The Influence Paths of Agricultural Mechanization on Green Agricultural Development

For sustainable agricultural development, increasing efforts are put on promoting agricultural mechanization and green agricultural development all over the world. Based on the panel data of Chinese provincial agriculture from 2002 to 2018, the System Generalized Method of Moments model and mediation model are constructed to explore the paths of agricultural mechanization affecting green agricultural development. The results show that agricultural mechanization can not only promote the green agricultural development directly but also indirectly by transferring the agricultural labor force and increasing fertilizer input. However, because of the surge of pesticide demand, agricultural mechanization also leads to serious pollution indirectly. With the development of large-scale agricultural machinery, the direct promotion of agricultural machinery on green agricultural development will be more significant. However, it will be less efficient to substitute more agricultural labor force with machinery power. The problem of pesticide abuse will also become more serious. Therefore, it is important for green agricultural development to encourage human capital investment in agricultural mechanization. In addition, more attention should be paid to improving the input efficiency of fertilizers and pesticides so that agriculture will be sustainable in production and the ecological environment.

Dynamic Contract Design of Product-Service Supply Chain considering Consumers’ Strategic Behavior and Service Quality

With increasing market competition and rapid development of service economy, more and more enterprises are shifting from providing products or services to providing product-service systems (PSSs) that integrate products and services, in order to improve competitiveness and profitability. Meanwhile, consumers have strategic delayed purchasing behavior when purchasing the PSS and high requirements for service quality. This paper investigates the two-period pricing and service quality decisions of product-service supply chain (PSSC) considering consumers’ strategic behavior under decentralized and centralized scenarios. The equilibrium results are compared in two scenarios. In order to eliminate performance loss under the decentralized scenario, we design two-period dynamic contracts to coordinate the PSSC. Furthermore, numerical simulation is provided to verify the feasibility of the contracts. The following conclusions can be drawn: (1) the higher the service input-efficiency, the more beneficial for alleviating consumers’ strategic purchase behavior under two scenarios, but this mitigation effect is more obvious under the centralized scenario. (2) Compared with the centralized scenario, the service quality is lower, the two-period PSS sales prices are higher, and the two-period profit is lower under the decentralized scenario. The proportion of service valuation (accounts for the valuation of PSS) will promote the widening of the service quality gap under two scenarios, but in some cases, the service input-efficiency will weaken the promotion effect of the proportion of service valuation. (3) The design of the two-period combined contracts depends on the proportion of service valuation. When the proportion of service valuation is high, the “two-period revenue sharing + service-cost sharing” combined dynamic contract can achieve PSSC perfect coordination. However, when the proportion of service valuation is low, it is necessary to design complexity combined dynamic contract which can achieve PSSC perfect coordination.

Investigating the Performance of Gesture-Based Input for Mid-Air Text Entry in a Virtual Environment: A Comparison of Hand-Up versus Hand-Down Postures

Although the interaction technology for virtual reality (VR) systems has evolved significantly over the past years, the text input efficiency in the virtual environment is still an ongoing problem. We deployed a word-gesture text entry technology based on gesture recognition in the virtual environment. This study aimed to investigate the performance of the word-gesture text entry technology with different input postures and VR experiences in the virtual environment. The study revealed that the VR experience (how long or how often using VR) had little effect on input performance. The hand-up posture has a better input performance when using word-gesture text entry technology in a virtual environment. In addition, the study found that the perceived exertion to complete the text input with word-gesture text entry technology was relatively high. Furthermore, the typing accuracy and perceived usability for using the hand-up posture were obviously higher than that for the hand-down posture. The hand-up posture also had less task workload than the hand-down posture. This paper supports that the word-gesture text entry technology with hand-up posture has greater application potential than hand-down posture.

Input Efficiency Measures: A Generalized, Encompassing Formulation

In the article “Input Efficiency Measures: A Generalized, Encompassing Formulation” we develop a generalized, encompassing formulation unifying four traditional input efficiency measures: radial, Färe-Lovell, asymmetric Färe, and multiplicative Färe-Lovell. This is basically motivated by the fact that observations on production need not be situated near the efficient subset, but could also be positioned close to the isoquant or even the boundary of the technology. This new generalized Färe-Lovell input efficiency measure shares its axiomatic properties with the original Färe-Lovell input efficiency measure. In addition, we can derive new dual interpretations for this generalized Färe-Lovell input efficiency measure. Finally, we derive mathematical programming formulations, with a special focus on cases where linear programming applies.

Efficiency Analysis of the Input for Water-Saving Agriculture in China

To optimize the installation distribution of water-saving techniques and improve the efficiency of water-saving agricultural inputs, we used a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and Chinese provincial panel data from 2014 to 2016 to analyze the input efficiency of the water-saving irrigation. This study explores the efficiency derived from the efforts of water-saving initiatives in the agricultural sector in China. We present the impacts of factors such as technology, scale, diminishing marginal revenue, and crop water requirements on the research results. We found overall efficiency of water-saving irrigation is increasing nationally. The efficiency of water-saving irrigation input will significantly increase if management and organization of the input improve. Increasing the investment in areas with increasing marginal revenue would improve the local agricultural water-saving input efficiency in areas such as Hainan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Tibet, and Qinghai; although in areas with large water requirement for major crops, such as Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, the efficiency of water-saving irrigation is generally high. Shanxi requires a large amount of water as the efficiency of agricultural water-saving input is 0.07, which is relatively lower than the average efficiency of all regions (0.39). The cultivated area index and the GDP per capita had no significant effect on the irrigation input efficiency.