Incentive mechanism design for citizen reporting application using Stackelberg game

<p>The growing utilization of smartphones equipped with various sensors to collect and analyze information around us highlights a paradigm called mobile crowdsensing. To motivate citizens’ participation in crowdsensing and compensate them for their resources, it is necessary to incentivize the participants for their sensing service. There are several studies that used the Stackelberg game to model the incentive mechanism, however, those studies did not include a budget constraint for limited budget case. Another challenge is to optimize crowdsourcer (government) profit in conducting crowdsensing under the limited budget then allocates the budget to several regional working units that are responsible for the specific city problems. We propose an incentive mechanism for mobile crowdsensing based on several identified incentive parameters using the Stackelberg game model and applied the MOOP (multi-objective optimization problem) to the incentive model in which the participant reputation is taken into account. The evaluation of the proposed incentive model is performed through simulations. The simulation indicated that the result appropriately corresponds to the theoretical properties of the model.</p>

Substantiation of Approaches to the Analysis and Assessment of the Effectiveness of Participants in the Implementation of Diversifcation Programs.

Purpose: of the article is to substantiate conceptual approaches to the formation of a toolkit for assessing the effectiveness of participants in the development and implementation of diversifcation programs for enterprises of the military-industrial complex in the context of digital transformation of management.Methods: the research methodology is based on general economic approaches to studying the problems of the efciency of economic activity of economic entities and special approaches to the formation of complex systems for analyzing and assessing the effectiveness and efciency of the activities of project management participants in the process of developing and implementing programs for the diversifcation of the defense industry. The basis of the methodology is the concept of performance management in the context of digital transformation of management.Results: the article presents the key provisions and the main results of the study, obtained on the basis of studying the materials of scientific publications and open information sources in the subject area under consideration using the methods of logical, content and statistical analysis. Based on the specifcs of diversifcation programs, it is proposed to use the provisions of the performance management concept as a theoretical basis for the formation of a tool for assessing the activities of their participants. An integral multiplicative criterion of efciency for a comprehensive assessment of activities is proposed. It is built on the indicators of fve aspects of assessing the performance of participants in diversifcation programs. These aspects assess the completenes s of the organizational and methodological support of the diversification process, the consolidated effectiveness and efciency of the program activities, the quality of management, as well as the fnancial security of the implementation of the diversifcation program activities.Conclusions and Relevance: a scenario approach to substantiating the parameters of the incentive mechanism in the model of coordinated activity of the participants in the implementation of the diversifcation program is proposed, which takes into account the assessment of its commercial parameters. The results presented in the article are useful in the development of methodological support for assessing the effectiveness and organizing incentives for participants in diversifcation programs in the context of the formation of a digital ecosystem for managing enterprises of the military-industrial complex.

Offline Reputation Matters: Physicians’ Online Reputation Bias in Online Health Communities (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Online health communities (OHCs) have gradually become an important service platform for patients to communicate with physicians and obtain treatment and related medical information. With the rise of OHCs, an increasing number of scholars have begun to study the incentive mechanism of a physician’s online contribution behavior. However, previous studies have ignored the limited effect of online reputation on a physician’s online contribution and the moderating effect of offline reputation. OBJECTIVE We hypothesized that online reputation shows an inverted U-shaped relation with a physician’s contribution and that offline reputation reduces the inverted U-shaped relation, thus weakening the positive impact of reputation on performance and strengthening the negative impact of reputation performance. METHODS Based on incentive theory and prior studies, we proposed three hypotheses. We collected the panel data of 6,648 physicians from Good Physician, one of the largest OHCs in China. An empirical model was built to test our hypotheses. Additionally, the variables representing online reputation were replaced and the data set was split for the robustness check. RESULTS First, our results support the hypothesis of an inverted U-shaped relationship between a physician’s online reputation and their online contribution behavior(β=-0.127, t=13.624, P<.001). Second, we identify the bipolar impact of online and offline reputation on a physician’s online contribution. Specifically, over a period of time, online reputation will promote the contribution of physicians(slope=1.514, P<.001), while offline reputation will inhibit the contribution. Third, our research shows that offline reputation can weaken the impact of online reputation on a physician’s online contribution. CONCLUSIONS We amended the bias of the positive linear correlation between online reputations and online contributions in OHCs. Moreover, by identifying the moderating effect of offline reputation, we ameliorated the interpreting mechanism of online reputation on a physician’s online contribution. The findings improve our understanding of physicians' online contribution behaviors and contribute to the literature on OHCs. Our research can provide guidance for an OHC to design effective personalized incentive mechanisms and encourage physicians to provide more high-quality services.

A Game Model for Incentive Mechanism of Distributed Nodes in Supply Chains

This study aims to solve the credit problems in the supply chain commodity and currency circulation links from the perspective of the ledger, while the game model method has been adopted. The research firstly reviews the relationship between distributed ledger technology and the essential functions of currency. Then, by constructing two-agent single-period and multi-period game models in the entire supply chain, the researchers analysed the incentive mechanism and equilibrium solution of distributed nodes of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The results of this study include the incentive mechanism and optimization of distributed nodes based on licensed distributed ledger technology, which is an important issue that CBDC faces when performing currency functions. The implications of this study mainly cover the limitations of the underlying technology of the public chain and its reward mechanism in the supply chain management and provide support for the rationality of the CBDC issuance mechanism based on state-owned commercial banks, which provides a reference for the CBDC practice. The main value of the research not only serves the decision-making department of the CBDC issuance but also provides ideas on the operation mode of digital currency for the field of digital currency research.

The Incentive Mechanism of Knowledge Sharing in Cross-Border Business Models Based on Digital Technologies

This paper aims to solve the time-constrained problems of knowledge sharing caused by geographical distance and cultural differences in cross-border business models by proposing a novel knowledge sharing model based on principal–agent theory. Given that digital technologies (DTs) can solve the information asymmetry issue, this paper analyses and compares the contract parameters given by the principal, the efforts of the agent, and the changes in the expected profits of both parties before and after the application of DTs and therefore discusses the influence of various relevant factors in incentive contracts; the relationship between the expected profit of both parties and the various relevant factors is analyzed through numerical simulations. The results show that, in cross-border business models considering the time value of knowledge, the principal is affected not only by “information rent” and “channel loss” but also by the “time cost”. The application of DTs can effectively reduce all three of these costs. More importantly, the principal’s incentive coefficient and the agent’s effort are related to this time constraint and the application of DTs.

Incentive Mechanism for Product Quality of Retailers Based on Platform-Based ECommerce

In order to explore the autonomous incentive mechanism of platform-based e-commerce to online retailers' products, a product quality incentive model based on deposit and commission management is established for single retailer single quality products, single retailer products at multiple quality levels and double-retailer different quality products in three cases. Comparative analysis of the equilibrium results in three cases reveals that the effectiveness of the incentive mechanism of platform discount in the first case depends on the deposit strategy of the platform and the influence of the unit cost of excellent and low-quality products. In the second case, the incentive mechanism of platform discount is completely effective. The platform price discount has a positive incentive effect on retailers. The online retailers' increasing the sales of high-quality products and reducing the sales of low-quality products improve the high-quality product rate in the market. In the third case, the effectiveness of the platform discount incentive mechanism is mainly affected by the unit cost of products.

Optimal Loan Pricing for Agricultural Supply Chains from a Green Credit Perspective

In recent years, many countries have proposed various sustainable development strategies around environmental issues. The implementation of green supply chain management is an effective sustainable development approach that combines “environmental awareness” and “economic development.” Therefore, introducing the concept of “green” effectively is the main direction for the sustainable development of agriculture in the future. The impacts of green credit policies on agricultural supply chains have rarely been discussed before. Therefore, we focus on the incentive mechanism of green credit policies in the agricultural supply chain. We use the Stackelberg Leadership Model to construct a pricing model which adds the interest subsidy and required reserve ratio (RRR) cuts, and determines the pricing rules of bank loans and production decisions of the farmer in the agricultural supply chain under the incentive policy of green credit by quantifying the optimization problems of the bank and the farmer. The result shows that optimal decisions exist for both farmer and bank in the supply chain game framework. The implementation of the green credit policies contributes to both of their profits. Additionally, the green credit policies give the bank room to reduce interest rates so that the overall utility level of the supply chain could be improved.

Research on the Cultivation Path of College Students’ Public Welfare Spirit from the Perspective of Voluntary Activities

College students’ voluntary activity is the most common project in colleges and universities of China to cultivate college students’ cultural competence and play the role of social support. At present, a relatively mature college voluntary service mechanism has been formed in colleges and universities. Public welfare spirit, as the core connotation of voluntary service, is a good way to cultivate college students to improve their ideological and moral attainment. College students’ voluntary activities play such a role as undertaking the cultivation of public welfare spirit, enriching the path of practical education in colleges and universities, and implementing the cultivation of public welfare spirit. Therefore, it is of great benefit to carry out the research on the cultivation path of college students’ public welfare spirit which is characterized by majors in colleges, implemented by professional training and voluntary service, and guaranteed by the incentive mechanism of voluntary service.