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This paper aims to examine the role of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body in China, in addressing environmental challenges.

This study uses 457 CPPCC environmental proposals across 160 cities for the period of 2013 to 2015 and a mediation effect model to examine the effect of CPPCC environmental proposals on environmental quality.

This study shows that CPPCC environmental proposals improve environmental quality; and the relationship between CPPCC environmental proposals and environmental quality is partially mediated by enforcement of environmental laws and regulations only although the proposals positively influence both law enforcement and environmental public budget expenditures.

Future research may examine how the interaction between the government and other important stakeholders such as non-governmental organizations can help improve environmental quality. In addition, future research may examine whether other policy tools such as pollution tax and fees, environmental subsidies, and emissions trading can play a role in dealing with environmental issues.

This study provides evidence that supports CPPCC members to take an even more active role in public governance by engaging with both the government and the public.

The CPPCC’s participation in public governance helps the government respond to critical issues more effectively. The government should pay close attention to CPPCC proposals when making public policies. Furthermore, the government probably needs to review its policies in relation to environmental expenditures.

This study is the first to examine the role of the CPPCC, a political advisory body, in addressing environmental challenges through functioning as a bridge between government and the public, whereas the extant literature has predominantly focused on the role of government, market and the public.

COVID-19 has forced audit firms to change the way they operate. One change has been to rely more on information technology (IT) and IT human capital to overcome COVID-19-related challenges. We refer to audit firms’ use of these two resources as audit firm informatization (AFI). It is important to understand whether AFI helps audit firms address challenges created by the pandemic. Thus, this study examines the impact of AFI on audit quality during the COVID-19 pandemic in China with a focus on IT human capital.

We use a mixed-methods approach. First, we perform multivariate regression analyses on archival data. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between IT human capital and audit quality and the two mechanisms (i.e. improved efficiency and reduced audit risk) underlying the relationship. We also investigate how this relationship is moderated by features of clients, audit firms and individual auditors. Then we use interviews to corroborate the results of our regression analyses.

Our analyses of archival data show that IT human capital positively affects audit quality through improved efficiency and reduced audit risk and that this positive impact is more pronounced for clients in non-manufacturing industries, those with a more opaque information environment, audit firms with greater industry coverage and individual auditors with less experience. Our interview data indicate that audit firms with more advanced AFI and a higher level of IT human capital in particular are less disrupted by the pandemic and are better able to use IT to address challenges associated with COVID-19. Furthermore, the results confirm that improved efficiency and reduced audit risk are the mechanisms through which AFI enhances audit quality. Finally, we identify issues associated with the use of IT.

This study is the first to investigate how IT human capital (and by extension AFI) influences audit quality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings should be of interest to practitioners and setters of auditing standards.

Green building education, an important aspect of sustainability in higher education, has rapidly expanded across the world. Yet, a bespoke pedagogical model integrating the essential elements of green building knowledge into a university course is lacking. To plug this deficiency, this study aims to develop an innovative pedagogical model that incorporates four types of teaching activities, namely, lecture, virtual reality (VR)-aided site visit, physical site visit and practicum-based project.

Based on an extensive review of the relevant literature and course materials, a pedagogical model was constructed for application to the teaching and learning activities of a university’s hospitality and real-estate programme. Using a case study approach involving in-depth interviews with green building professionals and a workshop coupled with an online survey on building professionals, the model’s transformative effectiveness was evaluated.

The study finds that the pedagogical model was able to effectively equip students with the essential green building knowledge pertinent to the different stages of a building life cycle. Concerns about wider applications of the model, including barriers to implementation in other academic programmes and resources for updating the VR platform, were identified.

The VR-aided and project-based pedagogy model is novel and effective in delivering green building education. Future work, particularly expanding the VR platform to cover more green building cases, thereby allowing multiple case studies to be conducted, is recommended for illustrating further contributions and implications of the model.

Foreign firms entering into the domestic real estate industry and foreign investment control are significant in global hot markets such as Australia. Despite their market impact and policy sensitivity, developer choice is rarely studied. The purpose of this paper is to study domestic and overseas property developers for their motive and preference in response to market growth and market barriers including regulatory constraint.

International trade theory suggests local and overseas firms can vary significantly for their risk profile when engaging in location-specific development opportunities. Using a comprehensive decision factor system for the residential development process, the authors conducted an experimental survey to collect the prime data to measure stated preference of domestic and overseas developers in the context of the Melbourne residential market.

Results suggest high consistency between the samples of domestic and overseas developers. Possible explanations include vertical integration by innovative contracting, strict regulatory constraint dictates domestic and overseas firms’ preference or sample selection bias. This micro-analysis of developer stated preference highlights their entrepreneurial ability to combine substitution and integration for innovative contractual strategy. This ability to join asset holding and project management enables firm flexibility to mitigate business risk in rapidly globalising capital and factor markets.

These insights of firm-level decision making contribute to the decision literature of real estate developers and are relevant to the broader literature of industrial economics and international trade. Government may evaluate policy strategies based on the explicit entrepreneur (e.g. developer) preference for their “comparative advantage”.

This paper highlights developer’s ability to jointly consider investment and project management for decision making. It found that other than political cost such as national interest and domestic interest group pressure, domestic and overseas developers in the Melbourne residential market actually think quite alike. It suggests that irrespective of property ownership conditions, market integration occurs in the Melbourne residential sector.

Led by the rapid advancement of information technology in engineering, business and creative industries, the emergence of new technology such as virtual reality (VR) and its use in education and practices are clearly observed. Although widely spread in industry practices, technology-led innovation is applied rather slowly in the tertiary real estate education. This paper examines the integrative effect of VR technology in a real estate course.

This study adopts a case study approach. Using an experimental course design and delivery in a business school real estate programme from Hong Kong, this paper shows the design, development and implementation of an innovative teaching model with VR being integrated. A survey was conducted to gain feedback information from participating students towards teaching innovation. It identifies the role and values of adopting VR technology in real estate education as pedagogical tool.

A new teaching model integrated with VR technology to deliver a real estate course has demonstrated its ability and potential to assist the development and enhancement of student's sense of value and place, as well as improving communicative efficiency of property investigation and the analysis of trade process. Findings from the study have implications for future global real estate industry practice and education.

The critical role of information technology to revolutionise the global economy and its real estate sector is apparent. Few studies have inquired about attempts and experience of integrating VR technology in real estate education towards direct link to industry practice. This paper is a major attempt to bring attention to this important concern.

Heritage building revitalisation (HBR) is gaining its popularity to intervene historic buildings/sites for their conservation and reuse. Given that multiple stake-holding situations are often involved in HBR process, coordination or managerial problem may hinder versatile facilities design for operational efficiency while preserving the heritage values. To address the coordination challenge, this paper aims to examine the relevance and relative advantages of a FM-led revitalisation strategy for HBR, which the existing literature has not yet addressed.

This paper adopts a case study approach to a major HBR project in Hong Kong. This study conducted field observations and interviews, which were combined with publicly accessible policy and project information to identify stakeholders’ opinions and specifications for the role of facilities management (FM) in HBR project process.

The paper reveals the role of FM in coordinating the HBR process for the benefits of stakeholders and general community. FM allows a balanced approach to heritage building adaptation, sound user experience and broader community effects. This enables efficient decision-making, creative facilities design and effective public engagement. FM’s strength of fitting in the urban renewal context illustrates its comparative advantage for heritage conservation and revitalisation management.

This study develops a conceptual map to identify FM’s role in heritage building conservation and revitalisation. This will enhance process evaluation and project decision-making that are central to heritage conservation policy and HBR intervention practices.

This study examines relevance and advantage of FM-led business strategy for HBR, which the existing literature has not yet addressed. It discovers FM’s strategic roles and initiates a conceptual framework for evaluation of heritage conservation management.

This paper aims to investigate the theoretical and practical links between digital twin (DT) application in heritage facilities management (HFM) from a life cycle management perspective and to signpost the future development directions of DT in HFM.

This state-of-the-art review was conducted using a systematic literature review method. Inclusive and exclusive criteria were identified and used to retrieve relevant literature from renowned literature databases. Shortlisted publications were analysed using the VOSviewer software and then critically reviewed to reveal the status quo of research in the subject area.

The review results show that DT has been mainly adopted to support decision-making on conservation approach and method selection, performance monitoring and prediction, maintenance strategies design and development, and energy evaluation and management. Although many researchers attempted to develop DT models for part of a heritage building at component or system level and test the models using real-life cases, their works were constrained by availability of empirical data. Furthermore, data capture approaches, data acquisition methods and modelling with multi-source data are found to be the existing challenges of DT application in HFM.

In a broader sense, this study contributes to the field of engineering, construction and architectural management by providing an overview of how DT has been applied to support management activities throughout the building life cycle. For the HFM practice, a DT-cum-heritage building information modelling (HBIM) framework was developed to illustrate how DT can be integrated with HBIM to facilitate future DT application in HFM. The overall implication of this study is that it reveals the potential of heritage DT in facilitating HFM in the urban development context.

With the focus on the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on export quality or of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection on export trade, there is little scholarly attention on how IPR protection affects the relationship between FDI and export quality. This study aims to examine the potential nonlinear dynamic threshold effect of IPR protection on the relationship between FDI and export quality. Distinguishing between developing and developed countries, the authors present an empirical analysis of the effects of FDI on export quality per degree of IPR protection.

Using panel data on 45 countries for the period from 1992 to 2014, we use a nonlinear dynamic panel threshold model to examine the effect of IPR protection on the relationship between FDI and export quality.

The authors find a triple threshold effect of IPR protection in both developing and developed countries. The three threshold values are larger for developed countries than for developing countries. The coefficients on the relationship between FDI and export quality per degree of IPR protection are larger in developing countries than in developed countries, except for high IPR protection. The results of the paper suggest that the effect of FDI on export quality differs greatly per degree of IPR protection. In both developing and developed countries, FDI impacts export quality most significantly under medium-high IPR protection. Having estimated the optimal range of IPR protection for attaining FDI in both groups of countries, policy recommendations are offered.

These findings not only contribute to the literature but also provide a view that a moderate level of IPR protection is conducive to attracting FDI and improving export quality.