Survival Through Text–Image Fusion and Joint Learning: A Multimodal Model for Predicting and Explaining Restaurant Success
Prof. Hengyun (Neil) LI
Associate Professor, School of Hotel and Tourism Management
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Date: 24 October 2025 (Friday)
Time: 10:30-12:00
Venue: E22-1029 & 1030
Host: Prof. Yuansi HOU, Associate Professor in Integrated Resort and Tourism Management
Abstract
As an important component of the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) ecosystem, restaurants face numerous challenges in a highly competitive market. Predicting the survival of restaurants is crucial for evaluating their operational performance and guiding strategic decision-making. However, existing research on SME survival prediction, especially for restaurants, often overlooks multimodal data integration, fails to address the interplay between prediction and interpretation, and lacks sufficient interpretability. To address these gaps, this study proposes an innovative restaurant survival prediction framework that integrates multimodal online review data, including both text and images. In addition, the framework introduces a joint learning approach to enable information sharing between prediction and interpretation tasks. By leveraging generative machine learning techniques, the framework can also provide human-like textual explanations, thereby enhancing the interpretability of the prediction results. This study demonstrates the theoretical significance of multimodal data integration and joint learning frameworks in predicting the survival of small businesses, contributes to the development of explainable artificial intelligence, and offers practical insights for improving restaurant operations.
Speaker
Dr. Hengyun (Neil) Li is an Associate Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). His research centers on digital platforms, social media, and human-centered artificial intelligence. With around 5,000 citations and an h-index of 38, Dr. Li has been recognized as one of the World’s Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists by Stanford University. He has secured research funding from prestigious organizations, including the China NSFC Young Scientist and General Program, Hong Kong RGC ECS and GRF, Hong Kong UGC, and the Hong Kong Scholars Program. Dr. Li’s achievements have been honored with numerous accolades, such as the PolyU Faculty/School Research Excellence Award (2021 & 2025), PolyU Faculty/School Outstanding Young Researcher, the USC Breakthrough Graduate Scholar Award (University of South Carolina, USA), and the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) Fellowship Award (University of Surrey, UK). In addition, Dr. Li’s research has been featured by renowned organizations such as the World Health Organization, BBC News, and the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
All are welcome!
