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Recently, an increasing number of Internet users have begun to purchase various products, both secondhand and new, from online auction websites. However, some Internet users are still hesitant to purchase products from these websites. Moreover, the factors affecting male and female users' intention to shop on the websites may be different. Past studies have indicated that uncertainty is a major determinant of online shopping behaviors and may have different effects on men's and women's purchase intentions. Therefore, to explore the differences, this study seeks to propose a research model based on uncertainty and agency theory.

This study included members of the Yahoo! and PChome online portal sites in Taiwan as research subjects. A web survey was conducted, and data were collected from a total of 313 bidders of online auctions. The casual model was validated using partial least squares (PLS) techniques.

Gender moderated most of the relationships in the research model. The analysis results showed that the factors influencing men's and women's uncertainty are different. In addition, uncertainty has stronger influence on men's intention to purchase products from online auction websites.

This study contributes to a theoretical understanding of the factors that promote men's and women's intention to purchase products from online auction websites. From a practical perspective, insights provided by this study can help online auction service providers understand buyers' concerns and eliminate the sources of the uncertainty.

The primary value of this paper lies in providing a better understanding of male and female behaviors on online C2C market, and investigating the gender differences in the factors that influence the consumers' purchase in online auctions.

This study aims to examine the relationship between Achievement Motivation (AM), Smart Work (SW), and human resources (HR) performance. It questions how moral global leadership (MGL) could moderate the relationship between AM, SW, and HR performance. A theoretical model was developed and tested on sample data representing 219 employees, educators, and educational staff of Islamic Higher education (IHE). The data were collected through surveys and applied to structural equation modeling using SEM-PLS. This study found that AM and SW significantly affect HR performance. While MGL substantially moderates the relationship between AM, SW, and HR performance. This study contributes to the literature on MGL, AM, and SW in creating HR performance that has yet to be studied so far. This study offers the concept of MGL, which plays a central role in moderating the relationship between AM, SW, and HR performance.

Although the metaverse has gained popularity in recent days, research on metaverse tourism in urban destinations is still lacking. Drawing on existing cases in Chinese urban destinations, this paper aims to provide valuable insights into the development of metaverse tourism in China and provides managerial implications for future urbanmetaverse tourismplayers.

Literature from Chinese and international sources was reviewed to highlight the current status of metaverse tourism in the context of Chinese urban tourism. This paper also draws on information provided by online materials, especially the official websites of tour organizers and news media.

This paper outlines important aspects of metaverse in Chinese urban tourism. First, cities are the hotbeds of metaverse development, and the metaverse has become a new way to attract urban tourists and a significant element in various exhibitions. Second, the combination of metaverse with China’s extensive and profound traditional culture has made urban tourism full of vitality. Third, China’s game companies are progressively empowering the metaverse tourism industry.

This paper contributes to the existing knowledge on metaverse tourism based on the Chinese urban tourism context. Furthermore, it highlights the state of the metaverse in Chinese urban tourism during and after the pandemic situation. Lastly, it provides thoughtful implications for tourism players and future tourism development.

This paper aims at providing a comparative analysis of the existing protocols that address the security issues in the Future Internet (FI) and also to introduce a Collaborative Mutual Identity Establishment (CMIE) scheme which adopts the elliptical curve cryptography (ECC), to address the issues, such as content integrity, mutual authentication, forward secrecy, auditability and resistance to attacks such as denial-of-service (DoS) and replay attack.

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the existing protocols that address the security issues in the FI and also provides a CMIE scheme, by adopting the ECC and digital signature verification mechanism, to address the issues, such as content integrity, mutual authentication, forward secrecy, auditability and resistance to attacks such as DoS and replay attack. The proposed scheme enables the establishment of secured interactions between devices and entities of the FI. Further, the algorithm is evaluated against Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Application (AVISPA) tool to verify the security solutions that the CMIE scheme has claimed to address to have been effectively achieved in reality.

The algorithm is evaluated against AVISPA tool to verify the security solutions that the CMIE scheme has claimed to address and proved to have been effectively achieved in reality. The proposed scheme enables the establishment of secured interactions between devices and entities of the FI.

Considering the Internet of Things (IoT) scenario, another important aspect that is the device-to-location (D2L) aspect has not been considered in this protocol. Major focus of the protocol is centered around the device-to-device (D2D) and device-to-server (D2S) scenarios. Also, IoT basically works upon a confluence of hundreds for protocols that support the achievement of various factors in the IoT, for example Data Distribution Service, Message Queue Telemetry Transport, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) and so on. Interoperability of the proposed CMIE algorithm with the existing protocols has to be considered to establish a complete model that fits the FI. Further, each request for mutual authentication requires a querying of the database and a computation at each of the participating entities side for verification which could take considerable amount of time. However, for applications that require firm authentication for maintaining and ensuring secure interactions between entities prior to access control and initiation of actual transfer of sensitive information, the negligible difference in computation time can be ignored for the greater benefit that comes with stronger security. Other factors such as quality of service (QoS) (i.e. flexibility of data delivery, resource usage and timing), key management and distribution also need to be considered. However, the user still has the responsibility to choose the required protocol that suits one’s application and serves the purpose.

The originality of the work lies in adopting the ECC and digital signature verification mechanism to develop a new scheme that ensures mutual authentication between participating entities in the FI based upon certain user information such as identities. ECC provides efficiency in terms of key size generated and security against main-in-middle attack. The proposed scheme provides secured interactions between devices/entities in the FI.

This policy review paper is an analysis of the Double Reduction Policy (DRP) of China that was promulgated in July 2021. It looks into its rationale as well as different stakeholders' early reactions to the policy.

Critical policy analysis (CPA) method was used to identify (1) the artefacts, such as language, objects and acts, that were significant carriers of the DRP; (2) communities of meaning, interpretation, speech and practice that are relevant to the DRP and its implementation; (3) the local discourses relevant to the DRP; and (4) the tension points and their conceptual sources (affective, cognitive and/or moral) by different DRP stakeholders. As per the comparative education field, this paper compares the pre-DRP and post-DRP periods to tease out how the policy affects different stakeholders of education.

The DRP in China could be attributed to diverse factors such as demography, socialist economic and developmental visions and manpower structure. The implementation of the DRP has generated uneven reactions among different stakeholders and geographical regions both in speed and scale. While education stakeholders have no choice but to adopt the policy, they face challenges derived from a sudden halt of private educational resources and subsequent increased duties of parents and schools.

The significance of this early policy analysis lies in offering an insight into education development in China by analysing and deliberating the DRP from different perspectives.

Facial recognition payment (FRP) has been attracting attention as an alternative payment mode. This research aims to investigate the future use of FRP for both mobile payment and point of sale payment.

The body of information on this topic is promoted by proposing the valence framework, where the authors used relative advantage, initial trust, perceived playfulness and need for uniqueness as positive valence, and perceived risk, technophobia and perceived complexity as negative valence. This study also investigated the moderating effect of personal innovativeness on consumers' behavioral intention to use FRP-based payments. The authors collected data from 392 FRP users from China to test the model. The authors used structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the significant determinants influencing FRP use.

The authors found that relative advantage and privacy risk are the two most influential predictors of FRP use. The findings indicate that personal innovativeness acts as a moderator between negative valence and behavioral intention. This study provides valuable policy guidelines for the mobile or point of sale (POS) payment companies for adding FRP service into their default payment method.

FRP is a relatively new technology that has not received much research attention in information system (IS) literature. Most studies on payment investigated enablers, and less effort has been given to study both enablers and inhibitors together. Furthermore, the authors employed SEM-based analysis to identify the most important factors influencing consumers' future use decisions.

This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding international school sector.

In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with international school students and their parents in Shenzhen, covering their motivations for overseas higher education, experience with international schooling, self-perceived identities and imagined futures.

The participants aspired to overseas higher education for both symbolic capital attainment and embodied cultural cultivation to thrive in a globalised world. They expressed confidence that international schooling experiences prepared students for mobility to Western higher education and cultivated globally-oriented identities while not undermining their Chinese roots. They imagined their futures in terms of considerable flexibility, with a rising China viewed as an attractive and feasible option for career development.

This research provides an enriched understanding of a new generation of globally mobile Chinese students. The participants held distinctively different outlooks, aspirations and attitudes than depicted in the flexible citizenship framework, which emphasised a one-dimensional and instrumentalist portrayal of Chinese international students. This study discusses cross-generational changes in the desire for overseas education and a global-national outlook among young people in the context of significant social transformations in urban China.

The originality of this study is in expanding the flexible citizenship framework with reference to the emergent identities and pathways of students in the international schooling sector in China.