Search results

This paper explores the relationship between state-led urbanization and primary industry development using the difference-in-differences (DiD) method.

The study uses the DiD method.

Exploiting county-city mergers during 2010–2018, the key strategy to expand the city outward and promote urbanization on the urban fringe by local government, the authors find that county-city mergers led to the growth of primary industry decline by 4.23%. The result can be explained by the loss of essential production factors, including land and labor used for farming. In addition, the negative effect is more pronounced for counties with more substantial manufacturing. The results indicate that urbanization in China relocates land and labor; however, it does not improve the efficiency of agricultural output.

This paper contributes to the understanding of urbanization and rural development from the perspective of the primary industry by showing production factor redistribution. Second, this study complements the literature on local government mergers.

Thriving brand communities are inseparable from engaged members and their word-of-mouth behavior. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which customer experience elevates customer engagement and consequent word-of-mouth intention in online brand communities, and how.

From the perspective of service ecosystem theory, a framework with several hypotheses was proposed. The model was verified with structural equation modeling based on questionnaire data collected from smartphone communities in China.

Empirical results indicate that customer experience promotes community engagement, and further enhances word-of-mouth intention. Furthermore, the mediating effect of community engagement in the relation between customer experience (social support and flow) and word-of-mouth intention has been verified.

This paper informs practitioners about the importance of experience co-creation with community members in brand and community promotion, and provides several implications to encourage more engaged customers with fostering pleasant customer experiences.

This study contributes to the theory of service ecosystem by empirical examination of its several propositions in a brand community context. The paper extends the present theory with the discussion of the mediation effect of community engagement in the continuing value co-creation process.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the indigenous concept of suzhi at individual and organizational levels, and identify its dimensions for human resource management (HRM) research and practice in China.

Based on a comprehensive review of suzhi literature, Chinese cultural and historical literature, as well as Western mainstream HRM research, a multidimensional suzhi framework is conceptualized.

As an indigenous expression, suzhi can be and has been adopted for Chinese HRM research and practice. As a multidimensional construct, one’s cognitive suzhi is jointly determined by corresponding moral suzhi, wenhua (knowledge-based) suzhi and zhuanye (professional) suzhi. Cognitive suzhi, in turn, determines one’s behavioral suzhi that drives employees to enhance organizational performance, and this relationship is moderated by psychological suzhi.

The proposed framework provides new insight for Chinese indigenous management research, particularly in developing suzhi measurement for different dimensions. It also informs HRM practices in recruiting, selection, performance analysis and employee career development.

The complexity of suzhi dimensions from an organizational HRM perspective is analyzed. The resulting suzhi framework offers new insight for HRM research and practices in China.

It is a very prominent problem that Chinese universities lack school-running characteristics. In the past ten years, because of undergraduate teaching assessment requirements of the Ministry of Education, universities attach great importance to school-running characteristics. What is the reality and how to improve the effectiveness of creating the school-running characteristics of universities? It is a problem that needs to be solved. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

Using the survey method, literature study, case studies and other methods, this study reviewed ten years of school-running characteristics construction and explored some laws of creating school-running characteristics.

This study found although universities in China are beginning to attach great importance to the school-running characteristics, but they are still staying in the summarization of characteristics. School-running characteristics are very rough. Creating school-running characteristics are mainly efforts responding to the superior government. Creating school-running characteristics should be based on category characteristic. Universities need to change in competition and create characteristics within its history and culture. Universities need to refine the core idea of education, develop a big picture and then renew them in the assessment cycle.

The originality of this study was that it put forward some new laws including changing from summarizing to creating its own school-running characteristics, putting category characteristic as the prerequisite and considering the core idea of education as the focus of school-running characteristics. This research will enrich the theory building of higher education research and has some value in promoting the creation of school-running characteristics.

The study aims to address the gap between leaders’ preventative self-regulatory focus and its impact on Chinese primary care physicians (PCPs) well-being, measured by work–family spillover stress and work exhaustion and on healthcare quality, measured by preventive service delivery and clinical guideline adherence.

This paper conducted a cross-sectional in-person survey with 38 leaders and 224 PCPs in 38 primary health centers (PHCs) in Jinan, Tianjin, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Guided by the regulatory focus theory, this paper built hierarchical linear regression models to examine the association between the leadership’s regulatory focus and physician burnout, work–family conflict, clinic guideline adherence and preventive service delivery.

This paper added the knowledge of leadership’s regulatory focus impact on the well-being and medical service quality of PCPs. Prevention regulatory focus of leaders was significantly associated with work exhaustion and physicians’ reported work–family conflict. There is no significant association between leadership’s prevention regulatory focus and PCPs’ preventive service delivery or clinical guideline adherence.

Data on the regulatory focus of PCPs were not collected. Future studies should collect longitudinal data, allowing for exploration of the mechanism.

This paper revealed that PHC leaders should restructure their leadership focus away from preventive regulatory behavior, promoting a team atmosphere and enhancing PCP attitudes, behaviors and well-being.

To improve the well-being of PCPs and the quality of medical services, our results recommend a focus on establishing a positive organizational culture and addressing the emotional and professional needs of PCPs. To achieve these aims, policymakers should implement measures that promote a more comprehensive and balanced regulatory focus within PHC institutions. These measures should aim to create an environment that supports physician well-being and enhances the quality of healthcare services. Providing ample resources and support, promoting a collaborative team atmosphere and encouraging open communication are vital to empowering PCPs.

This study examined the preventive regulatory focus of PHC leaders on the well-being and medical service quality of PCPs in China.

The high-load operation of the engine crankshaft causes severe wear and fatigue. This study aims to prepare in situ textures with effective density and study their wear mechanism on the surface of ductile cast iron, which optimizes the tribological properties of engine crankshafts and reduces wear.

A new method was proposed based on the hardness difference in graphite removal to form an in situ texture. The friction performance was evaluated using a combination of computational fluid dynamics and tribological testings. The influence of the texture characteristic parameters on the bearing capacity of the oil film was analyzed. The surface wear morphology was studied by scanning electron microscopy.

The texture density significantly affected the oil film bearing capacity. The surface texture can reduce the average friction coefficient (COF) by more than 35% owing to the oil film bearing and storage capacity. Specifically, the 13% texture density exhibited the lowest wear rate and COF under all three experimental conditions. The reduction in abrasive particles in the wear area of the textured surface indicates that the surface texture can improve the lubrication mechanism.

This study systematically explored the influence of the weight of each model parameter on tribological properties. Subsequently, focusing on the critical parameter (texture density), detailed tribological testings were carried out to reveal the specific effect of texture density on the wear mechanism under different working conditions, and the optimal texture density to achieve the optimal tribological performance was determined accordingly.

Existing research focuses on the pension systems and reforms in China from a macro-level and financial perspective. The expectations of mid-life Chinese people regarding their retirement and pensions have been ignored to date, and this research set out to address this lacuna.

The application of qualitative research methods is relatively novel in Chinese social science. As a grounded theory (GT) study, the research reported here deployed semi-structured interviews to investigate middle-aged Chinese women's and men's perceptions of their pensions and retirement. In total, 36 interviews were conducted, following the constructivist GT method.

The data point to disparities between the choices and perceptions of individuals on the one hand and the official assumptions underlying the current pension regime on the other hand. Research participants had varying interpretations of the inequality in retirement incomes in China, the main division being between enterprise workers and public-sector employees.

Although there are in principle rigidly fixed retirement ages for men and women in contemporary China, the phenomena of early retirement and working post-retirement are increasing. There are trade-offs between work/retirement and family needs, which influence the choices of middle-aged citizens. Retirement pathways are increasingly individualised, reflecting broader patterns of individualisation and inequality in China.

The connection between digital manufacturing technologies (Industry 4.0) and the environment has sparked discussions on firms' disclosure of negative information on pollutant emissions and the pursuit of positive environmental outcomes. However, very few studies explore how it relates to a firm's robot usage and its mechanism. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of robot penetration on firms' environmental governance in China.

The ordered probit model (and probit model) are employed and empirically tested with a sample of 1,579 Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2019.

The study reveals a negative relationship between robot usage and the disclosure of negative indicators and a U-shaped relationship between robot usage and positive environmental outcomes. Among the sample, nonstate-owned enterprises (SOEs) display unsatisfactory performance, while heavily polluting industries disclose more information on pollutant emissions. The robot–environmental governance nexus is conditional on firm size, capital intensity and local economic development.

The study proposes a fresh view of corporate environmental governance to assess the environmental implications of robot adoption. It also contributes to identifying the curvilinear, moderating and heterogenous effects in the robot–environment nexus. The results provide rich policy implications for the development of industrial intelligence and corporate environmental governance in the circular economy (CE) context.

Although word of mouth (WOM) affects customers’ purchasing intentions to a large extent, prior research has neglected the role of WOM as a driver of customer satisfaction.

Several scholars have suggested that WOM can not only affect customer expectation but also can influence perceived quality. Consistent with existing research results and the expectancy disparity model, this paper established a causal relation between WOM and customer satisfaction and confirmed it was drawing on an experimental study.

This paper indicates that positive or negative WOM affects customer satisfaction by promoting or lowering customers’ expectations. This relation is moderated by product type, rather than the source of the WOM. With experience goods, positive (negative) WOM will decrease (increase) customer satisfaction. However, with search goods, positive (negative) WOM will increase (decrease) customer satisfaction.

The results of this study have implications for academia and management. Academically, this study establishes the causal relation between WOM and customer satisfaction, expanding the research on the relation between WOM and satisfaction. From a managerial perspective, the promotion of WOM also can create certain service risks.

Recently, short-form video apps, as a new form of social media, have attracted users and rapidly emerged by virtue of their personalized recommendation algorithms, interesting forms of live interaction, and diverse interactive functions, which may lead to excessive use. From the perspective of IT affordances, this study combines the cognitive-affective-behavioral model and perceived values theory to examine the formation mechanism of the excessive use of short-form video apps.

We surveyed a total of 351 users who have used Tiktok, a typical short-form video app, and used their questionnaires to test the research model.

Searching affordance has a positive impact on perceived information value and perceived entertainment value. Furthermore, meta-voicing, recommending, and livestreaming affordance have a positive impact on perceived information value, perceived entertainment value, and perceived social networking value, which also have a positive impact on negative affect anticipation. In addition, negative affect anticipation is significantly positively correlated with excessive use.

In terms of theory, this study introduces the theory of IT affordances and perceived values into the cognitive-affective-behavioral model, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time. Furthermore, it conducts situational research on the formation mechanism of excessive use of short-form video apps and makes up for the lack of studying of excessive use behavior from the perspective of technical factors.