Mobile Services Research Articles

Mobile Government Service Promotion Strategies: Exploring Sustainable Development Pathways Based on Provincial Government Practices in China

The level of mobile government services has become a crucial metric for modernizing a government’s governance capabilities, and it plays a significant role in promoting sustainable development. This study aims to explore the key factors influencing the level of mobile government services across 31 provinces in China, along with their combinatory pathways. Using the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework and employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study conducts an in-depth analysis of mobile government service levels across these provinces, focusing on the dimensions of technology, organization, and environment. The results identify three pathways that promote high levels of mobile government services: technology–organization, technology–environment, and internal–external linkage-driven pathways. These pathways offer viable strategies for achieving sustainable development in mobile government services. Additionally, this study identifies two pathways associated with lower service levels, technology deficiency, and organization–environment misalignment, highlighting key factors that hinder sustainable development. The findings suggest that organizational and environmental factors can complement each other based on technological conditions, internet penetration rates, and citizen participation levels. Based on these insights, this study recommends that provincial governments proactively explore sustainable development pathways, optimize the “technology–organization–environment” conditions to harness synergies, and work towards enhancing mobile government service levels, thereby reducing inter-provincial disparities and advancing sustainable development.

A shift scheduling model for ridepooling services

AbstractThe planning of efficient shift schedules is a key challenge for many service companies whose economic success heavily relies on the efficient employment of personnel. In spite of the recent advances in autonomous driving, mobility services, such as ride pooling, still heavily rely on the use of human drivers and will presumably remain in this category in the near to midterm. As a consequence, shift scheduling of drivers is one of the key success factors in the current industry environment. Determining appropriate shifts that minimize an under- and oversupply of vehicles for all planning periods is a challenging task, since demand can vary heavily over time and the assignment flexibilities are limited due to driver preferences and regulations. In this work, we present a shift scheduling model for ridepooling services. Moreover, we introduce a data generator for instances with realistic properties of a ridepooling service. Using it, we study the effect of different kinds of flexibilities on solution quality.

Integrating one-to-many peer-to-peer ridesharing and public transit for morning commute on a mobility-as-a-service platform

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) seamlessly integrates public transit with mobility-on-demand services to provide users with a one-stop tailored mobility service. Motivated by the practices of the SocialCar project, we study the integration of one-to-many peer-to-peer ridesharing and public transit in the morning commute setting. However, it becomes extremely difficult for the platform to optimise matching, routeing and scheduling for the users over a large network. For practical application, we develop a decision model for the integrated matching problem and propose an iterative distributed optimisation algorithm. The algorithm decomposes the original problem into parallel small subproblems within clusters and iteratively updates clustering as guided by theoretical results; furthermore, an incremental approach is adopted when updating clusters to reduce computational complexity. We conduct extensive computational experiments with real-world data, which demonstrate that our algorithm can quickly generate high-quality solutions for MaaS systems in practice while substantially reducing the users' vehicle miles travelled.

Buoyancy and Propulsion Mechanisms for Stable Movement in Snow Field

For small-sized mobile machines, moving on snow without sinking is challenging. Snowmobiles are often used to move on snow. However, in smaller-sized machines, the skis attached to the machine become small, so small snow bumps or soft powdered snow quickly cause the entire machine to be buried under the snow. Therefore, it is necessary for small robots moving on snow to give appropriate driving mechanisms for producing propulsive force and snow-floating force. To this end, we propose new driving mechanisms, a “passive wing wheel” and a “spiral screw,” for small mobility services that move on snow without sinking or getting stuck. The passive wing wheel has transformable wing-like paddles, which extend to behave like animal feet and shrink to form a wheel if necessary. The spiral screw is designed to produce propulsive force by pushing snow particles with the screw. Additionally, by combining two sets of screws having opposite threads, they gather snow underneath the body attached to them, which causes floating force. This report also proposes ways to prepare pseudo-snow, which resembles natural snow in hardness, viscosity, and property transformation due to deformation. We conducted experiments to measure the performance of the proposed design in both the pseudo-snow and natural snow. From experiments, we confirmed that the mechanism performs well in terms of propulsion and floating on snow.

Socially Sustainable Mobility as a Service (MaaS): A practical MCDM framework to evaluate accessibility and inclusivity with application

Promoting socially sustainable mobility services for all social groups is one of the key elements for sustainable development according to the UN's sustainable development goals. Mobility as a Service (MaaS), a rapidly growing smart mobility concept, has the potential to achieve this goal. However, measuring societal impacts of MaaS considering vulnerable social groups' (elderly, disabled, low-income people) needs is still a question for scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. This paper presents a practical 3-stage framework to evaluate the accessibility and inclusion of MaaS systems based on a range of indicators, and a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method. A worldwide experts' view survey was conducted among transportation academics and practitioners with 105 valid responses to prioritise the main and sub-criteria in proving an accessible and inclusive MaaS system. The results of MCDM analysis show that accessible transport services, accessible MaaS platforms, and accessibility data collection have a share of 51 %, 29 %, and 20 %, respectively. The functionality of the proposed framework has been illustrated on a real-world multi-city MaaS implementation within the Solent area, in particular Portsmouth city located in Southeast England (UK). The policy recommendations proposed in this study shed light on guiding stakeholders and policymakers to select and implement an accessible and inclusive MaaS system.

Building Urban Mobility through Smart Cities and Sustainable Policies

This study examines how smart cities and sustainable policies build urban mobility. Research data from a highly reputable journal indexed by Scopus yielded 321 documents. The search criteria included the title-abs-key "urban mobility," document type "Article," subject area "Social Science," language "English," source type "Journal," and the exact keyword "urban mobility" for publications between 2019 and 2023. This research employed a qualitative approach with bibliometric analysis. Data analysis was conducted using VOSViewer and NVivo12 Plus software to visualise data in images and graphs. The research findings indicate that urban mobility is a pivotal consideration in urban development projects. The United States emerged with the highest focus on urban mobility, accounting for 47 publications, or 16% of the total. Recent research has particularly emphasised topics related to COVID-19, parking management, bicycle infrastructure, mobility services, mobility patterns, and sustainable urban planning, with a significant concentration in 2021. Notably, urban mobility initiatives have fostered collaboration, with a prominent partnership observed with Universidade de São Paulo (13 publications or 17%). These initiatives underscore the importance of establishing networks, groups, and services to advance the development of smart cities and sustainable urban policies

Gigahertz and terahertz transistors for 5G, 6G, and beyond mobile communication systems

Mankind is currently living in the era of mobile communication. Mobile communication encompasses almost all areas of our daily life and is heavily used in most sectors of economy, including agriculture, healthcare, education, and so on. With mobile devices such as smart phones, people can connect to any other people somewhere on the earth, can access huge databases via the internet, stream videos and movies, to name just a few of the many mobile services that are routinely used in the early 2020s. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other emerging new applications will further boost the importance of mobile communication. It is a general trend that with progressing evolution of mobile communication, the amount of data to be transmitted wirelessly increases rapidly and continuously. To enable this, a suitable well-performing hardware infrastructure is needed. The hardware used so far in the successively introduced generations of systems for mobile communication is essentially based on fast transistors. We designate these transistors as gigahertz (GHz)–terahertz (THz) transistors, as the high data rates to be transferred require an electronic hardware operating properly at frequencies in the GHz–THz range. The present paper provides a comprehensive in-depth discussion of these transistors. After a short survey of the evolution of mobile communication systems, the different categories and classes of GHz–THz transistors are introduced, relevant transistor performance measures called figures of merit are defined, issues of transistor design are dealt with, and general design rules for GHz–THz transistors are established. This is followed by a tour through the evolution of these transistors, starting in the 1950s, when the first transistors with GHz capabilities were demonstrated, up to the latest developments since the turn of the millennium and to the state-of-the-art in mid-2024. The discussion includes evolutionary advances as well as true breakthroughs, both contributing to the significant performance improvements achieved over the years. Furthermore, some research activities on GHz–THz transistors, which, unfortunately, led to a dead end as well as ongoing efforts with still unclear outcome are presented and the approaching limits of transistor performance are critically examined. Finally, we take a short view on alternative hardware options for mobile communication systems beyond the limits of transistors.

Mobile fintech adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis

Financial technology (fintech) has become an important means of promoting financial inclusion in developing countries. Understanding why people use fintech services is crucial for improving financial inclusion and policy development. This study examines the drivers of mobile fintech service adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region with the lowest financial inclusion rates in the world. We analyze the determinants of the use of mobile money, mobile banking, electronic wallets, and internet banking by summarizing the extensive empirical research through a systematic literature review. Based on a meta-analysis, we conclude that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are most important. We also find a lack of research on how the supply side drives fintech adoption. Finally, we find large-scale field experiments to be underrepresented in the literature. Policymakers should focus on enhancing digital and financial literacy and setting standards for technology compatibility to create a supportive regulatory environment for wider mobile fintech adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) for university communities: Modeling preferences for integrated public transport bundles

In order to investigate the role that Mobility as a Service (MaaS) could play in university communities to reduce car dependency and moderate car-oriented travel behavior, this paper examines individuals’ stated interest in adopting MaaS bundles in academic environments, where its potential is still largely underexplored. The study involves a large-scale survey campaign carried out within a university community in Milan (Italy), comprising 1873 answers from faculty members, technical-administrative staff, and students. The paper discusses the factors affecting behavioral intentions towards a potential MaaS adoption on the basis of aggregate statistics and discrete choice models estimates. This research highlights that there is a real opportunity to market MaaS in university communities, but an accurate user-centered design of the MaaS solutions is needed, based on individuals’ preferences and actual mobility needs. Results suggest that MaaS has a broader potential user base among individuals under 35 years old and Public Transport subscribers, and that MaaS bundles involving shared mobility services are attractive by residents in the city center, while reserved parking at interchange facilities is more attractive to commuters coming from suburban areas.

Integrating fuzzy multicriteria decision making approach for improving the quality of urban mobility services in developing countries

Integrating fuzzy multicriteria decision making approach for improving the quality of urban mobility services in developing countries

Serial mediation effect of service innovation and word of mouth on mutual fund investment decision through mobile customer relationship management

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of mobile customer relationship management (mCRM), service innovation (SI) and word of mouth (WOM) on the investment decisions (IDs) of mutual fund investors. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a new model for impacting the IDs of mutual fund investors. To verify the suggested model, Partial Least Squares with Structural Equation Modelling are used. For analysis, a survey questionnaire is designed, and data inputs were invited from more than 400 online mutual fund investors in Delhi NCR. Findings The outcomes reveal that the ID of mutual fund investors is significantly influenced by WOM. WOM, in turn, is significantly impacted by mCRM applications through SI playing a mediating role. Research limitations/implications The limitation with reference to survey respondents was that only online mutual fund investors using mCRM applications were considered. Moreover, this study was conducted in Delhi NRC, and a limited sample was considered. Practical implications The result from this research helps the financial organisation to consider SI in their mCRM application as one of the main concerned areas for increased WOM that directly influences the ID of mutual fund investors. Originality/value This study highlighted the impact of SI and WOM on the mutual fund investors’ decision, who use mCRM application. The outcome may contribute to the theoretical framework of IDs concerning mCRM applications. The results of this research offer practical implications for financial organisations in strategising their marketing and product development plans in the context of mutual funds. Also, the mutual fund ID through mCRM application is positively influenced by SI and WOM using both constructs as sequential mediating tools. This research offers new insights into mCRM application for mutual fund investors and financial organisations in India.

Barriers toward the adoption of mobile payment for Vietnamese consumers in rural areas

The study aimed to assess the impact of barriers on the intention to use mobile payment services among rural residents in various provinces of Vietnam. Barriers were categorized into two groups: "Functional barriers" and "Psychological barriers," which play crucial roles in shaping decisions regarding behavioral innovation. The research was conducted through an online survey of 484 rural residents in three provinces: Son La, Da Nang, and An Giang, representing the Northern, Central, and Southern regions of Vietnam. These provinces also represent the mountainous, coastal, and delta regions of the country. Data were processed using Smart PLS 4.1 software, applying the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) method to test the proposed hypotheses in the study. The research findings indicate that factors, including barriers such as usage, value, risk, and tradition, exert counteractive effects on the intention to use mobile payment services. Specifically, functional barriers like perceived usage complexity and value concerns were found to significantly reduce the likelihood of adopting mobile payments. Psychological barriers related to traditional practices also hindered adoption, highlighting the deep-rooted cultural influences in rural areas. However, there is no evidence to support the impact of image barriers on the intention to use mobile payment services among rural residents. This suggests that concerns about social perception and status may be less relevant in rural contexts compared to functional and psychological considerations. Based on the research results, the authors propose managerial implications aimed at fostering the intention to use mobile payment services. These recommendations include enhancing user education and training to reduce functional barriers, as well as culturally sensitive marketing strategies to address psychological barriers. By addressing these barriers effectively, it is possible to increase the adoption of mobile payment services, thereby contributing to the attraction and development of new technology-driven service applications in commercial transactions.

Navigating the Role of Mobile Audiology in Public Health: Overcoming Hearing Health Care Barriers That Impact the Underserved

Purpose: The purpose of this clinical focus article is to convey the significant role that mobile audiology could have in the public health space and discuss how mobile audiology can overcome obstacles that hinder access to traditional audiological care. This article also introduces strategies for delivering innovative audiological care. Method: The article is drawn from the authors' personal research, business, and clinical experiences. It describes the variations in mobile audiology that could aid in improving health care outcomes, identifying underserved areas, identifying barriers, implementing innovative solutions to overcome barriers, limitations of mobile audiology, and implications for optimized hearing health care. Conclusions: Mobile audiology services may play a vital role in public health programs and initiatives by bringing hearing health care to underserved communities, promoting accessibility, and addressing hearing health care concerns that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. Mobile audiology services extend beyond the conventional concept of service delivery and can reduce barriers that prevent access to hearing health care, such as lack of transportation, geographical conditions/distance, time, lack of insurance coverage for evaluation/treatment, lack of qualified hearing health professionals, and financial constraints. Various services can be offered through mobile audiology, such as comprehensive screenings, diagnostic evaluations, and rehabilitation services/interventions. Mobile audiology services provide patients with the intervention necessary to improve communication abilities, quality of life, and overall health care outcomes.

Multimodal urban mobility solutions for a smart campus using artificial neural networks for route determination and an algorithm for arrival time prediction

Artificial intelligence algorithms play a key role in solving multimodal urban mobility problems, this study outlines a scheme covering bus, boat, and pedestrian transport modes. This involves designing an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to classify the most suitable routes for passengers, together with an algorithm capable of estimating the arrival times of various transportation modes at designated stopping points or buildings within the smart campus. The information used to train the ANN is obtained from an Internet of Things (IoT) network and a database that includes the available routes within the campus (which is situated in the Brazilian Amazon), where there is a multimodal electric mobility service. In seeking to achieve the objectives, this ANN relied on the user's geographic location in the input layer, and route mapping data stored in the database in the output layer, as well as the backpropagation algorithm for computational processing and adjustments of synaptic weight. The algorithm for modal arrival time prediction used real-time geographic location data, together with the Haversine formula to calculate geographic distance, while the average speed was obtained from the IoT network. A range of different ANN parameters were included in the experiments. In the study case, the ANN results show an improvement of above 92% for determining the best routes and predicting arrival times. The findings show that ANNs can effectively find the best route within a real-world smart campus environment. Moreover, the results show the arrival time can be estimated by using real-time geographic location data.

Operationalising the 15-minute city with New Mobility services

The 15-minute city concept has gained significant traction in recent years but faces implementation challenges across diverse geographical, spatial, and political contexts. This 15-minute concept proposes that primary functions should be accessible within 15 minutes by walking, cycling, or public transport. However, it provides little guidance on the placement of these functions or the modalities of access. Additionally, it does not consider various new mobility modes and services, nor emerging technologies such as telecommuting and e-commerce. The main challenge is that the 15-minute city presents an alternative planning paradigm to the existing automobility paradigm, which has dominated global city planning over the past century. While cars can facilitate all types of trips, no other transport mode can claim the same versatility. To transition to a new mobility paradigm, we must consider unbundling these trips to allow for the rightsizing of vehicles according to trip purposes, better aligning with factors such as cost, environmental impact, and spatial constraints. This article will showcase how the New Mobility Assessment Framework has been applied to the new development of Hinna Park, outside of Stavanger, Norway. The project provides insights for the public transport authority, Kolumbus, on optimising the deployment of shared mobility services such as bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, shared cars, and car-pooling. It also provided insights to allow key discussions between Kolumbus and the property developer to plan the new districts to support sustainable modes of transport. The framework aims to operationalise the mobility principles of the 15-minute city through public-private collaboration, assessing market potential, setting ambition levels for behaviour change, and developing pricing and investment strategies.

Navigating Social Services from the Perspective of Finnish Older Adults with Complex Needs: An Examination of Different Dimensions of Access

This study aims to increase understanding of accessing social services for older adults with complex needs. Individual interviews (18) with older clients of gerontological social work and diaconal social work in Finland were analyzed using abductive content analysis. The conceptual framework of access to services, consisting of five interrelated dimensions by Penchansky and Thomas (1981) and the sixth dimension, awareness, by Saurman (2016), was used as a basis for analysis and reporting of results. The findings showed that accessing services was affected by all six dimensions and factors related to both the service system and the clients. The main results showed that available services did not always meet the needs of older adults (Availability), or they did not have enough information about the services (Awareness). Attitudes toward both the service system and older adults affected their experiences (Acceptability), as well as the perceived approachability of the services (Accommodation). In addition, mobility of services and physical abilities of clients (Accessibility), together with the perceived worth of services in relation to their cost (Affordability), influenced older adults’ access to services. Overall, this study emphasizes the significance of considering different aspects of access in service design and policies for services for older adults.

Benefits and challenges of geographic information systems (GIS) for data-driven outreach in black communities experiencing overdose disparities: results of a stakeholder focus group

BackgroundBlack individuals in the U.S. face increasing racial disparities in drug overdose related to social determinants of health, including place-based features. Mobile outreach efforts work to mitigate social determinants by servicing geographic areas with low drug treatment and overdose prevention access but are often limited by convenience-based targets. Geographic information systems (GIS) are often used to characterize and visualize the overdose crisis and could be translated to community to guide mobile outreach services. The current study examines the initial acceptability and appropriateness of GIS to facilitate data-driven outreach for reducing overdose inequities facing Black individuals.MethodsWe convened a focus group of stakeholders (N = 8) in leadership roles at organizations conducting mobile outreach in predominantly Black neighborhoods of St. Louis, MO. Organizations represented provided adult mental health and substance use treatment or harm reduction services. Participants were prompted to discuss current outreach strategies and provided feedback on preliminary GIS-derived maps displaying regional overdose epidemiology. A reflexive approach to thematic analysis was used to extract themes.ResultsFour themes were identified that contextualize the acceptability and utility of an overdose visualization tool to mobile service providers in Black communities. They were: 1) importance of considering broader community context; 2) potential for awareness, engagement, and community collaboration; 3) ensuring data relevance to the affected community; and 4) data manipulation and validity concerns.ConclusionsThere are several perceived benefits of using GIS to map overdose among mobile providers serving Black communities that are overburdened by the overdose crisis but under resourced. Perceived potential benefits included informing location-based targets for services as well as improving awareness of the overdose crisis and facilitating collaboration, advocacy, and resource allocation. However, as GIS-enabled visualization of drug overdose grows in science, public health, and community settings, stakeholders must consider concerns undermining community trust and benefits, particularly for Black communities facing historical inequities and ongoing disparities.

Dynamic Operations of a Mobile Charging Crowdsourcing Platform

This paper investigates the operation of a novel electric vehicles (EVs) charging service mode, that is, crowdsourced mobile charging service for EVs, whereby a crowdsourcing platform is established to arrange suppliers (crowdsourced chargers) to deliver charging service to customers’ electric vehicles (parked EVs) at low-battery levels. From the platform operator’s perspective, we aim to determine the optimal operation strategies for mobile charging crowdsourcing platforms to achieve specific objectives. A mathematical modeling framework is developed to capture the interactions among supply, demand, and service operations in the crowdsourced mobile charging market. To design an efficient solution method to solve the formulated model, we first analyze the model properties by rigorously proving that a crucial variable set for operating the mobile charging crowdsourcing system includes charging price, commission control, and period-specific aggregate demand control. Besides, we provide both an equivalent condition and a necessary condition for checking the feasibility of these crucial variables. On top of this, we construct a search tree according to the operation periods in a day to solve the optimal operation strategies, wherein a nondominated principle is adopted as an accelerating technique in the searching process. The solution obtained from the proposed solution algorithm is proved to be sufficiently close to the actual global optimal solutions of the formulated model up to the resolution of the discretization scheme adopted. Numerical examples provide evidence verifying the model’s validity and the solution method’s efficiency. Overall, the research outcome of this work can offer service operators structured and valuable guidelines for operating mobile charging crowdsourcing platforms. Funding: This work was supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education [Grant RG124/21]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2023.0126 .

Palliative mobile care service as an integrated care model

A palliatív ellátás a krónikus, progresszív betegségben szenvedő, előrehaladott stádiumú betegek gondozási formája, melynek célja az életminőség javítása. Ezen ellátási forma feladata a komplex tüneti terhek csökkentése, a túlkezelések elkerülésének biztosítása, valamint az ellátás előzetes tervezésének segítése. A palliatív ellátás alkalmazása nemcsak a daganatos, hanem a súlyos szervelégtelenségben vagy dementiában szenvedő betegek esetében is szükséges. A be gyógyászati fekvőbetegosztályok nagyszámú idős, súlyos állapotú, jelentős komorbiditásokkal bíró betegeinek terápiájában ennek megfelelően a szokványos kezelésekkel együtt történő alkalmazása kiemelt fontosságú. Munkánkban a pécsi integrált palliatív betegellátási rendszer részeként működő Klinikai Palliatív Mobil Team rövid ismertetését követően bemutatjuk a palliatív ellátási rendszer kialakításának folyamatát belgyógyászati osztályunkon. A rendszer létrehozásához az ellátási forma kiépítésére nyitott intézetvezetés, a szakápolók és az orvosok oktatása, a speciális gyógyszerek naprakész hozzáférésének megteremtése, valamint a betegvizitek folyamatának kidolgozása is rendkívüli fontosságú. Közleményünk célja, hogy a folyamat ismertetésével segítsük hasonló palliatív ellátórendszerek kialakítását a fekvőbeteg-ellátás súlyos állapotú betegeinek kezeléséhez. Az ellátási forma a betegek életminőségének javításán túl a kezelés költségét is csökkenti. Orv Hetil. 2024; 165(31): 1186–1190.

Indigenous knowledge and digital financial inclusion: a comparison between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT M-Pesa is one leading example of mobile money services. It reveals the importance of digital financial inclusion (DFI) in countries still largely unbanked, and of institutional factors in shaping DFI. Yet, extant research has not investigated the combined effect of these factors, informal (indigenous knowledge) and formal (regulatory) institutions, on DFI. This study intends to do so leveraging the institutional theory and applying regression techniques to data from 1000 digital-finance users. It reveals different effects of institutional factors across regions. In Europe, strong formal institutions shape DFI. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), weak institutions combined with high indigenous knowledge increase DFI. These findings are crucial for countries’ development, as financial inclusion is considered a key enabler of several SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). They could help adapt financial-inclusion programs by including the indigenous-knowledge component in countries facing weak formal institutions, to maximize their chances of success in fostering development and growth.