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This study aims to determine how and through what mechanisms the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) promotion effect of the Belt and Road initiative (BRI-OFDI) affects domestic investment. It is motivated by the context that China is fostering a new development pattern, as well as by the impetus from the Belt and Road initiative for the new pattern.

Drawing on data of Chinese-listed companies, this study uses a difference-in-difference method to explore the effect of the BRI-OFDI on domestic investment and a mediation model to illustrate the mechanisms.

The BRI-OFDI has a significantly positive effect on domestic investment, meaning that the Belt and Road initiative's OFDI promotion effect crowds in domestic investment. The results are heterogeneous: the crowding-in effect mainly exists in non-state-owned and technology-intensive enterprises, while a crowding-out effect is seen in state-owned and labor-intensive enterprises. The easing of corporate financing constraints and the expansion of market demand are two important mechanisms.

This study uses the Belt and Road initiative as an exogenous shock to investigate the impact of the initiative-induced OFDI promotion effect on domestic investment. It addresses the potential endogeneity issue confronting the studies on the relationship between OFDI and domestic investment in the literature. The authors focus on the possible spillover effects of the Belt and Road initiative discussing the impact of the BRI-OFDI on domestic investment from the micro-firm perspective. It offers a new perspective to objectively assess the initiative's policy effect.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices frequently result in increased costs for Chinese international contractors (CICs), where profitability is the primary objective; therefore, internal corporate drivers and external pressures play a crucial role in encouraging them to engage in sustainable CSR practices. This study systematically examines the dynamic impact of internal and external stakeholders on the CSR practices of CICs.

This study adopted a structural equation model (SEM) to identify and validate a correlation between stakeholders and CSR practices. Standardized causal coefficients estimated in SEM were used to construct a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) model to illustrate the effect of stakeholders on CSR practices with linkage direction and weights. Predictive, diagnostic, and hybrid analyses were performed to dynamically model the variation in stakeholders on the evolution of CSR practices.

The empirical results demonstrate that (1) employee participation in CSR has the greatest impact on CSR practices, followed by CSR strategies, partner and customer expectations, and finally government regulations. (2) In the early stage of CSR fulfillment, CSR strategies have the greatest influence on CSR practices; in the later stage of CSR fulfillment, employee participation in CSR has the greatest influence on CSR practices. (3) In the long run, the most effective and economical integrated interventions are those that address employee participation in CSR, partner expectations and customer expectations, and intervention in CSR strategies is needed if the level of CSR practice needs to be improved in the short term.

This study contributes to the research on the influence mechanisms of CSR practices of CICs and systematically analyzes their dynamic influence on CSR practices of CICs from the perspective of stakeholders.

3D printing has been warmly welcomed by clothing enterprises for its customization capacity in recent years. However, such clothing enterprises have to face the digital transformation challenges brought by 3D printing. Since the business model is a competitive weapon for modern enterprises, there is a research gap between business model innovation and digital transformation challenges for 3D-printing garment enterprises. The aim of the paper is to innovate a new business model for 3D-printing garment enterprises in digital transformation.

A business model innovation canvas (BMIC), a new method for business model innovation, is used to innovate a new 3D-printing clothing enterprises business model in the context of digital transformation. The business model canvas (BMC) method is adopted to illustrate the new business model. The business model ecosystem is used to design the operating architecture and mechanism of the new business model.

First, 3D-printing clothing enterprises are facing digital transformation, and they urgently need to innovate new business models. Second, mass customization and distributed manufacturing are important ways of solving the business model problems faced by 3D-printing clothing enterprises in the process of digital transformation. Third, BMIC has proven to be an effective tool for business model innovation.

The new mass deep customization-distributed manufacturing (MDC-DM) business model is universal. As such, it can provide an important theoretical reference for other scholars to study similar problems. The digital transformation background is taken into account in the process of business model innovation. Therefore, this is the first hybrid research that has been focused on 3D printing, garment enterprises, digital transformation and business model innovation. On the other hand, business model innovation is a type of exploratory research, which means that the MDC-DM business model’s application effect cannot be immediately observed and requires further verification in the future.

The new business model MDC-DM is not only applicable to 3D-printing garment enterprises but also to some other enterprises that are either using or will use 3D printing to enhance their core competitiveness.

A new business model, MDC-DM, is created through BMIC, which allows 3D-printing garment enterprises to meet the challenges of digital transformation. In addition, the original canvas of the MDC-DM business model is designed using BMC. Moreover, the ecosystem of the MDC-DM business model is constructed, and its operation mechanisms are comprehensively designed.

The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system not only needs to focus on its composition, but also needs to consider changes and impacts of internal and external environment.

This study attempts to introduce the concept of dissipative structure from the perspective of complexity theory and constructs a positive entropy and negentropy flow index system for mega railway infrastructure project management system in order to analyze the factors of management system more deeply. The Brusselator model is used to construct the structure of the mega railway infrastructure project management system, and the entropy method is used to calculate the positive entropy and negentropy values to verify whether the management system is a dissipative structure.

A plateau railway project in China was used as an example for an empirical study, not only its own characteristics are analyzed, but also the role of constraints and facilitation of the internal and external environment. Based on the research results, several effective suggestions are put forward to improve the stability and work efficiency of mega railway infrastructure project management system.

This study demonstrates that mega railway infrastructure project management system has the characteristics of dissipative structure. It can provide theoretical support for the development of mega railway infrastructure project management system from disorderly state to orderly state.

In the era of information overload, the density of tourism information and the increasingly sophisticated information needs of consumers have created information confusion for tourists and scenic-area managers. The study aims to help scenic-area managers determine the strengths and weaknesses in the development process of scenic areas and to solve the practical problem of tourists' difficulty in quickly and accurately obtaining the destination image of a scenic area and finding a scenic area that meets their needs.

The study uses a variety of machine learning methods, namely, the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) theme extraction model, term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighting method and sentiment analysis. This work also incorporates probabilistic hesitant fuzzy algorithm (PHFA) in multi-attribute decision-making to form an enhanced tourism destination image mining and analysis model based on visitor expression information. The model is intended to help managers and visitors identify the strengths and weaknesses in the development of scenic areas. Jiuzhaigou is used as an example for empirical analysis.

In the study, a complete model for the mining analysis of tourism destination image was constructed, and 24,222 online reviews on Jiuzhaigou, China were analyzed in text. The results revealed a total of 10 attributes and 100 attribute elements. From the identified attributes, three negative attributes were identified, namely, crowdedness, tourism cost and accommodation environment. The study provides suggestions for tourists to select attractions and offers recommendations and improvement measures for Jiuzhaigou in terms of crowd control and post-disaster reconstruction.

Previous research in this area has used small sample data for qualitative analysis. Thus, the current study fills this gap in the literature by proposing a machine learning method that incorporates PHFA through the combination of the ideas of management and multi-attribute decision theory. In addition, the study considers visitors' emotions and thematic preferences from the perspective of their expressed information, based on which the tourism destination image is analyzed. Optimization strategies are provided to help managers of scenic spots in their decision-making.

This paper studies the optimal decision-making and coordination problem of a dual-channel fresh agricultural product (FAP) supply chain. The purpose is to analyze the impact of information sharing on optimal decisions and propose a coordination mechanism to encourage supply chain members to share information.

The two-echelon dual-channel FAP supply chain includes a manufacturer and a retailer. By using the Stackelberg game theory and the backward induction method, the optimal decisions are obtained under information symmetry and asymmetry and the coordination contract is designed.

The results show that supply chain members should comprehensively evaluate the specific situation of product attributes, coefficient of freshness-keeping cost and network operating costs to make decisions. Asymmetric information can exacerbate the deviation of optimal decisions among supply chain members and information sharing is always beneficial to manufacturers but not to retailers. The improved revenue-sharing and cost-sharing contract is an effective coordination mechanism.

The conclusions can provide theoretical guidance for supply chain managers to deal with information asymmetry and improve the competitiveness of the supply chain.

This paper combines the three characteristics that are most closely related to the reality of supply chains, including horizontal and vertical competition of different channels, the perishable characteristics of FAPs and the uncertainty generated by asymmetric demand information.

Based on climate issues and carbon emissions, this study aims to promote low-carbon consumption and compel consumers to actively shift to energy-saving appliances. In this big data era, online reviews in social and electronic commerce (e-commerce) websites contain valuable product information, which can facilitate firm business strategies and consumer comparison shopping. This study is designed to advance existing research on energy-saving refrigerators by incorporating machine learning models in the analysis of online reviews to provide valuable suggestions to e-commerce platform managers and manufacturers to effectively understand the psychological cognition of consumers.

This study proposes an online e-commerce review mining and management strategy model based on “data acquisition and cleaning, data mining and analysis and strategy formation” through multiple machine learning methods, namely, Bayes networks, support vector machine (SVM), latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and importance–performance analysis (IPA), to help managers.

Based on a case study of one of the largest e-commerce platforms in China, this study linguistically analyzes 29,216 online reviews of energy-saving refrigerators. Results indicate that the energy-saving refrigerator features that consumers are generally satisfied with are, in sequential order, logistics, function, price, outlook, after-sales service, brand, quality and space. This study also identifies ten topics with 100 keywords by analyzing 18 different refrigerator models. Finally, based on the IPA, this study allocates different priorities to the features and provides suggestions from the perspective of consumers, the government and manufacturers.

In terms of limitations, future research may focus on the following points. First, the topics identified in this study derive from specific points in time and reviews; thus, the topics may change with the text data. A machine learning-based online review analysis platform could be developed in the future to dynamically improve consumer satisfaction. Moreover, given that consumers' needs may change over time, e-commerce platform types and consumer characteristics, such as user profiles, can be incorporated into the model to effectively analyze trends in consumers' perceived dimensions.

This study fills the gap in previous research in this field, which uses small-sample data for qualitative analysis, while integrating management ideas and proposes an online e-commerce review mining and management strategy model based on machine learning methods. Moreover, this study considers how consumers' emotional and thematic preferences for products affect their purchase decision-making from the perspective of their psychological perception and linguistically analyzes online reviews of energy-saving refrigerators using the proposed mining model. Through the improved IPA model, this study provides optimizing strategies to help e-commerce platform managers and manufacturers.

Social shopping platforms have flourished by using multiple social shopping features, yet little is known about how the combination of these features affects purchase intention, particularly in terms of the product itself. The purpose of the paper is to draw on the concept of social shopping feature richness, adopting a formative approach on the survey used, and endeavors to reveal the concept's impact on consumers' buying intention from a product perspective.

Building on mental accounting and signaling theories, a theoretical model is proposed and empirically evaluated with 356 samples collected using a questionnaire survey.

The results suggest that social shopping feature richness promotes consumers' consumption by providing information signals to satisfy acquisition utility and transaction utility. Specifically, social shopping feature richness enhances perceived product quality, while decreasing negative perceptions regarding price. Moreover, perceived product quality and perceived price significantly influence buying intention through the mechanism of perceived value.

The authors' study highlights the role of the combination of functionally diverse social shopping features on product sales for social shopping platforms.

This study aims to understand the epistemic foundation of the classification applied in the first Chinese library catalogue, the Seven Epitomes (Qilue).

Originating from a theoretical stance that situates knowledge organization in its social context, the study applies a multifaceted framework pertaining to five categories of textual data: the Seven Epitomes; biographical information about the classificationist Liu Xin; and the relevant intellectual, political, and technological history.

The study discovers seven principles contributing to the epistemic foundation of the catalogue's classification: the Han imperial library collection imposed as the literary warrant; government functions considered for structuring texts; classicist morality determining the main classificatory structure; knowledge perceived and organized as a unity; objects, rather than subjects, of concern affecting categories at the main class level; correlative thinking connecting all text categories to a supreme knowledge embodied by the Six Classics; and classicist moral values resulting in both vertical and horizontal hierarchies among categories as well as texts.

A major limitation of the study is its focus on the main classes, with limited attention to subclasses. Future research can extend the analysis to examine subclasses of the same scheme. Findings from these studies may lead to a comparison between the epistemic approach in the target classification and the analytic one common in today's bibliographic classification.

The study is the first to examine in depth the epistemic foundation of traditional Chinese bibliographic classification, anchoring the classification in its appropriate social and historical context.

Considering the popularity and addictive attributes of short-form videos, this study aims to determine mechanisms by which short-form video features affect addiction.

This study conducts empirical research using data collected from 382 Chinese TikTok users. Based on the stimulus–organism–response framework, the research model was constructed from the opponent process theory (OPT) perspective through features and emotional elements.

The results show that short-form video features influence addiction by activating users' perceived enjoyment and feeling of withdrawal. Based on the positive and negative reinforcement of the OPT, users must repeatedly interact with short-form videos to maintain positive emotions or reduce negative emotions. Eventually, this practice will lead to addiction. Additionally, users' procrastination moderates the relationship between feeling of withdrawal and addiction.

This study discussed how features influence addiction through opponent emotions on short-form video from the OPT perspective, enriching scholars' research on social media addiction. Furthermore, this study examined the moderating effects of procrastination and identifies unique features of short-form videos.