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Taking urban-rural disparity into account, this research examines the current service provision of preschool education at the local level in China.

Following a qualitative design, the research is based on a case study on the preschool service provision in Luochuan County in China, with data collected from semi-structured interviews with grassroots officials and residents from the county’s rural and urban regions.

This research finds that preschool services are inefficiently delivered between the county’s rural and urban areas. While services are oversupplied in rural regions, the popular demand for urban kindergartens is inadequately addressed. Moreover, the tuition subsidy offered by the local government has drastically decreased in recent years.

This research is confined to a single-case study, so its findings are not necessarily applicable to all Chinese localities. Nevertheless, it proves that these problems in preschool service provision can be a result of the central authority’s tight control.

Given China’s rapid urbanization and fertility decline, this research argues that overinvestment in rural kindergartens can be a widespread phenomenon throughout China. It also suggests a decreasing popular demand for other public services, such as childcare, in Chinese rural regions. This research calls for special attention to the persistent regional discrepancy in preschool service standards and the welfare cuts after the revenue centralization reform.

This research contributes to a clearer picture of the current preschool service delivery by Chinese local governments, which remains largely underexplored by far. It also provides updates on the country’s long-existing urban-rural discrepancy in preschool services.

Given the regional diversity in China, this study aims to provide an empirical evaluation of how organizational stakeholders (i.e. customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders) affect corporate environmental sustainability investment (ESI).

To empirically investigate the influence of organizational stakeholders on ESI, this study used regional-level data consists of Chinese A-share stocks for the years 2009–2019.

This study’s findings show that pressure from customers, employees and suppliers has a significant effect on corporate ESI, with customers being the most important stakeholder group. Shareholders, by contrast, have no significant influence on ESI. The influence of these pressures is more pronounced in developed regions (the east) than in less developed (the west) localities of China.

This study complements the stakeholder–institutional perspective by implying to consider the differentiated logics of the contesting stakeholders in the nonmarket operations.

Practically, this study poses that managers must realize the heterogeneity of pressures from stakeholders and the differentiated impact of these pressures keeping in view the institutional differences in different regions.

Our study reports initial empirical evidence that shows how regional differences influence the role of stakeholders in determining corporate environmental strategy.

The primary purpose of this study is to explore the effect of technical changes on provincial-level income inequality in Vietnam. The authors also investigate whether the quality of institutions and human capital level moderate this relationship.

This research applies the fixed-effect and random-effect models on a balanced panel data set of 63 Vietnamese provinces/cities from 2010 to 2020.

The study’s empirical results show that technical improvement has a nonlinear influence on income disparity in Vietnamese localities. When the local level of technology is limited, technological change can mitigate income disparity. However, as local technological levels increase, inequality tends to rise. Moreover, the study also reveals that the quality of a province’s institutions and the level of human resources are factors that moderate the correlation between technological change and income inequality. For provinces with better institutional quality and/or better human resources, inequality tends to decline under the impact of technological change.

The results of this study suggest that while encouraging technology advancement, localities should also ensure sustainable development, reduce income inequality and focus on improving institutional quality and human resources development.

There are increasing concerns about the impact of technical change on inequality in income distribution; however, empirical evidence on this relationship in developing countries remains scarce. This study is among the few attempts to examine this issue at the provincial level of a developing country considering the moderation effect of institutional quality and human capital level.

This paper aims to provide a reference for the development of digital transformation from the perspective of manufacturing process links.

This paper applies canonical correlation analysis based on digital technology patents in the key links of manufacturing industries (product design, procurement, product manufacturing, warehousing and transportation, and wholesale and retail) and the related indicators of economic benefits of regions in China.

(1) The degree of digitalization of manufacturing process links is significantly correlated with economic benefits. (2) The improvement of the degree of digitalization in the “product design” link, the “warehousing and transportation” link, the “product manufacturing” link and the “wholesale and retail” link has significant impacts on the economic benefits of manufacturing industry. (3) The digital degree of the “procurement” link has no obvious influence on the economic benefits of manufacturing industry.

The research results can provide reference for the formulation and implementation of micro policies. The strategy of improving the level of digital transformation of key links of manufacturing industry is put forward to better promote both the digital transformation of manufacturing industry and economic development.

This paper innovatively studies the relationship between digitalization of manufacturing process links and economic benefits. The findings can provide theoretical and empirical support for the digital transformation of China's manufacturing industry and high-quality development of economy.

The agricultural sector is a critical component of global economic development, and its significance has grown significantly in recent years. The risks associated with agriculture and the behaviors of farmers in handling these risks are becoming increasingly important, given the sector’s increasing dependence worldwide. Various activities related to agriculture are vulnerable to multiple risks, which can have severe consequences for farmers’ livelihoods. The purpose of this systematic review is to present a comprehensive analysis of the sources of risk faced by farmers and their choices in adopting risk management strategies worldwide.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol was utilized to select relevant literature, and a total of 102 studies were analyzed. Through the use of Venn diagrams and graphical methods, the authors provide a transparent overview of the risks faced by farmers and the adoption of risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

From the analysis, the authors found that, in terms of risk management strategies, diversification, reserve credit and accumulated assets are frequently used in developing countries, while developed countries tend to rely on future/forward contracts, crop insurance and hedging. Diversification is the most widely used risk management strategy across both developed and developing countries. Our study also highlights the different perceptions of weather-related risks among growers in developed and developing countries.

This systematic review provides valuable insights into the risks associated with agriculture and farmers' strategies in managing these risks, which could inform policy decisions and promote sustainable agricultural practices. For instance, understanding the individualistic nature of farmers' risk perception and the varying risk sources and management strategies depending on the locality and provide assistance to the farmers accordingly.

The paper explains how farmers behave during uncertainty in terms of risk perception and their decision to adopt risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

Informality in the tourism sector of the Philippines is a pervasive phenomenon, yet only few studies have explored the former's contribution to the latter, especially at the local level. Hence, this chapter utilizes a tourism value chain model developed by the United Nations World Tourism Organization and Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation (DEVCO) to determine the presence and examine the role of the informal sector in various spheres of Binondo's tourism industry. Findings reveal that informality is thriving in the areas of transportation, food and beverage, handicraft, leisure, excursion, tours, and support services. Conversely, they are inexistent or less visible in the accommodation and tourism assets in destination segments. Moreover, the fragmented tourism value chain of Binondo is heavily shaped by three primary challenges, namely, difference in perception between decision-makers and economic actors, resistance to change by the informal sector, and lack of relevant data to support evidence-based policymaking. To address these issues, the local government of Manila City may hence consider the following policy options: (i) mainstream a “whole-of-locality” approach, (ii) conduct an industry mapping of Binondo's tourism value chain, (iii) facilitate linkages between formal and informal businesses, (iv) develop shared infrastructure and extend capacity-building to the informal sector, and (v) employ a regulatory sandbox approach.

To maintain the bottom line of food import risk in China, this paper proposes a novel risk state evaluation model based on bottom-line thinking after analyzing the decision-making ideas embedded in the bottom-line thinking method.

First, the order relation analysis method (G1 method) and Laplacian score (LS) are applied to calculate the constant weights of indexes. Then, the worst-case scenario of food import risk can be estimated to strive for the best result, so the penalty state variable weight function is introduced to obtain variable weights of indexes. Finally, the study measures the risk state of China's food import from the overall situation using the set pair analysis (SPA) method and identifies the key factors affecting food import risk.

The risk states of food supply in eight countries are in the state of average potential and partial back potential as a whole. The results indicate that China's food import risks are at medium and upper-medium risk levels in most years, fluctuating slightly from 2010 to 2020. In addition, some factors are diagnosed as the primary control objects for holding the bottom line of food import risk in China, including food output level, food export capacity, bilateral relationship and political risk.

This paper proposes a novel risk state evaluation model following bottom-line thinking for food import risk in China. Besides, SPA is first applied to the risk evaluation of food import, expanding the application field of the SPA method.

In the realm of postpandemic perspectives, tourism was awakened to see that atop economic viability is resiliency. Shift in the demand to visit ecotourism destinations became a valuable opportunity to the local community to capitalize on natural resources as primary precursor for livelihood, substantiating their communal role as bailiffs in the conservation of protected landscapes and mitigators of the negative tourism implications. As tourism initiates in rethinking sustainability and inclusivity, the postpandemic paradigm in destination planning became anew. Aside from being an agritourism destination, Nueva Ecija has been promoted as an emerging ecotourism destination. Various literature has evaluated local ecotourism destinations in the Philippines, yet few literature examined the potential of Nueva Ecija. The emerging popularity of the province's ecotourism postpandemic beckons the inflow of tourists compelling for an in-place policy toward sustainability. The study aims to underscore the destination branding of Nueva Ecija as a tourist destination using a strategic framework derived from ecotourism concepts and best practices. Qualitative data from various tourism stakeholders were collected, and internal and external factors were analyzed. Results of the study may serve as a foundation toward a unified framework to assess and strengthen ecotourism destinations toward sustainability and tourism destination resiliency.

In 2016, the Chinese central government decentralized the responsibilities of housing market regulation to the municipal level. This paper aims to assess whether the decentralized market regulation is effective.

This study first investigates the fundamental drivers of urban housing prices in China. Taking into consideration the factors driving housing prices, the authors further investigate the effectiveness of decentralized housing market regulation by a pre- and post-policy comparison test using a panel data set of 35 major cities for the years from 2014 to 2019.

The results reveal heterogenous policy effects on housing price growth among cities with a one-year lag in effectiveness. With the decentralized housing market regulation, cities with fast price growth are incentivized to implement tightening measures, while cities with relatively low housing prices and slow price growth are more likely to do nothing or deregulate the markets. The findings indicate that the shift from a centralized housing market regulation to a decentralized one is more appropriate and effective for the individual cities.

Few policy evaluation studies have been done to examine the effects of decentralized housing market regulation on the performance of urban housing markets in China. The authors devise a methodology to conduct a policy evaluation that is important to inform public policy and decisions. This study helps enhance the understanding of the fundamental factors in China’s urban housing markets and the effectiveness of municipal government interventions.