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This chapter explores how the development of football fandom for the Chinese national team and local football clubs is strongly associated with societal changes. Although the performances of Chinese football teams, especially the national team, have failed to impress the world, football remains the most popular because of millions of supporters with loyalty and passion. Most studies related to fans mainly focus on the economic and political implications of spectatorship along with the rise of China. Nevertheless, few articles are available to answer the fundamental questions, such as ‘When did these supporters come out?’ and ‘What were the factors of the development of fandom?’. By going through archival records and published documents over the last decades, this chapter offers a comprehensive and historical analysis of the development of football fandom in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and deals with these unanswered questions. As such, this chapter does not intend to be the most authoritative one but is one of the rare sources to lay down the foundation for research on Chinese football fandom. Furthermore, this chapter also proves that studies on football fandom can be a useful window for observing Chinese society.

The international mentoring literature predominantly features traditional company-assigned expatriates as protégés overlooking other types of global talent, such as immigrants, refugees, and international graduates, who may help organizations gain long-term IHRM competitive advantages. We integrate multidisciplinary research to better understand the role of mentoring as a global talent management tool, identify research gaps, and propose future research directions.

We draw on an integrative review of 71 academic journal articles published between 1999 and 2024 to explore the role of mentoring in managing global talent (i.e. expatriates, immigrants, refugees, and international students and graduates).

We found that research has identified and examined relationships between various antecedents and outcomes of mentoring but mainly treating mentoring as a talent development tool. Less is known about the role of mentoring as a recruitment and selection tool in the pre-employment context. Mentoring is an important HRM tool that contributes to managing a global talent pool and developing existing employees.

The review contributes to a better understanding of the characteristics and processes involved in mentoring in a global context by proposing a framework that incorporates antecedents of mentoring, characteristics of the mentoring process, and mentoring outcomes. It highlights the value of mentoring as a recruitment and selection tool supporting global talent management and identifies avenues for future research.

This first chapter is the introduction to the book. The purpose of this book is to address and better understand why China tightly embraces modern sport in contemporary times. Some view this as an indicator of glocalisation and a result of Western industrial civilization putting pressure on China to showcase their strengths as a nation. Some important considerations to explore are China's mediated ability to play and compete with the west. Sport is also seen as a channel of observing global political and economic challenges, especially those in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the intense tensions between communities, which certainly inspires further academic development. Given China's recently remarkable achievements in sport, it is high time to show the world more inside stories of sport development across the nation. The contributors of this collection bring foundational Chinese context to each chapter as they examine changing sport cultures at different scales.

This study aims to understand the influence of raceway surface topography on the temperature rise characteristics of silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) full ceramic ball bearing and improve its service life.

The arithmetic average height S_a, skewness S_sk and kurtosis S_ku in the three-dimensional surface roughness parameters are used to quantitatively characterize the surface topography of the raceway after superfinishing. The bearing life testing machine is used to test the Si₃N₄ full ceramic ball bearing using polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) cage under dry friction conditions, and the self-lubricating full ceramic ball bearing heat generation model is established.

With the decrease of S_a and S_sk on the raceway surface and the increase of S_ku, the average height of the raceway surface decreases, and the peaks and valleys tend to be symmetrically distributed on the average surface, and the surface texture becomes tighter. This kind of raceway surface topography is beneficial to form a thin and uniform filamentous PTFE transfer film with a wide coverage area on the raceway surface based on consuming less cage materials and improving the temperature rise characteristics of hot isostatic pressing silicon nitride full ceramic ball bearings.

The research results provide a theoretical basis for the reasonable selection of Si₃N₄ ring raceway processing technology and have important significance for improving the working characteristics and service life of Si₃N₄ full ceramic ball bearings under dry friction conditions.

University students often encounter academic challenges and setbacks, which can impact their beliefs about their capabilities, leading to a phenomenon known as learned helplessness. This study explores the antecedents of learned helplessness through the interaction between teacher support, self-efficacy, and cultural dimensions such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity.

Drawing from constructivism, the authors empirically examined a conceptual model utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM). A total of 268 university students completed a self-survey on learned helplessness via a Google Form.

The study shows that LH is influenced by personal attributes, perceived support, and cultural context. Higher self-efficacy is linked to lower LH scores, while teacher support indirectly affects LH through self-efficacy. Power distance and uncertainty avoidance also directly impact LH. Additionally, cultural influences indirectly affect LH through perceived support and self-efficacy. However, the hypothesized connections between masculinity and LH were not supported.

The study advances LH literature by exploring it among university students using a multidimensional, constructivist approach, providing valuable insights for educational authorities. We illuminate how individual, social, and cultural factors influence LH, underscoring the serial mediation between self-efficacy and perceived teacher support. Existing literature frequently overlooks the intricate interplay among cultural dimensions and other factors, limiting the formulation of comprehensive solutions. Our research breaks new ground in quantitative LH examination within education, delving into Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and suggesting strategies to mitigate uncertainty and power distance for student well-being and success.

In order to better optimize the internal management system of book publishing and to cope with the changes in the external market environment, the purpose of this paper is to carry out cross-border publishing with the help of a transmedia storytelling model to realize the transformation and upgrading of the industry. Focusing on the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, the moderating effect of the innovation environment on different variables is assessed.

This paper proposes several feasible hypotheses based on existing research. The research data came from 365 managers of Chinese book publishing organizations, and the scale was validated by Cronbach’s a, composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE). Reliability and validity were verified, and correlation and regression analyses were used to test the impact of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model on business performance and to analyze the moderating role of the innovation environment.

The results show that the book publishing transmedia storytelling model (content production, technology integration, organizational innovation, marketing integration) helps to improve business performance (market performance, financial performance), and the innovation environment has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, which provides a guarantee for the transformation and upgrading of book publishing. The market information reflected in the innovation environment has a certain role in promoting the innovation and business performance of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model.

The empirical evidence provides a theoretical link between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, but there are still some shortcomings, and more factors, such as equity structure, government subsidies and research and development investment, should be included in future research. In addition, the scope of the research should be broadened on this basis to make the results of the data analysis more objective.

This paper introduces the transmedia storytelling model and deeply analyzes the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, which is of great practical significance for optimizing the application and service quality of book publishing, prolonging the industrial chain, enhancing the interaction and participation of users and perfecting the business management system of the book publishing industry.

The application and research of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model are imperfect. Therefore, this paper not only helps to promote the innovation of book publishing organizational structure and improve the management system of business performance, but also may help to improve the innovation environment of book publishing enterprises and promote the diversification of industrial structure.

This study aimed to investigate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) hotel selection criteria.

A thematic analysis was performed to explore 104 LGBTQ traveler comments based on TripAdvisor's top five LGBTQ hotels in Thailand.

The results indicated that tangible and intangible hotel attributes influence the LGBTQ community's hotel selection.

The results emphasize the need for hoteliers to understand the diversity of the LGBTQ community's hotel selection criteria and adjust or adopt different marketing strategies to engage and attract LGBTQ travelers.

This study contributes to the tourism literature by showing the importance of recognizing the LGBTQ community's hotel selection criteria and providing recommendations to improve product quality and services of hotels.

This chapter critically evaluates whether football can attain recognition as a national sport in China. Article No. 11, released by the Chinese government in 2015, aimed to develop a new national strategy centralised on the sport of football to foster consumption and enhance national soft power. Consequently, this also means encouraging Chinese football fans to support the national football team. Comparing the significance of local football clubs and the national football team to Chinese football fans is deemed meaningless and unable to generate useful information to comprehend Chinese people's attitudes towards local and national communities. Through literature comparisons with established Chinese national sports such as Chinese martial arts, badminton and table tennis, the discussion reveals that football currently falls short of meeting the general criteria of invention and popularity to be considered a Chinese national sport. In the specific Chinese context, it also proves that football fails to meet the criterion of politics, hindering its identification as a national sport. Consequently, the chapter rebuts the assumption and advocates for the validity of comparing how fans assess their fandom for local and national football teams.

This study aims to explore the eye movement behavior of preadolescent children accessing and diagnosing information.

The researchers tracked the eye movements of 30 children with an eye-tracking apparatus. Using the kit of factor-referenced cognitive tests to measure perceptual speed and associative memory, they measured information-searching behavior with screen recordings, the data of which were analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics 26.

Regarding information accessibility, there was a correlation between the child’s age, associative memory and the number of round-trip choices, and there were differences in the total fixation area among children of different age groups. Regarding diagnosticity, perceptual speed was positively correlated with the total fixation area, and the number of round-trip choices was negatively correlated with fixation duration.

Empirical evidence suggests that during information encoding, perceptual speed is the most important influencing factor. Extensive research indicates that children predominantly rely on recall and familiarity when searching for new information, both of which play roles in associative memory. Through an examination of the psychological and behavioral indicators of children, the study elucidated the cognitive processes involved in information processing and how children engage with information at both visual and cognitive levels.

Online comments significantly impact consumer choice and product sales. Existing research focuses on the direct effects of online comments on product sales, whereas studies on the spillover effects of online comments are relatively limited, especially for high-involvement products. This study explores the impact of online comments of competing products on focal product sales in high-involvement products.

Data mining techniques are used to collect 72,367 online comments from the Autohome platform, and sentiment analysis algorithms are used to quantify the textual information for subsequent analysis. Specifically, two panel two-way fixed-effects models are constructed to explore the impact of the average valence and quantity of online comments of competing cars on focal car sales, and analyse this impact in terms of heterogeneity across car price levels, while the moderating effect of online comments of competing cars is explored.

The results show that the average quantity of online comments of competing cars has a significant effect on the sales of the focal car in the overall sample, while the average valence of online comments of competing cars does not have a significant spillover effect. Moreover, the spillover effect varies by car price level. For high-priced cars, the average quantity of online comments of competing cars significantly and negatively affects focal car sales, and the average valence of online comments of competing cars significantly and negatively moderates the effect of the valence of focal car online comments on its sales. For lower-priced cars, online comments of competing cars don’t significantly affect focal car sales.

This study not only enriches the theory of online comments and high-involvement product sales, but also provides reference and guidance for exploring spillover effects of online comments for other products.