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Preschoolers and their inter-generational parents are the main users of modern urban residential outdoor space. To design and build appropriate outdoor space, it is necessary to understand the two groups’ psychological and behavioral needs in depth. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

By means of literature reviews, field surveys, questionnaires, and interviews, this study addresses the psychological, behavioral, neighborhood conversation, and space use characteristics of preschoolers and their inter-generational parents in the residential quarters of Haidian District in Beijing. This paper investigates the safety, interests, micro-climate appropriateness, supporting accompanying behavior, and promoting neighborhood conversation as the design strategies for residential outdoor space.

The findings suggest that children’s wills are dominant in choosing activity space, while the duration of stay is decided by inter-generational parents; appropriateness for children’s use is the most significant indicator for evaluating satisfaction of outdoor space; safety is the first rule in outdoor space design; and the design of details in outdoor space and facilities needs to be strengthened.

Some preliminary conclusions have been concluded in this research while some deficiencies still exist. For example, quantitative research method and data processing method need to be deepened and studied continually in the following research; also, the research defines the investigation elements based on literature reading and individual field research, which remains to be verified and deepened in the future.

This research paid attention to usage experience in residential quarters so as to get rid of the pursuit of beauty in form in the planning and design strategies for residential quarters, proper care for youth and seniors, promote community vitality, enhance the shared living environment, and promote community association. This research can arouse the attention to children and the elderly in subsequent residential quarters and urban research. It is a very important field to study the behavior characteristics of children and the elderly and then study the urban space that is suitable for them.

Planning and design strategies for residential quarters should be explored from the perspectives of the correlated group of preschoolers and their inter-generational parents – the group of people who most frequently use residential outdoor space. This research paid attention to usage experience in residential quarters so as to get rid of the pursuit of beauty in form in the planning and design strategies for residential quarters, proper care for youth and seniors, promote community vitality, enhance the shared living environment, and promote community association. This research can arouse the attention to children and the elderly in subsequent residential quarters and urban research.

This research is of great significance, in caring the young and the old, building up communities’ vitality, enhancing living environment, and promoting community association, to explore planning and design strategies for residential quarters from the perspective of the correlated group of preschoolers and inter-generational parents and the group of people who uses the residential quarters’ space most frequently.

This paper aims to reveal the interdisciplinarity of information science (IS) from the perspective of the evolution of theory application.

Select eight representative IS journals as data sources, extract the theories mentioned in the full texts of the research papers and then measure annual interdisciplinarity of IS by conducting theory co-occurrence network analysis, diversity measure and evolution analysis.

As a young and vibrant discipline, IS has been continuously absorbing and internalizing external theoretical knowledge and thus formed a high degree of interdisciplinarity. With the continuous application of some kernel theories, the interdisciplinarity of IS appears to be decreasing and gradually converging into a few neighboring disciplines. Influenced by big data and artificial intelligence, the research paradigm of IS is shifting from a theory centered one to a technology centered one.

This study helps to understand the evolution of the interdisciplinarity of IS in the past 21 years. The main limitation is that the data were collected from eight journals indexed by the Social Sciences Citation Index and a small amount of theories might have been omitted.

This study identifies the kernel theories in IS research, measures the interdisciplinarity of IS based on the evolution of the co-occurrence network of theory source disciplines and reveals the paradigm shift being happening in IS.

In an urbanising world, neighbouring is perceived to be steadily losing significance and a remnant of the past. The same belief can also be found in China where rapid urbanisation has had a tremendous impact on the social networks and neighbourhood life of urban residents. This chapter challenges the common perception of neighbouring in demise and argues that neighbouring remains an important form of social relationship, even if the meanings and role of neighbouring have changed. This chapter first charts the changing role of neighbouring from the socialist era to post-reform China. It then provides an account of four common types of neighbourhoods in Chinese cities – work-unit estates, traditional courtyards, commodity housing estates and urban villages – and considers how and why neighbouring in different ways still matters to them. In pre-reform socialist China, neighbourhood life and neighbouring comprised much of the daily social life of residents. Since the reform era, with the proliferation of private commodity housing estates, middle-class residents prioritise comfort, security and privacy, such that neighbouring levels have subsided. Nevertheless, in other neighbourhood types, such as work-unit housing estates, traditional courtyards and urban villages, neighbours still rely upon one another for various reasons.

Due to rapid development, historic city areas are faced with urbanization damage to their characteristic urban identity besides physical deterioration and economic decay. The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: What are the constituent elements of locality for historic areas? How does one classify historic areas according to locality elements? What are the characteristics of each kind of historic area? How does one identify to-be-protected locality elements according to different historic areas to realize sustainable development?

As a historic cultural city with a building history of over 3,000 years, Beijing has a myriad of distinctive historic areas, of which 367 were selected as the research samples. This paper classifies historic areas into the following four categories: distinctive areas, permanent areas, adaptive areas and inherited areas by analyzing the locality elements of 8,905 geo-tagged photos related to Beijing historic areas. The correlation among locality elements – the basis for joint protection – is also examined by Pearson’s correlation analysis.

The results are as follows: the reaction degree of carrier elements is generally higher than that of information elements, of which the representative architecture is the main constituent element of locality; folk customs, traditional activities and other intangible cultural heritage in historic areas receive only slight attention and need to be further stressed; controlled by non-human factors, permanent elements bear a high degree of autocorrelation; and emerging tourism and business activities have, to some extent, grown into constituent parts of the locality elements in historic areas.

This paper seeks to strike a dynamic balance between city renewal and historic area protection, providing a reference for understanding the dynamics of locality.

Tourists’ destination image is crucial for visiting intentions. An ancient capital with diverse characteristics is an important component of China’s urban tourism. The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: what are the differences and commonalities of the perceived destination image of ancient capitals? What makes the difference of the perceived destination image in these cities? Aside from the exterior factors, are there internal factors of cities that influence tourists’ cognition and perception of destination image?

The comment text data of Baidu tourism website were used to determine the differences in the destination images of China’s four great ancient capitals: Beijing, Xi’an, Nanjing and Luoyang. ROST content mining and semantic network analysis were for differences and commonalities of the perceived destination image, and correlation analysis was used to explore the internal factors of cities that influence tourists’ cognition and perception of destination image.

Though the same as ancient capital, the four ancient capitals’ images are far apart; historical interests are the core of tourism experience in ancient capital city; image perception is from physical carrier, history and culture, and human cognition; tourist’ destination affect of ancient capital is most from its history and culture; protecting identity and maintaining daily life are crucial for ancient city tourism.

Previous studies on ancient capitals have focused on the invariable identity of ancient capitals’ destination images, and left a gap on determining from where the invariable identity comes in general and how much it influences destination image. This gap was addressed in this study, by analyzing the destination images of four ancient capitals in China as cases. In this way, this study provided reference to the other ancient cities worldwide.

The former residences of historical figures are typical landscape elements of historic districts, which are characterised by the styles of these residences and spiritual historical figures cultures. The purpose of this paper is to determine how the former residences respond once the historical figures living there have passed.

The history of human culture and progression of urban construction – which are submerged in societal transformation – is recorded for old Beijing city. Narrative space theory is used and methods such as a content analysis, map overlay and the Geographic Information System are employed to analyse the selected 300 former residences of historical figures in old Beijing city.

The results are as follows: the political setting played a key role in the evolution process, three political narrative areas in the inner city and one cultural narrative area in the outer city form the narrative spatial structure of the former residences of historical figures, “government construction” and “resident construction” are the main reasons for the loss and destruction of narrative spaces and ordinary life is an important channel for showcasing the history of former residences. The narrative spaces of these residences carry double histories, namely, the development of human history and of city construction.

Different from former studies that focus on the preservation of the single historical building, this study explores the integral logic of historic buildings in the whole city through narrative space theory to get a combination of culture and space.

The present study aimed to examining the association between work–family conflict and turnover intention by exploring the mediating effect of job satisfaction and the moderating effect of perceived organizational support on preschool teachers in China.

A survey of 827 preschool teachers was conducted, and the data were analyzed using correlation analysis, hierarchical linear regression and path analysis with a structural equation model.

The results revealed that work–family conflict was significantly and positively associated with preschool teachers' turnover intention. Job satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between work–family conflict and turnover intention, while perceived organizational support moderated the association between work–family conflict and job satisfaction, thus mitigating the negative impact of work–family conflict on job satisfaction.

These findings contribute to the understanding of turnover among preschool teachers and suggest the need to enhance perceived organizational support to promote job satisfaction and reduce turnover in this profession.

This research investigates the impact of learners' non-substantive responses in online course forums, referred to as online listening responses, on e-learning performance. A common type of response in online course forums, online listening responses consist of brief, non-substantive replies/comments (e.g. “agree,” “I see,” “thank you,” “me too”) and non-textual inputs (e.g. post-voting, emoticons) in online discussions. Extant literature on online forum participation focuses on learners' active participation with substantive inputs and overlooks online listening responses. This research, by contrast, stresses the value of online listening responses in e-learning and their heterogeneous effects across learner characteristics. It calls for recognition and encouragement from online instructors and online forum designers to support this activity.

The large-scale proprietary dataset comes from a leading MOOC (massive open online courses) platform in China. The dataset includes 68,126 records of learners in five MOOCs during 2014–2018. An ordinary least squares model is used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.

Online listening responses in course forums, along with learners' substantive inputs, positively influence learner performance in online courses. The effects are heterogeneous across learner characteristics, being more prominent for early course registrants, learners with full-time jobs and learners with more e-learning experience, but weaker for female learners.

This research distinguishes learners' brief, non-substantive responses (online listening responses) and substantive inputs (online speaking) as two types of active participation in online forums and provides empirical evidence for the importance of online listening responses in e-learning. It contributes to online forum research by advancing the active-passive dichotomy of online forum participation to a nuanced classification of learner behaviors. It also adds to e-learning research by generating insights into the positive and heterogeneous value of learners' online listening responses to e-learning outcomes. Finally, it enriches online listening research by introducing and examining online listening responses, thereby providing a new avenue to probe online discussions and e-learning performance.

This paper aims to reveal the global non-synchronism that exists in the theoretical research of information science (IS) by analyzing and comparing the distribution of theory use, creation and borrowing in four representative journals from the USA, the UK and China.

Quantitative content analysis is adopted as the research method. First, an analytical framework for non-synchronism in theoretical research of IS is constructed. Second, theories mentioned in the full texts of the research papers of four journals are extracted according to a theory dictionary made before. Third, the non-synchronism in the theoretical research of IS is analyzed.

Non-synchronism exists in many aspects of the theoretical research of IS between journals, subject areas and countries/regions. The theoretical underdevelopment still exists in some subject areas of IS. IS presents obvious interdisciplinary characteristics. The theoretical distance from IS to social sciences is shorter than that to natural sciences.

This study investigates the theoretical research of IS from the perspective of non-synchronism theory, reveals the theoretical distance from IS to other sciences, deepens the communication between different subject and regional sub-communities of IS and provides new evidences for the necessity of developing domestic theories and theorists of IS.

This study introduces the theory of non-synchronism to IS research for the first time, investigates the new advances in theoretical research of IS and provides new quantitative evidences for the understanding of the interdisciplinary characteristics of IS and the necessity of better communication between sub-communities of IS.

Theory is a kind of condensed human knowledge. This paper is to examine the mechanism of interdisciplinary diffusion of theoretical knowledge by tracing the diffusion of a representative theory, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).

Based on the full-scale dataset of Web of Science (WoS), the citations of Davis's original work about TAM were analysed and the interdisciplinary diffusion paths of TAM were delineated, a supervised machine learning method was used to extract theory incidents, and a content analysis was used to categorize the patterns of theory evolution.

It is found that the diffusion of a theory is intertwined with its evolution. In the process, the role that a participating discipline play is related to its knowledge distance from the original disciplines of TAM. With the distance increases, the capacity to support theory development and innovation weakens, while that to assume analytical tools for practical problems increases. During the diffusion, a theory evolves into new extensions in four theoretical construction patterns, elaboration, proliferation, competition and integration.

The study does not only deepen the understanding of the trajectory of a theory but also enriches the research of knowledge diffusion and innovation.

The study elaborates the relationship between theory diffusion and theory development, reveals the roles of the participating disciplines played in theory diffusion and vice versa, interprets four patterns of theory evolution and uses text mining technique to extract theory incidents, which makes up for the shortcomings of citation analysis and content analysis used in previous studies.