of agriculture, industry, trade and service significantly impacts ethnic minority people's awareness of cultural preservation issues due to environmental changes. In contrast, economic and sociological developments appear to have little influence on ethnic minority people's attention to cultural preservation. This phenomenon may be due to the long-term effects of economic and sociological changes, which mostly affect intangible cultural heritages. In contrast, environmental impats are felt swiftly and primarily on physical cultural heritages that can be seen.   Research, Practical & Social implications: The findings of the research provide policymakers with valuable insights on the effects of economic development on cultural preservation. The study's recommendations can inform policies that promote sustainable economic development while preserving the cultural heritage of ethnic minority communities.   Originality/value: The research focuses on the border region of Northern Vietnam, which is an area of strategic importance for economic development and cultural preservation. The study's unique focus on this region provides insights into the cultural and economic dynamics of a specific area that has not been extensively studied

The association between food environment, diet quality and malnutrition in low‐ and middle‐income adult populations across the rural—Urban gradient in Vietnam

Background: Economic reforms and trade liberalisation in Vaietnm have transformed the food environment, influencing dietary patterns and malnutrition status. The present study focuses on the relationship between food environments (proximity and density of food outlets) and malnutrition (underweight, overweight, obesity) through diet quality in adult populations across urban, periurban and rural areas of Vietnam. Methods: We evaluated food environment by geospatial mapping of food outlets through a transect walk across the “food ecosystem” from rural to urban areas. Diet quality was assessed using the Diet Quality Index – Vietnamese (DQI‐V) comprising Variety, Adequacy, Moderation and Balance components. Malnutrition status was determined using body mass index. We performed a mediation analysis utilising mixed effect models to control for neighbourhood clustering effects. Confounders included age, education, income and nutrition knowledge score. Results: Analysis of data from 595 adult participants (mean ± SD age: 31.2 ± 6.4 years; 50% female) found that longer distance to the nearest food outlet was associated with higher overall DQI‐V (β = 2.0; 95% confidence interval = 0.2–3.8; p = 0.036) and the Moderation component (β = 2.6; 95% confidence interval = 1.2–4.0; p = 0.001). Outlet density shows a negative association with the odds of underweight among women (odds ratio = 0.62; 95% confidence interval = 0.37–0.96). However, we did not observe statistically significant relationships between diet quality and malnutrition. Education and nutrition knowledge scores were positively associated with diet diversity, while income was negatively associated with diet moderation. Conclusions: The findings of the present study have important implications for nutrition and dietetics practice in Vietnam and globally. It emphasises the need to consider various dimensions of sustainable diets, including economic, health and socio‐cultural/political factors. Longer distances to food outlets are associated with higher diet quality, whereas lower food outlet density increases the odds of underweight among women. This poses challenges in balancing modernisation and its adverse effects on sustainable food systems. Socio‐economic status consistently correlated with diet quality and malnutrition, necessitating further research to promote healthy diets across socio‐economic strata

Partial food systems baseline assessment at the Vietnam benchmark sites

Using data collected from a cross-sectional study in Moc Chau, Dong Anh and Cau Giay districts in Vietnam, this report aims to elucidate specific components of local Vietnamese food systems along a rural to urban transect focusing specifically on (i) diets, (ii) nutrition status (anthropometry), (iii) consumer behavior, (iv) food environment, and (v) food flows

A Hybridized Flower Pollination Algorithm and Its Application on Microgrid Operations Planning

The meta-heuristic algorithms have been applied to handle various real-world optimization problems because their approach closely resembles natural human thinking and processing relatively quickly. Flowers pollination algorithm (FPA) is one of the advanced meta-heuristic algorithms; still, it has suffered from slow convergence and insufficient accuracy when dealing with complicated problems. This study suggests hybridizing the FPA with the sine–cosine algorithm (call HSFPA) to avoid FPA drawbacks for microgrid operations planning and global optimization problems. The objective function of microgrid operations planning is constructed based on the power generation distribution system’s relevant economic costs and environmental profits. Adapting hop size, diversifying local search, and diverging agents as strategies from learning SCA are used to modify the original FPA equation for improving the HSFPA solutions in terms of diversity pollinations, increasing convergence, and preventing local optimal traps. The experimental results of the HSFPA compared with the other algorithms in the literature for the benchmark test function and microgrid operations planning problem to evaluate the proposed scheme. Compared results show that the HSFPA offers outstanding performance compared to other competitors for the testing function. The HSFPA also delivers efficient optimal performance in microgrid optimization for solving the operations planning problem

A Compact Bat Algorithm for Unequal Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks

Everyday, a large number of complex scientific and industrial problems involve finding an optimal solution in a large solution space. A challenging task for several optimizations is not only the combinatorial operation but also the constraints of available devices. This paper proposes a novel optimization algorithm, namely the compact bat algorithm (cBA), to use for the class of optimization problems involving devices which have limited hardware resources. A real-valued prototype vector is used for the probabilistic operations to generate each candidate for the solution of the optimization of the cBA. The proposed cBA is extensively evaluated on several continuous multimodal functions as well as the unequal clustering of wireless sensor network (uWSN) problems. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves an effective way to use limited memory devices and provides competitive results

A Novel Improved Bat Algorithm Based on Hybrid Parallel and Compact for Balancing an Energy Consumption Problem

This paper proposes an improved Bat algorithm based on hybridizing a parallel and compact method (namely pcBA) for a class of saving variables in optimization problems. The parallel enhances diversity solutions for exploring in space search and sharing computation load. Nevertheless, the compact saves stored variables for computation in the optimization approaches. In the experimental section, the selected benchmark functions, and the energy balance problem in Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Results compared with the other methods in the literature demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves a practical method of reducing the number of stored memory variables, and the running time consumption

Understanding Factors of Households' Circular Economy Adoption to Facilitate Sustainable Development in an Emerging Country

A shift from a linear economy to a circular economy can help participants (i.e., enterprises and households) to cut expenses, stabilize supply chains for the long term, and lower manufacturing and operating costs. Although the circular economy can benefit both the economy and the environment, this topic has still been under-studied in developing countries. More specifically, there has been little known about conditions and/or barriers for stakeholders in adopting a circular economy. In this regard, the authors conducted a study among Vietnamese households to improve the understanding of the factors (both drivers and impediments) of a circular economy adoption. Specifically, the authors employed a questionnaire-based survey approach to collect data from 473 households operating in the agricultural sector in the Red River Delta, Vietnam. The PLS-SEM method was performed to unravel the complicated relationship between circular economy adoption, organizational innovation, and income of agricultural households. The results showed that the adoption of circular economy is widely influenced by many factors in Vietnam. For example, technology has a negative impact on the level of circular economy adoption while policy and regulation, management, customer, and society have the opposite effect. Furthermore, organizational innovation played a fully mediating role between circular economy adoption and households’ income. The results of the study offer many policy implications for supporting and increasing the households’ circular economy adoption for further sustainable development in Vietnam and beyond