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With the increasing demand for data sharing in the Internet of vehicles, reliable identity authentication protocols and scientifically rational incentive mechanisms have become the primary conditions for ensuring the stable operation of the Internet of vehicles network. Blockchain, as a decentralized distributed ledger, provides a technologically advanced data sharing platform for the Internet of vehicles, making the combination of blockchain technology and the Internet of vehicles a feasible new approach to data sharing. This paper summarizes the requirements of the Internet of vehicles, analyzes the blockchain-based Internet of vehicles architecture, and divides it into the cloud layer, mechanism layer and edge layer. It categorizes and compares the existing solutions for authentication protocols and incentive mechanisms in blockchain-based Internet of vehicles systems by summarizing relevant literature. It summarizes the workflow and implementation solutions of existing trustworthy authentication mechanisms by analyzing the distributed and centralized authentication architectures. It categorizes existing incentive mechanisms into value-based, trust-based and individual decision-based incentive mechanisms. Finally, this paper summarizes the existing problems and solutions of trustworthy authentication and incentive mechanisms from the perspectives of privacy protection and typical attacks. It provides an outlook on future research directions for blockchain-based Internet of vehicles, focusing on data sharing, multi-vehicle cooperation, and the integration of 6G technology.

Introduction: This study explores the integration of financial stability regulation in professional soccer within the framework of sport governance, focusing on the German context. The research examines how financial regulations influence key governance principles such as accountability, transparency, and sustainability, while also addressing the challenges posed by the dynamic nature of professional soccer. Methods: A qualitative methodology was employed, using focus group discussions with nine experts, including representatives from soccer clubs, auditing firms and other relevant stakeholders. The discussions aimed to capture diverse perspectives on the impact of financial stability regulation on governance practices within the German soccer league and clubs. Results: The findings reveal that financial stability regulation is effective in promoting financial discipline and accountability at both league and club levels. However, the study also identifies challenges, such as the need for greater harmonization of regulatory frameworks across different levels of professional soccer and the potential benefits of implementing incentive mechanisms within the financial stability regulation to improve governance at the league and club levels. Discussion: The study underscores the importance of a multi-dimensional approach to financial stability regulation, considering political, systemic, and organizational dimensions. It highlights the potential for improving governance through the adoption of independent governance models and more practical applications of governance principles. Future research could further explore these areas, offering insights that could enhance the effectiveness of financial regulation in professional soccer and potentially other sport contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Frontiers of Computer Science & Technology is the property of Beijing Journal of Computer Engineering & Applications Journal Co Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Significant changes, whether at the organizational or social level, are effected only at scale. The early Christian church delivered perhaps the most remarkable scaling phenomenon in history, exhibiting tremendous resilience, resourcefulness, and capacity to leverage adversity. Adherents to the faith manifested the power of a simple vision that spawned a strong culture and elicited behaviors that delivered remarkable outcomes through networking, change management, and incentives mechanisms-lessons with broad beneficial implications for scaling nascent enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) receives extensive interest due to enabling many novel applications at lower cost. However in pricing incentive scenes of MCS, utility from mobile users presents complex distributions due to mobility, changes of abilities and resource consumption such as device's energy and memory, especially for submodular MCS with more general distributions. However, existing works only focus on homogeneous and heterogeneous MCS, whether multi-request pricing scene or single-request pricing scene. To the end, in this paper, we investigate online pricing issues for submodular MCS. Moreover, we apply a multiple-stage budget-limited process and robust mean estimators to design budget-limited pricing incentive for submodular MCS. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our mechanisms outweigh existing benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain for local communities are blockchain-based applications that support the participation of people in the social and economic life of their local community. These applications leverage tokenization to enable socioeconomic processes involving transactions of values where community members take part actively and intentionally. In this field, mechanisms that regulate the functioning of blockchains need to be redirected towards collaborative and social purposes that often differ from the logics on which mainstream cryptocurrencies are based. In order to redesign these mechanisms, sound examination of their system of tokenization and of dynamics of their token economy is required. This paper provides an exploratory review of token economy elements found within cases of blockchain for local community economies, which is an under-explored domain in the relevant literature. The analysis considers 9 projects for systems that incentivize or reward participation, or implement community currency schemes. The dimensions analyzed encompass the type of goals and communities, the blockchains adopted, and token economy design aspects such as: token types, their distribution and incentive mechanisms, the associated platform/wallet functionalities, and the project governance models. We have observed a variety of combinations of these elements being used to facilitate new forms of value circulation. However, there is a tension between the aspiration to introduce transformative systems and the need to ensure the stability of the economic framework. The highly experimental nature of these initiatives requires continuous monitoring of their emergence and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As globalization accelerates and technology advances, the education and transmission of architectural heritage face new challenges and opportunities. Mobile augmented reality (MAR) technology offers innovative means for presenting and educating about architectural heritage, enhancing user experiences and interactivity through the overlay of virtual information. This study explores the application of MAR in architectural heritage education, examining its potential to enhance educational outcomes, increase user engagement, and foster awareness of heritage conservation. While the technology has been widely explored in other educational fields, its application in architectural heritage remains insufficient, particularly in the design of collaborative tasks, assessment of user satisfaction, and implementation of incentive mechanisms. This paper encompasses three research components: a detailed description of collaborative tasks in architectural heritage education using MAR, the development of a satisfaction model to evaluate the effectiveness of these tasks, and the construction of an educational collaboration incentive mechanism. Through this study, the paper not only enriches the application of MAR in cultural heritage conservation but also provides theoretical and empirical support for future related studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the monopoly regulation literature with the Bayesian approach. The literature builds on Baron and Myerson's seminal 1982 paper, entitled "Regulating a Monopolist with Unknown Costs." After presenting their contributions to the regulation literature, the paper discusses the main criticisms of their model, relating to either informational or commitment assumptions about the Bayesian regulator. The paper also briefly reviews some non-Bayesian incentive schemes, price-cap regulation, and several extensions and applications of Baron and Myerson's regulatory model to highlight the evolution and scope of the new economics of regulation after 40 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionThis study explores the integration of financial stability regulation in professional soccer within the framework of sport governance, focusing on the German context. The research examines how financial regulations influence key governance principles such as accountability, transparency, and sustainability, while also addressing the challenges posed by the dynamic nature of professional soccer.MethodsA qualitative methodology was employed, using focus group discussions with nine experts, including representatives from soccer clubs, auditing firms and other relevant stakeholders. The discussions aimed to capture diverse perspectives on the impact of financial stability regulation on governance practices within the German soccer league and clubs.ResultsThe findings reveal that financial stability regulation is effective in promoting financial discipline and accountability at both league and club levels. However, the study also identifies challenges, such as the need for greater harmonization of regulatory frameworks across different levels of professional soccer and the potential benefits of implementing incentive mechanisms within the financial stability regulation to improve governance at the league and club levels.DiscussionThe study underscores the importance of a multi-dimensional approach to financial stability regulation, considering political, systemic, and organizational dimensions. It highlights the potential for improving governance through the adoption of independent governance models and more practical applications of governance principles. Future research could further explore these areas, offering insights that could enhance the effectiveness of financial regulation in professional soccer and potentially other sport contexts.

Blockchain for local communities are blockchain-based applications that support the participation of people in the social and economic life of their local community. These applications leverage tokenization to enable socio-economic processes involving transactions of values where community members take part actively and intentionally. In this field, mechanisms that regulate the functioning of blockchains need to be redirected towards collaborative and social purposes that often differ from the logics on which mainstream cryptocurrencies are based. In order to redesign these mechanisms, sound examination of their system of tokenization and of dynamics of their token economy is required. This paper provides an exploratory review of token economy elements found within cases of blockchain for local community economies, which is an under-explored domain in the relevant literature. The analysis considers 9 projects for systems that incentivize or reward participation, or implement community currency schemes. The dimensions analyzed encompass the type of goals and communities, the blockchains adopted, and token economy design aspects such as: token types, their distribution and incentive mechanisms, the associated platform/wallet functionalities, and the project governance models. We have observed a variety of combinations of these elements being used to facilitate new forms of value circulation. However, there is a tension between the aspiration to introduce transformative systems and the need to ensure the stability of the economic framework. The highly experimental nature of these initiatives requires continuous monitoring of their emergence and development.

Edge Computing (EC) emerged to address the cloud’s shortcomings in meeting demand and latency requirements, leading to a shift in computation closer to the end-user. Extreme Edge Computing (XEC) extends this approach by utilizing nearby user-owned computational resources to support latency-sensitive applications in a distributed manner. In this study, we introduce Reward Edge Computing (REC), a variant of XEC, where service providers recruit user devices for infrastructure support, offering rewards in return. We explore the use of Incentive-Vacation Queueing (IVQ) to manage REC and analyze both its long-term and short-term performance. Our analysis focuses on the choice of an Incentive-Vacation Function (IVF), a contractual function between workers and service providers, proposing a tunable model favoring either party. We provide closed-form expressions for long-term worker behavior under uniform workload pricing and analyze the system’s overall short-term operation, including the time a worker spends in the system. REC and IVQ aim to commodify computational resources for edge services, akin to sharing economy models like Uber and Airbnb, utilizing user-owned infrastructure.

Compared with traditional face-to-face classroom teaching, the nature of distance learning restricts the number of face-to-face exchanges between learners and teachers, as well as between learners and learners, which reduces the emotional and learning connection between learners, and results in a lesser degree of familiarity between learners and their peers than that of the physical classroom.

CEO compensation stickiness represents an important indicator to measure the effectiveness of compensation contracts. This study uses CEO career experience data and compensation stickiness data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2020 to investigate the compensation contracts' effectiveness of CEOs with diverse career experiences. The findings are as follows: 1) Compensation stickiness is more pronounced for CEOs with diverse career experiences. According to the mechanism test, these CEOs with diverse career experiences can obtain compensation incentives by reducing corporate uncertainty perception and improving total factor productivity. This approach leads to increased compensation stickiness and the effectiveness of compensation contracts. CEOs with diverse career experiences may receive excess compensation by raising agency costs, which intensifies compensation stickiness and weakens the effectiveness of compensation contracts. 2) Compensation stickiness of CEOs with diverse career experiences is more significant in companies with lower investor protection, which brings about less effective compensation contracts. In contrast, in companies with higher diversification, the compensation stickiness of CEOs with diverse career experiences is more significant, which delivers more effective compensation contracts. The conclusions deepen the research of CEO compensation contracts and provide a helpful reference for CEO compensation management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging distributed technology, blockchain has begun to penetrate into many fields such as finance, healthcare, supply chain, intelligent transportation. However, the interoperability and value exchange between different independent blockchain systems is restricting the expansion of blockchain. In this paper, a notary group-based cross-chain interaction model is proposed to achieve the interoperability between different blockchains. Firstly, a notary election mechanism is proposed to choose one notary from the notary group to act as a bridge for cross-chain transactions. Secondly, a margin pool is introduced to limit the misconduct of the elected notary and ensure the value transfer between the involved blockchains. Moreover, a reputation based incentive mechanism is used to encourage members of the notary group to participate in cross-chain transactions. Ethereum-based experiments demonstrate that the proposed mechanism can provide an acceptable performance for cross-chain transactions and provide a higher security level than ordinary cross-chain mechanisms.

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an economic crisis of the construction industry and to an increasing of energy consumption in the residential sector for all the world. The European Union highlights the crucial role of building sector for both energy gains and economic growth, defining a “Renovation Wave” plan combining regulation, financing and technical support with the aim of greening the buildings, creating jobs and improving lives. In Italy a great support mechanism for energy refurbishment of existing buildings has been launched by means of tax deduction of 110% over 5 years. The present study aims to analyze this new funding mechanism, under energy, environmental and economic point of views. By means of a real case study, representative of highly widespread southern Italy HVAC-building system, it will be highlighting advantages and contradictions of the incentive mechanism developed, proposing possible future improvements. It is found that, if on one hand, the best refurbishment measure under energy/environmental point of view is the external insulation, windows replacement, electric heat pump and PV-system installation, with a global not renewable performance index reduction of 81%, on the other hand it is not the best solution considering the cost/saving ratio.

Background: While there is high-quality online health information, a lot of recent work has unfortunately highlighted significant issues with the health content on social media platforms (eg, fake news and misinformation), the consequences of which are severe in health care. One solution is to investigate methods that encourage users to post high-quality content. Objective: Incentives have been shown to work in many domains, but until recently, there was no method to provide financial incentives easily on social media for users to generate high-quality content. This study investigates the following question: What effect does the provision of incentives have on the creation of social media health care content? Methods: We analyzed 8328 health-related posts from an incentive-based platform (Steemit) and 1682 health-related posts from a traditional platform (Reddit). Using topic modeling and sentiment analysis–based methods in machine learning, we analyzed these posts across the following 3 dimensions: (1) emotion and language style using the IBM Watson Tone Analyzer service, (2) topic similarity and difference from contrastive topic modeling, and (3) the extent to which posts resemble clickbait. We also conducted a survey using 276 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users and asked them to score the quality of Steemit and Reddit posts. Results: Using the Watson Tone Analyzer in a sample of 2000 posts from Steemit and Reddit, we found that more than double the number of Steemit posts had a confident language style compared with Reddit posts (77 vs 30). Moreover, 50% more Steemit posts had analytical content and 33% less Steemit posts had a tentative language style compared with Reddit posts (619 vs 430 and 416 vs 627, respectively). Furthermore, more than double the number of Steemit posts were considered joyful compared with Reddit posts (435 vs 200), whereas negative posts (eg, sadness, fear, and anger) were 33% less on Steemit than on Reddit (384 vs 569). Contrastive topic discovery showed that only 20% (2/10) of topics were common, and Steemit had more unique topics than Reddit (5 vs 3). Qualitatively, Steemit topics were more informational, while Reddit topics involved discussions, which may explain some of the quantitative differences. Manual labeling marked more Steemit headlines as clickbait than Reddit headlines (66 vs 26), and machine learning model labeling consistently identified a higher percentage of Steemit headlines as clickbait than Reddit headlines. In the survey, MTurk users said that at least 57% of Steemit posts had better quality than Reddit posts, and they were at least 52% more likely to like and comment on Steemit posts than Reddit posts. Conclusions: It is becoming increasingly important to ensure high-quality health content on social media; therefore, incentive-based social media could be important in the design of next-generation social platforms for health information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Blockchain is an emerging technology that enables secure and decentralized approaches to reduce technical risks and governance challenges associated with sharing data. Although blockchain-based solutions have been suggested for sharing health information, it is still unclear whether a suitable incentive mechanism (intrinsic or extrinsic) can be identified to encourage individuals to share their sensitive data for research purposes. Objective: This study aimed to investigate how important extrinsic incentives are and what type of incentive is the best option in blockchain-based platforms designed for sharing sensitive health information. Methods: In this study, we conducted 3 experiments with 493 individuals to investigate the role of extrinsic incentives (ie, cryptocurrency, money, and recognition) in data sharing with research organizations. Results: The findings highlight that offering different incentives is insufficient to encourage individuals to use blockchain technology or to change their perceptions about the technology's premise for sharing sensitive health data. The results demonstrate that individuals still attribute serious risks to blockchain-based platforms. Privacy and security concerns, trust issues, lack of knowledge about the technology, lack of public acceptance, and lack of regulations are reported as top risks. In terms of attracting people to use blockchain-based platforms for data sharing in health care, we show that the effects of extrinsic motivations (cryptoincentives, money, and status) are significantly overshadowed by inhibitors to technology use. Conclusions: We suggest that before emphasizing the use of various types of extrinsic incentives, the users must be educated about the capabilities and benefits offered by this technology. Thus, an essential first step for shifting from an institution-based data exchange to a patient-centric data exchange (using blockchain) is addressing technology inhibitors to promote patient-driven data access control. This study shows that extrinsic incentives alone are inadequate to change users' perceptions, increase their trust, or encourage them to use technology for sharing health data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue Economique is the property of Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Prior research in management and economics has predominantly focused on how managers or policymakers can shape workers' allocation of effort using output-based or effort-based incentives. In many settings, however, managers may seek to influence workers' effort choices through resource allocation—that is, changing the cost of securing resources for different projects or activities. In this paper, we develop a formal model to investigate how a worker changes the allocation of a fixed amount of effort across different projects in response to changes in the cost of securing resources for each project. Our model shows how cutting resources available to one project, under certain circumstances, can inadvertently reduce the share of effort allocated to other projects and vice versa. We use the insights from the model to explore the effectiveness of funding strategies designed to influence the research direction of academic scientists. We specifically examine how U.S. scientists working in stem cell research responded to a 2001 policy change that restricted access to federal funding for research in the human embryonic stem cell (hESC) area. In line with our model's predictions, we find that cutting resources for hESC research inadvertently reduced U.S. scientists' output in non-hESC areas of stem cell research—an effect that is strongest among the highest-ability scientists. Our findings highlight the complexities of incentivizing effort allocation using resource-based incentives. In particular, we show how altering resource-based incentives in one area can have unforeseen spillover effects on effort allocation in other areas. Funding: Financial support from the London Business School is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1565. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The province of San Juan in Argentina presents significant values of solar radiation that stimulate the development of distributed solar photovoltaic generation. Moreover, National Law 27.424 proposes Net Billing as an incentive mechanism for renewable energy sources. This work analyses the profitability of photovoltaic systems in the residential sector under current electricity costs and fare conditions. The analysis allows comparing the leveled cost to generate electricity through photovoltaic generation in contrast to the price of energy consumed from the grid. The results show that, on average, the leveled cost of photovoltaic generation is 20% higher than the average value of the fares for residential users. It is necessary to apply incentive mechanisms as proposed in Law 27.424. to achieve grid parity. In this sense, the impact of the Net Billing mechanism is analyzed and compared with the impact of the Net Metering mechanism. The results show, a priori, that the Net Metering mechanism would be more profitable or economically beneficial for owners of photovoltaic systems. However, this scheme could adversely impact the utilities' incomes. Finally, discussions on incentive mechanisms are introduced to improve the profitability of photovoltaic systems and to assist the government in making decisions to promote these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information resources have been shared to promote the business operations of firms. However, the connection of business information sharing interfaces between firms has increased the attack surface and created opportunities for the hacker. We examine the benefits and risks of business information sharing for firms who exert security efforts against a strategic hacker that launches attacks subjectively. We show that two kinds of security efforts, security investment and security knowledge sharing, act as strategic substitutes when the business-sharing degree is low and act as strategic complements otherwise. Besides, the strategic hacker is not always aggressive, who will give up launching attack activities when the business-sharing degree is relatively low. Moreover, as a specific characteristic in the security domain, the risk interdependency first enhances and then suppresses both firms' security investments and the hacker's attack effort, which causes a free-riding problem for two firms. Then, two coordination mechanisms, an investment-based mechanism and liability-based mechanism, are proposed to help firms coordinate their strategies to reach socially optimal security levels. Last, we extend the main model to three cases to make our model more general. This paper provides the first evidence to assess the security risks exacerbated by business information sharing while considering a strategic hacker. Some management insights to managers for making security decisions are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile devices equipped with diverse sensors have emerged as ubiquitous data collection systems within the rising paradigm of Mobile CrowdSensing (MCS). In MCS, auctions are adopted as effective incentive mechanisms in order to secure an acceptable level of contribution from users in participatory MCS. Recent techniques in the literature have addressed several challenges in auctions-based task assignments in centralized MCS. In this research, towards effective task-participant matching, we focus on maximizing the number of completed tasks, the Clearance Rate (CR), which has not been addressed in the literature to date despite the impact it exercises on the satisfaction of service demanders. We propose new bidding procedures for the task allocation strategy. The proposed procedures generalize well to reputation-aware auctioning while handling practical scenarios experienced during campaigns with budget constraints. Particularly, we show that for campaigns that are held consecutively in time, the adoption of an intuitive look-back strategy, for budget transfer from previous campaigns, would remarkably influence the CR. Moreover, observing that tasks with a few bidders should be assigned a higher priority in order to get accomplished, we introduce a new factor for task redundancy. In addition to promoting the accomplishment of unpopular tasks, this factor spares the budget to accomplish more tasks by penalizing redundant task assignment. Extensive performance evaluation of the proposed methods is carried out under various system parameters, namely the number of tasks, auctions, and participants. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested procedures through a significant-and-consistent increase, that ranges from 50% - 500%, in the attained CR compared to the most recent techniques in the literature.

The system of values is the “foundation” of the attitude toward the world. In the modern information society, the motivational and target component of work with the younger generation should lead to the formation of an “integrative profile” of an individual who possesses professional competencies of a high level that are in demand in research and educational spheres, as well as in project activities. Motivation is largely determined not only by internal characteristics of an individual, but also by the ways in which activity is carried out; this activity in the process of its implementation should be targeted, directional, predictable and analytical, with monitoring, evaluation of efficiency and adjustment of its implementation, i.e. it should be conscious activity. Our goal is to identify new mechanisms of state stimulation of topical and priority areas of youth policy in the field of university science and identify possible routes for the development of values. We adhere to the basic idea of the need to take into account value orientations in the development of state youth policy. Desk research and sociological research were used as the main methods of the work. The desk study was conducted by analyzing the main directions of the state policy in the field of science and technology, normative legal acts of the Russian Federation, state programs and projects, and publications of international organizations. The study collected data on existing forms and measures of incentives and support for student youth. In order to test theoretical approaches to motivation and identification of the main factors contributing to youth participation in research activities, a sociological study was conducted among university students

Mobile CrowdSensing (MCS) has emerged as a valuable framework for large scale mapping of phenomena of interest, thanks to the ever-growing advances and pervasiveness of sensor-rich mobile devices. Meanwhile, towards building a robust MCS system, several challenges have yet to be overcome. This includes security challenges, privacy concerns, data integrity, in addition to others. In this research, we are concerned with the power consumption of sensing campaigns, from the perspectives of service demanders and participants. We propose an opportunistic and predictive crowdsensing management framework that realizes Green Mobile CrowdSensing (GMCS) campaigns through energy-aware participant-task matching. This is achieved using two new techniques. First, we propose Green Auctioning, an auction management technique which adopts a new objective function that guarantees the selection of the devices which consume the least energy. The proposed objective function features a hard reputation term which depends on the device's energy consumption, in addition to the soft reputation term previously proposed in the literature. Second, we propose Predictive Auctioning, an auction management technique that adopts machine learning models to empower the platform to predict users' ability to complete the task at hand, using the user's battery level and internet connection status, and the task's duration. Towards this goal, we have constructed a new dataset-the MAGGIE dataset-by monitoring the energy consumption of over 100 users, over a duration of four months, using a mobile application specially developed for this purpose. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research that addresses energy-aware auctioning by constructing a crowd-sensed dataset specially built for this purpose. We present promising results for the attained energy awareness without compromising other performance aspects including data trustworthiness and the clearance rate of sensing auctions.

Abstract One formal way of studying cooperation and incentive mechanisms in wireless ad hoc networks is to use game theory. In this respect, simple interaction models such as the forwarder’s dilemma have been proposed and used successfully. However, this type of models is not suited to account for possible fluctuations of the wireless links of the network. Additionally, it does not allow one to study the way a node transmits its own packets. At last, the repeated game models used in the related literature do not allow the important scenario of nodes with partial information (about the link state and nodes actions) to be studied. One of the contributions of the present work is precisely to provide a general approach to integrate all of these aspects. Second, the best performance the nodes can achieve under partial information is fully characterized for a general form of utilities. Third, we derive an equilibrium transmission strategy which allows a node to adapt its transmit power levels and packet forwarding rate to link fluctuations and other node actions. The derived results are illustrated through a detailed numerical analysis for a network model built from a generalized version of the forwarder’s dilemma. The analysis shows in particular that the proposed strategy is able to operate in the presence of channel fluctuations and to perform significantly better than the existing transmission mechanisms (e.g., in terms of consumed network energy).

Privacy is a key requirement for connected vehicles. Cooperation between vehicles is mandatory for achieving location privacy preservation. However, non-cooperative vehicles can be a big issue to achieve this objective. To this end, we propose a novel monetary incentive scheme for cooperative location privacy preservation in 5G-enabled Vehicular Fog Computing. This scheme leverages a consortium blockchain-enabled fog layer and smart contracts to ensure a trusted and secure cooperative Pseudonym Changing Processes (PCPs). We also propose optimized smart contracts to reduce the monetary costs of vehicles while providing more location privacy preservation. Moreover, a resilient and lightweight Utility-based Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (U-DBFT) consensus protocol is proposed to ensure fast and reliable block mining and validation. The performance analysis shows that our scheme has effective incentive techniques to stimulate non-cooperative vehicles and provides optimal monetary cost management and secure, private, fast validation of blocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: analysis of the regulatory and legal tools aimed at creating conditions for the sustainable functioning of agro-industrial territories of advanced development (hereinafter – APTOR) based on the use of reclamation technologies within the framework of the current legislation of the Russian Federation. Materials and methods. Analysis of the regulatory documentation in the field of agro-industrial sector made it possible to identify the required amendments to the legislation in the field of land reclamation in order to create the APTOR. Using the existing experience of the target direction of subjects with the status of advanced development territories, they proposed APTOR as a kind of variety based on reclamation technologies, the latter being a mechanism that stimulates the intensification of agricultural activity. It has been determined that the interaction of various subjects of state power and management on the creation of territories of advanced development is carried out in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the current federal legislation. Conclusions. Currently, in the current legal framework of the Russian Federation, the projects to create advanced development territories, of which there are more than 100 today are being implemented. It is advisable to concretize the concept of “agro-industrial territory of advanced development” in a separate chapter of the current Federal Law no. 473 of December 29, 2014 “On Territories of Advanced Socio-Economic Development in the Russian Federation”.

Innovative development in the agricultural sector of the economy is a driver for increasing the efficiency of agricultural production. The purpose of the article is to develop mechanisms to stimulate the acceleration of innovative projects in the agro-industrial complex. The study clarified the theoretical and methodological aspects of the process of accelerating technological development. The restraining and accelerating factors of innovation processes in the agro-industrial complex are systematized. The analysis revealed disparities in the efficiency of investments in the agro-industrial complex and their contribution to the main macroeconomic indicators and export orientation. Mechanisms for stimulating technological acceleration have been developed: the introduction of an innovative lift for startups, the creation of technology platforms, and the improvement of regulatory and financial support. The practical significance of the presented mechanisms will stimulate the acceleration of innovative projects and increase the economic, social, technological and budgetary efficiency of agro-industrial complex management in industries and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital citizen science platforms are prominent examples of modern volunteerism that provide people with opportunities to observe natural phenomena and to engage in scientific processes. In this study, we explore the values and motivations underlying sustained participation in digital citizen science projects through the lenses of two social psychology theories (Schwartz’s Human Values Theory and Self-Determination Theory). We present in-depth analyses of interviews with 15 long-term volunteers in two digital citizen science initiatives (Järviwiki and Safecast) that have been collecting environmental data for a decade in Finland and Japan. Our results advance the understanding of the values underpinning motivations. Our analyses show that openness-to-change values, such as self-direction, are important for initial participation, yet a diverse range of values, except for power, play a role in sustaining participation. Our study also shows that the values related to sustained participation are linked with extrinsic motivations, suggesting that when extrinsic motivators are self-directed, people will not only perform tasks willingly and enthusiastically but also in a sustained manner. Conceptualizing the behavioral continuum that drives volunteering actions provides practical insights that can assist the design, development, and evaluation of digital citizen science platforms.

The past decade has witnessed the rapid evolution in blockchain technologies, which has attracted tremendous interests from both the research communities and industries. The blockchain network was originated from the Internet financial sector as a decentralized, immutable ledger system for transactional data ordering. Nowadays, it is envisioned as a powerful backbone/framework for decentralized data processing and data-driven self-organization in flat, open-access networks. In particular, the plausible characteristics of decentralization, immutability, and self-organization are primarily owing to the unique decentralized consensus mechanisms introduced by blockchain networks. This survey is motivated by the lack of a comprehensive literature review on the development of decentralized consensus mechanisms in blockchain networks. In this paper, we provide a systematic vision of the organization of blockchain networks. By emphasizing the unique characteristics of decentralized consensus in blockchain networks, our in-depth review of the state-of-the-art consensus protocols is focused on both the perspective of distributed consensus system design and the perspective of incentive mechanism design. From a game-theoretic point of view, we also provide a thorough review of the strategy adopted for self-organization by the individual nodes in the blockchain backbone networks. Consequently, we provide a comprehensive survey of the emerging applications of blockchain networks in a broad area of telecommunication. We highlight our special interest in how the consensus mechanisms impact these applications. Finally, we discuss several open issues in the protocol design for blockchain consensus and the related potential research directions.

The problem of social activity of the personality and groups becomes central in modern social, economic and political psychology. The innovative processes in the society, maintaining a dynamic balance in it, entirely depend on the release of the social activity of the individuals and groups, on its freedom and diversity, constructiveness and responsibility. The article presents a theoretical analysis of the problem of operationalization of the phenomena of social activity of the individual and groups, the synthesis of the disparate data on its foundations, motivators, mechanisms and social effects. The definition of social activity as a special case of initiative impact of social actors on the social environment, as the actions aimed at changing and transforming social objects as a result of which there is a change in the personality and the entire social situation, the problem of its operationalization is discussed. It is shown that social activity is the effect of socialization and development of the individual. The differences of social activity in different age periods and its importance for the individual and its sociopsychological status are singled out. The multi-component structure of the social activity, including the cognitive, emotionally-evaluative, motivational, and behavioral components are highlighted. The incentive mechanisms of social activity (motivation, satisfaction/dissatisfaction as an indicator of diachronic mismatch of personality and the social environment) are analyzed. The empirical research aimed at finding out the predictors and basis of the dominant types of social activity of the individual is outlined.

This paper proposes cloudlet-based intelligent agents for energy crowdsourcing from autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs). Existing energy crowdsourcing mechanisms focus on load shedding and cost savings, but lack incentive models for strategically behaving agents. In the proposed model, crowdsourcing agents residing on the edge network communicate with AEVs to stimulate them to participate in providing energy to the grid during peak time periods. The focus of this paper is on the development of incentive mechanisms that allow the agents to engage in an auctioning process according to their energy contribution. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, we evaluate the performance of the proposed model with respect to individual rationality, computational efficiency, and truthfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, agricultural knowledge-sharing platforms emerged to facilitate knowledge exchange among smallholders so as to enhance farmers' productivity. Despite the active interactions among farmers on the platforms, the amount of knowledge being exchanged is dubious. In a competing environment, are farmers willing to share their knowledge with their peers? In "Knowledge Sharing and Learning Among Smallholders in Developing Economies: Implications, Incentives, and Reward Mechanisms," S. Xiao, Y.-J. Chen, and C. S. Tang find that farmers with valuable knowledge do not have economic incentives to share their knowledge with others. To encourage the sharing of valuable knowledge, we propose a simple "quota-based" reward mechanism that could entice farmers to share knowledge up to the efficient level, maximizing farmer welfare. What is more, the implementation cost of the mechanism can be arbitrarily small. The proposed mechanism can also be applied to many other competing environments beyond agriculture. In developing economies, smallholders apply their own specialized knowledge and exert costly effort to manage their farms. To raise overall productivity, NGOs and governments are advocating various knowledge-sharing and learning platforms for farmers to exchange a variety of farming techniques. Putting altruism aside, we examine the overall economic implications for heterogeneous farmers sharing their private knowledge voluntarily with others under (implicit) competition. By analyzing a multiperson sequential game, we find that farmers with high knowledge are reluctant to share knowledge, and consequently, the voluntary shared level is always lower than or equal to the "efficient" shared level that maximizes farmer welfare under coordination. This finding is motivational in developing a reward mechanism to entice farmers to elevate their knowledge shared level in a decentralized system so as to maximize farmer welfare. On reviewing different mechanisms, we propose a quota-based reward mechanism that can entice farmers to share knowledge voluntarily up to the efficient shared level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]