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By comparing regression models, this study aims to analyze the added home value of green sustainability features and green efficiency characteristics, rather than green certifications, in the city of Austin.

The adoption of home green energy efficiency upgrades has emerged as a new trend in the real estate industry, offering several benefits to builders and home buyers. These include tax reductions, health improvements and energy savings. Previous studies have shown that energy-certified single-family homes command a premium in the marketplace. However, the literature is limited in its analysis of the effects of green upgrades and certification on different types of single-family homes. To address this gap, this research collected data from 21,292 multiple listing services (MLS) closed home-selling listings in Austin, Texas, over a period of 35 months.

The analysis results showed that green efficiency features could generally increase single-family housing prices by 11.9%, whereas green sustainability upgrades can potentially bring a 11.7% higher selling price. Although green housing certification did not have significant effects on most housing groups, it did increase closing prices by 13.2% for single-family residences sold at the medium price range, which is higher than the impacts from simply listing the green features on MLS.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge by examining the market value of broadly defined energy efficiency and sustainability features in the residential housing market. The findings can help policymakers, brokerage firms, home builders and owners adjust their policies and strategies related to single-family home sales and mortgage approvals. The research also highlights the potential benefits of capitalizing on green housing features other than certifications.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a DC-port voltage balance strategy realizing it by logic combination modulation (LCM). This voltage balance strategy is brief and high efficient, which can be used in many power electronic devices adopting the cascaded H-bridge rectifier (CHBR) such as power electronic transformer (PET).

The CHBR is typically as a core component in the power electronic devices to implement the voltage or current conversion. The modulation method presented here is aiming to solve the voltage imbalance problem occurred in the CHBR with more stable work station and higher reliability in ordinary operating conditions. In particular, by changing the switch states smoothly and quickly, the DC-port voltage can be controlled as the ideal value even one of the modules in CHBR is facing the load-removed problem.

By using the voltage balance strategy of LCM, the problem of voltage imbalance occurring in three-phase cascaded rectifiers has been solved properly. With the lower modulation depth, the efficiency of the strategy is shown to be better and stronger. The strategy can work reliably and quickly no matter facing the problem as load-removed change or the ordinary operating conditions.

The limitation of the proposed DC-port voltage balance strategy is calculated and proved, in a three-module CHBR, the LCM could balance the DC-port voltage while one module facing the load-removed situation under 0.83 modulation depth.

This paper provides a useful and particular voltage balance strategy which can be used in the topology of three-phase cascaded rectifier. The value of the strategy is that a brief and reliable voltage balance method in the power electronic devices can be achieved. What is more, facing the problem, such as load-removed, in outport, the strategy can response quickly with no switch jump and switch frequency rising.

This study aims to examine consumers’ responses to crowdsourcing campaigns in the request initiation stage using the signaling theory from economics. The purpose of the research is threefold. First, it provides a comprehensive classification of various task types within crowdsourcing. Second, it conceptualizes crowdsourcing announcements as signals of customer orientation and empirically tests the differential effects of the two most common crowdsourcing task types (product- and communication-related) on customer orientation perceptions. Third, it illuminates the downstream behavioral consequences of crowdsourcing campaign announcements.

The authors conducted secondary data analysis of 883 crowdsourcing campaigns (pilot study) to provide evidence on the differential effects of crowdsourcing task types. In addition, four laboratory experiments were conducted to test the theoretical arguments. To test the main effect of crowdsourcing task types, Study 1A (N = 252 MTurk workers) used a one-factor (product- vs communication-related crowdsourcing vs control) between-subject design, whereas Study 1B (N = 171 undergraduate students) used a 2 (task type: product- vs communication-related) by 2 (product category: restaurant vs fashion) between-subject design. Study 2 (N = 93 MTurk workers) explored the underlying mechanism using a one-factor (product- vs communication-related) between-subject design. Study 3 (N = 375 MTurk workers) investigated the boundary condition for the effect of task type with a 2 (task type: product- vs communication-related) by 3 (company credibility: low vs neutral vs high) between-subject design.

The pilot study provides evidence for the conceptualized typology and the differential effects of crowdsourcing task types. Study 1A reveals that product-related crowdsourcing tends to have a more substantial impact than communication-related crowdsourcing on how customer-oriented consumers perceive a company. Study 1B validates the results of Study 1A in a different product category and population sample. Study 2 shows that the differential customer-orientation effect is mediated by the perceived cost of implementing the crowdsourcing outcome and unravels the differences in consumers’ purchase and campaign participation intentions depending on task type. Study 3 highlights that the customer-orientation effect attenuates as company credibility increases.

This research contributes to the crowdsourcing literature by categorizing the various types of crowdsourcing campaigns companies undertake and revealing the differential impact of the different types of crowdsourcing campaigns on consumers’ perceptions and behavioral intentions. In doing so, this research converges two lines of consumer research on crowdsourcing, i.e. product- and communication-related crowdsourcing. The findings add to the debate over the returns from research and development (R&D) versus advertising and extend it from marketing strategy to crowdsourcing literature.

The findings highlight the importance of choosing specific task types for crowdsourcing and lead to practical recommendations on designing crowdsourcing campaigns to maximize their benefits to crowdsourcing brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that differentiates crowdsourcing task types and compares their effectiveness from a consumer perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of positive-framed and negative-framed green advertising on pro-environmental WTP. This study also explores the impacts of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasant level on green advertising effectiveness.

Data are collected from a within-participant between-group online experiment in China. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) is employed to investigate the impact of green advertising on WTP. Grouped regression and mediation analyses are conducted to explore the influences of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasure on advertising efficacy.

The experimental outcomes indicate that green advertising significantly increases participants’ pro-environmental WTP, and negative-framed advertising is more effective than its positive-framed counterpart. Prevention focus heightens receptivity to green advertising, and the relation of environmental concern to advertising effectiveness is inverted U-shaped. Pleasure mediates the effect of green advertising on the WTP, and this mediating role is influenced by emotional intensity when advertising is negatively framed.

Evidence suggests that green advertising may propel pro-environmental WTP by raising environmental awareness, but such a relationship remains severely understudied. As such, this study pioneers in exploring the impact of different-framed green advertising on pro-environmental WTP, extending the concept of green advertising to environmental management. By considering the influences of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasure, this study raises practical implications for designing green advertisements, such as increasing the usage of visual elements.

Qualitative methods are not suitable to process high volumes of policy texts for exploring policy evolution. Therefore, it is hard to use qualitative methods to systematically analyze the characteristics of complex policy networks. So the authors propose a bibliometric research study for exploring policy evolution from time–agency–theme perspectives to excavate the rules and existing problems of China's medical informatization policy and to provide suggestions for formulating and improving the future medical informatization policies.

Initially, 615 valid samples are obtained by retrieving related China's medical informatization policy documents, and the joint policy-making agency network and the co-occurrence network models of medical informatization policies are defined, and then the authors research China's medical informatization policies from single-dimension and multi-dimension view.

The analysis results reveal that China's medical informatization policy process can be divided into four stages; the policy-making agencies are divided into four subgroups by community detection analysis according to the fast unfolding algorithm; the core policy theme keywords are identified based on the eigenvector centrality of the nodes in those networks; the focuses of theme terms are varied in different stages and the correlations between agencies and themes are gradually decentralized.

These findings provide experience and evidence on leveraging informatics in the medical and healthcare field of China. Also, they can help scholars and practitioners better understand the current status and future directions of medical and healthcare informatics development in China and provide a reference to formulate and improve China's future medical informatization policies.

This study proposes a quantitative bibliometric-based research framework to describe transitions and trends of China's medical informatization policy.

Energy groups are cargo owners with large amounts of energy sources (such as coal) to transport. To achieve a satisfactory tradeoff between the reliability requirements of the sea transportation process and the need to control the investment cost, they usually set up a self-owned fleet supplemented by a chartered fleet. This paper aims to investigate the best fleet structure and to evaluate the investment scheme under volatile circumstances in the shipping market.

The authors construct a mathematical model to determine the ratio of the self-owned fleet to the total fleet to minimize fleet operating costs. The volatility of both freight rates and oil prices is taken into consideration. The CPLEX solver is used to empirically analyze real data from an energy group in China, and the ship investment plan is evaluated considering the technical and economic feasibility.

If the ratio of the self-owned fleet to the total fleet is increased to the optimal of 90.40%, the total operating cost is reduced by 33.98%. Thus, the energy group should increase its capacity with a Panamax vessel of approximately 82,000 DWT. Purchasing a 5-year-old secondhand ship and building a new ship both have good investment return indicators.

For cargo owners engaging in transporting bulk cargo domestically in China, the suggested fleet ratio can provide a reference with a universal application scale, given the boundary economic conditions (including the volatility of freight rates and oil prices in the shipping market) in the paper.

In general, the existing compressor design methods require abundant knowledge and inspiration. The purpose of this study is to identify an intellectual design optimization method that enables a machine to learn how to design it.

The airfoil design process was solved using the reinforcement learning (RL) method. An intellectual method based on a modified deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm was implemented. The new method was applied to agents to learn the design policy under dynamic constraints. The agents explored the design space with the help of a surrogate model and airfoil parameterization.

The agents successfully learned to design the airfoils. The loss coefficients of a controlled diffusion airfoil improved by 1.25% and 3.23% in the two- and four-dimensional design spaces, respectively. The agents successfully learned to design under various constraints. Additionally, the modified DDPG method was compared with a genetic algorithm optimizer, verifying that the former was one to two orders of magnitude faster in policy searching. The NACA65 airfoil was redesigned to verify the generalization.

It is feasible to consider the compressor design as an RL problem. Trained agents can determine and record the design policy and adapt it to different initiations and dynamic constraints. More intelligence is demonstrated than when traditional optimization methods are used. This methodology represents a new, small step toward the intelligent design of compressors.

The purpose of this study is to predict the thermal protective performance (TPP) of flame-retardant fabric more economically using machine learning and analyze the factors affecting the TPP using model visualization.

A total of 13 machine learning models were trained by collecting 414 datasets of typical flame-retardant fabric from current literature. The optimal performance model was used for feature importance ranking and correlation variable analysis through model visualization.

Five models with better performance were screened, all of which showed R2 greater than 0.96 and root mean squared error less than 3.0. Heat map results revealed that the TPP of fabrics differed significantly under different types of thermal exposure. The effect of fabric weight was more apparent in the flame or low thermal radiation environment. The increase in fabric weight, fabric thickness, air gap width and relative humidity of the air gap improved the TPP of the fabric.

The findings suggested that the visual analysis method of machine learning can intuitively understand the change trend and range of second-degree burn time under the influence of multiple variables. The established models can be used to predict the TPP of fabrics, providing a reference for researchers to carry out relevant research.

The findings of this study contribute directional insights for optimizing the structure of thermal protective clothing, and introduce innovative perspectives and methodologies for advancing heat transfer modeling in thermal protective clothing.

Stainless-clad bimetallic steels (SCBS) are widely investigated in some extremely environmental applications areas, such as polar sailing area and tropical oil and gas platforms areas, because of their excellent anticorrosion performance and relatively lower production costs. However, the properties of SCBS, including the mechanical strength, weldability and the anticorrosion behavior, have a direct relation with the manufacturing process and can affect their practical applications. This paper aims to review the application and the properties requirements of SCBS in marine environments to promote the application of this new material in more fields.

In this paper, the manufacturing process, welding and corrosion-resistant properties of SCBS were introduced systematically by reviewing the related literatures, and some results of the authors’ research group were also introduced briefly.

Different preparation methods, such as rolling composite, casting rolling composite, explosive composite, laser cladding and plasma arc cladding, as well as the process parameters, including the vacuum degree, rolling temperature, rolling reduction ratio, volume ratios of liquid to solid, explosive ratio and the heat treatment, influenced a lot on the properties of the SCBS through changing the interface microstructures. Otherwise, the variations in rolling temperature, pass, reduction and the grain size of clad steel also brought the dissimilarities of the mechanical properties, microhardness, bonding strength and toughness. Another two new processes, clad teeming method and interlayer explosive welding, deserve more attention because of their excellent microstructure control ability. The superior corrosion resistance of SCBS can alleviate the corrosion problem in the marine environment and prolong the service life of the equipment, but the phenomenon of galvanic corrosion should be noted as much as possible. The high dilution rate, welding process specifications and heat treatment can weaken the intergranular corrosion resistance in the weld area.

This paper summarizes the application of SCBS in marine environments and provides an overview and reference for the research of stainless-clad bimetallic steel.

With the rapid development of social media in the past few years, some dark aspects of usage have appeared, e.g., Weibo addiction. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to address the question of how Weibo keeps users hooked.

The study utilizes the netnography method to explore the symptoms of Weibo addiction and how it is formed.

First, some Weibo users have typical symptoms of addictive behavior, such as withdrawal, loss of control and general living problems; second, narcissism plays an important role in the process of Weibo addiction and has a stronger effect on content generation than content consumption; third, some users use Weibo as a means to alleviate anxiety, but they can then become more anxious owing to addiction; and fourth, the effect of comments has two sides – on the one hand, comments are one kind of feedback to posts, satisfying posters’ social needs, while on the other hand, a storytelling system consists of one post and its comments, upon which some Weibo users become more dependent.

This research is only a preliminary, exploratory study. Therefore, care should be taken when interpreting these findings.

This study should help social media service providers and users to pay attention to the risk of social media addiction. Social media service providers should take social responsibility, design more user-oriented guidelines for marketing ethics and launch more responsible marketing activities. Users should enhance self-control and better balance social media use and offline real life.

Netnography has not been widely used as an addictive behavior research technique. This study is further bolstered because it has also noticed the difference of addiction mechanisms between addictive micro-bloggers and their followers.