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This study investigated the role of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, by concentrating on the obstacles that hinder effective governance of community infrastructure planning.

The qualitative approach via case study design was adopted in this study. The Song District, located in the State of Sarawak, Malaysia, was selected as the case study area. Semi-structured interview sessions were conducted with 21 respondents who belonged to the government agencies involved in rural community infrastructure planning and village community representatives to capture their views on community infrastructure development planning in the selected district. The gathered responses were analysed thematically and the outcomes are discussed.

The findings revealed that although the development of community infrastructure in Song District has progressed and has exerted transformative impacts on rural livelihood, several challenges were identified in the delivery of community infrastructure. The four main themes of challenges that emerged from the data were location factors, financial resources, cooperation and collaboration of stakeholders, as well as community involvement. The outcomes disclosed that, in terms of governance, the institutional roles of the community, stakeholders and government agencies must be integrated throughout the rural community infrastructure planning process to resolve the emerging challenges effectively so that the demands of the rural community are met meritoriously.

An effective and efficient community infrastructure planning approach ascertains that the community infrastructure development gaps in rural areas are bridged and brings fruition to the rural communities for their livelihood transformation.

This paper delineates a view on the governance aspect of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, that is largely untapped. The study outcomes may facilitate practitioners and academics to move forward and recommend improvements in the approach to rural community infrastructure planning.

Mega-infrastructure development plans pave the way for policies to upgrade the infrastructure, environmental management and different aspects of locals’ well-being. These developmental dynamics can positively affect rural tourism including heritage sites destinations. The quality of life of local people can be linked to this positive developmental change through long-term and sustainable economic revitalization projects. In terms of this process, developing large-scale infrastructure and incorporating tourism sustainability can improve the quality of life-related to different dimensions that are critical to the community's well-being. Therefore, researchers have attempted to address this issue.

Data were collected between September and October 2020. The study sample size was the residents of Zhabagly village, including Zhabagaly, Abaiyl and 115 Railway settlements. Moreover, the residents were older than 18 years. A systematic random sampling technique was utilised to reach the targeted sample size and the researchers received 243 responses from the locals. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for analysis.

The findings from the structural equation modelling suggest that sustainable tourism increases due to the positive effect of mega-infrastructure development and positively impacts the locals' quality of life. Notably, no direct effect of mega-infrastructure development on quality of life reveals the pivotal role of sustainable tourism. Therefore, during the COVID-19 period, the dimensions of sustainable tourism – economic, market, socio-cultural and environmental – played a role in securing the positive impact of mega-infrastructure development on the locals’ quality of life.

This research highlighted the fact that when infrastructure projects are implemented to their full potential, they will generate sustainable tourism activities, provide eco-adventure activities, relax, treat signatories and boost the economy of all stakeholders. The study used AMOS to test the hypotheses. Qualitative research methods, including interviews with citizens, government officials and tourism managers, require further study.

The infrastructural development on a mega-scale means building an upscaling tourism ecosystem. This ecosystem is marked by the availability of drinking water, waste and energy management facilities that support the elevation of living material, community, health, safety and emotional well-being. It reflects the policy-level implications for future Belt and Road initiatives (BRIs). The tourism industry's resilience during COVID-19 has practical lessons for other industries.

Large-scale infrastructure construction must create favourable conditions for the rapid development of tourism. The availability of clean water, waste and energy management facilities contributes to the food production, social cohesion, physical and mental health and general well-being of the ecosystem. This is one of the few studies that used sustainable tourism as a mediator between the impact of large infrastructure projects and their impact on the quality of life of locals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aksu-Zhabagly, a World Heritage Site in Kazakhstan, was the site of this field study.

Infrastructure financialization plays a critical role in infrastructure development and urban growth around the world. However, on the one hand, the existing research on the infrastructure financialization focuses on qualitative and lacks quantitative country-specific studies. On the other hand, the spatial heterogeneity and influencing factors of infrastructure financialization are ignored. This study takes China as a typical case to identify and analyze the spatial characteristics, development process and impact factors of infrastructure financialization.

To assess the development and characteristics of infrastructure financialization in China, this study constructs an evaluation index of infrastructure financialization based on the infrastructure financialization ratio (IFR). This study then analyzes the evolution process and spatial pattern of China's infrastructure financialization through the spatial analysis method. Furthermore, this study identifies and quantitatively analyzes the influencing factors of infrastructure financialization based on the spatial Dubin model. Finally, this study offers a policy suggestion as a governance response.

The results demonstrate that infrastructure financialization effectively promotes the development of infrastructure in China. Second, there are significant spatial differences in China’s infrastructure financialization. Third, many factors affect infrastructure financialization, with government participation having the greatest impact. In addition, over-financialization of infrastructure has the potential to lead to government debt risks, which is a critical challenge the Chinese Government must address. Finally, this study suggests that infrastructure financialization requires more detailed, tailored,and place-specific policy interventions by the government.

This study not only contributes to enriching the knowledge body of global financialization theory but also helps optimize infrastructure investment and financing policies in China and provides peer reference for other developing countries.

As the foundation of social and economic development, infrastructure development projects are characterized by large initial investment, high technical requirements and thus generally delivered through complex contractor–subcontractor collaboration chains. This study aims to characterize the complexity of collaborative networks between contractors and subcontractors for infrastructure development through comparing the structural characteristics and the formation mechanisms of contractor–subcontractor collaborative networks for the following two different types of infrastructure: public works (PWCN) owned and operated by government agencies, and public utilities (PUCN) owned and operated by nongovernment agencies.

Based on the method of stochastic actor-oriented models and the longitudinal dataset of National Quality Award Projects in China during 2001–2020, this study compares how the structural characteristics of project-based collaborative networks between contractors and subcontractors for the two types of projects are different and how related micro-mechanisms, including both structure-based endogenous network effects and attribute-based exogenous homophily effects (institutional, organizational and geographical homophily), collectively underpin the formation of the networks.

The empirical results provide evidence that while the two networks are both characterized by relatively low levels of network density, PWCN is more globally connected around a minority of superconnected contractors as compared with PUCN. The results further reveal that compared with PUCN, the formation of PWCN is more significantly related to the structure-based anti in-isolates effect, suggesting that PWCN is more open for new entrant subcontractors. With regard to the attribute-based homophily effects, the results provide evidence that while both significantly and positively related to the effects of organizational (same company group) and geographical homophily (same location), the formation of PWCN and PUCN is oppositely driven by the institutional homophily effect (same ownership type).

As an exploratory effort of using network perspective to investigate the formation mechanisms of contractor–subcontractor relationships in the infrastructure development domain, this study contributes to a network and self-organizing system view of how contractors select subcontractors in different types of infrastructure projects. The study also provides insights into how contractor–subcontractor collaborative relationships can be better manipulated to promote the development of complex infrastructure in different contexts.

Health tourism is a relatively new branch of international tourism that has developed more rapidly than other tourism sectors in recent years. This study aimed to investigate the effect of government supports on health tourism development by considering the mediating role of internal and external infrastructures.

The study population consisted of all experts of two hospitals in Iran, which are frequently visited by foreign tourists (N = 151). A questionnaire, developed by combining standard and researcher-made questionnaires, was used to collect the data. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model was developed in SmartPLS 3 to test the hypotheses.

The main hypothesis test results indicated that government supports positively affect the development of health tourism. Internal and external infrastructures were also found to mediate the relationship between government supports and health tourism development. In addition, the sub-hypothesis test results showed that internal and external infrastructures are positively affected by government supports, which puts forth the development of health tourism. As the results explained, the most important aspects of internal infrastructures affected by government support were health service quality, cost of health services and applying advanced medical technologies, respectively. Also, different aspects of external infrastructures affected by government supports are as follows: economic, infrastructures and cultural factors.

This study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of both medical and non-medical factors on health tourism and signifies the crucial role of governments in the development of health tourism.

Public higher education institutions (HEIs) infrastructure funding is challenging in many developing countries. Encouraging private investment in HEIs infrastructure via a developed expanded corporate social responsibility (ECSR) may improve physical facilities. ECSR is a form of infrastructure tax relief providing physical facilities for HEIs. Academic literature is scarce concerning how ECSR can improve Nigeria’s public HEIs infrastructure and achieve education infrastructure related to Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4). Therefore, this study aims to proffer measures to improve public HEIs infrastructure and achieve sustainable development connected to Goal 4 focussing on infrastructure via a developed framework.

This is an expansion of an ongoing study, and data were collated via virtual interviews across the six geo-political zones in Nigeria. The analysed data were presented in a thematic pattern.

A total of 18 measures (sub-variables) emerged and were re-grouped into six variables. This includes institutionalising ECSR, HEIs infrastructure via ECSR awareness, HEIs infrastructure incentives, national and state action plans on HEIs infrastructure, a legal framework for HEIs infrastructure and key stakeholders’ participation. Also, the study used the generated six main variables to develop the improved public HEIs infrastructure via ECSR in developing countries, using Nigeria as a case study. This can enhance achieving infrastructure associated with SDG 4 (quality education) and targets.

This study intends to develop the philosophy (ECSR) with an implementable framework to encourage the private sector further to expand their CSR in the infrastructure development to the educational sector, especially in developing countries higher institutions, using Nigeria as a case study.

The current booming development of smart cities poses new requirements and challenges for their internal infrastructure development. This article aims to explore the questions of: What is the level of social sustainability of smart city infrastructure today? and What are the core contents and paths to improve this level?

With the theme of public participation in the social sustainability evaluation of smart city infrastructure in the context of big data, this study mainly makes a systematic literature review of the Web of Science's Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. After collection and screening, 199 documents were finally obtained.

It is found that the level of social sustainability of smart city infrastructure is still low, and public participation can provide solutions to the difficulties and challenges involved in its development, while big data technology can broaden the channels for public participation and promote the development of smart city-related components in the process, including smart city infrastructure.

This article summarizes the internal mechanisms of smart cities at the theoretical level and analyzes the social sustainable development of smart city infrastructure. In practice, the shortcomings in this field are identified and suggestions are provided on how to carry out digital public participation, which has practical reference value.

In successfully meeting city and metropolitan growth, sustainable development is compulsory. Sustainability is a must-focus for any project, particularly for large and mega rail infrastructure. This paper aims to investigate to what degree social, environmental and economic factors influence the government when planning sustainable rail infrastructure projects. To respond to such a matter, this paper focuses on two Australian mega-rail projects: the South West Rail Link (SWRL) and the Mernda Rail Extension (MRE).

As the basis of an experimental evaluation framework strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) and factor analysis were used. These two methods were specifically selected as comparative tools for SWRL and SWRL projects, to measure their overall sustainability effect.

Using factor analysis, in the MRE, the factors of network capacity, accessibility, employment and urban planning were seen frequently throughout the case study. However, politics and economic growth had lower frequencies throughout this case study. This difference between the high-weighted factors is likely a key element that determined the SWRL to be more sustainable than the MRE. The SWOT analysis showed the strengths the MRE had over the SWRL such as resource use and waste management, and natural habitat preservation. These two analyses have shown that overall, calculating the sustainability levels of a project can be subjective, based on the conditions surrounding various analysis techniques.

This paper first introduces SWRL and MRE projects followed by a discussion about their overall sustainable development. Both projects go beyond the traditional megaprojects' goal of improving economic growth by developing and enhancing infrastructure. Globally, for such projects, sustainability measures are now considered alongside the goal of economic growth. Second, SWOT and factor analysis are undertaken to further evaluate the complexity of such projects. This includes their overall sustainable development vision alignment with environmental, economic and social factors.

The purpose of this study is to explore how digital construction policy (DCP) drives enterprise green innovation (EGI) from an information processing theory (IPT) perspective, including the mediating mechanisms of market information accessibility and operational risk, the moderating role of intellectual property protection (IPP) and product market competition (PMC) and the heterogeneous effects of ownership, Internet development and managerial ability.

Based on the matched panel data of A-share listed enterprises from 2011 to 2019 and the Broadband China policy as a quasinatural experiment, this study investigates the impact of DCP on EGI by constructing a multi-time point difference-indifferences (DID) model.

Digital construction policies can significantly promote EGI. DCP works in two fundamental ways, namely by increasing market information accessibility and reducing operational risk. IPP and PMC significantly increased the contribution of digital construction policies to EGI. Heterogeneity analysis found that digital technology has a stronger promotion effect for SOEs, high-managerial-ability enterprises and enterprises in regions with low Internet development levels.

The study provides new insights about the antecedents of EGI from a DCP perspective. It also enlightens emerging economies to actualize green innovation under the digital wave.

From the perspective of IPT, this study explains the mechanism of DCP-driven EGI. It enhances understanding of the relationship between DCP and EGI.

The aging population, a higher proportion of older adults (aged 65+), is considered a global and severe problem, while the information systems (IS) literature on detecting the relationship between the aging population and the development of electronic commerce (e-commerce) is limited and insufficient. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to examine whether an aging population can moderate the effect of infrastructure constructions on e-commerce sales and whether an aging population can affect e-commerce sales.

To investigate the relationship between the aging population and e-commerce sales, this study proposes two potential influential mechanisms: moderating the effects of infrastructure development on e-commerce sales and direct influence. Subsequently, a sample of 31 Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2019 is utilized to conduct regression analyses in order to examine these hypotheses.

The findings suggest that the development of urban transportation infrastructure and network constructions can significantly contribute to the enhancement of e-commerce sales, and the influence cannot be affected by aging population. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that an aging population can have a positive effect on e-commerce sales.

The findings can inform future infrastructure constructions by assessing the potential of infrastructure projects to boost e-commerce sales and examining whether this effect varies in an aging population context.

The findings substantiate the pivotal role of older adults in the e-commerce industry. Moreover, the obtained results establish a positive relationship between an aging population and e-commerce sales, thereby offering diverse perspectives on existing theories.