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This study examines the effect of resources (e.g. tangible resources, human skills and intangible resources) that are utilized as a bundle of standard practices on sustainable net zero economy implementation and their further impact on financial, environmental and social performance among small- and medium-level enterprises in business markets. The moderating effect of big data analytical intelligence is also examined.

The samples were selected from the paper and chemical manufacturing industries of South Africa. The data analysis was performed using variance-based structural equation modeling.

The results show that tangible resources, human skills and intangible resources positively influence sustainable net zero economy adoption. However, intangible resources have a more substantial influence on sustainable net zero economy implementation. This shows that adopting a sustainable net zero economy depends more on a bundle of common practices, including sustainability culture, employee training and knowledge management, and managers must create the necessary action plans accordingly. In addition, sustainable net zero economy adoption positively influences financial performance, environmental performance and social performance. However, sustainable net zero economy adoption has a more substantial influence on social performance. Therefore, implementing a net zero economy will be more advantageous to society and to local communities.

To achieve a sustainable net zero economy, managers should recognize the significance of resource management. While managing tangible resources and human skills is crucial, intangible resources, such as culture and organizational learning, require more attention. Additionally, the ability of small- and medium-sized enterprises to explore, store, share and apply knowledge is crucial to achieving net zero. Therefore, managers should make use of Industry 4.0-based digital technologies for effective knowledge management. Moreover, net zero economy adoption can significantly enhance societal performance. Hence, while making budgeting decisions, managers must consider the potential of the firm's resources to improve social performance.

This study is the first to investigate the impact of human skills and tangible and intangible resources on the adoption of a sustainable net zero economy by companies, using empirical evidence. The research expands on the concept of the practice-based view (PBV) in the implementation of sustainable net zero economies by small- and medium-sized business-to-business enterprises.

Digital inclusive finance has a positive promotion effect on the development of the national economy, but little research exists on how digital inclusive finance affects high-quality consumption in economically developed regions. Therefore, to fill the gap, this paper aims to study the impact of digital inclusive finance on high-quality consumption development using the economically developed regions of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai as examples.

Firstly, the entropy method is used to construct the index of high-quality consumption among residents. Then, the municipal-level data of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai from 2011 to 2020 are used to test the impact. Subsequently, the mechanism of action test and heterogeneity analysis are conducted.

The results show that digital inclusive finance has a positive role in promoting the high-quality consumption of residents in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. At the same time, digital inclusive finance can promote high-quality consumption through its own digital payment and internet insurance channels. There is regional heterogeneity in the impact.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine whether and how digital inclusive finance affects high-quality consumption. The authors consider multiple dimensions, such as consumption level, consumption structure, consumption ability, consumption environment and consumption mode, to measure high-quality consumption. The findings provide valuable insights for policymakers, investors and regulators in planning regulations.

At present, the Chinese economy has entered the “new normal” phase with the transformation of development stages from the low-income to the middle-income ones. Accordingly, there appear a series of innovations in development theories. Innovations involve creative destructions. Therefore, innovative development theories at the present stage either deny the prevailing principles of development economics, or deny the theories that once effectively guided development at the low-income stage, or even sublate some of the development polices which were propelled and proved effective at the beginning of the reform and opening-up. The fundamental reason is that, as the development stages evolve, there occur new development tasks, new periodical characteristics and new laws of development. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Any development theory from abroad will find it difficult to correctly guide and clarify development problems in a socialist country, such as the huge population and the extreme imbalance between the urban and the rural and among regional developments.

In conclusion, China, as a large world economy, has made innovations in its economic development theory, which indicates that it intends to perfect itself rather than seek hegemony. As the world’s second largest economy, China should adapt to the transformation and further free people’s minds instead of adhering to the old patterns of thinking. It should think over the path of development for a great world economy from the historical starting point of a large world economy and find development strategies to transform itself from a large economy to a great economy, so as to realize the dream of the Chinese nation to build a powerful country.

Only political economy studies both the relations of production and the productive forces, and only a theory combining both can correctly guide China’s economic development, which especially needs to be promoted by taking advantage of socialist economic system. Therefore, the first and foremost principle for a socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics is to insist on liberating and developing productive forces.

Under the dual pressure of resources and environment, many countries have focused on the role of railways in promoting low-carbon development of integrated transportation and of even the whole society. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive study on methods to improve railway energy efficiency in other national railways and achievements made by China’s railways in the past practice, and then to propose ways in which in the future China’s railways could rationally select the path of improving energy efficiency regarding the needs of the nation's ever-shifting development and carry out the re-engineering for mechanism innovation in energy conservation and emission reduction process.

This paper first studies other national railways that have tried to promote the improvement of railway energy efficiency by the ways of technology, management and structural reconstruction to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Among them, the effect of structural energy conservation and emission reduction has become more prominent. It has become the main energy conservation and emission reduction measure adopted by foreign railway sectors. The practice of energy conservation and emission reduction of railways in various countries has tended to shift from a technical level to a structural one.

Key aspects in improving energy efficiency include re-optimization of energy structure, re-innovation of energy-saving technologies and optimization of transportation organization. Path selection includes continuing to promote electrified railway construction, increasing the use of new and renewable energy sources, and promoting the reform of railway transportation organizations.

This paper provides further challenges and research directions in the proposed area and has referential value for the methodologies, approaches for practice in a Chinese context. To achieve the expected goals, relevant supporting policies and measures need to be formulated, including actively guiding integrated transportation toward railway-oriented development, promoting innovation in energy-saving and emission reduction mechanisms and strengthening policy incentives, focusing on improving the energy efficiency of railways through market behavior. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to new phenomena in the railway industry for track and analysis.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been frequently proposed as a promising tool for learning. However, researchers have commonly implemented a plethora of design elements in these IVR systems, which makes the specific aspects of the system that are necessary to achieve beneficial outcomes unclear. Against this background, this study aims to combine the literature on presence with learning theories to propose that the ability of IVR to present 3D objects to users improves the presence of these objects in the virtual environment compared with 2D objects, leading to increased learning performance.

To test this study’s hypotheses, the authors conducted a 2 (training condition: approach vs avoid) x 2 (object presence: high vs low) between-subjects laboratory experiment that used IVR with 83 female participants.

The results support this study’s hypotheses and show that training with high object presence leads to greater reactions to cues (chocolate cravings) and improved health behaviour (chocolate consumption).

This study shows that increased object presence leads to unique experiences for users, which help reinforce training effects. Moreover, this work sheds further light on how immersive computer technologies can affect user attitudes and behaviour. Specifically, this work contributes to IVR research by showing that learning effects can be enhanced through an increased degree of object presence.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of countries has some of the highest electricity consumptions and carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the world. This poses a direct challenge to the GCC government’s ability to meet their CO₂ reduction targets. In this review paper the current household electricity consumption situation in the GCC is reviewed.

Three scenarios for reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions are proposed and evaluated using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) as well as the political, economic, social, technical, legal and environmental (PESTLE) frameworks.

The first scenario found that using solar Photovoltaic (PV) or hybrid solar PV and wind system to power household lighting could save significant amounts of energy, based on lighting making up between 8% to 30% of electricity consumption in GCC households. The second scenario considers replacement of conventional appliances with energy-efficient ones that use around 20% less energy. The third scenario looks at influencing consumer behavior towards sustainable energy consumption.

Pilot trials of these scenarios are recommended for a number of households. Then the results and feedback could be used to launch the schemes GCC-wide.

The proposed scenarios are designed to encourage responsible electricity consumption and production within households (SDG12).

All three proposals are found viable for policymakers to implement. However, to ensure successful implementation GCC Governments are recommended to review all the opportunities and challenges associated with these schemes as laid out in this paper.

This study aims to analyse the consumption inequality between farm and non-farm households in rural Vietnam, using the data from the 2016 Vietnam household living standards survey.

The present paper applies the “recentered influence functions (RIF)” in “Oaxaca-Blinder (OB)” type decomposition as proposed by Firpo et al. (2018) to allow for the flexible distribution of the outcome variables and the non-randomness of non-farm employment that violates the classical linearity assumption.

Non-farm households have significantly higher per capita consumption expenditure than farm households for the entire distribution. The gap in expenditure is large at low percentiles and narrowing with higher percentiles. At 10th percentile, the gap is estimated at 27.1%, but it is decreasing to 11.1% at 90th percentile. Most of the gaps are explained by the differences in the observed characteristics between farm and non-farm households such as ethnicity, education, income, internal transmittances and household composition. Non-farm households are endowed with more productive factors that result in higher per capita consumption expenditure.

Gaps in ethnicity and education are found to be key predictors of the inequality in consumption expenditures between farm and non-farm households, then, government policies that are aimed at increasing access to non-farm employment and education for ethnic minorities and for rural poor households are pathways to improve rural household welfare and hence reduce inequality.

The goal of this study is to understand if ethnocentrism exists at the sub-regional level among honey consumers living in the same production area as a protected designation of origin (PDO). Moreover, this analysis explores if ethnocentrism is influenced by individual economic conditions, among other socio-demographic characteristics.

A sample of 725 consumers was collected through the use of a questionnaire that was circulated in the province of Varese, one of the few honey PDO areas in Italy. The authors performed a principal component analysis and a two-step cluster analysis to identify different PDO honey consumer segments, focusing on their interest for PDO attributes.

The authors identified four consumer segments, depending on socio-demographic, consumption habits, frequencies, preferred attributes and preferences for the PDO product. One cluster exhibited strong preferences for the PDO honey, in the spirit of ethnocentrism, and was characterised by low-income levels; ethnocentric preferences were also observed in another cluster that had a different socio-economic profile.

Honey is a niche product and not universally diffused among consumers: further analyses should investigate sub-national ethnocentrism for more universal food products. Yet, through the inspection of the different profiles found, it was possible to devise marketing strategies to boost PDO honey purchasing and to bring consumers closer to PDO products.

This analysis considers ethnocentrism as a segmentation criterion for PDO honey consumers that live in the very same PDO honey production area and enriches the existing literature on the relationship between ethnocentrism and individual economic status.