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This study investigates whether corporate executives, who are university alumni, influence each other's firm corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.

Drawing on social network theory, the authors hypothesise that a firm's CSR performance is positively associated with its peer firms' average CSR performance when the executives of the firm and its peer firms are university alumni. The study employs data from 1,685 listed firms and 4,906 executives who graduated from 585 different universities in China and runs multivariate regressions.

The results reveal a sizeable university peer influence on CSR performance. Such influence is even stronger for executives who graduated from elite universities (e.g. 985 or 211 universities), and universities or programmes that provide more opportunities for alumni reunions or networking (e.g. MBAs/EMBAs). Executives who are more influential in making firm decisions (e.g. CEOs/CFOs), as well as firms that are more likely to mimic the behaviour of others, also show higher degrees of university peer influence.

The results highlight the role of education in ethical decision-making.

This study documents evidence on a new determinant of firm CSR performance. The study sheds light on the impact of non-institutionalised personal ties, for example, university alumni networks, on CSR performance.

This paper aims to study the temporal and spatial variation of vegetation and the influence of climate change on vegetation coverage in the Yellow River basin, China. The current study aimed to evaluate the role of a series of government-led environmental control projects in restoring the ecological environment of the Yellow River basin.

This paper uses unary linear regression, Mann–Kendall and wavelet analyses to study the spatial–temporal variations of vegetation and the response to climate changes in the Yellow River, China.

The results showed that for the past 17 years, not only the mean annual increase rate of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was 0.0059/a, but the spatial heterogeneity also yields significant results. The vegetation growth in the southeastern region was significantly better than that in the northwestern region. The variation period of the NDVI in the study area significantly shortened, and the most obvious oscillation period was half a year, with two peaks in one year. In addition, there are positive and negative effects of human activities on the change of vegetation cover of the Loess Plateau. The project of transforming cultivated land to forest and grassland promotes the increase of vegetation cover of the Loess plateau. Unfortunately, the regional urbanization and industrialization proliferated, and the overloading of grazing, deforestation, over-reclamation, and the exploitation and development of the energy area in the grassland region led to the reduction of the NDVI. Fortunately, the positive effects outweigh the negative ones.

This paper provides a comprehensive insight to analysis of the vegetation change and the responses of vegetation to climate change, with special reference to make the planning policy of ecological restoration. This paper argues that ecological restoration should be strengthened in areas with annual precipitation less than 450 mm.

Stakeholders' uncertainty about firms' value drives their urge to get information, as well as managerial disclosure choices. In this study, the authors examine whether and how an important source of uncertainty – the recent COVID-19 pandemic's effect on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure – is beyond managerial and stakeholders' control.

The authors develop a novel construct for daily CSR disclosure by employing computer-aided text analysis (CATA) on the press releases issued by 125 New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) listed from 28 February 2020 to 31 December 2020. To capture COVID-19 intensity, the authors use the growth rate of the population-adjusted cumulative sum of confirmed cases in New Zealand on a specific day. To examine the association between the COVID-19 outbreak and companies' CSR disclosure, the authors employed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression by clustering standard error at the firm level.

The authors find a one standard deviation increase in the COVID-19 outbreak leads to a 28% increase in such disclosures. These results remained robust to a series of sensitivity tests and continue to hold after accounting for potential endogeneity concerns. In the channel analysis, the study demonstrates that the positive relationship between COVID-19 and CSR disclosure is more pronounced in the presence of a well-structured board (i.e. a large, more independent board and with a higher proportion of women on it). In further analysis, the authors find the documented relationship varies over the pandemic's life cycle and is moderated by government stringency response, peer CSR pressure and media coverage.

This paper is the first study that contributes to the scant literature examining the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on CSR disclosure. Prior research either investigates the relationship of the CSR-stock return during the COVID-19 market crisis or examines the relationship between corporate characteristics including the quality of financial information and the reactions of stock returns during COVID-19. The authors extend such studies by providing empirical evidence that managers respond to COVID-19 by increasing CSR disclosure.

This study aims to propose an adaptive fractional-order sliding mode controller to solve the problem of train speed tracking control and position interval control under disturbance environment in moving block system, so as to improve the tracking efficiency and collision avoidance performance.

The mathematical model of information interaction between trains is established based on algebraic graph theory, so that the train can obtain the state information of adjacent trains, and then realize the distributed cooperative control of each train. In the controller design, the sliding mode control and fractional calculus are combined to avoid the discontinuous switching phenomenon, so as to suppress the chattering of sliding mode control, and a parameter adaptive law is constructed to approximate the time-varying operating resistance coefficient.

The simulation results show that compared with proportional integral derivative (PID) control and ordinary sliding mode control, the control accuracy of the proposed algorithm in terms of speed is, respectively, improved by 25% and 75%. The error frequency and fluctuation range of the proposed algorithm are reduced in the position error control, the error value tends to 0, and the operation trend tends to be consistent. Therefore, the control method can improve the control accuracy of the system and prove that it has strong immunity.

The algorithm can reduce the influence of external interference in the actual operating environment, realize efficient and stable tracking of trains, and ensure the safety of train control.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of job-hopping executives at their former and subsequent firms.

We conduct regression analyses using a sample of firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2010 to 2020 to examine whether CSR performance is similar from one firm to the next as executives switch jobs.

We find a positive relationship between the CSR performance of former and subsequent firms under job-hopping executives. This relationship is the strongest in the year of the job switch; it weakens in the second year and eventually disappears in the third year. In addition, we show that this relationship benefits different CSR stakeholder groups and is contingent on executive and subsequent firm attributes and job-hopping characteristics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that firms that hire a new chief executive officer from a firm with a strong track record in CSR, the new firm experiences a significant surge in CSR performance compared with firms that do not experience such a shock.

This study has implications for executive hiring decisions.

This study extends the understanding of CSR determinants through the lens of inter-organisational ties associated with job-hopping executives.

Global climate change speeds up ice melting and increases flooding incidents. China launched a sponge city policy as a holistic nature-based solution combined with urban planning and development to address flooding due to climate change. Using Weibo analytics, this paper aims to study public perceptions of sponge city.

This study collected 53,586 sponge city contents from Sina Weibo via Python. Various artificial intelligence tools, such as CX Data Science of Simply Sentiment, KH Coder and Tableau, were applied in the study.

76.8% of public opinion on sponge city were positive, confirming its positive contribution to flooding management and city branding. 17 out of 31 pilot sponge cities recorded the largest number of sponge cities related posts. Other cities with more Weibo posts suffered from rainwater and flooding hazards, such as Xi'an and Zhengzhou.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the public perception of sponge city in Sina Weibo.

Debt, dividend and investment policy constitutes a company's important financial decisions to determine firm performance. The research emphasizes on the problem of overinvestment, a phenomenon that worsens firm operation. Furthermore, it clarifies the moderation role of debt and dividend policy in mitigating the negative effect of overinvestment on firm performance in the case of Vietnamese listed companies.

The research uses all financial statement of non-financial Vietnamese listed companies on Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi Stock Exchange in the period of 2008–2018. The data are collected from Thomson Reuters Eikon. The final data set is comprised of 669 listed companies. The study measures overinvestment though investment demand function and HP filter. Moreover, the research employs the dynamic model, so it has to apply the SGMM method to deal with the problem of endogeneity caused by the lagged dependent variable.

The research finds that overinvestment is negatively associated with firm performance. Debt or dividend policy separately can moderate the negative effect of overinvestment on firm performance. However, when these two policies are combined, they lessen the positive interaction impact of each policy due to the substitution between debt and dividend policy.

The research may have two limitations. Firstly, the research measures overinvestment indirectly through investment demand function and HP filter. These two measures only help identify the sign that companies may have the problem of overinvestment because we cannot determine whether they overinvest or not in reality. Secondly, when using interaction variables, the problem of multicollinearity may be higher, and this may adjust the signs and significance level of variables in the models.

Practically, the research proposes three policy recommendations. Firstly, a company can exploit debt or dividend policy to limit excessive free cash flow in order to constrain the problem of overinvestment. Secondly, a company should enhance its corporate governance to resolve agency problems. Thirdly, the government should make the financial sector more transparent and effective to improve monitoring functions of various parties in the capital market.

Overinvestment sometimes can cause social issues. Overinvestment means that companies make ineffective investment. If they continue this situation over a long time, companies may have financial distress or even go bankruptcy. As a result, it will slow down economic growth and increase unemployment in the economy.

The research is supposed to make two great contributions to the existing empirical studies in two aspects. Firstly, it is the first attempt to take into consideration the interaction between overinvestment and financial policies. Secondly, it helps enhance the fundamental stance of the agency theory, which supports the interdependence of debt, dividend and investment policy.

This study investigates to what extent the values perceived by tourists throughout cultural tours impact their overall satisfaction levels and behavioral intentions related to the destination. This study further examines the moderating role of tour guide competency in the relationship patterns concerned.

Empirical data were collected via a survey from 420 foreign tourists who visited Cappadocia and participated in guided cultural tours. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

Study results reveal that the effects of quality, emotional, monetary and social value perceptions of tourists gained through cultural tour experiences on their overall satisfaction levels and the effects of overall satisfaction on recommendation and revisit intention are positive and significant. Furthermore, the moderating role of tour guide competency is significant and positive in the relationships between quality value and satisfaction and between satisfaction and revisit intention.

This study offers a critical analysis of discoveries concerning the pivotal role of tour guide competency within the cultural tour experience.

Straightness measurement of rail weld joint is of essential importance to railway maintenance. Due to the lack of efficient measurement equipment, there has been limited in-depth research on rail weld joint with a 5-m wavelength range, leaving a significant knowledge gap in this field.

In this study, the authors used the well-established inertial reference method (IR-method), and the state-of-the-art multi-point chord reference method (MCR-method). Two methods have been applied in different types of rail straightness measurement trollies, respectively. These instruments were tested in a high-speed rail section within a certain region of China. The test results were ultimately validated through using traditional straightedge and feeler gauge methods as reference data to evaluate the rail weld joint straightness within the 5-m wavelength range.

The research reveals that IR-method and MCR-method produce reasonably similar measurement results for wavelengths below 1 m. However, MCR-method outperforms IR-method in terms of accuracy for wavelengths exceeding 3 m. Furthermore, it was observed that IR-method, while operating at a slower speed, carries the risk of derailing and is incapable of detecting rail weld joints and low joints within the track.

The research compare two methods’ measurement effects in a longer wavelength range and demonstrate the superiority of MCR-method.

Drawing on the theory of memory-dominant logic, this study aims to examine how the substantive staging of the servicescape, experience co-creation, experiential satisfaction and experience intensification affect experience memorability and hedonic well-being in the case of unmanned smart hotels.

An online survey was used, with the target respondents being hotel guests people aged 18 years and older who had been recent guests of the FlyZoo Hotel in Hangzhou, China. Data were collected online from 429 guests who had stayed in the hotel between April and June 2023. Data analysis was undertaken using structural equation modelling.

The results suggest that all the proposed four constructs are positive drivers of a memorable unmanned smart hotel experience. The relationship between the memorability of the hotel experience and hedonic well-being was found to be significant and positive.

Unmanned smart hotels should ensure that all smart technologies function effectively and dependably and offer highly personalised services to guests, allowing them to co-create their experiences. This will lead to the guest receiving a satisfying and memorable experience. To enable experience co-creation using smart technologies, unmanned smart hotels could provide short instructional videos for guests, as well as work closely with manufacturers and suppliers to ensure that smart technology systems are regularly updated.

This study investigates the antecedents and outcomes of a novel phenomenon and extends the concept of memorable tourism experiences to the context of unmanned smart hotels.