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Some fairy tale characters have transcended their original fairy tale genre and their influence can be perceived in other fictional genres. One illustration of this is the character of Blue Beard. This story, written by Charles Perrault, was first published in 1697 (Hermansson, 2010, p. 2). It moved through several themes or topics from anxiety to money to the right of the husband and wives (Warner, 2014, p. 82). In Perrault's story, Blue Beard is conceived as a serial killer and a jealous husband. ‘Whatever the medium, whatever the date: in opera, cartoon, X-rated film or graphic novel, he is an archetypal serial murderer, terrifying and yet alluring’ (2015, p. 76).

The influence of this character and examples that carry, at the very least, remnants of Blue Beard can be clearly identified in several contemporary narratives. In the BBC television series The Fall (Cubitt, 2013), Jamie Dornan portrays a serial killer named Paul Spector. Alternatively known as the Belfast Strangler, Spector, like Blue Beard, has a wife and children who are unaware of his murderous spree. Another example of the attempted enforcement of extreme patriarchy can be seen in Cult, the seventh season of Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story anthology series. The season is dedicated to the 2016 US election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (Raddish, 2017). In this fictional narrative Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) symbolises toxic masculinity and models patriarchal archetypes to create a cult and become a senator.

Through a contextual post-structuralist analysis of the aforementioned characters, this chapter intends to examine the representation and evolution of male character under the umbrella of the fairy tale ‘man’.

The agricultural sector is facing pressure due to concerns about its impact on the environment. Farmers must adapt to ensure high-quality, sustainable production. This requires efficient techniques such as soilless farming. The development of agricultural innovations depends on social acceptance; thus, it is crucial to identify the factors that influence consumers' purchasing decisions. The aim of this paper is to analyse consumers' perceptions of hydroponic cultivation techniques and their willingness to pay (WTP) a premium price for hydroponic tomatoes certified as “nickel-free” and “zero-residue”.

The survey was conducted in Italy using tomatoes as a case study. Data were collected through an online questionnaire from a convenience sample of 292 respondents and were analysed using statistical analysis and a multiple linear regression model.

The results showed that WTP was influenced by frequency of purchase, familiarity with soilless technology, environmental sustainability, income and education. Consumers place a high value on the sustainability of the hydroponic production process and their perception of increased safety positively influences WTP. It is therefore recommended that marketing strategies focus on the environmental sustainability and safety of hydroponic products. In addition, it may be beneficial to implement a certification system specific to hydroponic cultivation, in addition to the existing “nickel-free” and “zero-residue” certifications.

This study introduces several novel elements: it is the first to assess the Italian consumers’ perceptions and WTP for a hydroponic product. Secondly, it assesses WTP in relation to several aspects of increasing relevance related to health claims, namely “nickel-free” and “zero-residue”.

This study proposes a framework that demonstrates how the perceived value of augmented reality (AR) shopping influences the formation of psychological ownership of product and technology. The mediating role of flow experience and the moderating role of perceived control are identified.

An online survey study recruiting 480 participants who experienced AR shopping was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Functional value is negatively related to psychological ownership of product and technology whereas emotional value shows opposite effects. Flow experience mediates the relationships between functional/emotional value and psychological ownership of product and technology. Perceived control moderates the relationship between emotional value and flow experience, as well as the relationship between functional/emotional value and psychological ownership of product and technology.

The findings suggest the importance of AR’s functional and emotional values in developing psychological ownership of product and technology. To mitigate the negative effect of functional value, AR designers should focus on creating emotionally engaging apps that induce a flow experience, thereby enhancing psychological ownership. Furthermore, AR apps should be designed to empower users with a sense of control in the AR experience.

This research contributes to the AR and psychological ownership literature. It introduces a model that can explain both the formation of psychological ownership of product and psychological ownership of technology, thereby expanding the current understanding. By adding perceived values as antecedents of psychological ownership, it enriches the psychological ownership literature. Moreover, it enhances the flow experience literature by demonstrating the role of flow experience in the formation of psychological ownership of product and technology.

The ways communities have regarded disasters and natural hazards in the cultural sphere can provide a lens to inform the understanding of their ability to withstand shocks and the factors that led to such conditions. Only by tracing the complexities of creating, transmitting and preserving a culture of preparedness among disaster-vulnerable communities can researchers and practitioners claim to be working toward policy that is informed by the communities’ own experience and design policy or programming on their behalf.

In efforts to prevent, respond to and recover from disasters, what alternatives are available to top-down strategies for imposing expert knowledge on lay publics? How is the context of communities’ socioecological context understood in the development of programs and policy on their behalf? What can be learned from community narratives and cultural practices to inform disaster risk reduction?

I collected examples of how different communities perceive, prevent and respond to disaster through art, music and literature and analyzed how these were embedded into local narratives and how historical context influenced such approaches. My findings show that communities use cultural practices to contextualize experiences of hazards into their collective narrative; that is, storytelling and commemoration make disasters comprehensible. By incorporating such findings into existing policies and programs, institutions may be able to more effectively apply them to affected communities or build new ones around their actual needs and experiences.

By framing disasters as an anthropological inquiry, practitioners can better recognize the influence of a place’s nuance in the disaster management canon–guided by these details, not despite them.

With burgeoning interest in the low-altitude economy, applications of long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (LE-UAVs) have increased in remote logistics distribution. Given LE-UAVs’ advantages of wide coverage, strong versatility and low cost, in addition to logistics distribution, they are widely used in military reconnaissance, communication relay, disaster monitoring and other activities. With limited autonomous intelligence, LE-UAVs require regular periodic and non-periodic control from ground control resources (GCRs) during flights and mission execution. However, the lack of GCRs significantly restricts the applications of LE-UAVs in parallel.

We consider the constraints of GCRs, investigating an integrated optimization problem of multi-LE-UAV mission planning and GCR allocation (Multi-U&G IOP). The problem integrates GCR allocation into traditional multi-UAV cooperative mission planning. The coupling decision of mission planning and GCR allocation enlarges the decision space and adds complexities to the problem’s structure. Through characterizing the problem, this study establishes a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for the integrated optimization problem. To solve the problem, we develop a three-stage iterative optimization algorithm combining a hybrid genetic algorithm with local search-variable neighborhood decent, heuristic conflict elimination and post-optimization of GCR allocation.

Numerical experimental results show that our developed algorithm can solve the problem efficiently and exceeds the solution performance of the solver CPLEX. For small-scale instances, our algorithm can obtain optimal solutions in less time than CPLEX. For large-scale instances, our algorithm produces better results in one hour than CPLEX does. Implementing our approach allows efficient coordination of multiple UAVs, enabling faster mission completion with a minimal number of GCRs.

Drawing on the interplay between LE-UAVs and GCRs and considering the practical applications of LE-UAVs, we propose the Multi-U&G IOP problem. We formulate this problem as a MILP model aiming to minimize the maximum task completion time (makespan). Furthermore, we present a relaxation model for this problem. To efficiently address the MILP model, we develop a three-stage iterative optimization algorithm. Subsequently, we verify the efficacy of our algorithm through extensive experimentation across various scenarios.

This study seeks to explore the intricate relationship among supply chain transparency, digitalization and idiosyncratic risk, with a specific focus on newly public firms. The objective is to determine whether supply chain transparency effectively mitigates idiosyncratic risk within this context and to understand the potential impact of digitalization on this dynamic interplay.

The study utilizes data from Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on China’s Growth Enterprise Board (ChiNext) over the last five years, sourced from the CSMAR database and firms’ annual reports. The research covers the period from 2009 to 2021, observing each firm for five years post-IPO. The final sample comprises 2,645 observations from 529 firms. The analysis employs the Hausman test, considering the panel-data structure of the sample and favoring fixed effects over random effects. Additionally, it applies the high-dimensional fixed effects (HDFE) estimator to address unobserved heterogeneity.

The analysis initially uncovered an inverted U-shaped relationship between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, indicating a delicate equilibrium where detrimental effects diminish and beneficial effects accelerate with increased transparency. Moreover, this inverted U-shaped relationship was notably more pronounced in newly public firms with a heightened level of firm digitalization. This observation implies that firm digitalization amplifies the impact of transparency on a firm’s idiosyncratic risk.

This study distinguishes itself by providing distinctive insights into supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk. Initially, we introduce and substantiate an inverted U-shaped correlation between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, challenging the conventional linear perspective. Secondly, we pioneer the connection between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, especially for newly public firms, thereby enhancing comprehension of financial implications. Lastly, we pinpoint crucial digital conditions that influence the relationship between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk management, offering a nuanced perspective on the role of technology in risk management.

Construction safety resilience is gradually gaining attention in the field of engineering construction as a new management concept and way to improve safety performance. However, how to cope with the dilemma of the unclear relationship of construction safety resilience elements at the practice level and promote the harmonization of construction safety goals and resilience enhancement paths has become an urgent challenge for safe construction.

This study analyzes the components of construction safety resilience elements. A relationship network model of construction safety resilience elements is developed by using the social network analysis method. The location and influence of each element in the network and the interrelationships among the elements are explored in depth.

The findings reveal a robust interconnection among the elements of safety resilience in the construction industry. Key components such as safety behavior, risk prevention and control mechanisms, disaster prevention and mitigation technologies as well as information technology, are positioned at the core of the network. Notably, safety behavior exerts the most significant influence over the other elements, serving as the linchpin of safety management in the construction industry. Moreover, the interplay among safety resilience elements in the construction sector can alter the structure of the relationship network.

This study adopts the social network approach to solve the problem that it is difficult to quantitatively analyze the elements of construction safety resilience and their interrelationships and to clarify the interactions among the core elements, which can help to further assist the construction project manager to continuously optimize safety resilience and improve construction safety.

The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system not only needs to focus on its composition, but also needs to consider changes and impacts of internal and external environment.

This study attempts to introduce the concept of dissipative structure from the perspective of complexity theory and constructs a positive entropy and negentropy flow index system for mega railway infrastructure project management system in order to analyze the factors of management system more deeply. The Brusselator model is used to construct the structure of the mega railway infrastructure project management system, and the entropy method is used to calculate the positive entropy and negentropy values to verify whether the management system is a dissipative structure.

A plateau railway project in China was used as an example for an empirical study, not only its own characteristics are analyzed, but also the role of constraints and facilitation of the internal and external environment. Based on the research results, several effective suggestions are put forward to improve the stability and work efficiency of mega railway infrastructure project management system.

This study demonstrates that mega railway infrastructure project management system has the characteristics of dissipative structure. It can provide theoretical support for the development of mega railway infrastructure project management system from disorderly state to orderly state.

In contrast to other Chinese sports, which attract enormous commercial interests and relates to a kind of political kudos and ideological significance, Chinese baseball represents a singular case for the author to investigate the way in which China responds to sport globalisation due to its peripheral position in, and limited resource from, the domestic sport system and powerful stakeholders from the global society. The study examines the development of Chinese baseball and its interplay with the global sport giants and international events (i.e. the Olympic Games and the Major League Baseball [MLB]). Given the influence of sport globalisation, the author also identifies the consistent dominance of Chinese sport authorities and the spectrum of local stakeholders' reaction towards globalisation. The chapter ends with a discussion of the relationship between marginal position of Chinese baseball in the local sport system and the rationale of its response to sport globalisation.