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Metaverse is one of the technologies that has the most promise for the future. However, there is less discussion about teaching using the metaverse. It is possible that most of the educators are ignorant of the metaverse’s features and its potential uses. The objective of this chapter is to define the metaverse precisely and discusses the various applications, characteristics, and challenges of metaverse in Education. This chapter explores the pioneering efforts in leveraging the metaverse for educational purposes, highlighting key examples and their impact on the learning experience. The possible applications of metaverse and research encounters in context to education are further reviewed and then explained and included the Artificial Intelligence (AI) functions in the world of metaverse along with learning based on metaverse. Researchers in the domains of educational technology and computer science shall advance an inclusive insight of the metaverse and its potential applications in education using various metaverse techniques like gamified learning, virtual learning, etc. Also, the metaverse role in education starting from the perception of AI has been covered.

In this chapter, we describe the importance of good governance in the metaverse. It offers unlimited opportunities and presents unique governance challenges. First, we describe the concept of good governance and its relevance to the metaverse. We emphasize that the speed of metaverse adoption depends upon the presence or absence of effective governance. Recognizing the metaverse as the next iteration of the internet, we present significant governance issues. Some issues such as interoperability, security, safety, privacy, law, and digital inequality are critical governance issues in the metaverse. Next, we explore the diverse governance frameworks to ensure the implementation of policies and regulations. These frameworks include decentralized governance, cross-sector collaboration, and standards-based governance. We also describe the best practices which are essential for good governance. To materialize the concepts and principles discussed, we present a compelling case study centered on Decentraland. This insightful exploration dissects a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)-based governance structure, offering valuable insights into the intricacies and stages of governance proposals. We acknowledge both the merits and potential drawbacks inherent to this approach. This chapter aims to offer an all-encompassing view of metaverse governance, essentially serving as a comprehensive roadmap for traversing the multifaceted landscape of this digital frontier.

Political factors play a crucial role in China's initial public offering (IPO) market due to its distinctive institutional context (i.e. “economic decentralization” and “political centralization”). Given the significant level of IPO underpricing in China, we examine the impact of local political uncertainty (measured by prefecture-level city official turnover rate) on IPO underpricing.

Using 2,259 IPOs of A-share listed companies from 2001 to 2019, we employ a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the channel (voluntarily lower the issuance price vs aftermarket trading) through which political uncertainty affects IPO underpricing. We check the robustness of the results using bootstrap tests, adopting alternative proxies for political uncertainty and IPO underpricing and employing subsample analysis.

Local official turnover-induced political uncertainty increases IPO underpricing by IPO firms voluntarily reducing the issuance price rather than by affecting investor sentiment in aftermarket trading. These relations are stronger in firms with pre-IPO political connections. The effect of political uncertainty on IPO underpricing is also contingent upon the industry and the growth phase of an IPO firm, more pronounced in politically sensitive industries and firms listed on the growth enterprise market board.

Local government officials in China usually have a short tenure and Chinese firms witness significantly severe IPO underpricing. By introducing the SEM model in studying China IPO underpricing, this study identifies the channel through which local government official turnover to political uncertainty on IPO underpricing.

Despite widespread use of virtual streamers, academic research on this subject remains limited. This study aims to explore the mechanisms by which consumer perceptions of virtual streamers influence consumer purchase intentions.

We used partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze validated online survey data from 414 consumers watching virtual streamers.

Consumer perceptions of virtual streamers (perceived competence, perceived interaction quality and perceived warmth) promote the establishment of transactional psychological contract and relational psychological contract between consumers and virtual streamers, which further affects consumers’ purchase intention.

This study enriches the research on virtual streamers, facilitates their adoption and introduces the psychological contract into a new research context by revealing the formation of the psychological contract from the perspective of virtual streamers. Moreover, this study provides a new understanding of the relationship between disembodied artificial intelligence and consumers.

To address challenges such as inadequate funding and inefficiency in public infrastructure construction, PPPs have gained significant global traction. This study aims to comprehensively assess the impacts and mechanisms of PPPs on the SDI and to provide rational policy recommendations based on the findings.

We collated a dataset from 30 Chinese provinces covering the years 2005–2020 as our research sample. The study’s hypotheses are tested using a double fixed-effects model, a chained mediated-effects model and a multidimensional heterogeneity analysis.

Our findings indicate that PPPs have a facilitating effect on SDI in general. This boost usually lags behind policy implementation and is cyclical in the time dimension. In the spatial dimension, PPPs contribute significantly to SDI in the eastern and western regions, but not in the central region. From the perspective of the dynamics of economic, social and industrial development, PPPs in economically backward areas are difficult to promote SDI, promote it the most in economically medium regions and are slightly less in economically developed regions than in medium regions. This promotion effect has an inverted U-shaped relationship with social development and diminishes with industrial structure upgrading. Finally, due to the negative relationship between PPPs and social development and between social development and SDI, PPPs are shown to contribute to SDI and are identified as critical paths. However, PPPs suppress SDI by inhibiting economic and industrial development.

This study makes three novel contributions to the existing body of knowledge: (1) we innovatively introduce the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the field of infrastructure research, offering fresh perspectives on SDI enhancement; (2) revealing the mechanisms by which PPPs affect SDI through the three dimensions of economic, social and industrial development enabling policymakers to better understand and optimize resource allocation and improve planning, design and management of PPP projects for sustainable infrastructure and (3) we assess the spatiotemporal variances of PPPs’ effects on SDI and the diversity across regions at different social, economic and industrial structures developmental stages, offering critical insights to global decision-makers to devise tailored policy measures.

Restaurant table booking (RTB) mobile apps are transforming how consumers reserve tables in the restaurants of their choice. This study analyses how RTB mobile apps influence brand attachment (BA) and brand commitment (BC), highlighting the moderation effect of desire for uniqueness (DU) by integrating visual content theory and social exchange theory.

Data [N = 414] were collected through the survey method from consumers having experience in using RTB mobile apps. The data were analysed through structural equation modelling using AMOS and SPSS PROCESS macro to examine moderated relationship.

The results confirm that content aesthetic quality, perceived technical interactivity and brand investments influence BA and BC in the RTB mobile app and also confirm the moderating role of the DU.

The present work is among the first to study the sources of BA in the RTB mobile app domain. Thus, it contributes to the literature on the restaurant industry to understand consumers' BA behaviour to achieve BC.

The Soybean Producer Subsidy Policy (SPSP), an agricultural support policy enacted in China within the past few years, is designed to optimise crop planting structure. This study analyses the impact of SPSP on the crop planting structure in terms of absolute and comparative incomes and elucidates the mechanisms involved.

Utilising balanced county-level panel data from 966 counties in China’s major soybean-producing regions, spanning from 2008 to 2021, we investigate the impacts of SPSP on crop planting structure by applying a difference-in-difference (DID) model.

The findings reveal several crucial insights. First, SPSP optimises the crop planting structure in Northeast China, primarily through an expansion in the area sown to soybeans and a simultaneous reduction in the area sown to maize. Second, the impacts of SPSP gradually strengthen over time but begin to weaken by 2021. Third, heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effects of SPSP are most pronounced in Eastern Inner Mongolia, followed by Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. Finally, SPSP incentivises farmers to expand soybean sown areas by improving absolute rather than comparative incomes from soybean cultivation.

Addressing structural contradictions within China’s food supply chain necessitates the adjustment of support policies for different crops to mitigate market distortions. Establishing a holistic agricultural support system encompassing various crops could promote sustainable agricultural practices in the future.

Our findings are valuable for policy makers in China and globally who aim to establish support systems for regional linkages that include a variety of crops.

This paper aims to provide a full introduction, new classification, comparison and investigation of the challenges as well as applications of layerless 3D printing, which is one of the industry 4.0 pioneers.

Given the significance and novelty of uniform 3D printing, more than 250 publications were collected and reviewed in an unbiased and clear manner.

As a result, the majority of uniform parts printed in polymer form are known up to this point. In a novel division for better researchers’ comprehension, uniform printing systems were classified into three categories: oxygen inhibition (OI), liquid lubrication (LL) and photon penetration (PP), and each was thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, these three approaches were evaluated in terms of printing speed, precision and accuracy, manufacturing scale and cost.

The parameters of each approach were compared independently, and then a practical comparison was conducted among these three approaches. Finally, a variety of technologies, opportunities, challenges and advantages of each significant method, as well as a future outlook for layerless rapid prototyping, are presented.

Despite the knowledge transfer in project contexts which has been extensively studied by scholars, the study on inter-organizational knowledge transfer in international construction projects is still scattered and unsystematic. This research aims to explore the key factors influencing inter-organizational knowledge transfer of international construction projects and analyze how these factors interact to create a synthetic framework that enhances the effectiveness of knowledge transfer (EKT).

At first, eight factors influencing inter-organizational knowledge transfer within international construction projects were identified, which were from the four dimensions of subject, relationship, channel and context, namely cultural distance, connection strength, organizational climate, intercultural competence, information technology capability, transmit willingness, receive willingness and richness of transfer channels. Then, a conceptual model was developed and 13 hypotheses were formulated, which were derived from a literature review and in-depth survey. After that, data from 353 respondents were collected and analyzed, and the hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling analysis and bootstrapping test.

The results suggest that cultural distance hinders transfer willingness, which further affects EKT. Connection strength affects EKT by positively influencing transfer willingness and channel. Besides, organizational climate and intercultural competence positively influence transfer willingness and further affect EKT, while information technology capability affects the richness of transfer channels.

This research gives a thorough examination of the determinants influencing inter-organizational knowledge transfer of international construction projects, thus formulating available approaches that project managers and personnel can employ to effectively facilitate EKT.

The COVID-19 crisis has adversely affected entrepreneurs, innovators and their ventures and, arguably, entrepreneurship research. This study aims to map the knowledge of entrepreneurship research during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide evidence of literature evolution in the field with the purpose of supporting future decision-making for policymakers, academics and practitioners in the post-COVID-19 era.

The study examines various bibliometric and scientometric indicators of entrepreneurship research in the Web of Science database using bibliometric techniques and visualization tools. Using the information gained, the scientometrics of entrepreneurship research during the COVID-19 time slice (2020–02-12 to 2022–10-15) are synthesized and comprehensively presented, and future research avenues for the post-COVID-19 era are suggested.

The results of rigorous quantitative analyses show that entrepreneurship research activities were not disrupted by COVID-19, although entrepreneurial activities themselves were impacted worldwide. In addition to providing key insights into the research field, including the most relevant keywords, keyword co-occurrences, publication sources, countries' contribution and collaboration, and source co-citations, the conceptual structural analysis separates the current trends (hotspots) into ten themes. Based on the evolution of author keywords and research themes, the study identified numerous future research directions, including 1) entrepreneurship in emerging countries, 2) firm performance in different categories of enterprises, 3) immigrants and transnational entrepreneurs, 4) technology in entrepreneurship education and 5) the impact of COVID-19 on the entrepreneurial ecosystem and entrepreneurship.

By building firm foundations for advancing the field in innovative and systematic ways, this timely study contributes to entrepreneurship literature and facilitates the understanding of the features and structures of entrepreneurship research towards the end of the pandemic. The research also has important implications for research management and entrepreneurship policymaking. The study's main limitation is that the results can only represent the time slice between 2020-02-12 and 2022-10-15.

Policymakers and managers of research and development can utilize this research to prepare a crisis-related minimization handbook in advance.

This first data mapping and thematic analysis research for entrepreneurship during the period of COVID-19 provides the latest knowledge in the field at the beginning of the end of the pandemic. It empowers scholars by 1) providing a one-stop literature overview for this global crisis time slice, 2) identifying research focuses and gaps, 3) developing new research avenues for investigation and 4) contributing conceptual structure for specific entrepreneurship research projects.