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General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) was passed to protect data privacy. Though the GDPR intended to address issues related to data privacy in the EU, it created an extra-territorial effect through Articles 3, 45 and 46. Extra-territorial effect refers to the application or the effect of local laws and regulations in another country. Lawmakers around the globe passed or intensified their efforts to pass laws to have personal data privacy covered so that they meet the adequacy requirement under Articles 45–46 of GDPR while providing comprehensive legislation locally. This study aims to analyze the Malaysian and Saudi Arabian legislation on health data privacy and their adequacy in meeting GDPR data privacy protection requirements.

The research used a systematic literature review, legal content analysis and comparative analysis to critically analyze the health data protection in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia in comparison with GDPR and to see the adequacy of health data protection that could meet the requirement of EU data transfer requirement.

The finding suggested that the private sector is better regulated in Malaysia than the public sector. Saudi Arabia has some general laws to cover health data privacy in both public and private sector organizations until the newly passed data protection law is implemented in 2024. The finding also suggested that the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 of Malaysia and the Personal Data Protection Law 2022 of Saudi Arabia could be considered “adequate” under GDPR.

The research would be able to identify the key principles that could identify the adequacy of the laws about health data in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia as there is a dearth of literature in this area. This will help to propose suggestions to improve the laws concerning health data protection so that various stakeholders can benefit from it.

This study aims to examine the relationship between financial inclusion, CO₂ emissions and financial sustainability across 17 African countries.

Data were sourced from the World Development Indicators for the period 2004-2021. The study performs the principal component analysis, panel fixed effects model and quantile regression estimations to investigate the relationship between financial inclusion, CO₂ emissions and financial sustainability.

The study finds that an increase in automated teller machine (ATM) penetration rate, savings and credits increases CO₂ emissions. Findings also reveal that financial sustainability reduces financial inclusion, with significant negative effects on the conditional mean of CO₂ emissions and the conditional distribution of CO₂ emissions across quantiles.

This study is beneficial for policymakers, particularly in the age of digitalization and drive for low-carbon emissions, to develop green credits for energy players and investors to take up renewable and green energy projects characterized by high levels of carbon storage and carbon capture. Further, the banking sector’s credits and liquid assets should be used to finance alternative banking energy-related equipment and services, such as solar photovoltaic wireless ATMs, and fewer bank branches.

This study aims to provide insights into Airbnb’s exit from the China market, specifically from the perspective of platform competition.

Based on the understanding of the evolution and competition of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation market in China and the double-edged network effects, this viewpoint article provides an in-depth discussion on Airbnb’s withdrawal from the China market.

This viewpoint paper contends that Airbnb faced increasing challenges in establishing unique competitive advantages against local rivals, who demonstrate a capacity for innovation and maintaining loyal customers in adapting to the market evolution. Consequently, this may inhibit Airbnb from attracting the mainstream market and lead Airbnb into a negative spiral, exacerbated by indirect network effects.

This study offers insights into the failure of an internationalisation process, drawing from an analysis of the competitive environment and the competition strategies of P2P accommodation platforms in China. These findings have practical implications for the implementation of international business strategies in P2P accommodation.

本观点文章旨在基于平台竞争的视角对爱彼迎退出中国的现象进行阐释

基于对中国共享住宿/民宿市场的演变和竞争、双边网络效应的理解, 本文对爱彼迎退出中国进行了深入探讨。

本文提出, 爱彼迎在建立独特竞争优势以应对本地竞争对手方面面临日益严峻的挑战, 因为本地竞争者在适应市场变化方面展现出突出的创新和留客的能力。这可能会阻碍爱彼迎吸引主流市场, 并导致其跌入由间接网络效应加剧的恶性循环中。

基于对中国共享住宿平台的竞争环境和策略的分析, 本文洞悉了一个国际化失败的案例。本文的发现对于共享住宿的国际化策略实施具有实践意义。

Este artículo de opinión pretende aportar ideas sobre la salida de Airbnb del mercado chino, concretamente desde la perspectiva de la competencia entre plataformas.

Basándonos en la comprensión de la evolución y la competencia del mercado de alojamientos P2P en China, así como en los “efectos de red de doble filo”, este artículo de opinión ofrece una discusión en profundidad sobre la retirada de Airbnb del mercado chino.

Este documento sostiene que Airbnb enfrentó desafíos crecientes para establecer ventajas competitivas únicas frente a sus rivales locales, demostrando estos últimos una capacidad de innovación y del mantenimiento de la lealtad de sus clientes al adaptarse a la evolución del mercado. En consecuencia, esto puede inhibir a Airbnb para atraer al mercado principal y llevar a la empresa a una espiral negativa, exacerbada por efectos de red indirectos.

Este estudio ofrece una visión del fracaso de un proceso de internacionalización, a partir de un análisis del entorno competitivo y de las estrategias de competencia de las plataformas de alojamiento P2P en China. Estos resultados tienen implicaciones prácticas para la aplicación de estrategias empresariales internacionales en los alojamientos P2P.

Though the circular economy (CE) is a current buzzword, this still lacks a precise definition. In the absence of a clear notion of what that term includes, actions taken by the government and companies may not be well informed. In particular, those actions need to consider what people mean when people talk about the CE, either to refocus people's decisions or to undertake a more effective communications strategy.

Since people voice people's opinions mainly through social media nowadays, special attention has to be paid to discussions on those media. In this paper, the authors focus on Twitter as a popular social platform to deliver one's thoughts quickly and fast. The authors' research aim is to get the perceptions of people about the CE. After collecting more than 100,000 tweets over 16 weeks, the authors analyse those tweets to understand the public discussion about the CE. The authors conduct a frequency analysis of the most recurring words, including the words' association with other words in the same context and categorise them into a set of topics.

The authors show that the discussion focuses on the usage of resources and materials that heavily endanger sustainability, i.e. carbon and plastic and the harmful habit of wasting. On the other hand, the two most common good practices associated with the CE and sustainability emerge as recycling and reuse (the latter being mentioned far less). Also, the business side of the CE appears to be relevant.

The outcome of this analysis can drive suitable communication strategies by which companies and governments interested in the development of the CE can understand what is actually discussed on social media and call for the attention.

This paper addresses the lack of a standard definition the authors highlighted in the Introduction. The results confirm that people understand CE by looking both at CE's constituent activities and CE's expected consequences, namely the reduction of waste, the transition to a green economy free of plastic and other pollutants and the improvement of the world climate.

Feature selection is an essential step in data mining. The core of it is to analyze and quantize the relevancy and redundancy between the features and the classes. In CFR feature selection method, they rarely consider which feature to choose if two or more features have the same value using evaluation criterion. In order to address this problem, the standard deviation is employed to adjust the importance between relevancy and redundancy. Based on this idea, a novel feature selection method named as Feature Selection Based on Weighted Conditional Mutual Information (WCFR) is introduced. Experimental results on ten datasets show that our proposed method has higher classification accuracy.

Large-scale farm management in China has developed rapidly in recent years. Large-scale farmers face substantial operating risks, requiring extensive price risk management. However, the agricultural insurance and futures markets in China are incomplete. This study aims to analyze the price-risk-management behaviors of large-scale farmers under incomplete market conditions, with a focus on the interconnections between large scale farmers' subjective preferences (risk preferences, time preferences), liquidity constraints and their price risk management.

The authors construct an analysis framework to reveal the impact of large-scale farmers' risk preferences, time preferences and liquidity conditions on their price-risk-management behaviors under incomplete market conditions. Using data from field surveys and subjective preference experiments involving 409 large-scale grain farmers in China, an empirical analysis was conducted using the bivariate probit model.

The results show that risk-averse farmers will use risk transfer (such as contract farming) and risk diversification (such as multi-period sales) to avoid price risk. However, farmers subject to liquidity constraints and strong time preferences will not choose risk diversification, and the interaction between time preferences and liquidity constraints will strengthen this decision. The larger the farm-management scale, the greater the impact.

The authors focus on rapidly developed large-scale farm management in China. Appropriate price risk management is required by large-scale farmers due to their substantial operating risks. Considering the incomplete conditions of agricultural insurance and futures markets, the results of this study will help identify behavioral characteristics of large-scale farmers and optimize their price-risk-management strategies, further stabilizing large-scale farm management.

Green technology innovation is the organic combination of green development and innovation driven. It is also a powerful guarantee for shaping sustainable competitive advantages of manufacturing enterprises. To explore what kind of executive incentive contracts can truly stimulate green technology innovation, this study aims to distinguish the equity incentive and reputation incentive, upon their contractual elements characteristics and green governance effects, and then put forward suggestions for green technology innovation accordingly.

This study establishes an evaluation model and uses empirical methods to test. Concretely, using data from A-share listed manufacturing companies for the period from 2007 to 2020, this study compares and analyzes the impact of equity and reputation incentive on green technology innovation and explores the relationship between internal green business behavior and external green in depth.

This study finds that reputation incentives focus on long-term and non-utilitarian orientation, which can promote green technology innovation in enterprises. While equity incentives, linked to performance indicators, have a inhibitory effect on green technology innovation. Internal and external institutional factors such as energy conservation measures, the “three wastes” management system, and environmental recognition play the regulatory role in the relationship between incentive contracts and green technology innovation.

Those findings validate and expand the efficient contracting hypothesis and the rent extraction hypothesis from the perspective of green technology innovation and provide useful implications for the design of green governance systems in manufacturing enterprises.

During the construction process of the China Railway Track System (CRTS) I type filling layer, the nonwoven fabric bags have been used as grouting templates for cement asphalt (CA) emulsified mortar. The porous structure of nonwoven fabrics endowed the templates with breathability and water permeability. The standard requires that the volume expansion rate of CA mortar must be controlled within 1%–3%, which can generate expansion pressure to ensure that the cavities under track slabs are filled fully. However, the expansion pressure caused some of the water to seep out from the periphery of the filling bag, and it would affect the actual mix proportion of CA mortar. The differences in physical and mechanical properties between the CA mortar under track slabs and the CA mortar formed in the laboratory were studied in this paper. The relevant results could provide important methods for the research of filling layer materials for CRTS I type and other types of ballastless tracks in China.

During the inspection of filling layer, the samples of CA mortar from different working conditions and raw materials were taken by uncovering the track slabs and drilling cores. The physical and mechanical properties of CA mortar under the filling layer of the slab were systematically analyzed by testing the electrical flux, compressive strength and density of mortar in different parts of the filling layer.

In this paper, the electric flux, the physical properties and mechanical properties of different parts of CA mortar under the track slab were investigated. The results showed that the density, electric flux and compressive strength of CA mortar were affected by the composition of raw materials for dry powders and different parts of the filling layer. In addition, the electrical flux of CA mortar gradually decreased within 90 days’ age. The electrical flux of samples with the thickness of 54 mm was lower than 500 C. Therefore, the impermeability and durability of CA mortar could be improved by increasing the thickness of filling layer. Besides, the results showed that the compressive strength of CA mortar increased, while the density and electric flux decreased gradually, with the prolongation of hardening time.

During 90 days' age, the electrical flux of the CA mortar gradually decreased with the increase of specimen thickness and the electrical flux of the specimens with the thickness of 54 mm was lower than 500 C. The impermeability and durability of the CA mortar could be improved by increasing the thickness of filling layer. The proposed method can provide reference for the further development and improvement of CRTS I and CRTS II type ballastless track in China.

A country’s institutional environment influences every facet of its business. This paper aims to identify institutional factors (state ownership, government attention on employment and employees’ educational background) that affect the asymmetric cost behavior in China.

Using 2,570 listed firms’ data between 2002 and 2015, we use empirical models to explore the effects of state ownership, government attention on employment and employees’ educational background on the asymmetric cost behavior in China.

This study found that the asymmetric cost behavior of central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) is greater than local state-owned enterprises (LSOEs). Meanwhile, the empirical results show that government attention on employment is reflected in five-year government plans, and employees’ educational backgrounds are positively associated with asymmetric cost behavior.

This study contributes to the economic theory of sticky costs, institutional theory and asymmetric cost behavior literature by providing evidence that shows how government intervention and employee educational background limit the flexibility of corporate cost adjustments. Additionally, this study provides guidance to policymakers by showing how government long-term plans affect firm-level resource adjustment decisions.

This study develops a conceptualization of NPD (new product development) complexity and explores how inter-organizational collaboration and conflict influence NPD performance.

An empirical examination tests the proposed relationships in the context of Korean manufacturing firms, which currently engage in NPD projects with their key partners. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the hypotheses.

The findings suggest that a higher level of NPD complexity simultaneously calls for inter-organizational collaboration and conflict, and these two factors influence NPD performance in a conflicting manner: inter-organizational collaboration serves as a driver, and inter-organizational conflict acts as a barrier against NPD performance.

This study provides answers to the academic and practical calls by providing how NPD complexity should be managed in a way to increase NPD performance. This study provides insight into how manufacturing firms form inter-organizational collaboration practices and why they need to mitigate inter-organizational conflict.