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The purpose of this paper is to apply what can be learned from the emergence of nature tourism to understand some current and future trends of tourism.

This study adopted the evolutionary paradigm for investigation.

The emergence of nature tourism in early medieval China can be attributed to four major factors, including transformation of value orientations, seeking longevity, interest in suburbs and population migration.

Historical studies help understand the current and future trends. When the contributing factors for nature tourism are linked to the contemporary world, it can be found that these factors are still playing a part in shaping tourism trends or patterns in their original or alternative forms. These trends or patterns are worthy of scholarly investigations.

This paper offers a comprehensive understanding of the origins of nature tourism.

As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands.

The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands.

The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing.

This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

This paper focuses on governance in higher education in China. It sees that governance as distinctive on the world scale and the potential source of distinctiveness in other domains of higher education. By taking an historical approach, reviewing relevant literature and drawing on empirical research on governance at one leading research university, the paper discusses system organisation, government–university relations and the role of the Communist Party (CCP), centralisation and devolution, institutional leadership, interior governance, academic freedom and responsibility, and the relevance of collegial norms. It concludes that the party-state and Chinese higher education will need to find a Way in governance that leads into a fuller space for plural knowledges, ideas and approaches. This would advance both indigenous and global knowledge, so helping global society to also find its Way.

Is there a secret recipe for economic growth?

No, there is no recipe, but we can extrapolate some pieces of advice from Adam Smith.

An economy can leave behind its “dull” stagnant state and grow when its markets expand, when the productivity of its workers increases thanks to high compensations, which are seen as incentives to work harder and when lobbying and cronyism are kept at bay. Luck plays a role too, but these three ingredients are necessary, even if not sufficient, for an economy to grow and thus be “cheerful.”

These three aspects – expansion of market, liberal compensation of workers and lobbying – especially combined, have often been underestimated in Smith’s understanding of the possible sources of economic growth.

From 1979 to 2023, the takaful structure has been adopted in many jurisdictions, making the documenting of its early days of establishment relatively difficult and somewhat unreliable. This is unlike conventional insurance, where the history and legislation are well documented and archived in various research (Hellwege, 2016; Marano and Siri, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to provide a chronology for the establishment and development of takaful via the takaful establishment in each jurisdiction, documenting its first takaful operator and first takaful regulation.

This paper has used a qualitative method in the form of reviewing literature and available data such as journals, books and official resources. The data is thoroughly analysed in order to build the chronology for takaful. It adopted an exploratory research design, which is deemed suitable in situations where few works of literature have examined the subject (Neuman, 2014). The paper explores the establishment and non-establishment of takaful in 57 countries. The paper categorises the countries into seven regions starting with the GCC, Levant, Asia, Central Asia, Africa, Europe and Others.

The takaful chronology presented in this paper shows that takaful operations exist in 47 jurisdictions, starting from Sudan and the UAE in 1979, with the most recent adopters being Morocco and Iran in December 2021. It is found that 22 jurisdictions do not have takaful regulations, and the Takaful Act 1984, issued in Malaysia, is considered the first takaful regulation that sets the basis for other regulations that follow.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive chronology of takaful, especially as the few existing timelines have been found to be incomplete and consist of contradictory information.

The socialist construction with Chinese characteristics must be based on history and reality. According to the requirements of liberation and development of productivity, efforts must be made to reform and improve the production relations, as well as continually consolidate the socialist system with Chinese characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to prove the necessity and superiority of a socialist system through China’s modernization achievements.

Marxist political economics is a critical legacy from classical economics. Its core question is also social production and distribution, which is epitomized in the labor theory of value and the theory of surplus value.

Regarding the significant principles that must be followed, these speeches summarized the logical system and prominent features of the socialist political system in the new normal from several significant and interrelated aspects such as basic methods, core propositions, main tasks and fundamental goals.

The socialist system with Chinese characteristics will gradually appear through further research and prove its superiority. How can a socialist system with Chinese characteristics innovate and develop? Does the system have a future? Is there any historical necessity for the socialist system to replace the capitalist system in human history? These are the questions that need urgent answers and in-depth exploration.

The overall purpose of this study is to utilize the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in combination with four dark tourism constructs (dark experience, engaging entertainment, unique learning experience, and casual interest) to gain a better understanding of behaviors and intentions of tourists who have visited or plan to visit a dark tourism location.

A total of 1,068 useable questionnaires was collected via Qualtrics Panels for analysis purposes. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to verify satisfactory reliability and validity regarding the measurement of model fit. With adequate model fit, structural equation modeling was employed to determine positive and negative relationships between TPB and dark tourism constructs. In all, 11 hypotheses statements were tested within this study.

Results of this study indicate that tourists are curious, interested, and intrigued by dark experiences with paranormal activity, resulting in travel choices made for themselves based on personal beliefs and preferences, with minimal outside influence from others. It was determined that dark experience was the most influential of the dark tourism constructs tested in relationship to attitudes and subjective norm.

The data collected for this study were collected using Qualtrics Panels with self-reporting participants. The actual destination visited by survey participants was also not factored into the results of this research study.

This study provides a new theoretical research model that merges TPB and dark tourism constructs and established that there is a relationship between TPB constructs and dark tourism.

This study aims to reflect on the past and prospects of digital Korean studies.

Discussion includes the remarkably early adoption of computing in the Korean humanities, the astounding pace in which Korean heritage materials have been digitized, and the challenges of balancing artisanal and laboratory approaches to digital research.

The main takeaway is to reconsider the widespread tendency in the digital humanities to privilege frequentist analysis and macro-level perspectives.

Cha hopes to discover the future of digital Korean studies in semantic networks, graph databases and anthropological inquiries.

Cha reconsiders existing tendencies in the digital humanities and looks to the future of digital Korean studies.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the dramatic transformation of Las Vegas from a local watering hole to a world renowned entertainment city, and to offer predictions of what this ever-changing city might become in the future.

A series of turning points in Las Vegas’ history are presented in a chronological manner, highlighting how external forces have played a role in shaping the city into what it is today. These external forces are then used as the underlying reasoning for a series of scenarios, signposts informing predictions detailing what might happen to Las Vegas in the future.

The development of Las Vegas has been influenced by a wide range of external factors, from geology, government, organized crime, business visionaries, large corporations and the economy. The continued influence of these factors could lead to drastically divergent outcomes from the loss of the city to a new golden age.

This paper identifies turning points that have helped to shape the development of Las Vegas, and in doing so encourages researchers to consider future scenarios grounded in the underlying dynamics of the turning points.