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The purpose of this paper is to present some dynamic hesitant fuzzy aggregation operators to tackle with the multi-period decision-making problems where all decision information is provided by decision makers in hesitant fuzzy information from different periods.

First, the notions and operational laws of the hesitant fuzzy variable are defined. Then, some dynamic hesitant fuzzy aggregation operators involve the dynamic hesitant fuzzy weighted averaging (DHFWA) operator, the dynamic hesitant fuzzy weighted geometric (DHFWG) operator, and their generalized versions are presented. Some desirable properties of these proposed operators are established. Furthermore, two linguistic quantifier-based methods are introduced to determine the weights of periods. Next, the paper extends the results to the interval-valued hesitant fuzzy situation. Furthermore, the authors develop an approach to solve the multi-period multiple criteria decision making (MPMCDM) problems. Finally, an illustrative example is given.

The presented hesitant fuzzy aggregation operators are very suitable for aggregating the hesitant fuzzy information collected at different periods. The developed approach can solve the MPMCDM problems where all decision information takes the form of hesitant fuzzy information collected at different periods.

The presented hesitant fuzzy aggregation operators and decision-making approach can widely apply to dynamic decision analysis, multi-stage decision analysis in real life.

The paper presents the useful way to aggregate the hesitant fuzzy information collected at different periods in MPMCDM situations.

Attitudes and beliefs towards marriage and family held by Chinese and American college students were compared in this study. The primary dimensions included whether to marry, age to marry, number of desired children, age to have children, perceptions of divorce, willingness to cohabit, openness to blended marriages, and gender roles within marriage. If a global convergence of cultures is occurring, then similarities should be found throughout the views of all respondents towards the institution of marriage. Dissimilarities in views could be interpreted as evidence of the entrenchment and uniqueness of culture, an outcome advanced by those who question cultural homogenisation. Hundreds of college students in several large universities in China and one regional university in the United States were surveyed at convenience. The Chinese students were found to prefer marrying and to plan having children a year later in age compared to the Americans. They also desired having nearly one fewer total number of children on average compared to the Americans. Surprisingly, the Chinese were more agreeable with divorce. The Americans were more likely to support gender equality within marriage and to accept blended types of marriage. Both groups equally approved of the overall idea of couples cohabiting if they plan on marrying. However, the Americans were far more willing to say that they themselves would cohabit. Visions of the benefits of married life were similar across countries. Overall, far more significant differences were found than no differences. The results suggest that elements of marriage norms in the world’s largest economies are somewhat constrained by social forces in their ability to completely converge.

With numerous and ambiguous sets of information and often conflicting requirements, construction management is a complex process involving much uncertainty. Decision makers may be challenged with satisfying multiple criteria using vague information. Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) provides an innovative approach for addressing complex problems featuring diverse decision makers’ interests, conflicting objectives and numerous but uncertain bits of information. FMCDM has therefore been widely applied in construction management. With the increase in information complexity, extensions of fuzzy set (FS) theory have been generated and adopted to improve its capacity to address this complexity. Examples include hesitant FSs (HFSs), intuitionistic FSs (IFSs) and type-2 FSs (T2FSs). This chapter introduces commonly used FMCDM methods, examines their applications in construction management and discusses trends in future research and application. The chapter first introduces the MCDM process as well as FS theory and its three main extensions, namely, HFSs, IFSs and T2FSs. The chapter then explores the linkage between FS theory and its extensions and MCDM approaches. In total, 17 FMCDM methods are reviewed and two FMCDM methods (i.e. T2FS-TOPSIS and T2FS-PROMETHEE) are further improved based on the literature. These 19 FMCDM methods with their corresponding applications in construction management are discussed in a systematic manner. This review and development of FS theory and its extensions should help both researchers and practitioners better understand and handle information uncertainty in complex decision problems.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the PROMETHEE method under typical hesitant fuzzy information for solving multi-attribute decision-making problem in which there is hesitancy among experts.

Different aggregation and distance functions were developed to deal with HFS. But it is rational that different operators applying in existing methods can produce different results. Also, it is difficult for decision makers to select suitable operators. To address the drawback, this paper develops the PROMETHEE method as an outranking approach to accommodate hesitant fuzzy information. Since the proposed method is constructed on the basis of the pair-wise comparisons, it is independent of the aggregation and distance functions.

To demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method, the authors provide a numerical example and a comparative analysis. The results indicate that outranking-based methods suggest a better ranking than the aggregation- and distance-based methods.

The proposed approach does not consider the hesitant fuzzy linguistic information decision-making problem.

The proposed approach can be applied in many group decision-making problems in which there is hesitancy among experts.

This paper proposes an extension on PROMETHEE method under hesitant fuzzy information, which has not been reported in the existing academic literature.

The purpose of this study is to look at Chinese mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in Germany on a firm level. It focuses on the benefits and risks from the viewpoint of Germany. In this way, the authors want to close the research gap concerning the financial consequences of Chinese takeovers for the affected German firms. The purpose is to find out if Chinese investors show a specific behavior in terms of profitability, growth and business risks in the acquired companies.

This paper studies the financial situation of German firms two years before and two years after being bought by Chinese companies, by analyzing accounting data of 19 target companies in six economic sectors. In this empirical study, firm performance is measured by profitability, research and development cost, liquidity and financial leverage. It is using the industry adjustment method and calculation of mean and weighted mean considering company size.

Overall, German firms’ financial performance after Chinese M&A did not significantly improve, but they did not worsen either. The changes in financial ratios are different across economic sectors and company sizes. Obviously, the final performance of firms after M&A is quite diverse due to diverse company-specific targets. The results do not reflect common fears about deteriorating situations brought by Chinese involvement drawn in mass media.

The study lacks analysis for a longer period, ideally five years before and five years after M&A. The calculated results of industry mean may differ from the real industry mean, as components are collected from the sample companies accounting for only 70% of the market. Industry means figures are calculated for only one single point in time and assumed to be unchanged over the whole time period. The study covers mostly firms which have total assets of more than €50m, so SMEs are underrepresented.

Owners of German firms that are in target but have not been purchased by Chinese investors can see the trends and anticipate which group of M&A targets their firms are categorized into. If their firms belong to the group of sectors or company sizes that shows negative results of performance after Chinese M&A, they can plan to protect their firms by implementing defending strategies against hostile takeovers. If their firms are in the groups that tend to enhance performance after Chinese M&A, they may be in a good position and able to negotiate for mutually beneficial transactions.

The results are important for political and public discussion. It is shown that Chinese acquisitions of German firms do not have a deteriorating effect, at least not in the short-term. Therefore, the results are a good input to neutralize discussions in German society.

The results disagree with the few previous studies on Chinese M&A in Germany (Bollhorn, 2015; Müller, 2017; Löchel and Sächtig, 2019). While the studies of Bollhorn and Müller are based on subjective methods, the study is based on a detailed financial method. Then, in contrast to the study of Löchel and Sächtig, it is strictly focusing on Chinese/German M&A. Most existing empirical studies are focusing on cross-border M&As from developed to developing countries and there is little attention to acquisitions in the other direction (Ma et al., 2016, p. 22).

Consistency and consensus are two important research issues in group decision-making (GDM). Considering some drawbacks associated with these two issues in existing GDM methods with intuitionistic multiplicative preference relations (IMPRs), a new GDM method with complete IMPRs (CIMPRs) and incomplete IMPRs (ICIMPRs) is proposed in this paper.

A mathematically programming model is constructed to judge the consistency of CIMPRs. For the unacceptably consistent CIMPRs, a consistency-driven optimization model is constructed to improve the consistency level. Meanwhile, a consistency-driven optimization model is constructed to supplement the missing values and improve the consistency level of the ICIMPRs. As to GDM with CIMPRs, first, a mathematically programming model is built to obtain the experts' weights, after that a consensus-driven optimization model is constructed to improve the consensus level of CIMPRs, and finally, the group priority weights of alternatives are obtained by an intuitionistic fuzzy programming model.

The case analysis of the international exchange doctoral student selection problem shows the effectiveness and applicability of this GDM method with CIMPRs and ICIMPRs.

First, a novel consistency definition of CIMPRs is presented. Then, a consistency-driven optimization model is constructed, which supplements the missing values and improves the consistency level of ICIMPRs simultaneously. Therefore, this model greatly improves the efficiency of consistency improving. Experts' weights determination method considering the subjective and objective information is proposed. The priority weights of alternatives are determined by an intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) programming model considering the risk preference of experts, so the method determining priority weights is more flexible and agile. Based on the above theoretical basis, a new GDM method with CIMPRs and ICIMPRs is proposed in this paper.

Intuitionistic linguistic fuzzy information (ILFI), characterized by linguistic terms and intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs), can easily express the fuzzy information in the process of muticriteria decision making (MCDM) and muticriteria group decision making (MCGDM) problems. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of aggregation operators (AOs) and applications of ILFI.

First, some meaningful AOs for ILFI are summarized, and some extended MCDM approaches for intuitionistic uncertain linguistic variables (IULVs), such as extended TOPSIS, extended TODIM, extended VIKOR, are discussed. Then, the authors summarize and analyze the applications about the AOs of IULVs.

IULVs, characterized by linguistic terms and IFSs, can more detailed and comprehensively express the criteria values in the process of MCDM and MCGDM. Therefore, lots of researchers pay more and more attention to the MCDM or MCGDM methods with IULVs.

The authors summarize and analyze the applications about the AOs of IULVs Finally, the authors point out some possible directions for future research.

Through the case analysis of China’s digital library, the purpose of this paper is to make readers understand the development status, achievements and problems of China’s digital library. At the same time, it also enables readers to understand the common application forms of these modern information technologies in digital libraries, so as to provide a reference basis for the application of new technologies in other countries’ digital libraries.

On the basis of literature review, the authors have analyzed a conspicuous collection of related papers in order to make a comprehensive summary and elaboration on the present situation of modern information technology application in Chinese digital libraries.

This paper defines and analyses the concepts, contents and relationships of the three most important modern Big Data information technologies, and then completes the analysis of the current situation of the application of information technology in Chinese digital libraries. The block chain can achieve more accurate information collection, more secure information storage and more effective information dissemination. Artificial intelligence can improve the existing digital library service level in three aspects: resource construction, information organization and information service. Internet plus will help transform the traditional digital library business mode in order to adapt to the change of user-centered service.

This is among the first structured attempts of comprehensively and generally summarizing the application of modern information technology in Chinese digital libraries. It also contains an original exploration of the relationship between the main kinds of modern information technology. Based on this, a relatively complete application scenario and possible vision of modern information technology in digital library can be built.

This study aims to estimate the synergy effect of agricultural dual-scale management (ADM) on farmers' total household income, its heterogeneous effects and its mechanisms.

This study constructs a theoretical analysis framework based on the division of labor and synergy theory, empirically assesses the impact of ADM on farmers' income, and further discusses the heterogeneity and mechanisms using the propensity score matching (PSM) and quantile treatment effect (QTE) models. Data is collected from 1,076 households across 4 cities in Liaoning Province of China in 2021.

ADM can improve the total household income of farmers, and the impact force is greater than that of the single-scale management mode. ADM is more conducive to improving the income of farmers with low income and low labor endowment. Moreover, ADM can improve agriculture production efficiency, increase net grain production income. Nevertheless, it has no significant effect on farmers' off-farm employment income.

Previous studies have mainly focused on the income effect of land scale management or service scale management. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to identify the synergy effect of ADM on farmers' income in China. It provides new insights into the process of agricultural production and management mode transitions in rural China.

Complex technology not only provides potential economic benefits but also increases the difficulty of application. Whether and how upstream technological complexity affects downstream manufacturers' innovation through vertical separation structure is worth discussing, but it has not been effectively discussed.

Through theoretical analysis and empirical testing, this article discusses the cost effect and market competition effect caused by upstream technological complexity on downstream manufacturers and further elucidates the impact of upstream technological complexity on downstream manufacturers' innovation.

Research has found that the impact of upstream technological complexity on the downstream manufacturers' innovation depends on the cost effect and market competition effect. The cost effect caused by the complexity of upstream technology inhibits the innovation of downstream manufacturers. In contrast, the market competition effect promotes the innovation of downstream manufacturers. There are differences in the cost effect and market competition effect of upstream technological complexity on different types of downstream manufacturers, so there is also significant heterogeneity in the impact of upstream technological complexity on innovation of different types of downstream manufacturers.

The conclusions of this article improve the understanding of the relationship between upstream technological complexity and downstream innovation and provide helpful implications for industrial chain innovation.