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Virtual reality (VR) technologies have expanded their application domains towards education with pedagogical benefits including fully immersive learning environment and in-depth user engagement through scenario-based virtual simulations. Motion sickness (MS), however, has become one of the long-standing key challenges of the VR utilisation, even in gaming industries. Thus, this paper aims to present a preliminary study on understanding the VR MS, referred as cybersickness, in the teaching and learning (T&L) context at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

A VR-based virtual classroom content was developed and tested for 60 undergraduate students having equal access to the same VR equipment. A two-step data collection, comprising qualitative and quantitative measures, was conducted for the participants. The aspects of how gender influences the cybersickness severity and how academic background affects the learning experience were investigated and analysed using analysis of variance F-test statistical approach.

The results demonstrated approximately 47% of the participants had experienced cybersickness, where 64% of them were females. With confidence level of 95% (a = 5%), the obtained p-value and F-statistical value for the respective gender and study discipline categories against the cybersickness symptoms confirmed the significance level between the two compared variables. Moreover, it is worth highlighting that the virtual movement speed, perspective angle and visual properties of the virtual environment were selected as the top three factors that caused the cybersickness.

The study is hoped to provide valuable pointers to current and future VR developers in minimising the cybersickness symptoms that would enable an effective T&L environment in higher education.

The development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the construction sector is slow, thereby leaving many opportunities for further development. To enable operators in the construction sector to effectively capitalise on the opportunities to promote the development of CSR in the sector, this study employs the practice viewpoint to take the stock of CSR activities in the sector. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the state of CSR practice in the construction sector. The study also draws from the development of CSR in the manufacturing, mining and banking sectors to inform the state of CSR practice in the construction sector.

This study carries out a systematic literature review of 56 journal publications that were published between the year 2000 and 2016. The deductive coding of the publications was done to identify four themes of CSR research that constitute the practice view of the state of CSR in the construction sector.

The implementation of CSR is the major emphasis in the state of CSR practice in the construction sector. The implementation of CSR is wrapped in the perception of operators about CSR potentials, dimensions of CSR implemented, strategies for implementation and the effects of the implemented CSR practices on performance. The sector characteristics and organisational structure are attributes for comparing the CSR practices between the construction sector and the manufacturing, mining and banking sectors.

This study provides a researchers’ view of the state of CSR in the construction sector. Additionally, the study draws from the development of CSR in the manufacturing, mining and banking sectors to inform the state of CSR practice in the construction sector.

The purpose of this paper is to critically assesses the major contributions to the academic literature on China’s increased focus on Africa, from 2001 to 2011. It discusses the key trends concerning China’s presence in Africa and draws conclusions on the significance of the studies by emphasizing and contrasting the prevailing positions.

Based on a qualitative approach using an integrative and comprehensive literature review, the authors performed a content analysis of high-impact, peer-reviewed papers.

The paper questions and repositions some of the existing controversies. The results from existing studies remain questionable, requiring further clarification and more theoretical backing. It, moreover, highlights the notion that behind the explicit neutrality views of China’s presence in Africa, implicit assumptions may exist. These are often the differences in narratives conveyed by Western and Southern stakeholders.

Most of the conclusions drawn from this paper need to be re-explored and supported by additional research. This could be done by widening the scope of the analysis. Studies need to provide more empirical support for their assertions through quantitative data and evidence-based qualitative analyses

all within a framework that considers more cultural, social and historical dimensions. The paper also suggests that an institutionally based view appears most relevant in better explaining China in Africa.

This paper reviews a decade of research on China in Africa and presents a snapshot of the current state of knowledge. It also raises concerns to be analyzed by future research and proposes new avenues for better understanding China’s presence in Africa.

Climate change adaptation (CCA) has emerged as a significant new theme in development and many large development agencies, including bilateral, multilateral or non‐government, are embarking on new programs focusing on CCA. However, the development sector has witnessed the rise and fall of many new development themes over the past 60 years around which funding has coalesced, only to see them fade away. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the new concept of CCA is being conceptualised and utilised by aid workers in order to shed light on challenges and opportunities for effective CCA and development practices.

This paper has emerged from a broader study that involved 35 semi‐structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation with various stakeholders engaged in development and CCA. The research sought to understand how development actors defined CCA, what activities they associated with it, and how they were using the concept in their work.

This paper finds that there is a range of different, and at points contradictory, conceptualisations of CCA within the field of development. CCA discourses are being used in at least two different ways: to enable the re‐legitimisation and repetition of old development practices as well as to open a space for new practices and imagining of alternatives.

This paper offers a unique perspective of how a set of development actors are conceptualising and utilising the concept of climate change adaptation in their work. This timely contribution builds on a long history of critical development theory, which has interrogated development discourses, by investigating original data that explores this increasingly prominent theme in aid and development.

This study aims to understand better how business strategies impact a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR).

In this research, two categories of business strategy are proposed, and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research model using a sample of 150 valid surveys data from the Chinese manufacturing firms industry in Africa.

This study indicates business strategy in terms of real support and development approach plan in the Chinese manufacturing industry has a crucial influence on CSR effectiveness. Business strategy leads to effective CSR practices by adding value to firm products, services, marketing strategies and technological investment.

Companies can use a support strategy for effective CSR to improve corporate social performance. The study expands upon previous insights into corporate leaders enhancing their CSR strategy because it may successfully contribute to environmental preservation.

This research mobilized and found academic gaps in business strategy regarding real support and development approach; it is necessary to combine the impacts of business strategy at multiple levels of analysis to explain the expansion of CSR to integrate the stakeholder theory.

This study offers a deeper perspective and provides empirical evidence of a better understanding of CSR effectiveness by emphasizing the role of business strategy. Effective CSR implementation requires integrating the influences of company strategy and real support at multiple levels of analysis to explain CSR dispersion.

This purpose of this paper is to explore China’s choice to focus early Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Africa outreach on Eastern Africa. The BRI specifically seeks to achieve ten economic and policy objectives, as outlined in the two launch speeches of 2013. In terms of realising these, the economic development and digitisation levels, that progress of the demographic transition, and the important security context of the sub-region, logically make East Africa relatively important to BRI in continental context. Kenya specifically is important in being an African frontier therein, and, also, because it shares a few important borders with landlocked countries, including Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda, alongside a strategic coast and ports. From this lens, as well the fact that in the Ming Dynasty Chinese fleets reached what is modern-day Kenya, China’s early BRI outreach to Africa having had a historical precedent in initially focusing on Eastern Africa, might be usefully understood.

To realise that aim a comprehensive survey of related literature and policy documents, in Chinese, English and Swahili, was undertaken and relevant data compiled and analysed.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, first, this paper is the first to argue that the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa may build on abstract long-run logic in terms of economics, demographic change and security. This provides a contrary perspective to the pre-existing established “debt trap diplomacy” and no consistent logic narratives. Second, it is the first to offer a synthesised analysis of the BRI in Africa, East Africa specifically, looking across economic, demographic and security angles.

The paper is a synthesis of development and regional economics literature that forges some prospective rationales only. It is not an empirical research paper drawing very specific and definitive conclusions.

Amid widespread geo-economic tensions and uncertainty, around the Belt and Road Initiative in particular, this paper offers a new economic development-oriented logic for the choice of an important node of the China's Belt and Road Initiative, that of East Africa, Kenya especially. This may impact existing related narratives and policy responses.

Equivalently to the above this may then have an impact on the ground in East Africa and beyond.

The first such or even close to synthesis.

This paper aims to examine changes of non-financial voluntary reporting practices over time in response to episodes of employee-related distress. It investigates employee-related disclosures by the four largest electronic manufacturing services firms in China between 2008 and 2013 during a series of employment-related incidents, to investigate how the firms re-legitimate their reputation in response to the media coverage on those incidents.

A series of employee-related incidents that occurred in 2010-2012 is selected as the focus of this study, with total coverage of employee-related disclosures between 2008 and 2013. These incidents are directly linked to three of the four sample companies: Foxconn, Pegatron and Compal Electronics. Employee-related disclosures in corporate social responsibility (CSR) stand-alone reports are coded by a set of specifically designed instructions, and newspaper articles about employee-related incidents are coded for sentiment. Results are interpreted through two theoretical lenses: the media agenda setting theory and the legitimacy theory.

Newspapers reported the employee-related incidents in a way detrimental to the legitimacy of firms that directly involved in the selected industry. In the process of legitimation, firms switch between disclosing more employee-related information and reducing disclosures. The self-expectation on organizational legitimacy also affects how CSR reporting is used in legitimation. The employee-related disclosure analysed is closer to symbolic legitimation than substantive legitimation.

This study contributes to reporting practice by showing that employee-related disclosure is largely vacuous and to a greater extent is used as symbolic legitimation. The quality of disclosure requires significant improvement. This study contributes to the literature by using the legitimacy theory to interpret employee-related disclosure in China, addressing inadequate research efforts in the context of social and human rights dimensions of CSR reporting.

This paper aims to fill a conceptual gap in the understanding of rapidly changing characteristics of local risk, addressing how the notion of the local might be reframed, and how opportunities for multi-scale interventions for disaster risk reduction might be identified.

The paper illustrates the significance of the systems and services on which urbanization depends – water, food, energy, transport and communications – to consider the cascading impacts at multiple scales often beyond the administrative boundaries of cities, and how vulnerabilities and risks are distributed unevenly across different groups of people.

The process of rapid urbanization in the Mekong Region represents a fundamental transformation of ecological landscapes, resource flows, livelihoods and demographics. In addition to the location of urbanization, it is these transformative processes and the critical dependence on inter-linked systems that shape the overall picture of urban disaster and climate vulnerability.

By drawing on research and practical experience in two of the most rapidly urbanizing countries in the world, Thailand and Vietnam, the approach and findings have implications for understanding global patterns of urbanization.

The paper contributes to considering practical actions whether in terms of policy or project implementation for both the assessment of disaster and climate risk, and for actions to reduce vulnerability and promote resilience.

The paper draws largely from social science perspectives, highlighting the dynamism of social organization in urbanizing contexts, and the implications for risk and vulnerability.

The paper draws on original research in Thailand and Vietnam that takes urbanization as the starting point for assessing vulnerability and risk.

The historic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an economic reform policy proposed by the Chinese Government that focuses on connectivity, improved collaboration and more robust economic relations. This paper aims to identify risks involved in BRI infrastructure project and establish a hierarchical relationship among them.

The methodology includes two phases, namely, identification of significant risks involved in the BRI project using systematic literature review and to develop a hierarchical relationship between the risks using interpretive structural modeling followed by the MICMAC analysis.

This work has identified the 11 risks of BRI infrastructure projects through academic literature. Based on the analysis, economic risk (R3), environmental risk (R1) and political risk (R2) are placed at level six in the ISM model and can significantly influence BRI infrastructure projects. These risks have high driving power, which exaggerates other risks.

This study would help Engineering Procurements and Construction contractors in strategic decision-making select risk mitigation strategies and make robust and efficient infrastructure projects. However, additional factors may be considered, which are essential for the BRI infrastructure project.

This research’s novelty lies in the advancement of expertise in project risk assessment. This study contributes by identifying the most significant risks involved in the BRI project. The integrated ISM-MICMAC approach provides a macro picture of BRI project risks to formulate better strategies for its success.

The purpose of this paper is to inspect disaster risk reduction (DRR) challenges from a political economy (PE) perspective and to explore how PE determinants facilitate or hinder effective DRR in Bangladesh.

A qualitative case study, using semi-structured in-depth interviews, official documents and literature review has been conducted to explore the current process and practices of DRR in Bangladesh. The specific focus is on the distribution of public spending on flood shelters implemented by the Department of Disaster Management.

The study revealed a number of findings, including that the interest and incentives of influencing decision makers matter; formal and informal institutions have influence; and the values and ideas of dominating stakeholders’ impact on decisions regarding public spending of DRR in Bangladesh. These PE factors often hinder efficiency by leading to overlapping efforts and inefficient use of scarce resources. DRR planners and practitioners need to take steps to mitigate potential risks from PE processes in the allocations of DRR funding by implementing improved distribution arrangements.

Despite many successes in dealing with disasters, Bangladesh faces several challenges, including better governance of funds. DRR challenges can be considered as a problem of PE, which concerns the distribution of resources, and includes how powerful decision makers affect economic choices. Prior research examining the challenges in DRR-related funding distribution from a PE perspective is limited. Therefore, this study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on the situation in Bangladesh from this perspective. The authors elaborate how PE determinants can function as both barrier and opportunities on the ground in DRR-related fund distribution and in the selection of project locations and beneficiaries.