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The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrative model where perceived competence, perceived warmth and “clean green image” of an exporting country are drivers for Chinese consumers' trust in food quality and food safety, which in turn predict their willingness to buy fresh fruit from this country.

Participants (N = 1,583) from the three metropolises in China were surveyed on their perceptions of the competence, warmth and clean green image of seven contrasting exporting countries and their trust in quality, trust in safety and willingness to buy fresh fruit imported from those countries.

Results support the proposed integrative model, explaining 39%–55% of the variance in willingness to buy. Clean green image was the strongest predictor of willingness to buy through enhanced trust in food quality. The effects of country competence and warmth on willingness to buy through trust in food safety and quality varied with exporting country.

The integrative model and findings of this study can help agri-food industries develop an in-depth understanding of Chinese consumers and to develop targeted strategies to increase willingness to buy through improving consumer trust in food quality and safety.

This study extends the country image framework which previously only consisted of human characteristics (i.e. perceived competence and warmth) by incorporating environmental characteristics (i.e. clean green image) in examining consumers' willingness to buy imported fresh fruit.

The present experimental study aims to investigate when a food safety incident occurs, how country image influences consumers' trust and purchase intention, as well as the relationship between trust and purchase intention.

Participants (N = 1,590) were randomly allocated into one of the eight conditions [(country competence: high vs low) × (country warmth: high vs low) × (clean green image: high vs low)], read the corresponding country image descriptions, and rated measures on trust in food safety and quality, and purchase intention of fruit imported from this exporting country before and after reading a fictional food safety incident scenario.

Results showed that the food safety incident led to a significant decrease in trust and purchase intention across all conditions. However, trust in food safety and quality, and purchase intention were still higher in high competence, warmth or clean green image conditions. The decreased magnitude of trust in food safety was larger when country competence and clean green image was high, and when country warmth was low. Food safety incident caused purchase intention to become more dependent on trust in food safety than food quality.

This study provides a novel insight into the impacts of food safety incidents on consumers' responses in different country image contexts including the human-related and environment-related dimensions.

This paper aims to study the influence of thermal effect on the performance for a high-speed conical hybrid bearing including stability and minimum oil film thickness.

A thermal hydrodynamic (THD) model and dynamic model of single mass rigid rotor system were established by taking conical hybrid bearing with shallow and deep pockets as the research object, dynamic coefficient and stability parameters of bearing-rotor system were obtained by using finite element method (FEM) and finite difference method (FDM) to solve computational models of Reynolds equation, energy equation and viscosity-temperature equation. Minimum oil film thickness was obtained based on bearing force balance. Dynamic coefficient was compared with previous findings.

After considering thermal effect, the dimensionless critical mass decreases, a significant decrease in the instability speed, and the stability of the system decreases greatly; the minimum oil film thickness decreases because of thermal effect.

The thermal effect is combined with dynamic characteristics to analyze stability of the rotor system for a conical hybrid bearing. Influence of thermal effect on minimum oil film thickness is studied.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-12-2019-0542/

Research on grey systems is becoming more sophisticated, and grey relational and prediction analyses are receiving close review worldwide. Particularly, the application of grey systems in marine economics is gaining importance. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and review literature on grey models, providing new directions in their application in the marine economy.

This paper organized seminal studies on grey systems published by Chinese core journal database – CNKI, Web of Science and Elsevier from 1982 to 2018. After searching the aforementioned database for the said duration, the authors used the CiteSpace visualization tools to analyze them.

The authors sorted the studies according to their countries/regions, institutions, keywords and categories using the CiteSpace tool; analyzed current research characteristics on grey models; and discussed their possible applications in marine businesses, economy, scientific research and education, marine environment and disasters. Finally, the authors pointed out the development trend of grey models.

Although researches are combining grey theory with fractals, neural networks, fuzzy theory and other methods, the applications, in terms of scope, have still not met the demand. With the increasingly in-depth research in marine economics and management, international marine economic research has entered a new period of development. Grey theory will certainly attract scholars’ attention, and its role in marine economy and management will gain considerable significance.