Government Policy Incentives Research Articles

Comparisons of students’ perceptions on BIM practice among Australia, China and UK

PurposeUniversity students are the future driving forces in and leaders of the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry advancement. Although BIM pedagogical studies have been performed in different institutions, there has not been sufficient research providing a global perspective of BIM education and students’ perceptions toward BIM practice and application following their learning progress. The purpose of this paper is to adopt student samples from Swinburne University of Technology (SUT, Australia), Wenzhou University (WZU, China) and University of Brighton (UK) as three case studies to investigate the BIM practice and application-related perceptions and motivations.Design/methodology/approachBased on the thorough understanding of the BIM pedagogical delivery including teaching contents and assessment methods among the three institutions, a questionnaire survey approach was adopted to collect AEC students’ perceptions of BIM. Within each selected case, statistical analysis was conducted to investigate both the overall sample and subgroup differences regarding students’ opinions on BIM’s functions (e.g. as a 3D visualization tool) and BIM usefulness in various industry professions, their motivation in BIM-related jobs and their perceptions of challenges encountered in BIM practice and application. Multiple factors influencing BIM learners’ perceptions were discussed, such as pedagogical assessment approach, and individual factors (e.g. disciplines).FindingsThe results showed that students were able to discern the latest industry practices and critical thinking in BIM movements. For example, SUT students perceived more challenges from the government legislation or incentive policies, which was consistent with Australia’s BIM policy movement. WZU students tended to have less positive views on BIM usefulness. The results also indicated fewer differences regarding perceived challenges among students from these three institutions.Originality/valueThis study contributed to the body of knowledge in managerial BIM by focusing on learners’ perceptions from the perspective of students’ understanding, motivation and individual views of BIM, which were insightful to both BIM educators and employers. By initiating the framework of BIM learning process and its influence factors, the current study serves as a point of reference to continue the future work in strengthening the connection between institutional BIM education and industry practical needs worldwide.

Multi-constraints in an integrated inventory model with learning and screening errors under greenhouse gas emissions

An inventory model is developed for an economic production quantity model with learning in production and screening errors under greenhouse gas emissions. The main contribution of this paper is determining an optimal vendor–buyer inventory policy by accounting quality inspection errors at the buyer's end and learning in production at the vendor's end and also considering the Government's penalty and incentive policies to reduce the emission. The buyer warehouse has limited capacity and there is an upper bound on the purchase of products. Moreover, we consider the ordering cost is reduced by an extra investment. Also to find an optimal policy of the proposed mathematical model, a genetic algorithm is established. Numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are shown to illustrate the models.

Research on the evolution mechanism of the electric vehicle market driven by big data

SummaryThis paper focuses on analyzing the effect of Government incentive policy on car producers under big data background. Driven by big data, the producers can effectively predict the consumers demand on EV. We research on the mechanism of government subsidies and carbon tax influence on producers' decision‐making by establishing an evolutionary game model between governments and producers, and integrating with prospect theory, we get a Perceived Benefit Matrix which is different from the traditional payoff matrix to research the behavior of the government and the producer decision‐making. Theoretical study and simulation show that, under static subsidies and carbon tax, there does not exist real Nash equilibrium in evolution system, and the initial state affects the track of evolution system; only when the government intervention cost and subsidies are less than carbon tax and the different profit between producing electric vehicle and fuel vehicle is greater than actual input, the evolution system will have a stable state, which the producers would produce electric vehicle under government intervention; the system is more sensitive on the degree of perceived value and degree of loss aversion, so it is more important to strength the producers confidence in producing electric vehicles; raising the subsidy and carbon tax policies can induce producers to choose producing electric vehicles, and in these measures, producers are more sensitive in carbon tax.

Research on the Present Situation and Countermeasures of Teaching Quality of International Volunteer Tourism Project in Mabul Island

“International Volunteer Tourism” was born in Europe and America in 1920. It has a history of nearly 100 years, which experienced a rich evolution from simple initial scale to gradual maturity and internationalization. While vigorously promoting the development of education in poverty areas, world cultural exchanges, as well as world peace, the problem of International Volunteer Tourism has emerged, including high mobility of volunteers and instable local teaching quality. The author stayed in Malaysia for a week in charging of volunteer work, and researched by field investigation and described the severe living conditions and poor education of local students in Mabul Island. There are some problems in the development of international volunteers in Mabul Island, such as the high mobility of volunteers, incoherent teaching contents, and uneven teaching level. By analyzing the reasons and exploring solutions, the author puts forward three suggestions. First, strengthen publicity, combine government coercion and incentive policies. Second, advocate UNESCO to set up a unified teaching material and teaching plan for international volunteers worldwide. Third, encourage UNESCO and people who support the volunteer organization to set up foundations to relieve the financial pressure, as well as improving the quality of teaching in underdeveloped areas.

Sustainable supply chain collaboration with outsourcing pollutant-reduction service in power industry

Abstract In developing countries, coal power plants still play a major role in the power sector and they are considered as a major emission source of air pollution. Strict regulations have compelled the coal power plants to improve environmental performance by reducing carbon emissions and the emission of pollutants. However, due to cost disadvantages, the coal power plants often lack motivation to internalize environmental externalities through investing in green technology. This situation raises a question: is there any alternative to reduce pollutants in operations economically? With a focus on service supply as well as a consideration of government policies, this paper develops a model to investigate the opportunity of outsourcing a pollutant-reduction service to meet the environmental constraint. The service supply chain consists of a coal power plant (end user) and a pollutant-reduction service provider, with the former outsourcing the service to the latter. We study the policy for improving the profit of this service supply chain whereas the benefit allotment is adjusted through outsourcing price negotiation between the two partners. The results show that the green service outsourcing price is interrelated with the government incentive policy which defines the shares of the two partners. Our key contribution lies in integrating the complex factors affecting the supply chain collaboration such as green service, financial feasibility, environmental constraint, government policies, outsourcing price negotiation, and profit sharing. Our research findings have the following implications: considering environmental externalities, the government should motivate the collaboration between supply chain partners; the economic scale of output and sales price subsidy of electricity generation are the primary factors affecting the price of outsourcing green service and, consequently, the allotment of supply chain profits. The study results indicate the collaboration is potentially effective in improving environmental performance.

Imagística: A Case of Youth Entrepreneurship in a Small Film Production Firm

The article presents the trajectory of two young entrepreneurs of the Brazilian audiovisual sector, seeking to present the main motivations to starting the business, difficulties faced during the process and profile of entrepreneurs. In order to achieve the proposed goal, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with the young entrepreneurs over a period of six months. As main results it was verified that the main motivation to start the venture was the desire to develop projects independently and the opportunity to access government incentive policies that promote Brazilian film production. Among the main difficulties faced by the young entrepreneurs were the financial ones. They believe that a good entrepreneur is one who knows his goals, persists in reaching them, and overcomes adversities. The cases illustrates how a cultural entrepreneurship process is composed of a search for competences in both the artistic tools needed producing films as well as business startup and management.

Research on benefit evaluation of governmental incentive policies

Towards the benefit evaluation problem of government incentive policies in the green supply chain, combined with the government stimulation measurements, this paper constructs a more improved evaluation index system from qualitative and quantitative aspects. Meanwhile, it established the green benefit evaluation model of government incentives in the supply chain based on the cross-evaluation of data envelopment analysis method and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation theory. According to the expert opinions and questionnaire survey on the characteristics of industry development in Zhejiang province, China, moreover, this paper makes an empirical analysis on the sample enterprises and concludes a reasonable evaluation result. The result indicates that the government incentive policy would be more effective under the constraint of the limited resources, which concentrates on the resource allocation optimisation of government incentive policies in green supply chain.

Research on benefit evaluation of governmental incentive policies

Towards the benefit evaluation problem of government incentive policies in the green supply chain, combined with the government stimulation measurements, this paper constructs a more improved evaluation index system from qualitative and quantitative aspects. Meanwhile, it established the green benefit evaluation model of government incentives in the supply chain based on the cross-evaluation of data envelopment analysis method and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation theory. According to the expert opinions and questionnaire survey on the characteristics of industry development in Zhejiang province, China, moreover, this paper makes an empirical analysis on the sample enterprises and concludes a reasonable evaluation result. The result indicates that the government incentive policy would be more effective under the constraint of the limited resources, which concentrates on the resource allocation optimisation of government incentive policies in green supply chain.

Agro-Processing Industry and Farmers’ Linkages: Pattern and Impact on Enhancing Farmers’ Income in Tamil Nadu

Linking production to processing is one of the strategies outlined by the government to double the farmers’ income by 2022. In this context, this study examines the role of processing industry in enhancing farmer's income. More specifically, the study has assessed (i) evolution of processing industry cluster and its enabling factors, (ii) farmers-processing industry linkage mechanisms and their impact on farmers’ income, and (iii) farmers’ preference for marketing outlets and its key determinants. This study is based on the comprehensive survey conducted across various stakeholders such as mango processors, commission agents, traders, and farmers of Krishnagiri cluster of Tamil Nadu in 2016–17. The study has found a rapid growth in the number of processing firms in the study region during 2000s. The growth was fuelled by export demand, assured supply of raw material and Government's policy incentives. On an average, the cost of mango cultivation was 1.56 lakh/ha and cost of production was 8.29/kg and farmers received net income of 1.34 lakh/ha. The cost of processing of mango was estimated to be 7/kg. More than 90 per cent of the farmers were linked with the processors either directly or through local contractors and an oral agreement was the common form of institutional mechanism. Overall, the study has shown that those farmers those who were linked with the processing industry could gain on an average additional income of about 49 per cent in comparison to the farmers those who were located in the non-processing industry region.

Is a cooperative approach to seaweed farming effectual? An analysis of the seaweed cluster project (SCP), Malaysia

Seaweed (Kappaphycus spp.) farming has been practised in Malaysia since the late 1970s following government policy incentives (training and farming inputs). However, numerous governance, economic, environmental, technological and sociocultural challenges have limited the industry from achieving its full potential. The Seaweed Cluster Project (SCP) was introduced in 2012 to address some of these challenges. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the SCP in delivering its central objectives of increasing seaweed production, optimising the farming area, improving seaweed quality and farming efficiency, raising farmers’ income, and reducing the environmental impact of seaweed farming. Community and industry perceptions of the SCP were obtained from seven communities using a mixed-methods approach based on face-to-face semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, household surveys, observation and secondary data. Views on the SCP outcomes were generally negative, including low take-up rates by indigenous people, poor stakeholder participation in decision-making, limited acceptance of new technologies, economic vulnerability, a complex marketing system, and low social cohesion of seaweed farming communities. Positive perceptions included recognition that the SCP confers high social status upon a community, reduces operating costs, and facilitates the production of certified seaweed. The SCP’s problems are linked to poor multi-level governance, weak market mechanisms and unintegrated community development. The study concludes with five recommendations to improve the SCP: promote the participation of indigenous people; legalise existing migrant farmers; strengthen local seaweed cooperative organisations; provide entrepreneurship skills to farmers; and fully integrate stakeholders into decision-making.

Factors influencing technology and knowledge transfer: Configurational recipes for Sub-Saharan Africa

General studies on technology and knowledge (T&K) transfer to developing countries have often adopted methods that yield inconsistent results. Traditional quantitative methods, alone, have limitations in their ability to account for complex interaction between variables. This article adopts configurational recipes, using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to supplement the analysis. This research carefully and systematically selects responses from experts and practitioners in the construction industry in Ghana. The results reveal two configurational recipes for high quality of T&K transfer: effective industry institutions, education effectiveness, and less congestion of firms; and joint presence of high government policy incentives, effective industry institutions, and education effectiveness. This study extends significantly the existing literature regarding T&K transfer in developing countries in general and in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in particular.

Assessing the economic performance of an environmental sustainable supply chain in reducing environmental externalities

This study investigates the mechanism that motivates supply chain firms to reduce environmental externalities while balancing the economic feasibility of the supply chain system under environmentally constrained circumstances in a competitive market. Taking government policy incentives into account, a quantitative model of an integrated supply chain that incorporates sustainable constraints is formulated to optimize supply chain firms’ operational strategies of producing environmental friendly products (EFPs). This study contributes to the literature with a better understanding the interplay and interrelation of multiple sustainable constraints and their impact on supply chain firms’ collaborative decisions. Our findings suggest that the decisions of operating EFPs are subject to sustainable constraints and that the government policy incentives play a dominant role overseeing supply chain firms’ environmental behaviors toward sustainability.

Assessing Economic Performance of an Environmental Sustainable Supply Chain in Reducing Externality

This study investigates the mechanism that motivates supply chain firms to reduce environmental externalities while balancing the economic feasibility of the supply chain system under environmentally constrained circumstances in a competitive market. Taking government policy incentives into account, a quantitative model of an integrated supply chain that incorporates sustainable constraints is formulated to optimize supply chain firms’ operational strategies of producing environmental friendly products (EFPs). This study contributes to the literature with a better understanding the interplay and interrelation of multiple sustainable constraints and their impact on supply chain firms’ collaborative decisions. Our findings suggest that the decisions of operating EFPs are subject to sustainable constraints and that the government policy incentives play a dominant role overseeing supply chain firms’ environmental behaviors toward sustainability.

Pricing strategy of environmental sustainable supply chain with internalizing externalities

The negative impact of business activities on resources and sustainability include pollution and environmental externalities, which are becoming more severe and attracting worldwide attention. This study investigates a mechanism for motivating supply chain members to collaboratively produce environmentally friendly products (EFPs), with an investment in pollution reduction and prevention and by considering environmental regulations and incentive policies From the perspective of supply chain members, we focus on studying optimal pricing strategies for environmentally sustainable supply chains and the relationship between firm performance and environmental policy incentives. By treating the EFP as an investment project, its economic feasibility can be evaluated in the context of the supply chain. Unlike traditional supply chain models, in our model, government policy incentives are shared within the supply chain through transfer price negotiations between manufacturers and suppliers. This study addresses the impact of government policy incentives on value transition and profit allotment in the collaborative supply chain system.

Review of Regional Economic Development in the Local Government Competition

Academic circles from fiscal decentralization, the central government's incentive policy in the regional economic development is discussed the reasons of local government competition, put forward from the aspects of policy, develop cooperation mechanism is conducive to healthy competition, prevent vicious competition countermeasures. However, under the supervision of competition mechanism research still exist. Need to make decision by the central competition management mechanism, in the process of competition also need to set up relevant supervision mechanism, and can only be the most behavior supervised the earth contain improper competition, avoid vicious competition. In the aspect of implementation to avoid vicious competition mechanism lacks the corresponding supervision mechanism in our country, has yet to be research and development.

Policy Initiatives and Agricultural Performance in Post-independent Ghana

The central role agriculture plays in the development of Ghana’s economy has been recognized by several authors, particularly because Ghana’s economy is basically agrarian. Nevertheless, the contributions agriculture can make to economic development depend on the policy environment within which agriculture thrives. Several policies, both general and specific to agriculture, which have been pursued under various governments have either promoted or mitigated against the performance of agriculture in Ghana. This paper reviews the various policies under which Ghana's agricultural sector has operated since independence, and provides a synthesis of the major existing policies and recent changes and how these have affected the agricultural sector. The analysis shows that the socialist model of the 1960s contrasted sharply with the liberalized market approach of the 1980s and 1990s, particularly under structural adjustment. These differing policy orientations have had significant effects on agricultural performance in Ghana, and the roles of agriculture at different periods. For instance, the policy effects of agricultural activities on the environment, such as the promotion of export commodities, the exploitation of timber and forest resources, mining, and indiscriminate sale and use of agro-chemicals in Ghana have been negative. On the other hand, promotion of cash and export crops through government policy incentives have improved rural incomes for farmers that cultivate such crops, and helped to reduce poverty among this group. In general, the policy effects on agriculture in Ghana have been mixed.

The Electric Vehicles Developing in Taiwan-Application of Scenario Analysis

The internal combustion engine vehicles is currently the most important means of transport, but it causes air pollution and rapid decrease in volume of oil reserves and many other issues, therefore, the best choice to reduce carbon emissions is the electric vehicle. Unfortunately, the use of electric vehicles is very uncommon situation now. In this study, We employ scenario analysis of the basic principles and procedures, Let science and technological development, government policies and laws, consumer consciousness, firm behavior and other variables included into consideration, to analyze the possibility of electric vehicles in the future direction of development. And proposes specifically the feasible strategy development suggestion by scenario analysis method, includes: 1. reduce the battery cost; 2. government incentive policy; 3. establish charging stations.

Modelling future uptake of solar photo-voltaics and water heaters under different government incentives

To accelerate the adoption of technologies to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the residential sector, government policy makers offer a range of fiscal instruments and incentives. Despite the high costs of these schemes, methods are lagging to systematically evaluate their likely effectiveness amongst a geographical landscape of heterogeneous consumers. To address this need, a model was developed for spatial adoption of technologies such as water heaters and solar photo-voltaic panels (PVs), across housing stock, given government policy incentives. By combining features of choice modelling, Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) and diffusion models, it provides a capability to analyse future adoption patterns of the competing technology options under a range of features for purchase timing and choice. The model was implemented across 2.7 million residential dwellings in the State of New South Wales (NSW) of Australia to estimate future stock of PV and water heater options at geographical units of 250 households. Validation against actual numbers of PV installations at each postcode showed the model was effective at identifying high versus low adoption locations. Application to a wide range of policy scenarios, ranging from feed-in tariffs to upfront rebates, showed substantial differences in their effectiveness to accelerate uptake, and the government expenditure required.

The role of government in the venture capital market with asymmetric information

Information asymmetry increases the risks undertaken by venture capitalists. The present study departs from the tendency in earlier analyses to attribute the problem of information asymmetry to the entrepreneur only. In view of the obvious social benefits that the development of the venture capital industry brings, the government should take upon itself to consider tax incentives and changes to regulatory policies in order to attract venture capital investments. Three scenarios are portrayed here to examine the issue of asymmetric information in the venture capital market: (1) when both the venture capitalist's and entrepreneur's efforts are observable and the government incentive policy is available; (2) when the entrepreneur's effort is unobservable but the venture capitalist's is observable and government tax incentive is available; and (3) when the entrepreneur's effort is observable but the venture capitalist's effort is unobservable, and regulatory monitoring and government tax incentives are uncertain. This investigation reveals that the tax incentive policy and regulatory measures put in place by the government can significantly and positively affect the outcome of the entrepreneurial project by reducing information asymmetry.

A stochastic model to optimize forecast and fulfillment of green roof demand

Increasing demand for green roofs in cities has generated pressure on the landscape industry to supply materials in a timely manner. A demand-responsive optimal-inventory model (DOM) is developed to predict future demand and optimize contractor inventories of green roof components. Unlike other operations research models, no assumption is made on demand distribution. Instead, a stochastic model is constructed based on building owners’ behavior and two pertinent extrinsic factors: changing government incentive policy and increasing energy price. When actual demand exceeds predicted value, undesirable backorder and inventory shortfall emerge. The reverse scenario creates superfluous inventories and elevated holding cost. As managers have scanty market data for the relatively new products, they use current demand to predict next-period demand. The findings suggest adopting the safe lower limit of demand fluctuations to prevent overstocking. The numerical experiment finds the greatest demand fluctuations in the first year of the government reimbursement program. The sensitivity analysis indicates sensitive response of green-roof accumulated demand to extrinsic influences. Managers could regularly update demand forecast and inventory strategy to dovetail with changing market and policy environment. The stochastic model could capture most of the important real-world features of the green-roof market by relatively simple mathematical expressions.