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This paper aims to provide useful information and suggestions for future improvement in relation to China's construction industry and market. With China's rapid economical development and its entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO), much attention has been paid to the China construction business opportunities. However, not much information is available on the history, practices and business cultures of the Chinese construction industry.

Through literature review and interviews with industry professionals, this paper discusses the Chinese construction industry in terms of its market and management practice with a focus on tendering processes, contract management, project on‐site supervision and occupational health and safety (OHS) issues. It also discusses the challenges that face the Chinese construction industry.

China has gone over a long way in construction tendering, contract management and OHS. Its current practice is in the right direction. However, further development and improvements are necessary.

This paper provides useful information to Chinese construction personnel for future improvement. This paper also provides useful information to overseas companies who are planning to enter China's construction market in the near future.

The purpose of this paper is to present an automated method for complicated truss structure subassembly identification.

A community-detecting algorithm is introduced and adapted to reach the target. The ratio between oriented bounding boxes of parts is used as the weight to reflect the compact degree of assembly relationships. The authors also propose a method to merge nodes together at cut-vertex in model, by which the solving process could be accelerated.

This method could identify the subassemblies of complex truss structures according to the specific requirements.

This research area is limited to truss structures. This research offers a new method in assembly sequences planning area. It could identify subassemblies in complex truss structures, with which the existing method is not adequate to deal.

This method could facilitate the complex truss structures assembly planning, lower the human errors and reduce the planning time.

The method could inspire general assembly analysis planning.

All authors of this paper confirm that this manuscript is original and has not been submitted or published elsewhere.

Sometimes regarded as the best method of prioritizing budgetary expenditures, Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB) was introduced into China in the early 1990s and systematically adopted since the recent budgeting reform although it has experienced numerous failures in many countries. This study examines ZBB as practiced in Hubei province in China. In Hubei, although the reformers are intended to create ZBB as a general budgeting framework, eventually, it was a Chinese style Target-Based Budgeting (TBB) rather than ZBB that has been put into place. Interestingly, ZBB has not disappeared but is deliberately applied to budgetary decisions of one type of expenditures under the Chinese style TBB. However, even in the field where ZBB is practiced, its achievements are at best moderate. The Chinese experiment of ZBB presents something new not only for the theory of ZBB but also for the budgeting literature.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the historical development and characteristics of labour disputes in China, including their growth, collective disputes, regional differences, direct causes and the impact of economic ownership on labour disputes.

This paper critically reviews the existing literature and analyses official government statistics.

Individual and collective labour disputes have been on the rise since 1978 when China embarked on market‐oriented economic reforms. The considerable regional variations in labour disputes are closely associated with regional economic growth, the restructuring of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and development of non‐SOEs. While non‐payment or delayed payment, job losses and industrial accidents resulting from poor labour protection are the three major causes of labour disputes, management corruption and mismanagement sometimes fuel the anger of already disgruntled workers. The nature of economic ownership also impacts on how labour conflicts occur.

This paper investigates labour disputes in China, an important phenomenon which is currently increasing but has not been much studied. It therefore develops a better understanding of their historical development and characteristics. Such an understanding is critical to resolving labour disputes and preventing them from occurring in the future.

Hazard warning schemes provide efficient hazard recognition and promote project safety. Nevertheless, these schemes perform poorly because the warning information is calibrated for individual characters and is not prioritized for the entire system. This study proposes a hazard warning scheme that prioritizes hazard characters from the inspection process based on the inspectors' experience.

First, hazard descriptions were decomposed into their characters, forming a double-layer network. Second, warning schemes based on cascading effects were proposed. Third, character-based warning schemes were simulated for various experiences.

The results show that when a specific hazard is detected, the degree centrality is the most effective parameter for prioritization, and hazard characters should be prioritized based on betweenness centrality for experienced inspectors, whereas degree centrality is preferred for novice inspectors.

The warning scheme theoretically supplements the information-processing theory in construction hazard warnings and provides a practical warning scheme with priority for the development of automated hazard navigation systems.

Drawing on information processing theory, this paper aims to study how consumers’ liking of background music in advertising affects their purchase intention and explore the roles of positive brand attitudes, music mode and music tempo within such a relationship.

We created several radio advertisements that promote two fictitious products: an electric car (EcoCar) and a reusable coffee mug (EcoMug). We study the role of music in these advertisements and examine how it affects purchase intention across multiple experiments.

We confirm the prediction that positive brand attitudes mediate the relationship between music liking and purchase intention. We also show that music moderates such an indirect relationship because major mode music strengthens the effect of positive brand attitudes on purchase intention. Additionally, we find that major mode music with a fast tempo can further strengthen the effect of positive brand attitudes on purchase intention. As a result, the indirect effect of music liking upon purchase intention via positive brand attitudes will be moderated jointly by the music mode and the music tempo.

Limited scholarship explores how the subjective characteristics of music affect consumer buying behaviour in conjunction with the objective characteristics of music. The current research addresses this gap by investigating how music liking (a subjective characteristic of music) and music mode and tempo (objective characteristics of music) affect consumer buying behaviour.

This study aims to explore the level of adoption of Construction 4.0 (C4.0) technologies and of Lean Construction (LC) ambidexterity capability in China’s construction industry. By incorporating C4.0 and LC ambidexterity into a sociotechnical systems (STS) framework, this research provides practical insights for construction practitioners and companies seeking C4.0 and LC.

The study adopts the questionnaire survey method. Data was obtained from Chinese construction professionals working on projects using C4.0 technologies. The data were analysed using mean score ranking and three nonparametric techniques, including the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the Spearman rank correlation.

According to the ranking analysis, building information modelling and offsite construction have the highest adoption level, while additive manufacturing and blockchain rank lowest. Digital technology is more widely used in China’s construction industry than in physical technology. Many C4.0 technologies are significantly correlated with LC ambidexterity. Based on the STS perspective, we propose a holistic approach that incorporates C4.0 technologies and LC ambidexterity.

Conceptually, the study incorporates C4.0 and LC ambidexterity into the STS framework. Empirically, this study fills the gap in the current literature by exploring the level of C4.0 technology adoption in the Chinese construction industry, as well as the level of LC ambidexterity capabilities. Construction companies can use this framework to make strategic decisions regarding investments in LC practices and the adoption of C4.0 technologies, such as investing in staff skill training and new technology deployment to adapt to the ever-changing environment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of four different incentives in improving hedging effectiveness and propose an alternative regulatory mechanism for China’s futures market.

The research method that this study uses is a laboratory experiment, and this study follows the basic norms of experimental research. In addition, this paper designs and conducts a game experiment between hedgers and futures brokerage firms (FBFs) under different incentive mechanisms.

By analyzing the experimental data, it is found that compared with other incentive mechanisms, hedgers’ willingness to hedge and FBFs’ regulatory intention are both significantly higher for the dynamic linkage updating mechanism, indicating that hedgers have a stronger willingness to follow their hedging plan, and FBFs are more responsible for their regulatory behaviors. Additionally, the dynamic linkage updating mechanism has a long-term impact on effective hedging in the futures market.

The findings suggest that the dynamic linkage updating mechanism is beneficial for effectively restricting both hedgers’ over-speculation and FBFs’ regulatory slack and improving the hedging efficiency of the futures market.

To solve the problem of inefficient hedging in China’s futures market, i.e., hedgers’ over-speculation and FBFs’ passive collusion with hedgers, the regulators of China’s futures market should reform the existing incentives and adopt a dynamic linkage updating mechanism to encourage all the participants to actively improve hedging effectiveness.

This paper analyzes and verifies, for the first time, the role of the dynamic linkage updating mechanism in the investing behaviors of hedgers and the regulatory behaviors of future brokerage firms. The futures market experiment that was designed and used in this study is a pioneering and exploratory experiment that applies game theory and mechanism design theory to the field of behavioral finance.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing provides more possibilities for composite manufacturing. Composites can no longer just be layered or disorderly mixed as before. This paper aims to introduce a new algorithm for dual-material 3D printing design.

A novel topology design method: solid isotropic material with penalization (SIMP) for hybrid lattice structure is introduced in this paper. This algorithm extends the traditional SIMP topology optimization, transforming the original 0–1 optimization into A–B optimization. It can be used to optimize the spatial distribution of bi-material composite structures.

A novel hybrid structure with high damping and strength efficiency is studied as an example in this work. By using the topology method, a hybrid Kagome structure is designed. The 3D Kagome truss with face sheet was manufactured by selective laser melting technology, and the thermosetting polyurethane was chosen as filling material. The introduced SIMP method for hybrid lattice structures can be considered an effective way to improve lattice structures’ stiffness and vibration characteristics.

The fabricated hybrid lattice has good stiffness and damping characteristics and can be applied to aerospace components.