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In recent Chinese history, rural villages have suffered extensive depopulation due to the intensive urbanisation of the country. In the early 1990s, the rediscovery of villages for tourism purposes caused a change in approach to conservation policies and village management. Today, villages are subjected to climate change with mass tourism as a contributing factor. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether the village community is climate change aware and to identify best practises for it.

In this case study, the authors adopted a visual research technique called Photovoice. It is a research method which combines preliminary data collection and initial analysis processes. The main goals of adopting Photovoice are to enable community members to record and reflect their community’s strengths and concerns, to promote dialogue and knowledge exchange among community members regarding critical local social or environmental issues through small group discussion, and to report to policymakers.

This research demonstrated that both visitors and hosts shared common thoughts on tourism interests, impacts and current actions regarding climate change. Age, level of education or origin did not interfere and it shows a common awareness regarding the effects of climate change. It confirms the structural assumption that local and expertise knowledge are complementary.

At a time when awareness of climate change is affecting almost every debate concerning development strategies, future planning, governance and action implementations, very little has been written on the climate change impact on villages from a community perspective. Even less has been researched on what are called “urban rural villages”, that are villages located at the close periphery of a large urban agglomerations or cities in China.

Biotech share price is highly volatile, compared to most other industries. There is limited explanation for what causes such a high volatility. The purpose of this study is to explore how R&D strategies selected by biotech firms affect their share price volatilities. Specifically, the paper empirically investigates the impact of drug discovery and development diversification on share price volatility.

Regression analysis is applied to observe the effect of R&D strategy on share price volatility. Share price volatility is regressed on the measure of drug discovery and development diversification. Strategies are classified into two categories: diversified vs. concentrated. Meanwhile, other factors that have an influence on share price volatility such as firm maturity, firm size, and book‐to‐market ratio are controlled. For robustness, a return model is also used to further test the effect of R&D strategy, and sensitivity analyses using alternative drug discovery and development diversification measures are performed. Empirical data was collected for publicly‐traded biotech firms from COMPUSTAT, CRSP and Biospace.

The major finding of this study is the significant impact of R&D strategy in term of drug discovery and development diversification on share price volatility. Firms that have more diversified drug portfolios are associated with lower share price volatilities; and lower stock returns. In contrast, firms that have more concentrated drug portfolios are associated with higher share price volatilities; and higher stock returns.

Future research can explore effects of other aspects of the drug discovery and development as well as other firm attributes on biotech share price volatility. In addition, share price volatility may have impacts on managerial issues such as employee stock option issuance. Such impacts should also be studied.

This study targets a major aspect (i.e. R&D strategy) of the very fundamental value drive in the industry (i.e. drug discovery and development) to shed light on the limited understanding of what contribute to biotech share price volatility. The benefit of produce diversification has been examined in some other industries; however, its benefit is largely unknown in the biotech industry. This study has implications for investor risk assessment and corporate risk management.

This paper aims to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of listed Chinese firms. In particular, it examines the relationships between CSR and profitability, state ownership and tax reporting behavior.

The paper is an empirical study using CSR reports published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and financial data collected from the China Stock Market Financial Statement Database (CSMAR).

The paper finds that state ownership is positively associated with CSR and its three components including the governance, social and environmental scores; firm profitability is positively associated with CSR and its market score; and tax reporting behavior is negatively associated with the environmental score. But the result is weak.

The results in this study should be treated with some caution as the sample size of 85 observations represents only a small fraction of China’s listed firms. A larger sample size is desirable and may affect our results.

This paper is of interest to policy-makers, corporate management and academics who wish to explore the relationship between CSR and other firm characteristics.

This paper is the first study which provides a comprehensive examination of CSR and its four components in connection with Chinese firms. In particular, it examines the relationship between CSR and profitability and state ownership.

The expected rate of return for individual firms is determined by multiple firm‐specific factors. There is no evidence on how firm life cycle contributes to the determination of the expected rate of return. This study explores how life cycle stage affects the expected rate of return.

Regression analysis is applied to observe the effect of life cycle. Expected rate of return is dependent variable. Life cycle measures are interacted with commonly identified risk factors. Empirical data was collected for publicly traded firms from COMPUSTAT.

The major finding of this study is the significant impact of life cycle stage. Results indicate that the value relevance of risk factors is conditional on firm life cycle stage. Findings suggest that capital markets do realize and incorporate information conveyed in firm life cycle stage when interpreting risk factors.

Future research can explore effects of life cycle stage on share return volatility as investors trade off between return and risk.

This study targets a major aspect (i.e. what determine the expected rate of return in the finance literature) to shed light on the limited understanding of what contribute to individual firms’ risk premium. This study has implications for investor risk assessment and corporate risk management.

This paper aims to examine whether information search frequency of accounting information is related to the explanatory power of accounting information for firm market value. It also examines whether information content and state of nature can have an impact on this relationship.

The paper is an empirical study using Web search volume data collected from Google Trends and financial and market data collected from Compustat.

This paper finds that investors use Web search engines as an alternative way to search for information they need, search frequency of accounting information is positively related to the explanatory power of accounting information for firm market value, the relationship is found differential between statements and categories within a statement depending on the information content and the relationship is found stronger during economic upturns.

This paper examines 59 accounting items that are cross-firm commonly reported and that have data availability in Compustat. The external validity might be an issue.

This paper is of interest to standard setters, corporate management and academics who wish to understand and improve the value of accounting information in the capital market.

This paper is the first study which provides a comprehensive examination of the impact of investors’ information search volumes on the explanatory power of accounting information. It is also the first paper that intrudes Google Trends search volume data into accounting research.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between culture-based tourism development and cultural sustainability in the established tourism destination of Gold Coast, Australia. It seeks to contribute to the debate on local development and tourism through evaluating the development of the newly-born Gold Coast Chinatown.

Two types of analysis were developed for this study. The first one aims at assessing the general features of the case study site. It was done by the urban analysis of the precinct, the count of the shops associated with the identification of their function (e.g. retail, services, etc.), street visual survey, and the assessment of ethnic expression/representations. The second analysis aims at assessing place-attachment, development impacts and cultural attitude. It was done by questionnaire surveys.

The analysis evidences mainly two findings. First, tradition, authenticity or ethnicity are not perceived as key drivers, and tangible pre-requisites do not appear as a priority for a culture-based tourism development. Second, correlation studies show the longer the length of residence the higher is the attitude towards positive perceived economic impacts and positive cultural attitudes. It is the opposite of what is usually found in literature review. As such, it challenges the concept of cultural sustainability, and helps us to reconsider the weight of the evaluative factors of community attachment, development impact and cultural attitude in tourism development.

The recent creation of the Gold Coast Chinatown not only raises the question of the rationale of what is usually recognised as a community-based settlement, hence its cultural foundation and the legitimacy of transfer of cultural models, but also the processes at stake between cultural sustainability and tourism development. To the knowledge, no publication exists on this case study.

The historical development and size of China’s audit market provides an opportunity to investigate important questions regarding the functioning of the market for audit services that are difficult, if not impossible, to test in other globally established markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the market entry of the Big Four accounting firms into China on the audit fees charged by its local accounting firms.

In this paper the authors rely primarily on the incumbent pricing literature (Simon, 2005; Geroski, 1995) to assist them in developing the specific hypotheses and empirical tests. This paper is an empirical study, which examines whether local incumbent accounting firms cut prices in response to the Big Four’s entry by using data from annual reports and audit reports for China’s listed companies from the 1994 to 2008 period.

This study shows that local incumbent firms cut prices post-entry. This study also finds that it was local large-sized accounting firms as well as accounting firms located in regions with highly developed- and competitive markets that cut prices in response to the Big Four’s entry.

This study has important implications for the Big Four accounting firms as it provides useful information about pricing strategies that would likely be used by local accounting firms in a new market. Local accounting firms in emerging markets can also gain useful insights about the pricing strategies adopted by the Big Four accounting firms when they enter a market.

Audit market research has little to offer on how local accounting firms respond in their pricing to the entry of Big Four accounting firms into their market, mainly because in western countries such as Canada, England, and the USA, the Big Four accounting firms are the oldest firms operating in those markets. This paper is the first study that examines the effect of the market entry of the Big Four accounting firms into China.