Urban Service Systems Research Articles

An Impact Evaluation of the Application of Sharing Products in Tourism Services

This study is a discussion on the feasibility of, application, and promotion of sharing products in tourism services. The promotion and application of the current sharing concept are mostly aimed at a wide range of urban populations or urban service systems, while research on applications of the concept that target tourism services are few. This study hopes to demonstrate that, with the introduction of the sharing concept into the tourism industry, tourism services will benefit from sharing tourism products. Adopting the TAM model, the study surveyed tourists in the form of a questionnaire and obtained its data from 410 participants. The research investigated tourists’ attitudes towards sharing tourism products and the impact of sharing products in tourism services. In the SEM model test and analysis, we found that: (1) sharing tourism products is acceptable to tourists; (2) sharing tourism products brings tourists good travel experiences and improves the quality of tourism services in scenic spots; and (3) tourists can have their special needs and concerns met by sharing tourism products. These prove that tourist sharing products are a scientific and effective way for the tourism industry to improve the travel experience of tourists and to optimize the tourism service industry, and that the sharing concept is in agreeance with the climate of current economic development and the diversified needs of consumers. This research focuses on the promotion of the sharing concept in seaside tourism services. In future research, we can also try to improve the user experience, assist service management, and build a healthy economic ecological model with the application of the sharing concept in different service models and business venues.

Evolving Obligatory Passage Points to Sustain Service Systems: The Case of Traditional Market Revitalization in Hsinchu City, Taiwan

“City” could be viewed as an integration of various service systems with relocated social, economic, and environmental capitals under urbanization. It was evidential in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, where once the biggest market, Dongmen Market (DMM), declined because the replacement of urban consumption patterns along with the setup of high tech science park bringing new residences. This research took the perspectives of Service-Dominant Logic (S-DL) and Actor Network Theory (ANT) to study the development of new service systems and how they were sustained through the revitalization by a two-year ethnographic study. We explain how stakeholders propose and receive value within and among service systems. A unique actor called obligatory passage point (OPP) was formed in the translation phases of actor networks, delivering the co-created value by stakeholders with different interests. Four identified OPPs indicated that their “evolution process” drove the revitalization of DMM toward a sustainable service system. A framework of open innovation practice was formulated as iterative cycles with four phases: (1) actor interacting; (2) value co-creating; (3) relationship modeling; and (4) OPP transforming, which operationalized the OPP evolution from its destruction to construction. The application of the OPP evolution process to revitalizing urban service systems contributes to practitioners in social innovation to sustain urban service systems in addition to the theoretical formation of OPP evolution.

Partnership and Incentives: Making Performance Contracting Work in Ukraine

ABSTRACT Ukraine's energy-intensive urban services systems were built in the 1960s and 1970s, when the Soviet Union heavily subsidized electrical power and natural gas. With the rise of energy prices to international market levels, these systems are now very expensive to operate. The large majority of Ukrainian water, wastewater, and districting heating utilities are therefore operating at a financial loss. However, because of the high potential for reducing energy costs, almost all enterprises can readily identify capital investment projects in energy-efficiency equipment such as water pumps and gas boilers that have high financial rates of return. This operating environment poses a unique mix of opportunities and challenges for the application of performance contracting for energy services. The high financial returns on projects are attractive to private capital and emerging energy services companies. With their low tariffs and outstanding debts to creditors, however, utilities have difficulty channelin...

Need, Awareness, and Contacting Propensity

Recent research on citizen-initiated contacting propensity has generated two different findings: one of a parabolic relationship between contacting and neighborhood social well-being, the other a negative relationship between the two. It has been argued that the latter pattern is to be expected in cities with central complaint-handling units, owing to the effect of such units on citizen awareness of urban service systems. Results reported here from a city with a central complaint unit yield the expected pattern. In addition, survey research data provide a test of the need-awareness model that has been posited to explain the two patterns.

The marketing of services: Applications in the urban realm

This paper suggests that services as compared to products possess the following four unique characteristics: 1. 1. Services are intangible. 2. 2. Because services are intangible, they cannot be stored. 3. 3. Because services are intangible, they cannot be separated. 4. 4. Because services are intangible and cannot be stored or transported, there are limits on mass producing and mass marketing them. The marketing implications of each of these characteristics for urban service systems are outlined in the form of propositions.

A study of some stochastic urban service systems

This article is concerned with the optimal operation of a special class of stochastic urban service systems using the multichannel queuing theory. Examples of such systems are the operational systems of hospital emergency service, fire departments, and taxicabs service. Two models, namely the minimum travelling time (MTT) and the minimum waiting time (MWT) are developed. A discussion is finally given comparing the applicability of these models to some situations in North American cities.

New Directions for Urban Analysis

Quantitative analysis—by which is meant the methodological approach traditionally associated with management science, operations research, and systems analysis—has been applied successfully to improve the operation of many urban service systems. However, its application at the strategic or policy level to solve urban problems has been less successful—a shortcoming that quantitative analysis shares with all other methodologies. The results have been particularly disappointing when measured against the early expectations of some uncritical enthusiasts, that “the urban problem” would be conquered by the modern management armamentarium of operations research, the systems approach, planning-programming-budgeting systems, costs-effective analysis, and the like. In order to understand the reasons for the modesty of the impact of analysis at the strategic level, it is necessary to examine the barriers to success and the nature of the larger systems within which urban service systems are nested. Then one can more readily perceive the new challenges and the new opportunities which beckon urban analysts.

Analysis of urban service systems

Analysis of urban service systems

Analysis of urban service systems: A special one-week Summer Program at M.I.T., July 8–12, 1974

Analysis of urban service systems: A special one-week Summer Program at M.I.T., July 8–12, 1974

Estimating Travel Times on Highway Networks

Many urban service systems have the need to estimate travel times between arbitrary points on the highway network. Some of these systems, such as Dial-a-Ride, require these estimates to be performed in real time. This paper describes and evaluates various computerized methods for performing these estimates. This paper begins by considering the characteristics on estimating techniques. Some experimental data are presented. Then various models for travel time estimation are described and evaluated using the City of Cambridge, Mass., as a test case. A framework for travel time prediction is established along with a characterization of the various errors inherent in the techniques. Tradeoffs between accuracy of the estimate, speed of the estimating procedure, and computer storage requirements are presented.

Dynamic travel time estimation on highway networks

The routing of vehicles in many urban service systems frequently requires estimation of travel time in real time; i.e. given the positions of two points on the highway network, an estimate of the travel time between these two points has to be secured in a very short period of time. Some estimation techniques use predetermined constant parameters to express the travel time estimate as a function of the coordinates of the two points, and these techniques are described as static because of their insensitivity to changing conditions on the network. This paper proposes a dynamic approach to the problem. Actual observations of travel time between the two points in question, which can be easily collected during the operation of the system, are stored and utilized to update the values of the parameters in the estimation function. By using the most recent observations of travel time on the network, prevalent travel conditions can be abstracted and reflected in the updated values of the estimation parameters. This concept of dynamic travel time estimation was tested by means of a simple simulation model. The results indicate that, under the conditions modeled, a dynamic technique is generally superior to a static technique, even though the latter is supplied with the optimal value of the estimation parameter. In addition, in the case of the dynamic technique, the choice of the size of the sample of travel time observations used to update the estimation parameter is critical and depends on the nature of the variations affecting the value of the actual travel time.

On Insensitivities in Urban Redistricting and Facility Location

This paper considers one class of problems associated with urban service systems that dispatch vehicles from fixed facilities. Given the limited resources available, one important issue is the location of the facilities and the design of their response districts to minimize average response time in the face of spatially distributed demand patterns. Calculations with spatially homogeneous demands suggest that the mean travel time resulting from totally random distribution of facilities in the region served is reduced by only 25 per cent when the facilities are optimally distributed. This apparent insensitivity of mean travel time to facility location is pursued in detail by analyzing two classes of systems involving a pair of facilities. In the first case, a procedure is outlined for determining the optimal location of a second facility, given a position for the first facility, when no interfacility cooperation is allowed. In the second case, the same region is examined, but allowing a form of interfacility cooperation. These simple models suggest that, because of insensitivities, it may not be necessary to quantize geographical data finely and then to try laboriously to find the “optimal” solutions to redistricting and facility-location problems. Redistricting and facility location based on rather crude assumptions and an awareness of some of the heuristic properties illustrated by simple analytical models may yield mean travel times very near the minimum possible.