Evaluating the Investment Climate for China’s Cross-Border E-Commerce: The Application of Back Propagation Neural Network

Abstract

China’s cross-border e-commerce will usher in a new golden age of development. Based on seven countries which include the Russian Federation, Mongolia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus along the “Belt and Road”, an evaluation system for cross-border e-commerce investment climate indicators is established in this study. This research applied the entropy method twice to evaluate the investment climate of seven countries based on 5 years panel data comprehensively and these countries are then classified into politics-oriented and industry-oriented countries, and then the weight of indicators for each category is analyzed. In addition, cross-border e-commerce investors are proposed to prioritize industry-oriented countries. Back propagation neural network algorithm is used to map the existing data and optimize the evaluation index system in combination with the genetic algorithm. This research denotes the effort to find out the index evaluation combination corresponding to the best overall score, make the established evaluation index system applicable to other countries, and provide reference for cross-border e-commerce investors when evaluating the investment climate in each country. This study provides the important practical implications in the sustainable development of China’s cross-border e-commerce environment.