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Information and communication technology (ICT) has the potential to address and reduce income inequality. However, since 1980, income inequality in the United States has caused concerns for researchers, policymakers and the public. Entrepreneurs and managers can take advantage of information technologies, while those in the middle and the bottom see fewer benefits. Meanwhile, countries such as Iceland are more capable of using ICT infrastructure to reduce income inequality, which contributes to the well-being of its citizens. This research study explores the relationship between infrastructure diffusion and income inequality through Rogers’s diffusion of innovations theory.

To answer the research questions, the author assessed the data through a series of regression analyses using SPSS. The authors used Power BI software to chart the relationships between ICT infrastructure diffusion and income inequality by country and in the United States by state and region.

The results show diffusion of innovations theory’s tenets do not necessarily hold, because a significant negative relationship exists between infrastructure diffusion and income inequality, especially in countries with emerging economies. In the United States, this relationship significantly differs by region.

This research contributes to research by expanding economic and sociology work to the IS domain, while providing conflicting evidence for diffusion of innovations theory. The research also provides suggestions for practice, such as more focused ICT infrastructure investments and regulations.

The purpose of this paper is fourfold: first, to provide the first systematic study on the ethics of blockchain, mapping its main socio-technical challenges in technology and applications; second, to identify ethical issues of blockchain; third, to propose a conceptual framework of blockchain ethics study; fourth, to discuss ethical issues for stakeholders.

The paper employs literature research, research agenda and framework development.

Ethics of blockchain and its applications is essential for technology adoption. There is a void of research on blockchain ethics. The authors propose a first theoretical framework of blockchain ethics. Research agenda is proposed for future search. Finally, the authors recommend measures for stakeholders to facilitate the ethical adequacy of blockchain implementations and future Information Systems (IS) research directions. This research raises timely awareness and stimulates further debate on the ethics of blockchain in the IS community.

First, this work provides timely systematic research on blockchain ethics. Second, the authors propose the first research framework of blockchain ethics. Third, the authors identify key research questions of blockchain ethics. Fourth, this study contributes to the understanding of blockchain technology and its societal impacts.

This study aims to examine and assess how sustainable development goal (SDG) Target 4.7 is incorporated in one leading higher education institution (HEI) in China (with a focus on teacher-education programmes) from students’ perspectives.

This study uses document analysis and a semi-structured interview to analyse official and accessible documents of the programmes related to SDG Target 4.7 and recorded interviews with seven students across various Postgraduate Diploma in Education programmes in the field of education at the examined university.

SDG Target 4.7 is absent in the related documents. Challenges and barriers for students include limited opportunity to be informed about SDG Target 4.7, limited topics covered, ineffective pedagogies and students’ diverse needs being neglected and teachers not giving immediate feedback. Given the opportunities in teaching and learning SDG Target 4.7, such as students are keen to learn and implement SDG Target 4.7, future directions could be reducing teachers’ lecturing and increasing student engagement in multiple ways, providing concrete examples that are relevant to students’ lives and giving immediate feedback and designing more related courses to specifically and systematically teach SDG Target 4.7.

This study contributes to the field by identifying and deeply analysing an interesting and representative non-western case that remains underexplored in literature. In this sense, it helps international readers to generate a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese approaches to SDGs in its higher education system, develop a more holistic global discourse on incorporating SDGs into HEIs and compare the similarities and differences between different countries’ approaches.

To analyse the relationship between China, patriachy, ageing, and social theory grounded in Judith Butler's notion of performativity.

This is a novel theoretical framework to examine instances of patriachal identities by using China as a case study.

Performativity, we suggest, offers productive insights into the processes of subjection and the nature of power relations that may be usefully incorporated into studies of the elderly in China.

This is a theoretical paper.

It raises questions to relationship of patriachy to understanding Chinese culture.

It is an original paper in that an application of Butler's conceptual tools have bot been applied elsewhere to examining China and ageing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying mechanisms influencing the social entrepreneurial intentions of individuals in China, adopting social capital theory, bottom-up and people-based approach. The interrelated effects of intellectual capital (social community trust, social capital bonding and social participation) on social innovation tendency were measured.

We recruited 502 Chinese individuals by utilising a reliable survey platform in China. This study used structural equation modelling as an analytical approach to examine the influence of social capital on social innovation and social entrepreneurship intention.

The findings showed that social innovation tendencies mediate the relationship between social community trust, social capital bonding and social participation and the social entrepreneurial intentions of individuals. The findings support the tested hypotheses that social innovation tendencies are the key mechanism to translate into stronger social entrepreneurial intentions. An iterative framework emphasising transparency and open collaboration among stakeholders, which are vital for fostering social entrepreneurial intentions, was proposed.

This is a novel empirical study to apply social capital theory to the field of social enterprises in the Chinese context using structural equation modelling, bottom-up, people-based approach and iterative model. The findings offer valuable practical insights for entrepreneurial and SME practices to foster social entrepreneurship through a people-based approach, emphasising the importance of fostering trust, strengthening social bonds, and encouraging active social participation.

Document retrieval has become a hot research topic over the past few years, and has been paid more attention in browsing and synthesizing information from different documents. The purpose of this paper is to develop an effective document retrieval method, which focuses on reducing the time needed for the navigator to evoke the whole document based on contents, themes and concepts of documents.

This paper introduces an incremental learning approach for text categorization using Monarch Butterfly optimization–FireFly optimization based Neural Network (MB–FF based NN). Initially, the feature extraction is carried out on the pre-processed data using Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency (TF–IDF) and holoentropy to find the keywords of the document. Then, cluster-based indexing is performed using MB–FF algorithm, and finally, by matching process with the modified Bhattacharya distance measure, the document retrieval is done. In MB–FF based NN, the weights in the NN are chosen using MB–FF algorithm.

The effectiveness of the proposed MB–FF based NN is proven with an improved precision value of 0.8769, recall value of 0.7957, F-measure of 0.8143 and accuracy of 0.7815, respectively.

The experimental results show that the proposed MB–FF based NN is useful to companies, which have a large workforce across the country.

This paper analyzes the impacts of COVID-19 and related policies on airport short-run costs and decomposes the percentage changes in total and average variable costs between pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 periods. Data for the analysis are a panel of 50 medium and large US airports from 2012 to 2021. COVID-19 measures include COVID-19 cases and deaths. COVID-19-related policies include state-level face mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Based upon a short-term multi-output translog cost function with three positive outputs (departures, non-aeronautical revenue, and workload), three associated negative attributes (delay, congestion, and air pollution), COVID-19 measures and policies, the analysis has three main conclusions: (1) A 1% increase in COVID-19 cases leads to a 0.077% increase in total operating costs. State-level face mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates increase total operating costs by 15.9% and 16.8%, respectively; (2) COVID-19 and related policies increase airport total operating costs through contractual services costs; and (3) the cost decomposition finds that a 1 million increase in COVID-19 cases results in a 109% increase in average variable costs, while the time/technological progress effect leads to a decrease of 87% compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. Face mask and vaccine mandates increase the average variable costs by 8.91% and 4.19%, respectively. The positive output total effects range from 3.46% to 7.99%. The effects of input prices and negative attributes are relatively small.