Browsing by Author "Wang, Yang"

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    Hotel Management in the Digital Age: Empirical Studies of Reputation Management and Dynamic Pricing
    (2016-04-01) Wang, Yang; Pazgal, Amit; Kamakura, Wagner; Kalra, Ajay; Sizova, Natalia
    Although a hotel’s basic purpose of providing a temporary place of lodging has not changed fundamentally over the course of history, the industry has continuously evolved with the newest innovations in architecture, technology, and culture. The most recent evolution is the digitization of the hotel marketplace. This thesis investigates two areas heavily influenced by the digital marketplace – online reputation management and dynamic pricing. The first study of this dissertation addresses one important facet of reputation management. How do managers’ responses to online reviews alter the opinion of subsequent reviewers? By analyzing a dataset of approximately 17 million hotel reviews, we demonstrate that managers’ responses can change the opinion of subsequent reviewers, but not always in a positive way. Responses to negative reviews generally improve subsequent opinion but responses to positive reviews can sometimes negatively influence subsequent opinion. A deep learning topic analysis of response and review texts reveals that tailored responses to positive reviews can actually negatively impact subsequent opinion. The findings in this study are shown to be consistent with the predictions of reactance theory. The second study seeks to uncover the degree to which managers’ pricing heuristics are optimal. Analyzing a year’s worth of spot prices for a focal hotel and its two competitors in the Las Vegas market, we show that managers do not price optimally in two peculiar ways. First, managers are able to set close-to-optimal average prices during off-season but dramatically underprice during peak-season. This result is consistent with agency theory that suggest the observable binary outcome of selling out the hotel may attenuate managers’ aggressiveness in setting prices. Second, managers, like untrained experimental subjects in prior literature, tend to make price changes that are too small. Furthermore, this study investigates the revenue gains due anticipating competitors’ pricing behavior and mean reversion tendencies in online reviews.
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    SARS-CoV-2 Exposure in Norway Rats (Rattus norvegicus) from New York City
    (American Society for Microbiology, 2023) Wang, Yang; Lenoch, Julianna; Kohler, Dennis; DeLiberto, Thomas J.; Tang, Cynthia Y.; Li, Tao; Tao, Yizhi Jane; Guan, Minhui; Compton, Susan; Zeiss, Caroline; Hang, Jun; Wan, Xiu-Feng
    Millions of Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) inhabit New York City (NYC), presenting the potential for transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from humans to rats. We evaluated SARS-CoV-2 exposure among 79 rats captured from NYC during the fall of 2021. Our results showed that 13 of the 79 rats (16.5%) tested IgG- or IgM-positive, and partial SARS-CoV-2 genomes were recovered from all 4 rats that were qRT-PCR (reverse transcription-quantitative PCR)-positive. Genomic analyses suggest these viruses were associated with genetic lineage B, which was predominant in NYC in the spring of 2020 during the early pandemic period. To further investigate rat susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 variants, we conducted a virus challenge study and showed that Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants can cause infections in wild-type Sprague Dawley (SD) rats, including high replication levels in the upper and lower respiratory tracts and induction of both innate and adaptive immune responses. Additionally, the Delta variant resulted in the highest infectivity. In summary, our results indicate that rats are susceptible to infection with Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants, and wild Norway rats in the NYC municipal sewer systems have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Our findings highlight the need for further monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 in urban rat populations and for evaluating the potential risk of secondary zoonotic transmission from these rat populations back to humans. IMPORTANCE The host tropism expansion of SARS-CoV-2 raises concern for the potential risk of reverse-zoonotic transmission of emerging variants into rodent species, including wild rat species. In this study, we present both genetic and serological evidence for SARS-CoV-2 exposure to the New York City wild rat population, and these viruses may be linked to the viruses that were circulating during the early stages of the pandemic. We also demonstrated that rats are susceptible to additional variants (i.e., Alpha, Delta, and Omicron) that have been predominant in humans and that susceptibility to infection varies by variant. Our findings highlight the reverse zoonosis of SARS-CoV-2 to urban rats and the need for further monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 in rat populations for potential secondary zoonotic transmission to humans.