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To raise public awareness of protecting Buddhist temples, this study considers Hebei Province of China as an example, and explores the value of architectural planning and design of Buddhist temples. After 11 Buddhist temples in Hebei Province of China are selected, the paper adopts a Delphi method and questionnaire survey method, establishes the value evaluation system from four dimensions: historical value, artistic value, scientific value, and sociocultural value; and calculates the value of the Buddhist temples’ architectural planning and design according to expert rating. Research results indicate the following. Puning Temple, Jinhe Temple, and ShiEn Temple rank at the top because they are complete extant ancient buildings and have beautiful architectural styles. Chongguang Temple and other Buddhist temples have low comprehensive score because they are severely damaged and other reasons. The comparative study indicates that Buddhist temples at different historical periods have different architectural heritage values, and different influencing factors exert different effects on the architectural heritage value. The study establishes an evaluation indicator system, studies the value of Buddhist temples’ architectural planning and design, and achieves certain innovative research perspective. The evaluation of the value of Buddhist temples’ architectural planning and design can help the public gain a better understanding of the value of temple architectural culture. This understanding benefits the preservation of the temple building heritage.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate educational functions of the World Heritage Site by examining the case of cultural tourism in a Japanese Buddhist temple.

Japan accepted the World Heritage Convention in 1992. “Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara” were decided to be listed on the World Cultural Heritage in 1998. It was composed of buildings, monuments and related cultural landscape, including five Buddhist temples and one Shinto shrine. Among them, the Gango-ji, focused in this paper, is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Japan.

It has been keeping many cultural properties related to the folk religious practice and providing many activities for the local community. The material culture of folk-belief is now preserved in a building in the temple yard. And there is an exhibition room. The main hall and the exhibition room are the important facilities for social education, where the visitors can watch and touch the real materials. According to the staffs of the temple, the tourists had better stay in the main hall after 1 h study at the exhibition room.

Heritage is a process of the contemporary people engaging in the usage of past as resources. The buildings as the tangible heritage used by the present community are combined with the actions as the intangible heritage of the people who preserve the heritage. The temporal tourists are also permitted to enjoy the process as participants. They can learn many things through their experiences at the heritage site.

This study explores whether and how Buddhism impacts corporate cash holdings. Buddhist culture affects investors' perception of how cash is deployed and then influences corporate cash holdings. This study first examines the impact of Buddhism on corporate cash holdings and then investigates whether formal governance mechanisms such as legal institutions and institutional ownership influence the relationship between Buddhism and corporate cash holdings.

The authors conduct empirical tests with data on Chinese listed companies between 2006 and 2019. Buddhism is measured with the natural logarithm of the number of Buddhist temples within a radius of a certain distance around a firm's headquarters. The authors adopt the OLS method to regress and take the 2SLS method, Heckman selection model and FEVD approach to address the endogeneity issue.

The results show a positive relationship between Buddhism and corporate cash holdings. This positive relation is more prominent for firms located in regions with weak legal institutions and for firms with low institutional ownership. Further analysis shows that Buddhism works through the channel of alleviating agency problems and finally improves the value of cash to investors.

The authors’ findings have important implications. First, this study provides inspiration for incorporating the ethical values of traditional cultures, such as Buddhism, into the corporate governance system. Second, the findings imply that informal institutions can influence corporate financial decisions beyond the effect of formal institutions, suggesting that informal systems should be emphasized when dealing with business affairs in countries where legal institutions are relatively weak. Third, the results suggest the significance of encouraging research on religious culture to explore its active role in corporate governance.

This study illustrates the positive value of religious culture in advancing corporate governance by relating Buddhism to corporate cash holdings based on the explanation of investors' perception. It makes a marginal contribution to the literature that investigates the determinants of cash policies and explores the firm-level consequences of religious culture, adding to the research area of culture and corporate finance.

Second Life, as a three-dimensional social medium, provides an unparalleled opportunity for people to interact with each other and their surroundings in unfamiliar and innovative ways. After a brief introduction to the discipline of Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland (UQ), this chapter will examine some of the key characteristics of MUVEs in general and of Second Life in particular, with a view to assessing its suitability as an environment for learning based on andragogical and constructivist methodologies. Further, it will explore the original conception and development of the UQ Religion Bazaar project within Second Life.

The UQ Religion Bazaar project was originally conceived in 2007 and developed through 2008. It consists of a Second Life island situated in the New Media Consortium educational precinct and boasts a number of religious builds including a church, a mosque, a synagogue, an ancient Greek temple, a Freemasons' lodge, a Zen Buddhist temple and a Hindu temple to Ganesha. The island was used in two large first-year classes and for supervising distance postgraduate research students.

This study examines whether Confucian culture can promote enterprise total factor productivity (TFP), and it also studies how transmission mechanism works on enterprise TFP.

Based on the data of A-share listed companies on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2008 to 2019, this study measures the influence of Confucian culture on enterprise TFP by the number of Confucian academies and Confucian temples within three radius ranges of a company's registered address.

The empirical results show that Confucian culture has a positive effect on the enterprise TFP. The transmission mechanism test shows that Confucian culture can promote the TFP of Chinese enterprises through reducing agency cost, improving agency efficiency and enhancing innovation.

The findings in this study provide implications for policymakers, scholars and enterprises. The results show that Confucian culture can enhance the TFP of Chinese enterprises. Especially in emerging markets including China, the Confucian culture, as an informal institution, can effectively complement formal institutions, promoting enterprise TFP.

This study expands the literature on Confucian culture in two aspects: the influence of Confucian culture on TFP and its transmission mechanism. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to identify a link between Confucian culture and enterprise TFP.

In this study I explore how practices and creativity in the commercial context conceptualize death in the changing styles of funerals by depicting the supply of contemporary funeral services. The cases are primarily based on ethnographic accounts derived from my fieldwork in Japanese funeral homes. I focus on the work and efforts of the funeral industry that make innovative services to shape and shift a set of cultural values and practices in the funerals of today.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Buddhist and Hindu people in non‐Western societies perceive rational accountability practices in religious organizations, through their respective religious “spirit” and “beliefs” and in combination with broader structural elements of the society.

The interpretive tradition of research, i.e. ethnography based on two in‐depth cases from Sri Lanka (a Buddhist temple) and Mauritius (a Hindu temple) is adopted for the data collection. The data are analysed using grounded theory methods and procedures.

In non‐Western Buddhist and Hindu societies where people's lives are bound by a high religious “spirit” the accountability system in the religious organisations is largely visible as an informal and social practice rather than a stakeholder‐oriented rational mechanism. It is found that the rational accountability mechanisms are “sacredised” by the Buddhist and Hindu religious “spirit” and subsequently, the accountability systems and religious activities are both influenced by the “structural elements” of trust, aspirations, patronage and loyalty relations, social status, power and rivalries. The accountability practices implemented in these organisations are perceived by the people as being no more than “ceremonial rituals” aimed at strengthening the temple's righteous and prudent image to the religious society.

The paper raises the issue that accountability practices in community, grassroots‐based non‐profit organisations are not mere reporting of “facts” relating to economic activities and a “neutral system” giving reasons for the conduct of its leaders. Instead, they initiate new forms of accountability systems and reproduce structural conditions.

This is one of the first field studies which examine perceptions of accountability within a Hindu and a Buddhist context, as influenced by the religious “spirit” and internal belief systems of the devotees. Previous studies have mostly focused on Judeo‐Christian or Islamic denominations.

Social media (SM) is a new communication tool that substantially contribute to facilitating online hate speech (OHS). In emphasis of the question “what role can SM play in an individual’s life?”, this study aims to understand Bangladeshi university students’ personal experiences and opinions of OHSs related to SM.

The authors used an online survey method to collect data and retrieved responses from 410 students. Mann–Whitney U test, Kruskal–Wallis test and Spearman’s rank correlation analysis were used to test the hypotheses.

This study found that hate speech is a familiar term among students. Students’ political views or opinions, religion and gender have become the most targeted instruments for OHSs. Comparing students’ use of SM, the authors found that Facebook was the most used SM site to spread hate speech in Bangladesh. In terms of personal experiences, the findings indicated that 45.6% of students became victims of OHSs at least once or more times, and the majority of students tended to simply avoid OHSs. Another significant finding was that OHS has real-life effects on the students, resulting in various personal and psychological distress.

Although some research has been conducted on hate speech at the local level, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has focused on the student community. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt in Bangladesh to focus on OHSs from a student’s personal viewpoint.

The article aims to present a new aspect of “the emergent identities” in Thailand with a correlation between morality and religiosity. The research deals with the perception of 65 Thai male-to-female transgender sex workers who are currently working in sex tourism in Pattaya and Bangkok. This article explores the role religion plays, the linkages between sexualities, and the potential for Thai Theravada Buddhist individuals to understand the way that they cope with life and interpret its meaning among these sexual minorities. Finally, the article shows how Thai marginalized Theravada Buddhists are negotiating their gendered religious spaces in Thailand.

The study investigates perceptions of religion and its role in the lives of Thai Buddhist male-to-female transgender sex workers. Almost all the qualitative data was collected sequentially through (1) focus group discussions, (2) small group discussions, and (3) in-depth interviews. All interview sessions took place over six months in 2019. The researcher is a native Thai speaker and conducted the interviews in Thai with selected sex workers over 20 years old who have at least one year of experience engaging in sex work.

The research found three principal characteristics of “lived religion” in which emergent identities negotiate sexuality and morality: (1) Buddhist dequeering (the way Buddhism operates conservatively to reinforce heteronormativity), (2) queering Buddhism amidst multiple oppressions (how Buddhism operates to complement queer identity and empowerment), and (3) queering Buddhism as enlightenment (Buddhism with an emphasis on “practice” and “spiritual development”). The paper discusses how institutional Buddhism creates and recreates gendered identities in complex ways.

The article shows how Thai marginalized Theravada-Buddhism are negotiating their gendered religious spaces and “buy” the right to sexual and anatomy within their families and society by providing financial support, engaging in religion practices, donating in social charity projects base on their faith and capacity.

The paper is supporting human right movements and dignity for sexual minorities gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender questioning, intersex (LGBTQI+) in Thailand. The paper also promotes equality to all human beings and shows a struggle for the basic human rights of sexual minorities in religion. The paper is raising awareness to religion's rights for all to look beyond distinctions of gender and class which may help to shape future history.

This article examines how Thai transgender sex workers utilize the non-essentialist philosophy of Theravada Buddhism. The paper finds that respondents are negotiating their religious spaces through the linkages among their gender, body, embodiment, identities, and sexualities. Despite most respondents believe that being born “a kathoey” as a result of bad karma, they use the Buddhist teachings of karma to explain their identities and even to lead a meaningful life to gain more merits for a better rebirth.

Thailand still lacks research on queer spiritualities and Buddhism. The article has seen challenges to the human rights of sexual minorities in religion. The solution is to increase awareness of the concepts of sex, gender, and sexualities and broaden the understanding of “endless performativity” and “gender diversification” (Butler, 1990) for gender sensitivity and gender responsiveness in creating “social equality” for all member societies in public campaigns, and media launched by the state and NGOs.