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This editorial establishes the broader context for debating the great global convergence of world economic systems and the role of Belt and Road Initiative in shaping the reconfiguration of key global transport nodes and trade corridors. The interwoven relationships between various aspects of technological transformation, supply chain integration and demographic restructuring in shaping the global value chain and integrated production networks are theoretically and empirically probed in this special issue. The importance of technological innovation, and structural reforms are highlighted to help businesses to sustainably manage the growing supply chain complexity and the likely disruptions during the fourth industrial revolution.

This paper aims to examine the association between green innovation and the cost of equity in China. This study relies on the investors’ base perspective and shareholders’ perceived risk perspective to investigate the relation between green innovation and the cost of equity in China.

The paper uses firm-fixed effect regression for a sample of Chinese public companies for the period 2008–2018.

The authors find a negative relationship between green innovation and the cost of equity capital. This negative association is found to be more pronounced for less financially constrained firms, during periods of high economic policy uncertainty, and for firms with a strong internal control environment. Finally, the paper shows that the negative association became more pronounced after the passage of the Environmental Protection Law of China in 2012. The results remain robust to possible endogeneity concerns.

This study contributes to the green innovation literature by documenting that shareholders favorably view firms implementing green innovation policies. The study also has policy implications for Chinese regulators in improving the green credit policy.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implementation of mobile learning in a nursing course at The Open University of Hong Kong, and identify the potentials of, and constraints on, introducing mobile technologies in the instructional design of nursing education. The paper also considers the pedagogical implications of the expansion of mobile learning in the field of nursing.

The research adopts a qualitative approach to obtain the students’ and teacher’s experiences, opinions, and expectations on mobile learning. Two focus groups with 20 student participants were conducted and an in-depth interview with the course teacher was arranged. The Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile Education (FRAME) model was used as the research framework to support data collection and analysis.

The aspects of device usability, interaction learning, and social technology as suggested in the FRAME model were partly fulfilled in the study. Mobile technology enhanced the portability and accessibility of learning information, and networking tools facilitated interaction among students and between students and the teacher. However, the readability of text was limited due to constraints on the user interface and screen size, and concerns over the reliability of learning content were also raised, given the abundance of unfiltered online information. The difficulty in updating the content of multimedia materials and sourcing videos of an appropriate level, together with the problem of device networking, also limited the usefulness of mobile learning. Attention should also be paid to the perceptual differences between students and the teacher on the nature and functions of mobile learning.

This empirical study provides a detailed evaluation of the delivery of mobile learning in a nursing course. The findings reveal the strengths and limitations of using mobile technologies to support the nursing education.

This paper presents a generic simulation model to determine the equipment mix (quay, yard and intra-terminal transfer) for a Container Terminal Logistics Operations System (CTLOS). The simulation model for the CTLOS, a typical type of discrete event dynamic system (DEDS), consists of three sub-models: ship queue, loading-unloading operations and yard-gate operations. The simulation model is empirically applied to phase 1 of the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai. This study considers different scenarios in terms of container throughput levels, equipment utilization rates, and operational bottlenecks, and presents a sensitivity analysis to evaluate and choose reasonable equipment ratio ranges under different operational conditions.

Perceived benefits of building information modelling (BIM) have been discussed for some time, but cost–benefit benchmarking has been inconsistent. The purpose of this paper is to investigate BIM feasibility and evaluate investment worth to elucidate and develop the current understanding of BIM merit. The aim of the study is to propose a research agenda towards a more holistic perspective of BIM use incorporating quantifying investment return.

An in-depth examination of research patterns has been conducted to identify challenges in the assessment of the investment value and return on investment (ROI) for BIM in the construction industry. A total of 75 research articles were considered for the final literature review. An evaluation of the literature is conducted using a combination of bibliometric analysis and systematic reviews.

This study, which analysed 75 articles, unveils key findings in quantifying BIM benefits, primarily through ROI calculation. Two major research gaps are identified: the absence of a standardized BIM ROI method and insufficient exploration of intangible benefits. Research focus varies across phases, emphasizing design and construction integration and exploring post-construction phases. The study categorizes quantifiable factors, including productivity, changes and rework reduction, requests for information reduction, schedule efficiency, safety, environmental sustainability and operations and facility management. These findings offer vital insights for researchers and practitioners, enhancing understanding of ’BIM’s financial benefits and signalling areas for further exploration in construction.

The ’study’s outcomes offer the latest insights for researchers and practitioners to create effective approaches for quantifying ’BIM’s financial benefits. Additionally, the proposed research agenda aims to improve the current limited understanding of BIM feasibility and investment worth evaluation. Results of the study could assist practitioners in overcoming limitations associated with BIM investment and economic evaluations in the construction industry.

By examining the link between the two types of FDI and intrastate conflict from 1990 to 2015 in 138 countries, this paper intends to test the peace-through-FDI thesis.

To empirically test the hypotheses, this study examines county-year observations from 1990 to 2015 for 138 countries. An instrumental variable method is utilized to this end.

This paper shows that, while greenfield FDI generates pacifying effects on intrastate conflict, M&A investment is likely to promote the onset of intrastate conflict.

Despite the extensive literature on FDI and the onset of intrastate conflict, many have approached FDI as a singular phenomenon, and have not broken it down into its constituent parts of greenfield and brownfield investment types. Theorizing that this practice had oversimplified and blurred the relationship of FDI on intrastate conflict onset, the authors pursued the collection of novel data in order to more completely distinguish between the two types of FDI. With this novel approach dividing FDI into its component parts, the authors break open the black box of FDI to empirically find out the extent of its diverse influence on the onset of intrastate conflict.

This paper aims to present a requirements analysis for the processing of water-based electrode dispersions in inkjet printing.

A detailed examination of the components and the associated properties of the electrode dispersions has been carried out. The requirements of the printing process and the resulting performance characteristics of the electrode dispersions were analyzed in a top–down approach. The product and process side were compared, and the target specifications of the dispersion components were derived.

Target ranges have been identified for the main component properties, balancing the partly conflicting goals between the product and the process requirements.

The findings are expected to assist with the formulation of electrode dispersions as printing inks.

Little knowledge is available regarding the particular requirements arising from the systematic qualification of aqueous electrode dispersions for inkjet printing. This paper addresses these requirements, covering both product and process specifications.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of the metaphor of verticality on how individuals assess prices, having regulatory focus as a moderator of this relationship.

Two experiments were conducted with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design (metaphor of verticality: physically higher vs physically lower × regulatory focus: promotion vs prevention). The second study performed moderated mediation by incorporating the self-esteem variable.

The results show that the treatment group consisting of prevention-focused individuals who consider themselves physically higher assessed prices according to what was proposed for the study compared to the group consisting of promotion-focused individuals who consider themselves physically lower. Participants in Treatment Group 1 attributed the lowest prices to products, demanded more significant discounts to go to another store searching for a product and considered the prices more unfair.

The primary contribution of this study is to reveal that the position of one's body on the vertical axis influences their thoughts and, therefore, their decision-making in the scope of products and services prices. Moreover, regulatory focus can attenuate such effects.

The quick growth of web-based and mobile e-learning applications such as massive open online courses have created a large volume of online learning resources. Confronting such a large amount of learning data, it is important to develop effective clustering approaches for user group modeling and intelligent tutoring. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, a minimum spanning tree based approach is proposed for clustering of online learning resources. The novel clustering approach has two main stages, namely, elimination stage and construction stage. During the elimination stage, the Euclidean distance is adopted as a metrics formula to measure density of learning resources. Resources with quite low densities are identified as outliers and therefore removed. During the construction stage, a minimum spanning tree is built by initializing the centroids according to the degree of freedom of the resources. Online learning resources are subsequently partitioned into clusters by exploiting the structure of minimum spanning tree.

Conventional clustering algorithms have a number of shortcomings such that they cannot handle online learning resources effectively. On the one hand, extant partitional clustering methods use a randomly assigned centroid for each cluster, which usually cause the problem of ineffective clustering results. On the other hand, classical density-based clustering methods are very computationally expensive and time-consuming. Experimental results indicate that the algorithm proposed outperforms the traditional clustering algorithms for online learning resources.

The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms has been validated by using several data sets. Moreover, the proposed clustering algorithm has great potential in e-learning applications. It has been demonstrated how the novel technique can be integrated in various e-learning systems. For example, the clustering technique can classify learners into groups so that homogeneous grouping can improve the effectiveness of learning. Moreover, clustering of online learning resources is valuable to decision making in terms of tutorial strategies and instructional design for intelligent tutoring. Lastly, a number of directions for future research have been identified in the study.