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This study aims to explore the consumption practices of globally-mobile, young consumers from China who experience both upward social mobility and geographically outbound mobility by studying abroad, echoing emerging scholarship of “moving consumption”.

Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 27 first-generation Chinese international students studying in the USA.

The informants interpret outbound geographical mobility and upward social mobility in an overlapping manner. For them, cosmopolitan consumption practices are a form of boundary work and identity construction, reflecting their international experience. At the same time, the informants seek affirmation of the meanings and references of their consumption in their remote, native cultural contexts. In this way, they ensure that their tastes align with the popular “West” with which Chinese consumers are already familiar.

This study examines international student mobility that is unique to the younger generation. It considers how such form of mobility shapes the consumption patterns of Chinese youth with substantial purchasing power. Young, affluent international students differ in fundamental ways from other cross-cultural, cross-border travelers such as migrants, globally-mobile professionals, global citizens, nomads, sojourners and tourists. Thus, this study not only sheds light on the under-researched subject of “moving consumption” but also addresses youth cultures in transitional economies by exploring how Chinese youth consume when they are away from home and exposed to global consumerism first-hand.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some specific, current social phenomena in China that may influence consumers’ ethical beliefs and practices, focusing on how some top-down, social and political changes could shape consumer behavior that needs to be understood in the Chinese context.

Extensive literature was critically reviewed to explore recent macro-societal reforms in China and their impact on consumers’ (un)ethical practices.

The authors lay out how China, a government-led society, underwent a series of political reforms resulting in demographic shifts that differentiate it from its western, industrialized counterparts. The authors connect these societal changes with Chinese characteristics to consumers’ ethical evaluations, forming a new angle to understand consumer ethics in China. The authors also draw on two empirical examples to illustrate the argument.

While consumer ethics are often explained by either cultural factors or individual variations, the authors discuss how one’s ethical practice is shaped by one’s social position, which is a product of national-level public policy. The discussions have ramifications for the study of consumers’ social class and ethical practices because they take into account the elusive social positions and ambiguous social class consciousness of the Chinese population that have resulted from social mobility. The discussions may give practitioners a better understanding of the ethical rationale behind consumers’ changing lifestyles especially in the Chinese context.

A question remains unresolved in existing cross-disciplinary research at the marketing/entrepreneurship interface (MEI). This features circumstances when employing a combination of market-oriented and entrepreneurially-oriented activities, known as entrepreneurial marketing (EM) behavior, is likely to lead to positive performance outcomes. Earlier mixed findings provide the need to unpack the nuances of EM practices, in terms of their boundary conditions, regarding circumstances where this behavior does or does not lead to performance-enhancing outcomes. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to examine the complexities of the association between EM activities and small firm performance by assessing quadratic and moderating effects.

This study was underpinned by resource-based theory (RBT). Survey responses were collected from 214 smaller-sized companies in the United Kingdom. The statistical data passed all major checks for reliability, different forms of validity, common method variance and endogeneity bias.

EM activities had a quadratic connection with small firm performance, with this relationship being enhanced (in terms of a positive two-way interaction effect) by market dynamism (a counter-intuitive result regarding environmental conditions). Surprisingly, through a post-hoc test, coopetition (cooperation among competitors to leverage assets and overcome resource constraints) did not play any influential part in helping owner-managers to overcome the potential downsides of EM practices, like the time and cost implications of identifying and exploiting opportunities (i.e., a non-significant three-way interaction effect).

Unique insights outline how decision-makers in smaller-sized organizations can harness the potential benefits, and minimise the likely drawbacks, of employing EM activities. However, owner-managers should be cautious when implementing these organization-wide practices, since they are likely to enhance performance, but only up to a fixed point. Indeed, excessive forms of EM activities can weaken small firms’ performance. A counter-intuitive positive moderation effect regarding market dynamism challenges certain earlier findings. Specifically, in some dynamic market conditions, EM activities could be performance-enhancing, since certain environmental-level forces might assist owner-managers to amplify the merits of behavior at the MEI when implemented effectively.

Soil nutrient management and fertilizer use by farmers are important for sustainable grain production. The authors examined the effect of an experimental agricultural extension program, the science and technology backyard, in promoting sustainable soil nutrient management in the North China Plain (NCP). The science and technology backyard integrates farmer field schools, field demonstrations, and case-to-case counselling to promote sustainable farming practices among rural smallholders.

The authors conducted a large-scale household survey of more than 2,000 rural smallholders. The authors used a multivariate regression analysis as the benchmark to assess the effect of the science-and-technology backyard on smallholder soil nutrient management. Furthermore, the authors used coarse exact matching (CEM) methods to control for potential bias due to self-selection and the (endogenous) switching regression approach as the main empirical analysis.

The results show that the science-and-technology backyard program increased smallholders' wheat yield by approximately 0.23 standard deviation; however, no significant increase in maize yield was observed. Regarding soil nutrient use efficiency, the authors found a significant improvement in smallholders' phosphorus and potassium use efficiencies for both wheat and maize production, and a significant improvement in nitrogen use efficiency for wheat production, but no significant improvement of nitrogen use efficiency for maize production.

This study evaluated a novel participatory agricultural extension model to improve soil nutrient management practices among smallholders. The integration of agronomists' scientific knowledge and smallholders' local contextual experiences could be an effective way to improve farmers' soil nutrient management. This study provides the first quantitative estimates based on rigorous impact assessment methods of this novel extension approach in rural China.