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This paper aims to present an approach by which to assess the potential of branding a particular type of place resource or feature.

A review was conducted to analyse three key periodicals (Journal of Brand Management, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy and Journal of Place Management and Development) in the field of branding and place branding between 2000 and 2011. These three periodicals are recognized as the three leading periodicals of place branding, and they followed the clear establishment and development of the field of place branding.

Familiarity, favourability and uniqueness are the three dimensions that give a quick indication of the level of place brand equity, and in turn they represent the level of place brand potential.

In the literature, brand potential is not well conceptualized. This paper identifies this knowledge gap through a review of place branding studies, and it closes the gap by connecting brand potential with place brand equity.

This paper suggests practical and research directions by which to study these three dimensions to generate valuable brands for places.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the perceptions of visitors in terms of multiple aspects of smart cities to allow wise decisions to be made about smart tourist destinations by municipal governments and tourism authorities.

This study takes a sample of inbound visitors (n=205) from Hong Kong as an empirical questionnaire-based survey on visitors’ perceptions of these smart city attributes, which are collected from literature, and framed in Cohen’s Smart City Wheel.

This paper identifies the distinctive factors for branding Hong Kong as a smart city. The results from the factor analysis identify four factors for determining what a smart city is from the perspective of visitors, namely, the quality of a smart society: energy consumption in an urban environment, smart city governance and smart city livelihood. The first two factors further become the determinants of a successful smart city brand considered by visitors, which contribute to their locational decisions and thus the strategies and policies of smart destination branding.

The results obtained can serve as insights for tourism policy makers and destination marketers when considering significant information and communication technology, or other smart and sustainable attributes for city branding (e.g. Buhalis and Amaranggana, 2014; Marine-Roig and Anton Clavé, 2015), as well as common investment and resource allocation for shared benefits in similar metropolises.

The smartness factors represent important dimensions of urban smartness as prioritized areas for further development, innovation and marketing of tourism industries and enterprises in Hong Kong, as a mature urban destination incorporating the branding of a proposed smart district as a strategy of urban development.

Smart urban development and tourism development have increasingly become inseparable, especially when visitors utilize cities as tourist destinations but share other urban resources and spaces with local citizens. Unlike the development of smart tourist attractions, smart tourist destinations should have a wider scope of smartness. A smart tourist destination may carry similar and overlapping characteristics of smart cities, which may be interpreted by visitors and may eventually affect their perceived image of a city.

This paper aims to connect green spaces with city branding by introducing a proposed Green (Resource) Brand Hexagon (GBH).

This study empirically tested the principles of the GBH with samples of Hong Kong residents (n = 301) and visitors (n = 395). Surveys were carried out to investigate the perceptions of the 23 elements in the GBH by both respondent groups.

A comparison of the results via factor analysis identified two green brand structures preferred by local residents (a brand pentagon) and by visitors (a brand square). The findings suggest different associations of green resource elements in their brand perceptions, which were partly reflected in the governmental Brand Review exercise in Hong Kong in 2008. Inter-group differences in the ranking of GBH’s elements also indicate a knowledge gap between visitors and residents.

The modification process of the GBH from Anholt’s City Brand Hexagon framework involved researchers’ interpretations and understanding of green resources in Hong Kong; it inevitably produced some degree of subjectivity. The working definition of “green resources” in this study perceptually excluded certain features in public parks, such as the geological landscapes and beaches that are, in principle, part of the Hong Kong Geopark.

The findings of this paper offer an indicative green brand framework for destination marketers and brand managers whose cities enjoy attractive green resources. The ratings of GBH’s elements provide useful references for local brand management through an understanding of strong green brand attributes and structures by local residents and visitors. The inter-group comparison of the green brand structures also informs policymakers and city marketers about the divergent associations of brand elements for possible brand extension. Finally, the results are also very beneficial because they provide an opportunity for regional green brand development.

This chapter explores the concept of branding in a contemporary competitive arena of places. The multi-dimensional interpretations of places offer a variety of possibilities to better understand the true essence of destination branding. One of the common interpretations of places is through the study of their images, as destination branding requires a thorough understanding of destination image. The important foundation and relation of destination image are specified and explained. The notion of destination branding has evolved from the fields of marketing and urban studies and has become a cross-disciplinary research area. Thus, the researchers explain that destination branding as well as ‘place branding’ are dynamic concepts that are being continuously being explored in academia for the benefit of practitioners in travel and tourism. This chapter suggests that the use of brand equity is also one of the frontier areas of study in ‘place branding’ as it emphasises the need to thematise destinations (e.g. for their historical heritage, cultural value, natural attractions, etc.) and places for residence (e.g. as green cities, creative cities, smart cities, etc.).

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the human resources (HR) literature by using exploratory network analysis (ENA), a data-driven technique. This technique was employed to discover how the perceived effectiveness of HR practices interrelate with employee perceptions on organizational cultural factors to enhance organizational commitment.

The authors used data from 1,459 employees of a large South Korean conglomerate and studied how individual HR practices could be enhanced by specific organizational cultural factors. The data were analyzed using ENA, which is an inductive approach.

The authors found that organizational commitment is associated with the positive perceptions of employees on the effectiveness of HR practices, such as performance appraisal, training and development, and compensation. Results show that when both HR practices and organizational cultural factors are considered, they appear to influence organizational commitment independently.

Data were collected from a large conglomerate. The authors were limited by the use of the scales developed by a consulting firm. Therefore, readers should be cautious about the generalizability of the findings.

The application of a data-driven technique (ENA) highlights the potentially fertile methodological grounds for HR research. Literature on strategic HR management may benefit from inductive approaches, wherein data serve as primary foundation for the design and development of new theories.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the intra-party conflicts in Hong Kong’s Democratic Party (DP) and their implications for broader democratic processes in the territory. It also examines some other thematic issues including: the party’s policy decision-making process, candidate selection, party membership and mergers, and their overall relevance for democratisation in Hong Kong.

The study gives a historical review of intra-party conflicts. The concept of factionalism is applied to better understand the DP in Hong Kong’s political space.

Hong Kong is unique and popular models of party conflicts are hardly applicable to the country. Intra-party conflict is an obvious, expected conflict because of differences in formation, leadership, manifestoes and ideologies. The present author tries to examine the case with a view to making a novel contribution.

The study of political factionalism is not uncommon in Hong Kong but this paper intends to study intra-party elite conflicts and self-democratisation of the Hong Kong DP as a case study which is seldom addressed. Consolidation is a possible scenario and its presence is evident when political elites increasingly demonstrate commitment towards creating a democratic regime and when they hold strong beliefs in democratic procedures and institutions as crucial to governing public life.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of civil disobedience (CD) movements in Hong Kong in the context of the notion of civil society (CS).

The paper begins by rigorously defining the notion of CD, as well as the concept of CS and tracing its development in Hong Kong over the past several decades. By using a model of CS typology, which combines the variables of state control and a society’s quest for autonomy (SQA), the paper aims to outline the historical development of CD movements in Hong Kong. It also discusses the recent evolution of CS and its relationship with CD movements, particularly focusing on their development since Leung Chun-ying became the Chief Executive in 2012. Finally, by using five cases of CD witnessed in the past several decades, the relationship between the development of CS and the emergence of CD in Hong Kong has been outlined.

Four implications can be concluded: first, CD cannot emerge when the state and society are isolated. Second, the level of SC and the scale of CD are positively related. Third, as an historical trend, the development of SQA is generally in linear progress; SQA starts from a low level (e.g. interest-based and welfare-based aims) and moves upwards to campaign for higher goals of civil and political autonomy. If the lower level of SQA is not satisfied, it can lead to larger scale CD in future. Fourth, the CD movement would be largest in scale when the state-society relationship confrontational and when major cleavages can be found within CS itself.

This paper serves to enrich knowledge in the fields of politics and sociology.

Since the launch of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003, Hong Kong cinema is believed to have confronted drastic changes. Hong Kong cinema is described to be dying, lacking creative space and losing local distinctiveness. A decade later, the rise of Hong Kong – China coproduction cinema under CEPA has been normalized and changed the once pessimism in the industry. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Hong Kong cinema adjusted its production and creation in the first 10 years of CEPA.

Beginning with a review of the overall development, three paradigmatic cases are examined for reflecting upon what the major industrial and commercial concerns on the Hong Kong – China coproduction model are, and how such a coproduction model is not developed as smooth as what the Hong Kong filmmakers expected.

Collectively, this paper singles out the difficulties in operation and the limit of transnationality that occur in the Chinese context for the development of Hong Kong cinema under the Hong Kong – China coproduction model.

This is the author’s research in his five-year study of Hong Kong cinema and it contributes a lot to the field of cinema studies with relevant industrial and policy concern.