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The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer preference of and willingness to pay for eco-labelled eggs using cross-sectional data collected from Chongqing Municipality in China.

This study employs both conditional logistic model and mixed logistic model to conduct the empirical analysis.

The empirical results show that individual heterogeneous preference and attributes of eco-labelled eggs significantly influence consumer choices. More specifically, higher per capita income, families with pregnant women or children, higher level of trust in and knowledge of eco-labels contribute positively to choosing eco-labelled eggs, and attributes of eco-labelled eggs such as certification labels, free-range husbandry, and nutrition enrichment significantly increase consumer utility. Generally, the price premium that consumers are willing to pay for eggs containing “organic”, “free-range husbandry”, and “nutrition enrichment” labels is 375.0% more, equivalent to 42.8 Yuan/kg.

This study used first-hand survey data to reveal consumers’ heterogeneous preference of and willingness to pay for eco-labelled eggs based on the random utility theory.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of Zr content on immersion and electrochemical corrosion behavior of Zr-containing Ti-based (TiZr) alloys.

The phase analysis of as-cast TχZAB alloys was carried out using X-ray diffraction. The microstructure of corrosion surfaces of the samples was observed using optical metallographic microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy.

The immersion test reveals that the corrosion is alleviated in the presence of a high amount of Zr, whereas pitting corrosion occurs when the Zr content is up to 40 Wt.%. Furthermore, the electrochemical analysis demonstrates that the corrosion resistance TiZr alloys is improved with increasing Zr content.

The TiZr alloys are promising candidates for high-end applications because of their excellent comprehensive properties. These alloys are usually used in marine or other harsh corrosive environments; therefore, it is essential to study their corrosion behavior.

With the continuous improvement of public–private partnership (PPP) projects, the participants' value creation goals are not only limited to achieving the basic performance objectives but also to realising value added. However, the effect of traditional contract management on realising the value creation objectives of PPP projects is limited. According to the view of multifunctional contract, joint-contract functions that integrate contract control and flexibility are likely to be effective in enhancing the value creation of PPP projects. This study aims to explore the effects of joint-contract functions on PPP project value creation and relevant influencing mechanism by investigating the mediating effect of in-role behaviour and extra-role behaviour.

After collecting 258 valid questionnaires from PPP professionals in China, this study used structural equation modelling to validate the hypotheses.

Contract control and flexibility can improve PPP project value creation. Specifically, contract control improves the achievement of the basic contract objectives of PPP projects, whereas contract flexibility enhances the achievement of the value-added of PPP projects. Moreover, only in-role behaviour mediates the effect of contract control on value creation. In addition, the mediating effect of extra-role behaviour on the impact of contract flexibility on value creation is stronger than that of in-role behaviour. The mediating effect of in- and extra-role behaviour is mainly reflected in the realisation of basic and value-added performance, respectively.

The findings of this study can help realise value creation in three ways. Firstly, new perspectives for PPP project value creation should be proposed by combining the improvement of contract objectives and the realisation of the participants' implicit demands. Secondly, the effects of different contract functions on value creation should be analysed instead of a single dimension of contractual governance. Thirdly, the mediating effects of different types of cooperation behaviour that may influence the relationship between contractual governance and value creation should be evaluated.

This study verifies the impacts of different contract functions on PPP project value creation. In addition, cooperative behaviour is embedded as a mediating variable, and the mediated transmission path from contract function to cooperative behaviour and further to PPP project value creation is systematically analysed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of disease risk in terms of the major signals (i.e. status, reputation and self-representation) on the e-consultation platforms.

In this study, the proposed research hypotheses are tested using the transaction data collected from xywy.com (in Need of Therapy). In fact, xywy.com is one the leading e-consultation service websites in China that provides a platform for the interactions between the physicians and patients (Yu et al., 2016; Peng et al., 2015). Generally speaking, it has all the needed design elements and in other words, a standard e-consultation website should have such items/components as physician homepage, physician review, free consultation, paid consultation and recommendation systems.

The obtained results reveal that all attributes including status, reputation and self-representation have a positive impact on physician’s online order volume. Moreover, there is a positive moderating effect of disease risk onto the online reputation, indicating a higher effect exists for the diseases with high risk. However, the effect of offline status and online self-representation is not moderated by the disease risk, indicating market signals (online reputation) may have a stronger predictive power than seller signals (offline status and online self- representation), and therefore market signals are more effective when/if the disease risk is high.

E-consultation has gradually become a significant trend to provide the healthcare services, in the emerging economy such as China because of shortage of medical resources but having an adequate access in internet usage. The impacts of signals on the health care market have been validated by previous studies. However, the research focusing on the moderating effect of signaling environment in the health care industry is still lacking. As a result, the value of this research helps to bridge the aforementioned research gap.

The authors empirically examined social capital factors affecting patients' social support acquisition with the aim of providing guidance to patients seeking social support online.

The authors used social network analysis to extract data about social capital factors from online health communities and text mining to identify forms of informational support and emotional support grounded in online, text-based communication. Moreover, the authors employed a random coefficient model to understand the dynamic influence of social capital factors on both informational and emotional support.

The results from the empirical analyses show that structural connections have a lasting impact on the acquisition of both types of support; that is, social connections developed in the past will have an effect on the future. For relational capital, strong ties were less important; the quantity of connections mattered more than the quality when acquiring informational support. The use of health-related language increased the amount of informational support acquired. Over time, patients gained increasing social support, which primarily came from the patients' historical threads, likely via searches from peers facilitated by accumulated social capital.

The authors' research adds to the literature on social capital and social support in online health communities by exploring how the three dimensions of social capital affect social support acquisition. The authors' research also contributes to the online health care literature by examining social support from a dynamic perspective. Practically, the authors' findings provide guidance for patients on what decisions to make to acquire more social support.

The authors investigate whether an index-based weather insurance (WII) product can complement or replace existing traditional crop yield insurance for mitigating farmers' financial risks, with an application to blueberry growers in British Columbia (BC).

A hybrid model combining expected utility (EU) and prospect values is developed to analyse farmers' demand for WII.

While weather data are used to investigate supply elements, a hybrid model combining EU theory and prospect theory (PT) is developed to analyse farmers' demand for WII. On the supply side, a quality index is constructed and the relationship between the quality index and key weather parameters is quantified using a partial least squares structural model. The authors then model weather parameters via time-series analysis and statistical distributions to provide reasonable estimates for calculating actuarially sound insurance premiums for a rainfall indexed, insurance product. This model indicates that decreases in the proportion of a blueberry grower's total revenue and revenue volatility will decrease the possibility that they participate in WII. At the same time, an increase in the value loss aversion coefficient and WII's basis risk further leads to less demand for WII. In short, a grower may decide not to participate in WII at an actuarially fair premium due to the combined effects of the above factors. Overall, while the supply analysis enables us to demonstrate that WII can potentially help in mitigating farmers' financial risks, it turns out that, on the demand side, blueberry growers are unwilling to pay for such a product without large government subsidies.

The authors argue that the demand for insurance may be affected by the level and the volatility of a berry grower's total revenue. Hence, the authors propose a hybrid expression that assumes a farmer seeks to maximize the total utility function to capture the rational and intuitive parts of a farmer's decision-making process. The EU represents rationality and the prospect value represents the intuitive component. Meanwhile, the authors investigate the possibility of using key weather parameters to construct a berry quality index – one that could be applied to other agricultural areas for studying the relationship between weather conditions and product quality.

Online shopping has recently been evolving more toward the subject area of collaborative online shopping (COS), and customer satisfaction is one of the key determinants for the success of COS. In this study, we investigate the effect of product type and gender and their interaction with customer satisfaction through user involvement in a collaborative online shopping context.

We developed a lab experiment with a mixed two-by-two factorial design to test the proposed research model. We chose gender (male versus female) as the between-subjects factor and product type (utilitarian product versus hedonic product) as the within-subjects factor.

The obtained results indicate that collaborative shopping may require group members to be more involved for a hedonic product than a utilitarian product. When collaboratively shopping for utilitarian products, male groups tend to show a higher level of involvement than female groups. In contrast, female groups show a higher level of involvement than male groups when collaboratively shopping for hedonic products. Furthermore, our results indicate that greater involvement in COS may lead to higher satisfaction.

Websites that sell hedonic products should first adopt the design elements that support COS. Meanwhile, online sellers should be aware that the gender gap still exists as online shopping evolves toward social online shopping. In addition, COS websites should provide more design elements (e.g. co-browsing, avatar embodiment, video chat and voting tools) to stimulate user involvement.

In this paper, we employ the theory of consumption values, which decomposes COS value into the utilitarian and hedonic dimensions, as a theoretical foundation to investigate the effect of product type and gender together as well as their interactions in the COS context. The obtained findings may provide various insights and empirical evidence to improve the understanding of how to target male and female customers across different product types in the COS context.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of agricultural internet information (AII) acquisition on climate-resilient variety adoption among rice farmers in the Jianghan Plain region of China. Additionally, it explores the influencing channels involved in this process.

Based on survey data for 877 rice farmers from 10 counties in the Jianghan Plain, China, this paper used an econometric approach to estimate the impact of AII acquisition on farmers’ adoption of climate-resilient varieties. A recursive bivariate Probit model was used to address endogeneity issues and obtain accurate estimates. Furthermore, three main influencing mechanisms were proposed and tested, which are broadening information channels, enhancing social interactions and improving agricultural skills.

The results show that acquiring AII can overall enhance the likelihood of farmers adopting climate-resilient varieties by 36.8%. The three influencing channels are empirically confirmed. Besides, educational attainment, income and peer effects can facilitate farmers’ acquisition of AII, while climate conditions and age significantly influence the adoption of climate-resilient varieties.

Practical recommendations are put forward to help farmers build climate resilience, including investing in rural internet infrastructures, enhancing farmers’ digital literacy and promoting the dissemination of climate-resilient information through diverse internet platforms.

Strengthening climate resilience is essential for sustaining the livelihoods of farmers and ensuring national food security; however, the role of internet information has received limited attention. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the casual relationship between internet information and climate resilience, which fills the research gap.

Aiming at the lack of explanatory power of traditional industrial organization theory in cross-border competition, by introducing the idea of ecological niche, the authors aim to explore the competitive situation of platform-based enterprises when they operate in multiple fields.

With the help of ecological niche theory, construct the niche width and niche overlap index of typical enterprises in the platform economy, and find out the advantages and the intensity of competition through comparative analysis.

In an environment of cross-border competition, large enterprises have significant competitive advantages, and the fierce competition is concentrated among medium-sized enterprises.

The conclusions of this paper not only provide new insights for explaining the phenomenon of cross-border competition in the platform economy, but also provide theoretical reference for the anti-trust enforcement practice in the platform economy.

A higher-order Reissner-Mindlin plate element method is presented based on the framework of assumed stress quasi-conforming method and Hellinger-Reissner variational principle. A novel six-node triangular plate element is proposed by utilizing this method for the static and free vibration analysis of Reissner-Mindlin plates.

First, the initial assumed stress field is derived by using the fundamental analytical solutions which satisfy all governing equations. Then the stress matrix is treated as the weighted function to weaken the strain-displacement equations after the strains are derived by using the constitutive equations. Finally, the arbitrary order Timoshenko beam function is adopted as the string-net functions along each side of the element for strain integration.

The proposed element can pass patch test and is free from shear locking and spurious zero energy modes. Numerical tests show that the element can give high-accurate solutions, good convergence and is a good competitor to other models.

This work gives new formulations to develop high-order Reissner-Mindlin plate element, and the new strategy exhibits advantages of both analytical and discrete methods.