Objectives: This study aims to elicit the relative importance of treatment attributes that influence residents’ choice, assuming they are suffering severe non-communicable diseases (NCDs), to explore how they make trade-offs between these attributes and to estimate the monetary value placed on different attributes and attribute levels. Methods: A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted with adults over 18 years old in China. Preferences were evaluated based on four treatment attributes: care provider, mode of service, distance to practice and cost. A mixed logit model was used to analyze the relative importance of the four attributes and to calculate the willingness to pay (WTP) for a changed attribute level. Results: A total of 93.47% (2019 of 2160) respondents completed valid questionnaires. The WTP results suggested that participants would be willing to pay CNY 822.51 (USD 124.86), CNY 470.54 (USD 71.41) and CNY 68.20 (USD 10.35) for services provided by experts, with integrated traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine (WM) and with a service distance <=30 min, respectively. Conclusions: The results suggested that mode of service, care provider, distance to practice and cost should be considered in priority-setting decisions. The government should strengthen the curative service capability in primary health facilities and give full play to the role of TCM in the prevention and treatment of severe chronic diseases.
Purpose
The goal of making buy-in decisions is to purchase materials at the right time with the required quantity and a minimum material cost (MC). To help achieve this goal, the purpose of this paper is to find a way of optimizing the buy-in decision with the consideration of flexible starting date of non-critical activities which makes daily demand adjustable.
Design/methodology/approach
First, a specific algorithm is developed to calculate a series of demand combinations modeling daily material demand for all the possible start dates. Second, future material prices are predicted by applying artificial neural network. Third, the demand combinations and predicted prices are used to generate an optimal buy-in decision.
Findings
By comparing MC in situation when non-critical activities always start at the earliest date to that in situations when the starting date is flexible, it is found that making material buy-in decision with the consideration of the flexibility usually helps reduce MC.
Originality/value
In this paper, a material buy-in decision-making method that accounts non-critical activities’ flexible starting date is proposed. A ternary cycle algorithm is developed to calculate demand combinations. The results that making material buy-in decision considering non-critical activities’ flexible starting date can reduce MC in most times indicates that contractors may consider non-critical activities’ flexibility a part of the buy-in decision-making process, so as to achieve an MC decrease and profit increase.
This paper aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which contributes to carbon neutrality, and, at the same time, preventing mine heat disasters and extracting highly mineralized (HM) mine water, so as to realize the synergy between CO2 storage (CS) and geothermal extraction and utilization (GEU) in a high temperature (HT) goaf. With this purpose, an innovative CS-GEU technology for HT and HM water in deep mine is proposed, based on the mechanism of water-rock-CO2 effect (WRCE) and the principle of GEU in the mine. This technology uses GEU to offset the costs of CO2 storage and refrigeration in HT mine. A general scheme for a synergistic system of CS and GEU in the goaf is designed. The feasibility of CS-GEU technology in the deep goaf is demonstrated from the views of CS and GEU in the goaf and the principles of a synergistic system. It is clarified that the CO2 migration-storage evolution and the multi-field coupling principle in the goaf are the key scientific issues in realizing the synergic operation of CS and GEU. It proposes the key techniques involved in this process: CO2 capture and CO2 transportation, layout and support of drill holes and high-pressure (HP) pipelines, and HP sealing in the goaf. The research results provide new ideas for CS and GEU of HT and HM mine water in deep mine.
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