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The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese consumer attitude mediates factors that influence their purchase intention toward low-displacement vehicles.

This study utilizes online survey data in China, multiple regression and recursive regression models.

Consumers’ environmental concern, perceived effectiveness belief and functional value positively affect their attitude toward such products. Consumer attitude positively affects purchase intention. Consumer attitude fully mediates the influence of environmental concern, and partly mediates the effect of perceived effectiveness belief, and functional value on purchase intention. Consumers’ awareness of government policy is not associated with attitude or purchase intention.

This is a first empirical study to systematically examine Chinese consumer attitude's mediation effect on factors influencing their purchase intent toward low-displacement vehicles in China.

This study aims to examine the association between a number of variables pertaining to marketing strategy and business performance of small construction firms in Tianjin, China.

The paper consists of a qualitative pilot study and a quantitative main survey.

Long‐term differentiation marketing strategy, research and development (R&D) as a percentage of sales, and years in business are found to be positively associated with a small firm's business performance. Current product focus, government policy, quality and availability of services, conducting regular market research, firm's registered capital and employee number, being a supplier to a few large firms, and having a few regular suppliers are not found to be significantly associated with business performance.

The study has possible location and industry‐specific limitations.

Managerially, the findings encourage small Chinese firms to adopt a long‐term differentiation strategy, focusing on R&D and new product development. Government should disseminate this knowledge and facilitate small firms in obtaining necessary external finances to support their R&D programs. Such measures are vital for small firms to adapt to the increasingly competitive business environment in China's post‐World Trade Organization era.

By systematically examining relationships between marketing strategy and performance of the small Chinese firms, this study adds knowledge to the field of small firm research in China.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary report and reflect on a recently passed PhD thesis (Sharaborova, 2014b) related to project management topics.

This paper focussed on narrative reflection upon the completed doctoral journey.

This paper presents the thesis findings, the research models, the guide in dealing with the early warning signs that developed as a result of this research and the contribution made to theory and practice.

Limitations of the research and the perspectives of the further diffusion of the research findings are considered.

This TRN is a PhD candidate’s point of view as well as the opinions of the scientific research supervisors about the doctoral study and its outcome. The paper could be useful for novice researchers who wish to conduct their research and did not yet make a decision.

The purpose of this paper is to design a climbing robot connected by a connecting rod mechanism to achieve multi-functional tasks such as obstacles crossing and climbing of power transmission towers.

A connecting rod type gripper has been designed to achieve stable grasping of angle steel. Before grasping, use coordination between structures to achieve stable docking and grasping. By using the alternating movements of two claws and the middle climbing mechanism, the climbing and obstacle crossing of the angle steel were achieved.

Through a simple linkage mechanism, a climbing robot has been designed, greatly reducing the overall mass of the robot. It can also carry a load of 1 kg, and the climbing mechanism can perform stable climbing. The maximum step distance of the climbing robot is 543 mm, which can achieve the crossing of angle steel obstacles.

A transmission tower climbing mechanism was proposed by analyzing the working environment. Through the locking ability of the screw nut, stable clamping of the angle steel is achieved, and a pitch mechanism is designed to adjust the posture of the hand claw.

From practical perspectives and to improve the working efficiency, trolley transportation and payload hoisting/lowering should be simultaneously controlled. Moreover, in practical crane applications, the transportation time is an important criterion for improving transportation efficiency. Based on these requirements, this paper aims to solve positioning and antiswing control problems and shorten the transportation time for underactuated varying-rope-length overhead cranes.

By choosing trolley acceleration and varying-rope-length acceleration as system inputs, the crane system dynamic model is converted into an equivalent model without linearizing/approximating. Then, based on the converted model and system state constraints, a time-optimal problem is formulated. Further, the original problem is converted into an optimization problem with algebraic constraints which can be conveniently solved. Finally, by solving the optimization problem, the optimal trajectories of system states, including displacements, velocities and accelerations, are obtained.

This paper first provides a nonlinear time-optimal trajectory planner for varying-rope-length overhead cranes, which achieves accurate and fast trolley positioning and eliminates payload residual swings. Meanwhile, all system states satisfy the given constraints during the entire process. Hardware experimental results show that the proposed time-optimal planner is effective and has better performance compared with existing methods.

This paper proposes a time-optimal trajectory planner for overhead crane systems with hoisting/lowering motion. The proposed planner achieves fast trolley positioning and eliminates payload residual swing with all the system states being constrained within given scopes. The planner is presented based on the original nonlinear system dynamics without linearization/approximation.

Against the background of the enormous economic transition China is undertaking, government intervention over corporate behavior is a frequent and, arguably, necessary measure. Among the most serious problems facing China, economically and reputationally, are environmental issues. So, how is the government intervening in the environmental performance of Chinese enterprises? And how are Chinese enterprises responding? These are the questions to be answered in this study.

This paper sampled listed companies on China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. The data were collected from the HeXun corporate social responsibility report, CSMAR and WIND databases. A Tobit model was used to conduct the main 2SLS regression analysis, and the robustness tests followed the propensity score matching method.

The analysis shows that environmental performance is positively related to the government subsidies a company receives. The “Eight-point Regulation of the Centre” crack-down on social corruption introduced in 2012 has weakened rent-seeking overall, but rent-seeking behavior through the cloak of corporate environmental performance has become more serious. As a result, non-polluting and state-owned enterprises are significantly less concerned about their environmental performance, while polluting and private enterprises are more motivated to become good environmental citizens.

This research provides a greater understanding of the drivers behind environmentally-responsible behavior in Chinese companies. These insights can be used by policymakers and environmental regulators to incentivize a more widespread ground-swell of change across the gamut of Chinese business.

Environmental policy and practice informed by research-driven recommendations can not only make valuable contributions to the health and well-being of Chinese society but also, as a significant contributor to climate change, environmental reforms have global benefits.

This study explores the motivations behind rent-seeking associated with environmental investment. The findings expand the research horizon of relevant literature on corporate political rent-seeking and deepen the understandings of the economic consequences of corporate investment into environmental practice. The results provide empirical evidence for the Chinese government to implement environmental regulations based on incentives beyond simple profit-making.