What Makes a Good Image? Airbnb Demand Analytics Leveraging Interpretable Image Features

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunyuan Zhang ◽  
Dokyun Lee ◽  
Param Vir Singh ◽  
Kannan Srinivasan

We study how Airbnb property demand changed after the acquisition of verified images (taken by Airbnb’s photographers) and explore what makes a good image for an Airbnb property. Using deep learning and difference-in-difference analyses on an Airbnb panel data set spanning 7,423 properties over 16 months, we find that properties with verified images had 8.98% higher occupancy than properties without verified images (images taken by the host). To explore what constitutes a good image for an Airbnb property, we quantify 12 human-interpretable image attributes that pertain to three artistic aspects—composition, color, and the figure-ground relationship—and we find systematic differences between the verified and unverified images. We also predict the relationship between each of the 12 attributes and property demand, and we find that most of the correlations are significant and in the theorized direction. Our results provide actionable insights for both Airbnb photographers and amateur host photographers who wish to optimize their images. Our findings contribute to and bridge the literature on photography and marketing (e.g., staging), which often either ignores the demand side (photography) or does not systematically characterize the images (marketing). This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Author(s):  
Brima Sesay ◽  
Zhao Yulin ◽  
Fang Wang

The question as to whether the national innovation system (NIS) plays a significant positive role in influencing economic growth has been intensely debated by academics as well as policy analysts. The main controversy, however, is the fact that the ongoing empirical evidences on the relationship between innovation and economic growth are still mixed. The aim of this paper is to provide further evidence on the relationship between the NIS and economic growth using consistent and reliable data from a sample of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa [BRICS]). The research has a BRICS focus and constructs NIS using historical panel data set for the main variables, that is, university enrolment rate for science and engineering students, government research and development expenditure, high-tech export and the enclosure of control variables covering the period 2000Q1–2013Q4. The study employed a dynamic panel estimation technique with a view of evaluating the relative impact of the NIS on economic growth in BRICS. The results revealed that the NIS as a whole has a positive effect on economic growth in BRICS economies. An important policy implication emerging from this study is that extra efforts are needed by emerging economies to promote the development of a NIS so as to explore the potential growth-inducing effects of a well-functioning NIS. Consequently, findings from this study have offered some persuading indicators for BRICS economies to explore the development of a NIS as a potential opportunity to speed up their economic growth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Tee-Ann Teo

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Deep Learning is a kind of Machine Learning technology which utilizing the deep neural network to learn a promising model from a large training data set. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been successfully applied in image segmentation and classification with high accuracy results. The CNN applies multiple kernels (also called filters) to extract image features via image convolution. It is able to determine multiscale features through the multiple layers of convolution and pooling processes. The variety of training data plays an important role to determine a reliable CNN model. The benchmarking training data for road mark extraction is mainly focused on close-range imagery because it is easier to obtain a close-range image rather than an airborne image. For example, KITTI Vision Benchmark Suite. This study aims to transfer the road mark training data from mobile lidar system to aerial orthoimage in Fully Convolutional Networks (FCN). The transformation of the training data from ground-based system to airborne system may reduce the effort of producing a large training data set.</p><p>This study uses FCN technology and aerial orthoimage to localize road marks on the road regions. The road regions are first extracted from 2-D large-scale vector map. The input aerial orthoimage is 10&amp;thinsp;cm spatial resolution and the non-road regions are masked out before the road mark localization. The training data are road mark’s polygons, which are originally digitized from ground-based mobile lidar and prepared for the road mark extraction using mobile mapping system. This study reuses these training data and applies them for the road mark extraction using aerial orthoimage. The digitized training road marks are then transformed to road polygon based on mapping coordinates. As the detail of ground-based lidar is much better than the airborne system, the partially occulted parking lot in aerial orthoimage can also be obtained from the ground-based system. The labels (also called annotations) for FCN include road region, non-regions and road mark. The size of a training batch is 500&amp;thinsp;pixel by 500&amp;thinsp;pixel (50&amp;thinsp;m by 50&amp;thinsp;m on the ground), and the total number of training batches for training is 75 batches. After the FCN training stage, an independent aerial orthoimage (Figure 1a) is applied to predict the road marks. The results of FCN provide initial regions for road marks (Figure 1b). Usually, road marks show higher reflectance than road asphalts. Therefore, this study uses this characteristic to refine the road marks (Figure 1c) by a binary classification inside the initial road mark’s region.</p><p>To compare the automatically extracted road marks (Figure 1c) and manually digitized road marks (Figure 1d), most road marks can be extracted using the training set from ground-based system. This study also selects an area of 600&amp;thinsp;m&amp;thinsp;&amp;times;&amp;thinsp;200&amp;thinsp;m in quantitative analysis. Among the 371 reference road marks, 332 can be extracted from proposed scheme, and the completeness reached 89%. The preliminary experiment demonstrated that most road marks can be successfully extracted by the proposed scheme. Therefore, the training data from the ground-based mapping system can be utilized in airborne orthoimage in similar spatial resolution.</p>


1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-204
Author(s):  
Xaunli Xie ◽  
Hugh O'Neill

Innovation is essential for every organization. Yet the relationship betweenboards and innovation remains unclear. We argue that boards not only monitor,but also provide resources, and innovations require both proper levels of resources(skills) from the board, and appropriate forms of control. In this study, we integrateresource-dependence and agency perspectives to examine how a board’s knowledgeand skills (board diversity) and a board’s preference for behavior based controls(board composition) influence the board’s ability to provide resources and designcontrols, which in turn affect the level of research and development intensity inthe firm. Hypotheses are tested using a panel data set of firms in research intensiveindustries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stubblefield ◽  
Mitchell Hervert ◽  
Jason L. Causey ◽  
Jake A. Qualls ◽  
Wei Dong ◽  
...  

AbstractOne of the challenges with urgent evaluation of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in the emergency room (ER) is distinguishing between cardiac vs infectious etiologies for their pulmonary findings. We conducted a retrospective study with the collected data of 171 ER patients. ER patient classification for cardiac and infection causes was evaluated with clinical data and chest X-ray image data. We show that a deep-learning model trained with an external image data set can be used to extract image features and improve the classification accuracy of a data set that does not contain enough image data to train a deep-learning model. An analysis of clinical feature importance was performed to identify the most important clinical features for ER patient classification. The current model is publicly available with an interface at the web link: http://nbttranslationalresearch.org/.


ILR Review ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip B. Beaumont ◽  
Richard I. D. Harris

In Britain, where there are no representation elections and management's recognition of unions is entirely voluntary, a substantial decline in union density since 1979 has been in part attributed to increased instances of union de-recognition by management. This study examines the relationship between union density and union de-recognition at the individual establishment level through an analysis of the panel data set contained in the 1990 national Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. The results indicate that between 1984 and 1990, union recognition was lost in less than 10% of establishments in the sample; changes in union status were closely related to changes in union density; and changes in union density, in turn, resulted from extrinsic and organizational changes, such as increased competition and changes in company size.


Mathematics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1606
Author(s):  
Daniela Onita ◽  
Adriana Birlutiu ◽  
Liviu P. Dinu

Images and text represent types of content that are used together for conveying a message. The process of mapping images to text can provide very useful information and can be included in many applications from the medical domain, applications for blind people, social networking, etc. In this paper, we investigate an approach for mapping images to text using a Kernel Ridge Regression model. We considered two types of features: simple RGB pixel-value features and image features extracted with deep-learning approaches. We investigated several neural network architectures for image feature extraction: VGG16, Inception V3, ResNet50, Xception. The experimental evaluation was performed on three data sets from different domains. The texts associated with images represent objective descriptions for two of the three data sets and subjective descriptions for the other data set. The experimental results show that the more complex deep-learning approaches that were used for feature extraction perform better than simple RGB pixel-value approaches. Moreover, the ResNet50 network architecture performs best in comparison to the other three deep network architectures considered for extracting image features. The model error obtained using the ResNet50 network is less by approx. 0.30 than other neural network architectures. We extracted natural language descriptors of images and we made a comparison between original and generated descriptive words. Furthermore, we investigated if there is a difference in performance between the type of text associated with the images: subjective or objective. The proposed model generated more similar descriptions to the original ones for the data set containing objective descriptions whose vocabulary is simpler, bigger and clearer.


Author(s):  
Ozge Oztimur Karadag ◽  
Ozlem Erdas

In the traditional image processing approaches, first low-level image features are extracted and then they are sent to a classifier or a recognizer for further processing. While the traditional image processing techniques employ this step-by-step approach, majority of the recent studies prefer layered architectures which both extract features and do the classification or recognition tasks. These architectures are referred as deep learning techniques and they are applicable if sufficient amount of labeled data is available and the minimum system requirements are met. Nevertheless, most of the time either the data is insufficient or the system sources are not enough. In this study, we experimented how it is still possible to obtain an effective visual representation by combining low-level visual features with features from a simple deep learning model. As a result, combinational features gave rise to 0.80 accuracy on the image data set while the performance of low-level features and deep learning features were 0.70 and 0.74 respectively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed A. Shabeeb Ali ◽  
Hazem Ramadan Ismael ◽  
Ahmed H. Ahmed

Using a UK panel data set drawn from 1675 Chief Executive Officer (CEO) year observations and 1540 Chief Financial Officer (CFO) year observations, we examine the relationship between CEO and CFO equity incentives and earnings management. In addition, we examine the moderation effect of corporate governance mechanisms on the relationship between executives’ equity incentives and earnings management. We use multivariate regression models to test our hypotheses. We find that CEO equity incentives are related to higher absolute and income increasing earnings management. These results support the managerial power theory argument that CEOs exploit equity-linked compensation to obtain more personal benefits without causing public anger. Contrary to CEO equity incentives, we could not find any significant relationship between CFO equity incentives and any of the earnings management proxies. In addition, we find that corporate governance quality (measured by individual mechanisms and overall index) has no effect on the relationship between executives’ equity incentives and earnings management. This result indicates that whereas some corporate governance mechanisms can reduce earnings management in general, they do not affect wealth driven incentives to manipulate accruals. In total, results question the effectiveness of the corporate governance system in mitigating opportunistic behavior motivated by executives’ compensation structures


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Nanfeng Luo ◽  
Steven S. Lui ◽  
Youngok Kim

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that the high learning ability associated with innovative firms enables these firms to conduct a broad knowledge search based on a knowledge transfer perspective. This paper further shows that knowledge tacitness and relationship between knowledge senders and receivers will accentuate this positive relationship. Design/methodology/approach To test the proposed model, a pooled panel data set based on 102 Korean firms that participated in three waves of National Korean Innovation Surveys conducted in 2002, 2005, and 2008 is constructed. Since the independent variables are lagged in the analysis, the panel data comprised 204 firm-year observations of the 102 firms. Generalized estimating equations were used to analyze the effect of innovation on knowledge search breadth. Findings The authors found that absorptive capacity mediated the relationship between innovation and knowledge search breadth. This mediating relationship was stronger when a firm is not affiliated with any business group and operates in the high-technology industry. Research limitations/implications This paper showed that innovation is not only a consequence of knowledge search as found in existing literature, but also is a precursor to knowledge search. Originality/value This paper developed a novel theoretical model on innovation and knowledge search that highlights a virtuous cycle between innovation and knowledge search. Methodologically, the pooled panel data controlled for lagged effect and enhanced efficiency of econometric models, thus offered several advantages over cross-sectional data.


2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen Biglaiser ◽  
Michelle A. Danis

What is the effect of regime type on privatization of state-owned enterprises? The authors investigate the relationship between regime type and privatization through a panel data set for 76 developing countries from 1987 to 1994. The results show that, contrary to most studies that claim that authoritarian regimes are better able to ignore societal interests opposed to economic measures that impose austerity, democracies privatize more than authoritarian regimes. Moreover, challenging conventional interpretations that claim that economic difficulties contribute to state sell-offs, the authors find that privatization is most likely in wealthier developing democracies whose budgets operate with current account surpluses. Hence authoritarian regimes provide neither the right nor the correct model for countries wishing to pursue unpopular economic policies.


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