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The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of supply capacity constraint, water delivery loss and fairness concern on the operational decisions/efficiency of the IBWT supply chain under the random precipitation.

Two game-theoretic decision models for the IBWT supply chain coordination considering water delivery loss without/with fairness concern under the supply capacity constraint and random precipitation are developed, analyzed and compared. On this basis, the corresponding numerical analyses are conducted and compared to derive the corresponding management insights and policy implications.

The research results indicate that the two-part tariff contract could effectively coordinate the IBWT supply chain and achieve operational performance improvement; the binding supply capacity constraint makes the water capacity to be allocated among IBWT distributors in accordance with fair shortage allocation rule and reduces the profit (or utility) of the IBWT supply chain and its members; the existence of fairness concern reduces the utility of the IBWT supply chain and its members; a lower precipitation utilization factor in the case with non-binding capacity constraint is beneficial for improving the profit/utility of the IBWT supply chain while a higher precipitation utilization factor in the case with binding capacity constraint is beneficial for improving the profit/utility of the IBWT supply chain; and reducing the water delivery loss rate, the mainline transfer cost, the branch-line transfer cost, the holding cost and the shortage cost and setting a higher retail price are beneficial for improving the profit/utility of the IBWT supply chain.

Two innovative coordination decision models under random precipitation are developed, analyzed and compared through game-theoretic approaches to investigate the impact of supply capacity constraint, water delivery loss and fairness concern on the operational decisions/efficiency of the IBWT supply chain, which have enhanced the optimization decision theory for the operations management of IBWT projects and provided a better decision support for the IBWT stakeholders to make better operations strategies.

The type 120 emergency valve is an essential braking component of railway freight trains, but corresponding diaphragms consisting of natural rubber (NR) and chloroprene rubber (CR) exhibit insufficient aging resistance and low-temperature resistance, respectively. In order to develop type 120 emergency valve rubber diaphragms with long-life and high-performance, low-temperatureresistant CR and NR were processed.

The physical properties of the low-temperature-resistant CR and NR were tested by low-temperature stretching, dynamic mechanical analysis, differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. Single-valve and single-vehicle tests of type 120 emergency valves were carried out for emergency diaphragms consisting of NR and CR.

The low-temperature-resistant CR and NR exhibited excellent physical properties. The elasticity and low-temperature resistance of NR were superior to those of CR, whereas the mechanical properties of the two rubbers were similar in the temperature range of 0 °C–150 °C. The NR and CR emergency diaphragms met the requirements of the single-valve test. In the low-temperature single-vehicle test, only the low-temperature sensitivity test of the NR emergency diaphragm met the requirements.

The innovation of this study is that it provides valuable data and experience for future development of type 120 valve rubber diaphragms.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the adoption of big data analytics (BDA) in the Tanzania banking industry by investigating the influence of technological, environmental and organizational (TOE) factors while exploring the moderating role of perceived risk (PR).

The study employed a qualitative research design, and the research instrument was developed using per-defined measurement items adopted from prior studies; the items were slightly adjusted to fit the current context. The questionnaires were distributed to top and middle managers in selected banks in Tanzania using the snowball sampling technique. Out of 360 received responses, 302 were considered complete and valid for data analysis. The study employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine the developed conceptual framework.

Top management support and financial resources emerged as influential organizational factors, as did competition intensity for the environmental factors. Notably, bank size and perceived trends showed no significant impacts on BDA adoption. The study's novelty lies in revealing PR as a moderating factor, weakening the link between technological readiness, perceived usefulness and the intent to adopt BDA.

This study extends literature by extending the TOE model, through examining the moderating roles of PR on technological factors. Furthermore, the study provides useful managerial support for the adoption of BDA in banking in emerging economies.

This paper explores travel motivations and characteristics of European ecotourists who visit ecolodges in desert areas of Iran. It also evaluates 26 ecolodge attributes from the perspective of the European patrons.

Different methods were adopted for the aim of this study, comprising the importance-performance analysis technique and a questionnaire survey.

A survey of 386 patrons in 12 selected ecolodges found that most European ecotourists were middle-aged to old adults (36–65 years old) and highly educated who traveled with their spouses or friends. Ecotourists generally stayed in ecolodges for 2–5 days to learn and explore nature and be in the wilderness and undisturbed nature. This study also showed that the ecolodges are successful to a large extent, yet they need to focus more on their services and facilities.

Due to the significance of international tourists for the economy, decision-makers and managers must learn about tourists' motivations and travel satisfaction to be able to compete against their rivals in the marketplace. The result of this study may help the owners and managers of ecolodges in desert areas understand the needs and priorities of European tourists.

This study expanded the existing literature of motivations and satisfaction of tourists in the ecolodge industry.

This study explores the integration of corporate reporting by Mitsubishi, a large Japanese company, using a culturally sensitive narrative that combines and reconciles Japanese and Western corporate values in one story.

We use an analytical framework drawing on insights borrowed from narratology and the notion of wrapping – the traditional art of packaging as communication.

We find that Mitsubishi is a survivor company that uses different corporate reporting frameworks during its reporting journey to construct a bespoke narrative of its value creation and cultural values. It emplots narratives to convey a story presenting the impression that Mitsubishi is a Japanese corporation but is compatible with Western neo-liberal ideology, making bad news palatable to its stakeholders and instilling confidence in the future.

Wrapping is a culturally sensitive form of impression management used in the integration of corporate reporting. Therefore, rather than assuming that companies blatantly manipulate their image in corporate reports, we suggest that future research should focus on how narratives are constructed and made sense of, situating them in the context of local culture and traditions.

The findings should interest scholars, report preparers, policymakers, and the IFRS, considering the recent release of the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards designed to reduce the so-called alphabet soup of corporate reporting. By following Mitsubishi’s journey, we learn how and why the notion of integrated reporting was adopted and integrated with other reporting frameworks to create narratives that together convey a story of a global corporation compliant with Western neoliberal ideology. It highlights how Mitsubishi used integrated reporting to tell its story rather than as a rigid reporting framework, and the same fate may apply to the new IFRS Sustainability Reporting Standards that now include integrated reporting.

The study offers a new perspective on corporate reporting, showing how the local societal discourses of cultural heritage and modernity can shape the journey of the integration of corporate reporting over time.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the internal interaction mechanism of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth from a systematic perspective, based on which this work forecasts their future development trends.

In this study, a multivariate grey model is applied to the prediction of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth. Considering the impact of the COVID-19 on marine development, this paper introduces the weakening buffer operator into MGM(1,m) and constructs the AWBO-MGM(1,m) model. To verify the validity and accuracy of the new model, this paper uses AWBO-MGM(1,m), MGM(1,m), GM(1,N), GM(1,1), back propagation neural network and linear regression models for simulation and prediction based on the data from 2010 to 2021, respectively.

From the theoretical perspective, the development of marine scientific research and education can accelerate industrial upgrading and promote marine economic growth by providing high-quality talents, promoting marine science and technology progress and reducing transaction costs; while the upgrading of marine industrial structure and marine economic growth can promote the development of marine scientific research and education by guiding social capital, enhancing talent demand and stimulating market vitality. From the empirical analysis, the AWBO-MGM(1,m) model can effectively deal with epidemic shocks and has higher fitting and prediction accuracy than the other five comparative models.

The government should pay attention to the construction of marine scientific research and education, so as to provide high-quality talents and advanced scientific research results for the high-quality development of marine economy. On the basis of using science and technology to firmly build the primary and secondary marine industries, the government should actively guide the labor, capital and other factors of production to the tertiary industry, thereby promoting the optimization and upgrading of marine industrial structure.

On the one hand, the interplay mechanism of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth is analyzed from a systematic perspective; on the other hand, the enhanced AWBO-MGM(1,m) possesses higher forecasting performance and is applicable to the systemic multivariate forecasting problem in the presence of outstanding external shocks.

Artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning is fuelled by high-quality, detailed behavioural data. These can usually be obtained by the biometrical sensors embedded in smart devices. The currently used data collecting approach, where data ownership and property rights are taken by the data scientists, designers of a device or a related application, delivers multiple ethical, sociological and governance concerns. In this paper, the author is opening a systemic examination of a data sharing concept in which data producers execute their data property rights.

Since data sharing concept delivers a substantially different alternative, it needs to be thoroughly examined from multiple perspectives, among them: the ethical, social and feasibility. At this stage, theoretical examination modes in the form of literature analysis and mental model development are being performed.

Data sharing concepts, framework, mechanisms and swift viability are examined. The author determined that data sharing could lead to virtuous data science by augmenting data producers' capacity to govern their data and regulators' capacity to interact in the process. Truly interdisciplinary research is proposed to follow up on this research.

Since the research proposal is theoretical, the proposal may not provide direct applicative value but is largely focussed on fuelling the research directions.

For the researchers, data sharing concepts will provide an alternative approach and help resolve multiple ethical considerations related to the internet of things (IoT) data collecting approach. For the practitioners in data science, it will provide numerous new challenges, such as distributed data storing, distributed data analysis and intelligent data sharing protocols.

Data sharing may post significant implications in research and development. Since ethical, legislative moral and trust-related issues are managed in the negotiation process, data can be shared freely, which in a practical sense expands the data pool for virtuous research in social sciences.

The paper opens new research directions of data sharing concepts and space for a new field of research.

Hikikomori is a multidimensional condition, characterized by voluntarily social withdrawal, impacting the relational dimension of life. The current study aims to examine secondary school teachers' beliefs, knowledge and needs on hikikomori and students' social withdrawal.

A qualitative method consisting of a semi-structured interview is adopted with 22 Italian secondary school teachers. The interview questions are focused on the beliefs, the profile, the conditions and the role of the school for adolescents socially retired.

Data are analysed using content analysis based on the grounded theory framework. Forty-nine codes emerged from the inductive analysis, which were sorted into the following categories: (1) Characteristics of hikikomori and social withdrawal; (2) Origin, causes and consequences; (3) Sources of information; (4) Socio-relational modalities; (5) Teachers' needs and role of the school. Teachers are aware of the educational issues and risks related to hikikomori and claim for more institutional support. Teachers reconsider the way of working in class for preventing the risk of self-isolation, supporting the development of social and emotional skills, and encouraging collaboration and positive exchanges among students. Participants mention a personalized student-centred method where families and external agencies support the school system.

Although several clinical and psychological interventions have been developed for treating the hikikomori’s self-isolation and concomitant mental disorders, few plans have been implemented for reducing the risk of adolescents' social withdrawal. Preventing hikikomori is crucial as well as to investigate the role and the needs of school teachers, and the current study has tried to explore these.

The author considers an invariant lightlike submanifold M, whose transversal bundle tr(TM) is flat, in an indefinite Sasakian manifold M¯(c) of constant φ¯-sectional curvature c. Under some geometric conditions, the author demonstrates that c=1, that is, M¯ is a space of constant curvature 1. Moreover, M and any leaf M′ of its screen distribution S(TM) are, also, spaces of constant curvature 1.

The author has employed the techniques developed by K. L. Duggal and A. Bejancu of reference number 7.

The author has discovered that any totally umbilic invariant ligtlike submanifold, whose transversal bundle is flat, in an indefinite Sasakian space form is, in fact, a space of constant curvature 1 (see Theorem 4.4).

To the best of the author’s findings, at the time of submission of this paper, the results reported are new and interesting as far as lightlike geometry is concerned.

This study aims to focus on the analysis of the internal mechanism of farmers’ ecological cognition and the behaviour of Grain for Green Project (GGP), and the further relationship between ecological cognition and ecological aspiration, proposing climate change strategies and management from the perspective of farmers.

Theory of planned behaviour and social exchange theory were used to construct a theoretical framework and an ecological cognition under the influence of external factors, the aspiration and the behaviour of GGP, using ecological fragile areas in Bazhou and Changji, Xinjiang of 618 peasant households’ survey data. The structural equation model and Heckman two-step model were applied to analyse the relationship between ecological cognition and ecological aspiration of farmers, the impact of peasant households’ ecological cognition and aspiration to the behaviour of GGP and the influence factors of GGP behaviour.

This research’s results show that the three characterizations of ecological cognitive variables, attitude towards the behaviour (AB), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behaviour control (PBC), have significant positive impact on farmers’ GGP ecological aspiration. The comprehensive impact path coefficients of ecological cognition are PBC (0.498) > SN (0.223) > AB (0.177). Also, income change is a moderating variable, which has a significant moderating effect on the influence of AB and SN on ecological aspiration. Further, farmers’ ecological cognition has an influence on the behaviour of GGP, and the change of farmers’ income has a significant positive effect on farmers’ choice of returning farmland to forests.

The ecological protection policy suggestions and countermeasures can be drawn from the research conclusions, adapted to China’s ecologically fragile regions and even similar regions in the world to response the climate change.

Combining the theory of planning behaviour and social exchange, this paper empirically analyses the path of farmers’ ecological cognition and ecological aspiration, as well as the influencing factors.