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This comparative study aims to examine the role of Socio-Economic Status (SES) on the academic performance of university students who hold both the status of Residential College (RC) and non-RC. The study further investigates whether the RC is able to offset the effects of SES on students' learning performance to ensure education equity and inclusion in China.

Data are collected through a questionnaire given to RC and non-RC students enrolled in three public universities in China. A quasi-experimental design is implemented to investigate the potential correlation, if any, between SES, RC and academic performance.

The results reveal that SES influences academic performance of RC students. Furthermore, the findings strongly suggest that RCs negatively moderate the effect of SES on academic performance.

This study examines RCs within a specific type of university in China, which may limit the generalizability of findings. Additionally, it uses a quasi-experimental method and relies solely on quantitative data, which may also introduce limitations.

Provided in this study is evidence that RCs can be an innovative way to bolster inclusive and equitable quality education for students from diverse backgrounds in China.

This study enriches the existing literature by exploring the relationships between RC, SES and academic performance in China. In addition, it provides significant references to whether RC can fulfill students' education equity and inclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of gamification on students’ e-learning adoption. In addition, this paper examines the effect of two mediations, that is, flow and engagement between gamification and e-learning adoption by using sequential mediation analysis.

The authors used the online survey method to collect the 570 responses through convenience sampling procedure. Sequential mediation analysis technique was used to test the mediation hypothesis.

The findings of this paper revealed that gamification elements are an important feature of flow, engagement in e-learning adoption process. Also, the paper found that engagement in the learning process is a key element for students to adopt e-learning.

This paper makes its contribution to the literature related to gamification and e-learning adoption. The paper signifies the importance of gamification as an educational application in e-learning environment and its contribution in designing an interactive learning environment.

Empirically, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first paper to examine the sequential mediation model of gamification in the education sector in a developing nation like India. Furthermore, this paper also extends engagement and flow theory related to e-learning process by showing how students’ engagement and flow impact the e-learning adoption in the gamified environment.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of NHGSFP on rural communities in Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 2,400 households were sampled across the six geopolitical regions of Nigeria.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicate that NHGSFP makes significant contributions to improving the health and educational status of rural school children, stimulates job creation and boosts rural economy.

This implies that a well-designed and integrated Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) can make significant contributions to improving food security at the household level, spurring job creation and boosting agricultural markets.

This suggests the need for a purposeful engagement and support from all stakeholders to ensure the success of HGSFP.

This research adds to the literature on school feeding in low-income countries. It concludes that school feeding programmes have been shown to directly increase the educational and nutritional status of recipient children and indirectly impact the economic and social lives of themselves and their family.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies’ (MOCs) corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on development of enterprising rural women as custodians of seed, food and traditional knowledge for climate change resilience in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 768 rural women respondents were sampled across the rural areas of the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicated that the meagre interventions of MOCs’ CSR targeted at the empowerment of rural women as custodians of seed, food and traditional knowledge for climate change resilience recorded significant success in improving the role of women in agricultural production, especially in women’s involvement across value chains.

This suggests that any increase in the MOCs’ CSR targeted at increasing rural women’s access to seed preservation facilities, food processing facilities and extension systems that impact a strong body of knowledge and expertise that can be used in climate change mitigation, disaster reduction and adaptation strategies will enhance women’s responsibilities in households and communities as stewards of natural and household resources and will position them well to contribute to livelihood strategies adapted to changing environmental realities.

This implies that MOCs’ GMoUs’ policies and practices should enhance women’s participation, value and recognize women’s knowledge and enable women as well as men farmers to participate in the decision-making process in agriculture, food production and land governance, as women need to be acknowledged and supported as the primary producers of food in the region, able to both cultivate healthy food and climate change resilience through small-scale agro-ecological farming system.

This research contributes to gender debate in agriculture from a CSR perspective in developing countries and explains the rational for demands for social projects by host communities. It concludes that business has an obligation to help solve problems of public concern.

Homeownership for younger generations is exacerbated by the deterioration in affordability worldwide. As a result, the role of parental support in facilitating homeownership requires attention. This study aims to assess the influence of parental wealth and housing tenure as support mechanisms to facilitate homeownership for their children.

This study uses data from a representative survey of the New Zealand population.

Parents who are homeowners tend to offer more financial support to their children than those who rent. Additionally, the financial support increases when parents have investment housing as well. The results further reveal differences in financial support when considering one-child and multi-child families. The intergenerational transmission of wealth inequality appears to be more noticeable in multi-child families, where parental housing tenure plays a dominant role in determining the level of financial support provided to offspring.

The insights gained serve as a basis for refining housing policies to better account for these family transfers and promote equitable access to homeownership.

The study’s objective was to ascertain the connection between secondary school students' test anxiety, academic self-concept, motivation and academic performance in mathematics. The difference between the academic performances of male and female secondary school students who exhibit high and low test anxiety, academic self-concept and motivation levels in mathematics.

Four hypotheses and four research questions were adopted. The design is a correlation. 42,299 mathematics students in senior school year two (SS2) made up the research population. A sample of 1,650 students was selected through a multi-stage sampling procedure. The main instruments used were the Mathematics Test Anxiety Questionnaire (MTAQ), Academic Self-Concept Questionnaire (ASQ) and Academic Motivation Questionnaire (AMQ) and students’ math scores. These instruments were validated by three experts and the reliability coefficients of 0.69, 0.68 and 0.68 were obtained for MTAQ, ASQ and AMQ, respectively, using Cronbach alpha. Pearson product moment correlation was used to analyze the data.

The study’s results showed a correlation between secondary school students' academic performance in mathematics and test anxiety, academic self-concept and motivation. There was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' test anxiety; there was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' self-concept and academic performance in mathematics, and there was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' motivation and academic performance in mathematics.

The major contribution of this study is to investigate the connection between test anxiety, academic self-concept motivation and students’ mathematics performance. There is a difference between psychological variables, gender and mathematics performance.

Fire is the fundamental element of most people’s lives, and when not controlled, the same fire can lead to several catastrophes in homes, offices, schools, lives and other public places with severe repercussions. Hence, this study aims to examine the adequacy and extent of the application of fire suppression systems in residential and commercial property in Ghana.

This study adopts a sequential mixed-mode design comprising quantitative and qualitative research strategies to analyse factors to produce findings. The target population for this study includes shop occupiers, end users of office buildings, and residents in the Accra Central of Ghana. Systematic random sampling was used for the quantitative research, and a sample size of 385 was obtained using a multi-stage and cluster sampling method. A structured survey and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the primary data. The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, whereas the qualitative data were analysed using content analysis.

From an empirical literature review and the analysis, the three main factors contributing to fire breakouts are equipment malfunction, improper use of heat sources and human mistakes. According to the respondents, fire suppression systems were also inadequate, as most of the suppression systems prescribed in the building code were unavailable. Regarding the ability to manually operate fire suppression systems, most property occupiers stated that they are generally unaware of these suppression systems.

This study will aid policymakers in developing interventions for fire safety enforcement by ensuring that fire safety regulations are consistently followed by design team members and property developers, resulting in a positive effect on public building structures performing their required functions. It is also critical to provide end users with education and training on how to operate the fire suppression system as well as effective handling of firefighting installations in the event of a fire.

The findings of this investigation contribute to knowledge and comprehension of the effect of fire suppression systems on building users and may serve as a precursor to the development of a “As Built” certification system for ascertaining the adequacy of fire suppression systems for new and existing residential and commercial property.

This work examines the impact of institutional agricultural credit on crop productivity of some major crops such as paddy, cotton, wheat and pulses for small and marginal farmers across various social groups.

The cross-sectional field data on socio economic variables was collected from three Indian states from about 400 small and marginal farmers across various social groups using multi-stage stratified random and purposive sampling through a structured questionnaire by interviewing. The method of propensity score matching (PSM) was employed to calculate average treatment effect (ATE) and average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) by categorising sample farmers as treatment group and control group where crop productivity was considered as outcome variable and access to institutional credit was considered as treatment variable.

The PSM estimates reveal that ATE and ATET for all the selected crops are found to be significantly higher for the treated group vis-à-vis non-treated group suggesting that institutional agricultural credit has a statistically and significant positive impact on the crop productivity.

Similar study can be extended for more crops and across regions in India for a universal coverage.

The agricultural credit policy of India has been to increase the access and availability of institutional farm credit. This has led to in general increase in the flow of formal farm credit to agricultural sector. However, the impact of institutional credit and crop productivity especially for small and marginal farmers across social groups is not well recognized in India using field data. Accordingly, this field data study contributes to the existing research by providing fresh evidence from field across social groups for both kharif and rabi crops using recent survey data from small and marginal farmers which has important policy implications.

The sharing economy is changing the way people use products and services, and the success of sharing-based apps like bicycle and automobile sharing has drawn a lot of interest across the world. The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors affecting the consumer's adoption of ride-sharing services.

With this aim, the current study integrates the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Expectancy Confirmation Model (ECM) with a further extension of consumer trust and social norms. Using a survey-based research design, data were collected from 558 respondents using multi-stage convenience sampling on 5 point Likert scale. Confirmatory factor analysis is conducted followed by structural equation modelling using IBM AMOS-22.

The findings of the study report crucial determinants for the consumer's continuance intention and actual use of these services. Perceived usefulness, consumer satisfaction, trust and subjective norms were found positively associated with the continuous intention to use ride-sharing services, whereas perceived ease of use was found to be insignificant. This study also highlights antecedents for the consumer's trust towards these services and found reputation, propensity to trust as a significant contributor whereas structural assurance was found insignificant to establish the trust among the users.

The research on consumer adoption towards ride-sharing services are meagre and this study adds the value to the field by integrating TAM and ECM model with further extension of consumer trust and social norms and empirically test the proposed model.

This study aims to provide a causal framework for teacher burnout (BO) and work engagement (WE) by examining the factors that contribute to it and evaluating how progressive education (PE) affects teachers' performance in Higher education institutions (HEIs).

This study uses a multi-stage sampling technique with the help of computer random generation data from a selected list of teachers. The survey has two sections; the first consisted of a questionnaire of PE, BO, WE and organizational outcomes and the second contained four items to measure the demographic variables. The researcher contacted 745 teachers and asked them to fill up the questionnaire but the authors received only 498 useable responses.

The results of the study confirmed that moderating role PE reduces the BO of the teachers of HEIs and increases WE. The job demand-resource (JD-R) model was also validated in the Indian context and the model was found suitable for the Indian sample.

The study has been conducted to manage BO and teachers' engagement in HEIs and the result suggests that the Management of HEIs should value PE characteristics as a crucial component of the educational process. PE encourages academic engagement among professors and students in HEIs.

The study tests the moderating role of PE with the JD-R and the JD-R model in the higher education system in India, which is rarely tested. The study's integrated approach to BO and WE, which provide insight into both viewpoints and aids in employees' poor health.