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The existence of controlling shareholders creates a remarkable difference between the corporate governance structures of Chinese firms and those of western firms. Despite the increasing importance of controlling shareholders, it remains disputable whether they are playing the “tunneling” roles or the “governance” roles. Therefore, more research is needed on what roles controlling shareholders are playing and how they play their roles. Previous empirical studies document a common phenomenon that directors play dual roles both on the board and in the top management team. Because of information asymmetry, the board of directors may not be able to perform its supervisory and strategic decision-making functions. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate whether controlling shareholders participate in firm management by appointing the executive directors and examine the economic consequences of controlling shareholder involvement.

In the empirical tests, the authors use the split share structure reform in China as a natural experiment. Using the data from Chinese listed firms between 2001 and 2015 and difference-in-differences analysis, the authors examine the impact of the split share structure reform on the executive directors of controlling shareholders and the governance effect of controlling shareholders’ appointing executive directors to the management.

The authors find that controlling shareholders get involved in firm management by appointing executive directors to strengthen the supervision and incentives of managers. The authors also find that firms exhibit a lower level of earnings management and enhance and higher pay-performance sensitivity after controlling shareholders appoint executive directors to the top management team.

As the natural experiment of the split share structure reform enables us to mitigate endogeneity, the authors investigate the channels through, which controlling shareholders get involved in firm management from the unique perspective of executive director appointment. The study expands the literature on corporate governance and board functions. The findings provide new insights to the effect of controlling shareholder governance and casts light on a new way for controlling shareholders of Chinese firms to participate in firm management – by appointing executive directors.

This study explores whether targeted microcredit can effectively alleviate households’ multidimensional relative poverty (MdRP) in rural China in the new era following the poverty elimination campaign and discusses it from a gendered perspective.

This study applies a fixed-effects model, propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage instrumental variable method to two-period panel data collected from 611 households in rural western China in 2018 and 2021 to explore the effects, mechanisms and heterogenous performance of targeted microcredit on households’ MdRP in the new era.

(i) Targeted microcredit can alleviate MdRP among rural households in the new era, mainly by reducing income and opportunity inequality. (ii) Targeted microcredit can promote women’s empowerment, mainly by enhancing their social participation, thereby helping alleviate households’ MdRP. The effect of the targeted microcredit on MdRP is more significant in medium-educated women households and non-left-behind women households. (iii) The MdRP alleviation effect is stronger in villages with a high degree of digitalization.

Learn from the experience of targeted microcredit. Accurately identify poor groups and integrate loan design into financial health and women empowerment. Particularly, pay attention to less-educated and left-behind women households and strengthen coordination between targeted microcredit and digital village strategies.

This study clarifies the effect of targeted microcredit on women’s empowerment and households’ MdRP alleviation in the new era. It also explores its various effects on households with different female characteristics and regional digitalization levels, providing ideas for optimizing microcredit.

The purpose of this study proposes a strategy based on vehicle kinematics, dynamics and fusion estimation. The estimation signal of vehicle driving state is crucial for vehicle driving safety and stability control, and the issue of fault-tolerant reconstruction estimation of vehicle driving state under the failure of yaw rate or lateral acceleration sensors is a significant research topic.

A strategy based on vehicle kinematics, dynamics and fusion estimation is proposed. To address the issue of inaccurate calculation of tire forces because of sensor failure, a method combining adaptive sliding mode observer, genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed to accurately calculate tire forces, and the Square Root Cubature Kalman Filter algorithm is used to reconstruct the estimation of vehicle driving state under sensor failure. To improve the accuracy of fault-tolerant reconstruction estimation of vehicle driving state, an error-weighted multi-method fusion estimation strategy for vehicle driving state is proposed. A fast terminal sliding mode control algorithm is proposed to control the stability of the fault-tolerant reconstruction estimation signal of vehicle driving state.

Simulation results show that the proposed fault-tolerant reconstruction estimation algorithm for vehicle driving state can accurately estimate the actual driving state of the vehicle and stably participate in the vehicle stability control system, achieving fault-tolerant reconstruction estimation and control of vehicle driving state under sensor failure.

The problem of vehicle motion state estimation under yaw velocity sensor fault or lateral acceleration sensor fault is solved, and fault tolerance control under sensor state is realized.

Three-dimensional (3D) food printing is an innovative technology used to customize food products through the integration of digital technology and food ingredients. The purpose of this study is to assess the current state of research in the field of 3D food printing, identify trending topics and identify promising future research directions.

This bibliometric review systematically evaluates the field of 3D food printing using data from published literature in the Web of Science database. After reference screening, 812 articles were included in the analysis.

The result reveals that research in 3D food printing primarily focuses on the optimization and characterization of mechanical and rheological properties of food inks and that post-printing processing, such as laser treatment, has emerged recently as an important consideration in 3D food printing. However, extant works lack animal and human studies that demonstrate the functionality of 3D-printed food.

This sophisticated bibliometric analysis uncovered the most studied current research topics and the leading figures in the area of 3D food printing, providing promising future research directions.

With the pandemic reshaping healthcare delivery, telemedicine has emerged as a vital solution for overcoming access barriers, particularly in resource-constrained settings. Hence, this study explores the key drivers behind the sustained use of telemedicine services in low-income countries during the post-pandemic period.

Using a quantitative research approach and purposive sampling technique, 273 valid responses were gathered from participants in Bangladesh. A comparative analysis utilizing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) were conducted to ensure greater accuracy.

The PLS-SEM analysis revealed that expectation confirmation and perceived ease of use positively influence satisfaction. Similarly, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use directly impact Attitude toward telemedicine services. However, perceived usefulness and perceived security were not significantly associated with satisfaction and attitude toward telemedicine services, respectively. The findings highlight that user satisfaction drives continuance use intention for telemedicine services, but only when it also cultivates a positive attitude toward telemedicine services. While the PLS-SEM findings indicate that perceived usefulness has no significant relationship with satisfaction and perceived security is not significantly associated with attitude toward telemedicine services, the fsQCA results offer a different perspective. fsQCA reveals that perceived usefulness retains a significant association with satisfaction and that perceived security, regardless of whether its effect is high or low, is equally effective in contributing to the intention for continuous telemedicine use. These findings underscore fsQCA’s ability to provide deeper insights into the complex causal relationships among the antecedents.

The findings provide valuable insights for hospitals, doctors and telemedicine providers on retaining existing users. Additionally, governments can leverage this information to address healthcare disparities between urban and rural areas. The study also identifies strategies to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of healthcare services.

This study advances telemedicine research by employing the extended technology continuance theory (ETCT) alongside a hybrid analytical approach that integrates PLS-SEM and fsQCA. It highlights that telemedicine organizations can boost patient confidence and encourage continued use by enhancing satisfaction and cultivating a positive user attitude. The innovative use of ETCT and the combined methodologies provide a comprehensive analysis, offering actionable strategies to retain telemedicine users in low-income countries during the post-pandemic period.

This article investigates the influence of marine ecological compensation policy on enterprises’ environmental investment and explores whether enterprise ownership could impact the said influence.

Using the data of China's A-share listed enterprises for the period 2007–2020, the paper develops a difference-in-differences model and a moderating effect model.

The outcomes corroborate that the marine ecological compensation policy positively influences enterprises' environmental investment, and the effect is nonlinear. Specifically, the marine ecological compensation policy significantly impacts enterprises with lower and higher environmental investment. The empirical evidence from the moderation model shows that the effect of the policy is more significant on the non-state-owned enterprises’ environmental investment.

The findings are based on a sample of 559 listed A-share enterprises in China. Additional studies could focus on data from other countries.

Based on the present scenario of Chinese enterprises' environmental investment, the results report that the marine compensation policy needs to be differentiated for firms having different ownership and different levels of environmental investment. The study provides valuable insights for the government to formulate marine ecological compensation policies.

Marine ecology increasingly affects the economic development of countries, and the study on the influence of relevant environmental policies is of practical significance. However, most scholars concentrate on the research of environmental regulation, and have little focus on the policy effect of marine environmental compensation. This paper studies how marine ecological compensation policy influences the environmental investment behavior of enterprises, and further analyzes the difference in the policy effect caused by the nature of enterprises’ ownership, which not only fills the gap in this field, but also provides a scientific basis for the formulation and adjustment of marine ecological compensation policy.

This study aims to develop and empirically examine a model that investigates the mediating role of technology development capability (TDC) on the relationship between customer focus (CF) and technology leadership (TL).

The analysis and interpretation of a partial least square model include the following two stages: the first stage focuses on assessing the reliability and validity of the measurement model, while the second pertains to evaluating the structural model.

The general understanding prevailing in practice and literature is that management sponsorship (MS) has a positive impact on the relationship between CF and TDC. It is also generally understood that MS has a positive impact on TL initiatives. However, the findings of this study contradict these assumptions. Specifically, the study indicates that MS has a negative moderating effect on CF and technology development capabilities, and has no impact on CF and TL relationships.

CF, TDC and MS, and their interplay and impact in enhancing firms’ TL position, have not been explored thus far in an integrated manner in the context of the automobile industry in developing countries. The research relating to CF, technology development capabilities, technology innovation capabilities, MS and TL reported in the literature has drawn inferences from case studies, anecdotal evidence and experiences of industry leaders, experts and consultants. This study attempts to fill the gaps mentioned above by presenting and testing a new moderated mediation model that shows the relationship between CF, TDC, MS and TL.

The textile sector is one of the sectors where competition is intense and requires the production of high-value-added products. This study aims to conduct patent analysis to find the technology status, recent trends, applications and technological evaluations of protective textile technologies in practice.

More than 36,840 patent documents related to protective textile technologies are available for researchers, patent examiners and patent researchers. Patent analysis is conducted to report the technology status, recent trends and applications of protective textile technologies. This analysis provides insights into the possible future directions of protective textile technologies in practice. Additionally, association rule mining (ARM) is performed to find the hidden patterns among protective textile technologies.

The development of protective textile technologies is revealed by the technology evaluation in this study. In addition, the sub-technology classes affecting protective textile technologies are examined using the cooperative patent classification (CPC) codes of the patent documents. Technology status and recent trends of protective textile technologies are provided in detail. The results of this study show that (1) protective textile technologies are constantly being developed, (2) the working areas of medical protective textiles are increasing, (3) there are frequent studies on fabric structures for saving lives within the framework of human needs and (4) there are four technology classes, namely A41D, Y10T, B32B and A62B impacting the other technology classes related to textile technologies such as D10B, Y10T, F41H, A62D, D04H, Y10S and D10B.

To have a competitive advantage in the marketplace, evaluation of textile technologies is critical in developing “functionalized” and “technologized” textile products. In particular, evaluating technologies in developing protective textile products is extremely important to meet customer demands and present competitive products in the market. Examining these patents for technology developers, decision-makers and policymakers is an urgent and necessary job. However, studies examining the development of protective textile technologies with patent analysis are very limited in the literature. To fill this gap, technology status, recent trends and applications of protective textile technologies are reported based on patent analysis and ARM in this study.

This study aims to solve the problems of ambiguous localization, large calculation, poor real-time and limited applicability of bolt thread defect detection.

First, the acquired ultrasound image is used to acquire the larger area of the image, which is set as the compliant threaded area. Second, based on the determined coordinates of the center point in each selected region, the set of coordinates on the left and right sides of the bolts is acquired by DBSCAN method with parameters eps and MinPts, which is determined by data set dimension D and the k-distance curve. Finally, the defect detection boundary line fitting is completed using the acquired coordinate set, and the relationship between the distance from each detection point to the curve and d, which is obtained from the measurement of the standard bolt sample with known thread defect, is used to locate the bolt thread defect simultaneously.

In this paper, the bolt thread defect detection method with ultrasonic image is proposed; meanwhile, the ultrasonic image acquisition system is designed to complete the real-time localization of bolt thread defects.

The detection results show that the method can effectively detect bolt thread defects and locate the bolt thread defect location with wide applicability, small calculation and good real-time performance.