Systems

Homer, Jack

doi: 10.3390/systems12120510pmid: N/A

US life expectancy now lags significantly behind the majority of high-income countries, having grown more slowly since 1980 for reasons that are not evident and have been debated. An exploratory system dynamics model is presented that reproduces the full pattern of US life expectancy from 1960 to the present. Multiple socioeconomic and behavioral factors help to explain the historical pattern, two of them apparently most responsible for the stagnation since 1980: the growth of obesity and the leveling off of growth in social spending. Some of the factors in the model are traced back to earlier causes, and obesity’s growth in particular is traced back to excess growth in private health care spending and its adverse effect on workers’ wages. The model’s base run does a good job of reproducing a variety of historical time series data going back to the 1960s, and counterfactual tests produce plausible results and clarify the model’s main themes. The model may thus be considered a reasonable starting point for more conclusive future modeling of US life expectancy.

Yue, Han;Huang, Min

doi: 10.3390/systems12120512pmid: N/A

The sale of second-hand goods has formed a complete industrial chain, and second-hand product testing is a crucial part of it. Second-hand inspection platforms (SIPs) have achieved remarkable commercial success by providing inspection services that alleviate consumers’ quality concerns. Different SIPs typically adopt various operation modes, such as consignment, resale, or hybrid modes. Appropriate operation modes not only benefit SIPs in maintaining profitability but also contribute to the sustainable development of the sharing economy. In order to realize the sustainable operation of second-hand inspection platforms, we construct a platform-dominated Stackelberg model to explore the motivations behind SIPs’ choices of different operation modes and investigate the impacts of changes in the inspection service level on the platform’s optimal decisions and market performance. System data analysis results show that the cost of guarantee significantly influences SIPs’ choices of operation modes, specifically; SIPs are inclined to adopt consignment mode or resale mode when the cost of guarantee is relatively high or low, respectively, and choose hybrid mode when the cost of guarantee is moderate. Furthermore, in the presence of inter-channel competition, if the inspection failure loss is relatively high, SIPs may lower the prices of used products as the inspection service level increases. Additionally, although inspection service can disclose the true quality of used products, a higher inspection service level may attract more low-quality sellers into the market when the inspection failure loss is substantial. Finally, under the resale mode, consumer surplus and social welfare will decrease with the inspection service level. Conversely, under the consignment or hybrid mode, both consumer surplus and social welfare will increase with the inspection service level when the inspection failure loss is relatively low.

Zhang, Jianbo;Yu, Yaoyi;Wei, Zhuoqiong;Shen, Jie;Zhang, Zhiping;Sun, Zichun

doi: 10.3390/systems12120513pmid: N/A

Financial distress is detrimental to both companies and the development of economic society. The emergence of digital transformation provides a potentially prominent pathway for companies to address financial distress. Drawing on the dynamic capability view, this study explored the effects of digital transformation on firms’ financial distress and how this relationship may be contingent on the life cycle. Our hypotheses were empirically examined using a large panel dataset of Chinese-listed manufacturing firms and applied a hierarchical linear model with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects. The results indicate that digital transformation significantly alleviates financial distress. Moreover, the life cycle has a moderating effect on this relationship. Specifically, the mitigating effect of digital transformation on financial distress is stronger during the growth stage but weaker during the declining stage. Finally, the findings provide important theoretical contributions to the literature on digital transformation and corporate finance and offer managers valuable practical implications to mitigate financial distress.

Zhou, Xiaoqian;Li, Bing;Ren, Zeqiang;Cao, Ziao

doi: 10.3390/systems12120514pmid: N/A

This paper deals with the optimization of railcar flow assignment among multiple marshalling stations oriented to making a stage plan. We aimed to minimize the total dwell time of the on-time and delayed allocated railcar flow at the station within a stage plan. Considering the limitations of the disassembly and assembly capacity of marshalling stations, the limitation of the transfer operation capacity between marshalling stations, the connection time limit of inbound and outbound trains, and the limitation of trains with different full workloads, we constructed a multi-marshalling station railcar flow assignment optimization model. Furthermore, for comparison, we built a model that only satisfied the train equivalent length limitation and a model that only satisfied the train hauling weight limitation. Finally, we designed experimental scenarios and conducted comparative analyses of the proposed model and a model that considered only a single full workload limitation. The results show that the railcar flow assignment scheme that considers different full workload limitations shortens the dwell time of railcar flow at the station, reduces the number of undispatched outbound trains within the time range of the stage plan, and effectively improves the terminal operation efficiency within the stage plan. Thus, the proposed scheme can achieve an effective railcar flow assignment within a multi-marshalling station railroad terminal while minimizing the dwell time.

Hyun, Eun-jung;Yu, Si

doi: 10.3390/systems12120515pmid: N/A

This study investigates how the relationship between firm-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) governance and corporate environmental performance (CEP) varies across diverse national contexts. Drawing on institutional theory, organizational adaptation theory, and the concept of institutional voids, we analyze an extensive dataset of 5326 firms from 26 OECD countries over a seven-year period (2013–2019). Employing panel data analysis, we examine the moderating effects of country-level factors on the CSR governance–CEP relationship. Our findings reveal a significant positive association between a firm’s CSR governance quality and environmental performance, which is notably stronger in countries characterized by weaker environmental governance, less prominent societal environmental values, and fewer climate mitigation laws and policies. These results suggest that firms with strong CSR governance effectively fill institutional voids in environmental governance, going beyond mere compliance to drive environmental performance improvements where external pressures are weak. Our study contributes to the literature by advancing the current understanding of the contextual nature of CSR, extending the application of institutional void theory to environmental governance landscapes in developed economies, and providing a more nuanced perspective on when and where CSR governance matters most for environmental outcomes. These insights offer valuable implications for managers in diverse institutional contexts and for policymakers seeking to enhance corporate environmental performance through complementary governance mechanisms.

Lv, Shenrong;Lu, Siyu;Wang, Ruiyang;Yin, Lirong;Yin, Zhengtong;A. AlQahtani, Salman;Tian, Jiawei;Zheng, Wenfeng

doi: 10.3390/systems12120516pmid: N/A

Chinese dialogue generation faces multiple challenges, such as semantic understanding, information matching, and response fluency. Generative dialogue systems for Chinese conversation are somehow difficult to construct because of the flexible word order, the great impact of word replacement on semantics, and the complex implicit context. Existing methods still have limitations in addressing these issues. To tackle these problems, this paper proposes an improved Chinese dialogue generation model based on transformer architecture. The model uses a multi-layer transformer decoder as the backbone and introduces two key techniques, namely incorporating pre-trained language model word embeddings and optimizing the sparse Softmax loss function. For word-embedding fusion, we concatenate the word vectors from the pre-trained model with character-based embeddings to enhance the semantic information of word representations. The sparse Softmax optimization effectively mitigates the overfitting issue by introducing a sparsity regularization term. Experimental results on the Chinese short text conversation (STC) dataset demonstrate that our proposed model significantly outperforms the baseline models on automatic evaluation metrics, such as BLEU and Distinct, with an average improvement of 3.5 percentage points. Human evaluations also validate the superiority of our model in generating fluent and relevant responses. This work provides new insights and solutions for building more intelligent and human-like Chinese dialogue systems.

Chang, Yajun;Zhou, Junxu;Ji, Min

doi: 10.3390/systems12120517pmid: N/A

Education is the cornerstone of rural revitalization. This study aims to comprehensively evaluate the development of rural education in China from 2006 to 2020. From a systemic perspective, this study established a multidimensional evaluation index system for rural education and used the weight-TOPSIS method for measurement. Additionally, geographic information system and spatial econometric methods were employed to explore spatial–temporal differentiation and influencing factors. The results show that (1) rural education levels in China have generally improved in recent years, with higher development in northern, northeastern, and eastern regions and lower levels in central and southwestern regions. (2) In terms of spatial differentiation, rural education development among provinces has significant spatial agglomeration. The provinces around Beijing are hot spots, while remote southwestern provinces are cold spots. (3) Regarding dynamic evolution, the disparity in rural education development among provinces has widened, with a few provinces significantly ahead. There are club convergence features, and the hierarchy of rural education development between provinces is relatively stable, with less likelihood of lagging provinces catching up. (4) Economy, finance, industry, population, and urbanization are key factors influencing rural education, with spatial spillover effects on neighboring provinces. The study provides empirical support and policy insights for advancing balanced and high-quality rural education development.

Chen, Ziqi;Wang, Yu;Wang, Yuan

doi: 10.3390/systems12120518pmid: N/A

As environmental issues grow increasingly complex and multifaceted, the synergistic effects of environmental policies and their implementation methods have become central to the environmental policy system. This paper analyzes panel data from all A-share-listed companies in China between 2013 and 2022 and aims at comprehensively evaluate the role and impact of command-and-control, market-incentive, and public-participation environmental policies along with their combinations on corporate green transformation by using a double machine learning method. The results indicate that (1) all three types of environmental policies positively influence corporate green transformation, with market-based policies having the most pronounced effect; (2) the synergistic effects of policy combinations further enhance corporate green transformation, especially the combination of market-incentive and public-participation environmental policies; (3) heterogeneity analysis highlights differences in the effects of these environmental policies and their combinations on corporate attributes and regional factors; and (4) mechanism analysis indicates that green innovation and financial constraints indirectly drive the high-quality green transformation of enterprises.

Liu, Yuanyuan;Liu, Wei

doi: 10.3390/systems12120519pmid: N/A

Effective rural solid waste management (RSWM) is crucial for sustainable rural development, particularly in developing countries, which face dual challenges from economic growth and environmental protection. To build a more sustainable business model for RSWM, this study employs a value proposition analysis approach to systematically analyze the multi-level requirements of various stakeholders involved in the current models of RSWM. It then proposes a novel optimizing approach for RSWM models from the perspective of business model innovation (BMI) by integrating the value proposition (VP) theory with the algorithm of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to fill the research gap. In this study, an AHP-based evaluating algorithm is firstly proposed based on the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders’ value propositions. Using this method, four typical pilot RSWM models across China are assessed and ranked, followed by a comprehensive analysis of the results and the incorporation of hierarchical criteria from multiple value dimensions. Building on the analysis of the results, optimization strategies for a novel RSWM model are proposed by constructing a conceptual framework of the business model. In addition, the analysis also indicates that both phases of sorting and collection and transportation are the main factors for fulfilling the overall satisfaction of the RSWM models. Lastly, this paper concludes by summarizing the relevant theoretical and managerial implementations of the proposed approach, providing a foundation for the scientific development of appropriate RSWM models by providing a new idea for BMI especially for environmental management projects that include multiple stakeholders.