Hotel or rented flat: A profile of purchasers of accommodation services in Warsaw

The spreading of short-term flat rentals has brought about changes in the accommodation market, often seen as a threat to traditional accommodation providers. This is particularly true in large cities which have a considerable accommodation capacity and also a large stock of flats. The aim is to indicate to what extent short-term rentals are influencing the tourist accommodation market in Warsaw. The idea behind the study is the assumption that the differences revealed between those using hotels or such flats will provide an answer to the question of the influence of the latter on Warsaw»s tourist market. Such information should be useful in the marketing activities of interested parties and in the policies of the city authorities. Analysis of the data from a survey carried out in 2021 using the CHAID decision tree indicates that the choice of accommodation type was mainly determined by situational variables. The only statistically significant demographic predictor relates to a greater interest in flats among those aged up to 34 years old. Planned expenditure per person per overnight stay proved to be a statistically significant predictor only for non-residents of Poland, with the cut-off amount set higher than the median interval for this segment. Flats were more often chosen by people travelling in a larger party or alone and those planning to stay longer than four nights, thus looking for a different offer than that of traditional city hotels. © 2023, Lodz University Press. All rights reserved.

Effect of ferritin, INR, and D-dimer immunological parameters levels as predictors of COVID-19 mortality: A strong prediction with the decision trees.

Background and objective: A hyperinflammatory environment is thought to be the distinctive characteristic of COVID-19 infection and an important mediator of morbidity. This study aimed to determine the effect of other immunological parameter levels, especially ferritin, as a predictor of COVID-19 mortality via decision-trees analysis. Material and method: This is a retrospective study evaluating a total of 2568 patients who died (n = 232) and recovered (n = 2336) from COVID-19 in August and December 2021. Immunological laboratory data were compared between two groups that died and recovered from patients with COVID-19. In addition, decision trees from machine learning models were used to evaluate the performance of immunological parameters in the mortality of the COVID-19 disease. Results: Non-surviving from COVID-19 had 1.75 times higher ferritin, 10.7 times higher CRP, 2.4 times higher D-dimer, 1.14 times higher international-normalized-ratio (INR), 1.1 times higher Fibrinogen, 22.9 times higher procalcitonin, 3.35 times higher troponin, 2.77 mm/h times higher erythrocyte-sedimentation-rate (ESR), 1.13sec times longer prothrombin time (PT) when compared surviving patients. In addition, our interpretable decision tree, which was constructed with only the cut-off values of ferritin, INR, and D-dimer, correctly predicted 99.7% of surviving patients and 92.7% of non-surviving patients. Conclusions: This study perfectly predicted the mortality of COVID-19 with our interpretable decision tree constructed with INR and D-dimer, especially ferritin. For this reason, we think that it may be important to include ferritin, INR, and D-dimer parameters and their cut-off values in the scoring systems to be planned for COVID-19 mortality.

Drivers for economic recovery: analysis of family expenditure on catering services

Purpose: Catering services play important role in the Spanish economy, accounting for 6.2% of GDP in 2021. To overcome the adverse economic impacts of COVID-19, catering services are considered one of the drivers to stimulate economic growth. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to analyse the sociodemographic profile of the family's main breadwinner who allocates most of his expenditure budget on different catering services before and during the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 in Spain. Design/methodology/approach: The official Family Budget Survey in Spain was used. This offers information on expenditure by families in 2019 and 2020. CHAID multivariate analysis was employed. This has proved a valuable tool in predicting expenditure, as well as determining the cause–effect relationship of this expenditure. Findings: Findings establish the main breadwinner's expenditure on catering services based on predictors such as "year” affected by the pandemic;"type of employment contract”;"gender”;and "age”. A gender "pub-gap” in consumption in bars and cafes has been revealed, and families with a male breadwinner, on a permanent contract, between the age of 40 and 60 spent the most on catering services. Originality/value: This research presents a new interdisciplinary approach to family breadwinners as a company whose spend on catering is shaping the economic recovery and leading to new answers for hospitality management. Identified factors can lead to improved decision-making and contextualisation of economic models for food service providers in a post-pandemic future. © 2023, Javier de Esteban Curiel, Arta Antonovica and Beatriz Rodríguez Herráez.

Intention to use e-commerce vs physical shopping. Difference between consumers in the post-COVID era

The increase in the widespread use of e-commerce reveals a greater tendency towards online shopping. The objective of this research is to analyze the drivers and barriers of online channel usage intention and their implications for physical channels, based on a modification of the UTAUT2 model, as well as to identify the relevant segments of e-commerce consumers versus physical shoppers in the post-COVID-19 era, using Hierarchical Tree Regression applying the CHAID method through an online questionnaire on a final sample of 491 Portuguese and 345 Spanish users. The results confirm the differences in the adoption of the use of electronic channels between the two countries, the absence of influence of most socio-demographic variables on intention, and the importance of behavioral variables in the definition of segments in both populations. Finally, strategic recommendations are made for each of the identified groups to improve the intention to use e-commerce platforms.

Exploring food security/insecurity determinants within Venezuela’s complex humanitarian emergency

Introduction The complex humanitarian emergency that Venezuela has been going through for several years has deteriorated the quality of life of its citizens, deepened food insecurity in households and has promoted migratory movements of almost six million people to neighboring countries. Objective To analyze food security in Venezuelan households to identify the determinant factors that might contribute to the design of evidence-based public policies. Materials and methods A non-probabilistic survey of national scope was used in 2,041 urban and non-urban households. A descriptive statistical test was performed to analyze demographic variables and the three component indicators of the food security index (FSI): food consumption, economic vulnerability and coping strategies. The FSI was built according to the World Food Program (WFP) methodology, and a segmentation analysis was applied using the Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) algorithm to specify the influence of some variables as the best predictor at each level. Results Only 9% of the households presented food security, 69% classified as marginally secure, and 22% presented moderate or severe food insecurity. The food consumption score (FCS) was the variable that best discriminated the level of food security, followed by coping strategies and the percentage of spending on food. Conclusion: Most of the households studied sacrifice their livelihoods to feed themselves and cover the minimum of their nutritional requirements. This needs attention to stop and reverse the deterioration within a framework of respect for the human rights to health and food.

Forecasting and classification of new cases of COVID 19 before vaccination using decision trees and Gaussian mixture model

Regarding the pandemic taking place in the world from the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic and viral mutations, the need has arisen to analyze the epidemic data in terms of numbers of infected and deaths, different geographical regions, and the dynamics of the spread of the virus. In China, the total number of reported infections is 224,659 on June 11, 2022. In this paper, the Gaussian Mixture Model and the decision tree method were used to classify and predict new cases of the virus. Although we focus mainly on the Chinese case, the model is general and adapted to any context without loss of validity of the qualitative results. The Chi-Squared (χ2) Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) was applied in creating the decision tree structure, the data has been classified into five classes, according to the BIC criterion. The best mixture model is the E (Equal variance) with five components. The considered data sets of the world health organization (WHO) were used from January 5, 2020, to 12, November 2021. We provide numerical results based on the Chinese case. © 2022 THE AUTHORS

Discerning Hygiene Behavior amidst Bottom of Pyramid Segment: A CHAID Analysis

Hygiene status of the people along with other measures of environmental sanitization promotes health of the community by providing clean environment and breaking the cycle of disease. Establishing routine hygiene behavior and adopting hygiene norms by the community at large and in particular the bottom of pyramid segment is of critical importance for long term welfare and health benefits. This study aims to firstly assess the hygiene behavior adopted by bottom of pyramid segment across several aspects of hygiene behavior. Secondly, to employ various demographic and behavioral factors to predict, model and classify hygiene behavior and thirdly to explore the differences across various aspects of hygiene behavior in the identified groups. This study surveyed the hygiene behavior across 272 respondents from the bottom of pyramid segment. Descriptive data analysis, CHAID analysis and one way ANOVA was employed to address the research objectives. The findings indicate an evident gap in adoption of hygiene (score less than 2.5 on a four point scale) across all aspects such as hand hygiene food hygiene etc. Pre covid hand hygiene behavior, positive influence of family on adopting hygiene behavior and residential status (native or migrant) emerged as key predictors of hygiene behavior. Five heterogeneous groups emerged as an outcome of CHAID analysis and significant differences were found across several aspects of hygiene behavior in these groups. The study provides a typology of citizens from bottom of pyramid that will facilitate policy makers and local authorities and agencies to design campaigns and intervention programs that promote long term adoption of hygiene effectively.

Logistic Regression Model and Decision Trees to Analyze Changes in Tourist Behavior: Tungurahua Case Study

This research was designed to identify the factors that influence the behavior changes of tourists visiting the province of Tungurahua and build the new visitor profile. The analytical method applied in this study was through the logistic regression model. Through the use of the CHAID logarithm, the decision trees were constructed. For this research, a total of 323 questionnaires were collected and validated by 4 experts. Additionally, the Cronbach’s Alpha statistic was used with a confidence level of 0.914. In this way, some questions were accepted for this research. Among the findings, it is identified that the behavior of tourists is determined by attitudes, decision conditions, travel destination choices, risk perceptions, and marketing factors. Decision tree models revealed that the choice of tourist destination depends on the effective application of biosafety regulations by service providers. Millennials are the potential market, coming from some cities of Ecuador, like Ambato, Quito, and Latacunga. They have a university or higher level of education and belong to a middle and upper-middle-income social stratum. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.