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This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the social responsibility performance of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) megaprojects. Specifically, it examines the role of isomorphic pressures and the joint influence of perceived benefits and top management support on megaproject social responsibility performance (MSRP).

Drawing from institutional theory, social exchange theory, and top management literature, this study established a conceptual model featuring eleven hypotheses. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was administered to collect data from 238 actively engaged participants in BRI megaprojects. Structural Equation Modelling was utilised to analyse the data.

The empirical findings indicate that mimetic and coercive pressures positively influence MSRP. Perceived benefits and top management support significantly enhance MSRP. Moreover, perceived benefits and top management support partially mediate the effects of coercive and mimetic pressures. However, when it comes to normative pressures, their impact on MSRP is solely channelled through the support of top management.

This study is one of the early endeavours to explore the factors influencing the social responsibility performance of BRI megaprojects. It sheds light on the interplay between external pressures and internal factors in shaping social responsibility efforts in these projects. These findings are of particular significance for BRI actors and stakeholders, offering guidance for enhancing social responsibility strategies within the context of BRI megaprojects.

In Chinese libraries, short video platforms have emerged as a channel for new media marketing. Thus, this study aims to explore libraries’ communication influence on China’s largest short video platform, that is, Douyin (the Chinese version of Tiktok), and to provide corresponding suggestions for improvement of libraries’ communication influence in the short video platform.

Based on the Douyin Communication Index (DCI), this paper collects the top 200 library Douyin accounts of cultural reading in China and uses statistical and content analyses to evaluate the communication influence of library Douyin accounts.

Study findings show that libraries of various types and in various regions currently have an unbalanced development trend, with public libraries accounting for the vast majority and nearly half of the libraries located in China’s eastern region. Analysis of variance shows differences in the influence of Douyin communication among library types. Correlation analysis shows that indicators with a high correlation with DCI include the number of new works, likes, shares, and comments. In marketing content, the library’s high-impact short videos have characteristics of value, interest, and emotional touch.

This study uses a hybrid research method to explore Chinese libraries’ communication influence using the Douyin short video platform. Compared to other parts of the world, short videos in Chinese libraries have unique characteristics. They are rooted in China’s history and reality, showcasing the unique charm of Chinese library culture and serving as a unique reference for library marketing activities around the world.

Predicting commodity futures trading volumes represents an important matter to policymakers and a wide spectrum of market participants. The purpose of this study is to concentrate on the energy sector and explore the trading volume prediction issue for the thermal coal futures traded in Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange in China with daily data spanning January 2016–December 2020.

The nonlinear autoregressive neural network is adopted for this purpose and prediction performance is examined based upon a variety of settings over algorithms for model estimations, numbers of hidden neurons and delays and ratios for splitting the trading volume series into training, validation and testing phases.

A relatively simple model setting is arrived at that leads to predictions of good accuracy and stabilities and maintains small prediction errors up to the 99.273th quantile of the observed trading volume.

The results could, on one hand, serve as standalone technical trading volume predictions. They could, on the other hand, be combined with different (fundamental) prediction results for forming perspectives of trading trends and carrying out policy analysis.

This research aims to investigate the influence of building design on the thermal comfort of occupants of naturally ventilated hospital (NVH) wards to identify the aspects with the most significant influence on the thermal comfort of hospital buildings during the hot-dry season in the hot-humid tropics of Southeast Nigeria.

Field measurements, physical observations and a questionnaire survey of 60 occupants of the wards of the Joint Presbyterian Hospital, Uburu in Ebonyi State, Nigeria were undertaken. The data were analysed using Humphreys' neutral temperature formula, descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis.

The results revealed that the neutral temperature for the wards ranges from 26.2 °C to 29.9 °C, the thermal condition in the wards was not comfortable because it failed to meet the ASHRAE Standard 55 as only 65% of the occupants said the thermal condition was acceptable. The number and sizes of windows, building orientation, the presence of high-level windows and higher headroom significantly influenced the occupants' thermal comfort vote.

This research is valuable in estimating comfort temperature and identifying aspects that require attention in enhancing the capacity of NVH wards to effectively meet the thermal comfort needs of occupants in the hot-humid tropics of Southeast Nigeria and other regions that share similar climatic conditions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of this nature that provides valuable feedback for building design professionals on the performance of existing hospital buildings in meeting users' thermal comfort needs in the hot-dry season of the hot-humid tropics in Southeast Nigeria.

This study aims to explore the association between environmental sustainability thoughts and environmental performance. Mediation through social innovation and moderating role of green innovation is also tested.

A quantitative research design was used for analyzing the personal/lived experience of 387 small–medium enterprises (SMEs) managers. Data were collected from persons who were performing their job, that is, it is based on current data. Cross-section data were collected through questionnaires. Correlation and regression analysis was used to test the study hypotheses.

Green innovation encourages firms to grow to be competent and increase their environmental performance. Results proved that businesses can work in a sustainable way through environmental sustainability thoughts and green innovation. Moreover, social innovation leveraged the interplay of environmental sustainability thoughts and the environmental performance.

The uniqueness of this research is that it combined environmental sustainability thoughts, social innovation and green innovation for developing environmental performance model for SMEs. This research includes new approach on sustainability domain and offered newest relevant factors to achieve a wider perceptive and multifaceted analysis of all dimensions that influence environmental performance.

This paper aims to examine the role of local/provincial government in influencing corporate social and environmental reporting (CSER) in China, and more specifically, how the underlying economic and political factors associated with local government have influenced the quality of CSER.

The authors used 234 environmentally sensitive companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges during 2013 and 2015 as the research sample to test the relationship between CSER and local government’s political connection and economic prioritisation and the potential mediating effect of local economic prioritisation.

The analysis provides evidence that local/provincial government’s political geographical connectedness with the central government has directly and positively influenced the level of CSER, while local prioritisation of economic development has a direct but negative effect on CSER in China. In addition, local/provincial prioritisation of economic development has mediated the relationship between local–central political geographical connectedness and CSER.

While local/provincial governments are heavily influenced by the coercive pressure from the central government, they also act in their own political and economic interests in overseeing CSER at the local level. This study raises the question about the effectiveness of the top-down approach to improving CSER in China and suggests that the central government may need to focus more on coordinating and harmonising different local/provincial governments’ interests to enable achieving a common sustainability goal.

The authors provide evidence revealing how the economic and political contexts of local government have played a significant role in shaping CSER in China. More specifically, this paper addresses a gap in the literature by highlighting the importance of local government oversight power for CSER development and how such oversight is determined by local prioritisation of economic development and political geographical connectedness of local and central governments.

Drawing on bargaining power and the inequality aversion perspective, this study aims to probe employees’ influence on addressing income inequality between top executives and nonexecutive employees. Meanwhile, it examines the moderating role of employee-related factors and plan attributes.

This study uses a staggered difference-in-differences design with a propensity scoring match approach and verification of the parallel trend assumption to test the hypotheses.

The results support the hypothesis that employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) significantly reduce within-firm income inequality. The negative effect is amplified by both the presence of trade unions and the unemployment rate at the regional level, as well as the duration of the lock-in period and the scale of participants within the stock ownership plan.

This study has implications for income inequality research and ESOP design and provides theoretical support for policymakers and corporate governance.

This study contributes to the literature on income inequality by examining the implementation of ESOPs from the employee perspective. Furthermore, it extends the current literature by investigating the strengthening effects of regional factors and ESOP attributes on the relationship between ESOPs and income inequality. The conclusions provide new empirical evidence to promote the effective implementation of ESOPs by combining internal and external factors.

The present study aims to examine the moderation role of school culture attributes (individualism versus collectivism) in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and teacher commitment, mediated by teacher well-being.

The data included 1,152 teachers across 104 schools in Türkiye using a multilevel moderated mediation SEM model to test relevant hypotheses.

The results showed that teacher well-being fully mediates the relationship between perceived paternalistic principal leadership and teacher commitment. Additionally, the collectivist orientation of school culture influences the strength of the association between paternalistic leadership and teacher commitment indirectly through well-being. More precisely, paternalistic leadership has a stronger link to teacher well-being and commitment when teachers identify the culture of their schools as relatively more collectivist.

This study offers empirical evidence of paternalistic school leadership in promoting teacher well-being and commitment depending on the school culture in a non-western country context.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of environmental risk on corporate governance through market reaction to bank loan announcements.

Using the establishment of environment court in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper adopt the difference-in-differences approach based on listed firms during 2003–2013 to explore the impact of environment court on corporate governance.

This paper find that the environment court would weaken the cumulative abnormal return of loan announcements. Then, this paper confirm that the potential reason is that environment court worsens the interest conflict between majority and minority shareholders. Further, cross-sectional analysis suggests that bank’s supervision, market competition and analyst coverage can alleviate the impact of environment court on corporate governance.

Environment courts intensify firms’ internal interest disputes, thus causing the decrease of corporate governance, which can be observed through the effect of bank loan announcements.

This paper provide reference for environmental policy formulation and implementation, firms’ decision-makings and improving the banking regulatory system.

This paper makes a contribution to the studies about the impact of environment court on firms’ decision-making and investors’ reaction, the impact of external factors on corporate governance and bank loan announcements effect.

From the perspective of local government tax administration, the impact of geographic dispersion on the corporate tax burden is investigated in this paper.

Using unbalanced panel data with a sample of listed companies from 2003 to 2020 in China, this paper focuses on the effect of geographic dispersion on corporate tax burden and the mechanisms.

It is found that corporate tax burden is positively related to geographic dispersion. It is also found that geographic dispersion affects the corporate tax burden by increasing the effort of local government tax administration. In addition, the relation between geographic dispersion and corporate tax burden is more pronounced for local SOEs prior to the implementation of Golden Tax Project III and in cases where local governments face stronger financial pressure to obtain revenue.

This study has important implications for the promotion of the coordinated development of the regional economy, as well as the legalization, modernization and informatization of tax administration.