ObjectiveFor a long time in China, public hospitals have been the most prominent provider of healthcare. However, recent policy reforms mean the private sector is experiencing rapid development. Thus, the purpose of this study is to detect whether the policies published by the government aimed to improve the quality of healthcare services were catering to patient’s preferences.Participants and methodsOur work uses dental care as an example of services provided in outpatient setting and takes advantage of a labelled discrete choice experiment with a random sample of respondents from Beijing. Participants were asked to make a choice between four healthcare providers with different attributes. Mixed logit and latent class models were used for the analysis.ResultCare provided by high-level private hospitals and community hospitals were valued RMB154 and 216 less, respectively, than care provided by class A tertiary hospitals, while the most disliked provider was private clinics. This was the most valued attribute of dental care. Respondents also value: lower waiting times, the option to choose their doctor, lower treatment costs, shorter travel times and a clean waiting room. However, when the level of provider was analysed, the prevailing notion that patients in China were always likely to choose public services than private services no longer holds. Four classes of patients with distinct preferences for dental care provider choice were identified, which can partly be explained by age, income, experience and Hukou status—a household registration permit.DiscussionThe study to some extent challenged the overwhelming predominance of public healthcare providers in China. The preference heterogeneity we found was relatively large. Our findings are significant for providers in developing more specific services for patients and for policymakers in weighing the pros and cons of future initiatives in medical reform.

Under the threat of global warming, joint emission reduction strategy has been widely adopted as an effective solution for the industry to guarantee environmental sustainability. In the practice of supply chain, environmental regulations and supply chain contracts are applied with the attempt to improve environmental performance. However, whether these measures are actually effective remains unanswered. In this paper, we study a supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer adopting joint emission reduction strategy. We first investigate under what circumstance the environmental regulation can effectively result in higher emission reduction efforts. The result shows that when the cost coefficient satisfies certain conditions, the increase of penalty or subsidy can lead to more investment in emission reduction. In addition, if the environmental impact caused by the production process is extremely high, the enforcement of the regulation is ineffective. We also explore how the cost-revenue-sharing contract affects the emission reduction strategy and the coordination of the members in the supply chain. The results suggest that the incentive effect of environmental regulation is more effective when the supply chain coordination contract exists. Numerical experiments are also presented to verify our analytical conclusions.

Technology opportunity discovery (TOD) is an important technique to help fuel cell vehicle (FCV) firms keep market advantage and sustainable development. Under fierce competition in the new energy industry, there is an urgent necessity for innovative TOD methods to effectively identify technology opportunities for FCV firms. This study proposes a structured TOD framework with a multi-level identification process. Based on technology portfolio analysis, it fully integrates the firm’s technology level analysis, technology potential analysis and patent novelty analysis. A series of techniques such as LDA (latent Dirichlet allocation), MDS (multidimensional scaling) and LOF (local outlier factor) are also applied in the framework. A total of 14,858 granted patent data of the FCV industry containing 798 patents of the target firm were extracted from the Derwent Innovation Index database as the input data of the empirical study. The result shows that the framework can provide a more profound analysis for identifying technology opportunities, which offer more appropriate insights in both strategic and operational level technological decisions for technology-oriented firms.

International scientific collaboration has played an important role in the development of fuel cell technology. In this paper, we employ bibliometric methods and social network analysis to explore the patterns and dynamics of scientific collaboration network of fuel cells. A total of 20,358 international collaborative publications in the fuel cell field published during 1998–2017 were collected from Web of Science. We use a series of indicators to address multiple facets of research collaboration and evolution patterns. Results show that international collaboration has been increasing and the characteristics of the scientific network have changed over time. The collaboration network presented a highly uneven distribution, while the sign of decline began to show. The trend of consolidation was presented with one cluster around North America–Asia, one around Europe, and a small emerging collaborating cluster around West Asia. European and North American countries had relatively higher international collaboration rate than Asian countries but lower publishing volume. Two modes of international collaboration exist: Germany, France and UK collaborate with a wide range of countries, while Singapore, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan concentrate on collaborating with few main countries. Microbial fuel cell had developed as a new prominent area in the international collaboration, and the most popular catalysts were nanoparticle and graphene/carbon nanotubes. This study presents a picture of international collaboration from multi-dimension view and provides insights in facilitating more vigorous collaborations in fuel cells.

With the imminent threat of the energy crises, innovation in energy technologies is happening world-wide. The aim is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Electric vehicles with fuel-cells that use hydrogen as an energy carrier are touted to be one of the most important potential replacements of the gasoline vehicle in both future transportation scenarios and emerging smart energy grids. However, hydrogen storage is a major technical barrier that lies between where we are now and the mass application of hydrogen energy. Further exploration of onboard hydrogen storage systems (OHSS) is urgently needed and, in this regard, a comprehensive technology opportunity analysis will help. Hence, with this research, we drew on scientific papers and patents related to OHSS and developed a novel methodology for investigating the past, present, and future development trends in OHSS. Specifically, we constructed a heterogeneous knowledge network using a unique multi-component structure with three core components: hydrogen carriers, hydrogen storage materials, and fuel cells. From this network, we extracted both the developed and underdeveloped technological solutions in the field and applied a well-designed evaluation system and prediction model to score the future development potential of these technological solutions. What emerged was the most promising directions of research in the short, medium, and long term. The results show that our methodology can effectively identify technology opportunities in OHSS, along with providing valuable decision support to researchers and enterprise managers associated with the development and application of OHSS.