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The purpose of this paper is to measure the influence factors of their preferences for urban forest, marginal values of various properties and relative values of different scheme portfolios, thus arriving indirectly at the city residents’ demand for urban forest improvement.

This paper, based on the data from the 2015–2017 field survey questionnaire of city residents over the radius of Beijing’s 5th Ring Road, uses the choice experiment method (CEM) to conduct a study of its residents’ demand for urban forest.

Beijing’s city residents are generally inclined to accept a relatively low payment of urban forest while hoping to access a relatively high urban afforestation coverage with the construction of relatively many city parks, especially focusing on the specialized park management; the marginal values of biodiversity and greenery coverage are far higher than those of greenbelts in quantity and the maximum marginal value of biodiversity remains as high as RMB29.42, indicating that the city residents do not favor much the number of greenbelts over other aspects but they generally hope to achieve a higher greenery coverage and a richer biodiversity.

Generally speaking, what Beijing City needs most is not continuing the increase in the number of greenbelts, but engaging in the rational retrofit of its existing greenbelts and optimizing its urban forest structure.

This paper may provide reference for determining the city residents’ payment criteria for urban forest and will be of equally great significance to developing cities and their urban forest.

The development of tourism around Wolong Nature Reserve changes the local communities' ways of life. This study discusses how ecotourism affects the households' use of their capitals, the livelihood strategies as well as illustrates the impact on the habitats in the reserve through Department for International Development’s (DFID) Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) with data collected during fieldwork.

The study focuses on (1) Calculating Livelihood Capital Index. (2) The effects of livelihood capitals on livelihood strategy were calculated by multinomial logistic regression.

The study has yielded the following results: (1) In general, tourism promotes people's livelihood capitals. The growth in different types of households under tourism settings is ranked as full-time tourism operators > part-time tourism operators > traditional living households. (2) Tourism development mainly shifts livelihood strategies in two ways. Firstly, travel operating replaces some traditional practices that make livings; secondly, increased needs for potherbs and herbs from tourists let households enter into the hills to pick the plants more actively, which intensifies the destruction of giant panda's habitats. (3) Nine types of livelihood capitals indicators, namely farmland quality, distance between house and roads, number of laborers, average housing area, average income per person, whether family members being village cadres, and ever having received skills training shape livelihood strategies in different levels.

Three discussions are drawn from the study: (1) Enhancing the exploit for tourism resources to form a diversified competition. (2) Introducing herb growing to fulfill tourists' needs and improve people's livelihood in the meantime. (3) Optimizing the tourism surveillance and management system and improving the rules and regulations.

Accurate and timely cost prediction is critical to the success of construction projects which is still facing challenges especially at the early stage. In the context of rapid development of machine learning technology and the massive cost data from historical projects, this paper aims to propose a novel cost prediction model based on historical data with improved performance when only limited information about the new project is available.

The proposed approach combines regression analysis (RA) and artificial neural network (ANN) to build a novel hybrid cost prediction model with the former as front-end prediction and the latter as back-end correction. Firstly, the main factors influencing the cost of building projects are identified through literature research and subsequently screened by principal component analysis (PCA). Secondly the optimal RA model is determined through multi-model comparison and used for front-end prediction. Finally, ANN is applied to construct the error correction model. The hybrid RA-ANN model was trained and tested with cost data from 128 completed construction projects in China.

The results show that the hybrid cost prediction model has the advantages of both RA and ANN whose prediction accuracy is higher than that of RA and ANN only with the information such as total floor area, height and number of floors.

(1) The most critical influencing factors of the buildings’ cost are found out by means of PCA on the historical data. (2) A novel hybrid RA-ANN model is proposed which proved to have the advantages of both RA and ANN with higher accuracy. (3) The comparison among different models has been carried out which is helpful to future model selection.

The piston ring-cylinder liner pair is one of the most important tribological systems of an internal combustion engine. The friction loss of the piston ring-cylinder liner pair accounts for the largest portion of total efficiency losses. Therefore, improving the tribological system design of the piston ring-cylinder liner pair can reduce friction losses and bring tremendous economic benefits to society. This paper aims use surface texturing, which is proving to be an effective method, for improving the tribological performance of sliding surfaces.

In this paper, an experimental study using a pin-on-disk tribometer was carried out to evaluate the effects of surface texturing on friction reduction of piston rings under various loads and sliding velocities. Rectangular- and circular-shaped textures with different depths and area densities were produced by a Femtosecond laser. Comparison experiments were conducted with un-textured rings.

The results indicate that the friction performance of the ring surface was significantly improved by surface texturing, and the running-in stage was also shortened. More specifically, it was found that the rectangular-shaped texture had a better effect on friction reduction than the circular-shaped texture. Results also indicate that an optimum texture density existed for the rectangular-shaped texture. Additionally, it was observed that the average friction coefficient reduction of the textured ring decreased with increasing load and increased with increasing sliding velocity.

Consequently, these findings provide a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between micro-textures and tribological properties of piston rings in lubricating sliding.

Online retailers are pioneering the incentivization of customers to generate more product reviews by rewarding them. However, little is known about the impact of reward types on customers' review behavior, including review frequency and sentiment. To address this gap, we investigated the effects of different reward types on customers' review behavior and how these rewards influence customers' review behavior.

We collected secondary data and empirically tested the hypothesis by analyzing the change in reward policy. Regression and two-stage Heckman models were applied to investigate the effects, with the latter used to control potential selection issues.

The results revealed that monetary rewards can stimulate customers to generate more positive product reviews. Furthermore, the reward amount has a negative moderating effect on the aforementioned relationship. Additionally, customer tenure negatively moderates the relationship between monetary rewards and review behavior.

This study contributes to the understanding of user-generated content motivation and provides managerial implications for reward programs.

From the perspective of top management heterogeneity, this paper aims to study the impact of the psychological traits of executive pay bandwagon on earnings management in the listed companies of China.

This paper applies the ratio of executive pay to the median pay level of executives in firms of similar size and industry, namely, the comparing coefficient, as an alternative variable of executive pay bandwagon, and earnings management as the behavior choice of executive pay bandwagon, to examine whether executives in the listed companies of China have comparing mentality, and whether the result is influenced by executive heterogeneity by using the multiple linear regression models.

The lower the executives’ compensation is than the median pay level of executives in firms of similar size and industry, the stronger the incentive the executives have to compare with others whose pay is higher, increasing the extent of earnings management in the future, and executives tend to use real activities manipulation rather than accrual-based earnings management to increase their performance-based compensation. As pay bandwagon is a kind of executives’ individual psychological reaction, in a large extent, its behavioral performance is likely to be affected by executive heterogeneity. Specifically, when the proportion of male executives, young executives or low educated executives is relatively high, or executives are located in remote cities, there will breed more earnings management behaviors induced by pay bandwagon. Further study shows that pay bandwagon is positively correlated with rigging compensation based on real earnings management and pay bandwagon also has significantly negative effects on the firms’ future value creation.

Pay bandwagon is an important inducement of executives’ earnings management, with implication that for executives with different characteristics, one should pay attention to the subjective psychological perception and expectation of their pay in the future studies related to executives’ compensation incentives.

This study introduces the research within sociology, psychology and experimental economics, and considers the executives’ subjective perception of their pay, to explore the internal mechanism that executives affect firm performance via a specific earnings management method and to implement self-interested behavior due to pay bandwagon. And this is the first study to select several typical executive individual characteristics to investigate the influence of executive heterogeneity on pay bandwagon and its economic consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the promotion of integrated forage/ruminant‐livestock industries forms a key plank in efforts to improve rural household livelihoods in Western China.

The paper critiques how this industry development has proceeded in the case of Qingyang prefecture in Gansu. The way in which the industry policy has manifested from central to local levels of government is outlined along with how the industry policy relates to other measures intended to improve household livelihoods.

The outcomes of this forage‐livestock industry policy do not always match the intention, and the paper examines the various disconnects that arise between government agencies, government and households and households and the market. The foremost challenge for policy makers is in connecting households and markets.

Identifying the impacts of policy and institutional settings associated with forage‐livestock systems is crucial if improvements are to be made and as these systems become more widespread in Western China.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of civil disobedience (CD) movements in Hong Kong in the context of the notion of civil society (CS).

The paper begins by rigorously defining the notion of CD, as well as the concept of CS and tracing its development in Hong Kong over the past several decades. By using a model of CS typology, which combines the variables of state control and a society’s quest for autonomy (SQA), the paper aims to outline the historical development of CD movements in Hong Kong. It also discusses the recent evolution of CS and its relationship with CD movements, particularly focusing on their development since Leung Chun-ying became the Chief Executive in 2012. Finally, by using five cases of CD witnessed in the past several decades, the relationship between the development of CS and the emergence of CD in Hong Kong has been outlined.

Four implications can be concluded: first, CD cannot emerge when the state and society are isolated. Second, the level of SC and the scale of CD are positively related. Third, as an historical trend, the development of SQA is generally in linear progress; SQA starts from a low level (e.g. interest-based and welfare-based aims) and moves upwards to campaign for higher goals of civil and political autonomy. If the lower level of SQA is not satisfied, it can lead to larger scale CD in future. Fourth, the CD movement would be largest in scale when the state-society relationship confrontational and when major cleavages can be found within CS itself.

This paper serves to enrich knowledge in the fields of politics and sociology.

Management science, operational and financial risk of overseas enterprises.

This case is mainly applicable to international business course and project management course.

Since 1992, the Great Mekong sub-regional economic cooperation between China and ASEAN countries was officially launched and set free economic zone. Hydropower is starting to develop in recent years in Cambodia, and it is a good significance to Cambodia's industry. Furthermore, most of hydropower plants in Cambodia are built by Chinese companies. Thus, this paper will analyze the current risk and condition of Kamchay hydropower, as well as the development of Chinese enterprise for Cambodia economic and social development.

This case study provides students concepts on international business, project management, and operational risk of overseas enterprises. The principle of project contracting, labor cooperation, and project financial in international process are considered together with the implications they have for advancing understanding of the problem of the host country's government interests and the various risk of enterprises in international BOT projects.

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Disaster management and humanitarian logistics (HT) play crucial roles in large-scale events such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis. Well-organized disaster response is crucial for effectively managing medical centres, staff allocation and casualty distribution during emergencies. To address this issue, this study aims to introduce a multi-objective stochastic programming model to enhance disaster preparedness and response, focusing on the critical first 72 h after earthquakes. The purpose is to optimize the allocation of resources, temporary medical centres and medical staff to save lives effectively.

This study uses stochastic programming-based dynamic modelling and a discrete-time Markov Chain to address uncertainty. The model considers potential road and hospital damage and distance limits and introduces an a-reliability level for untreated casualties. It divides the initial 72 h into four periods to capture earthquake dynamics.

Using a real case study in Istanbul’s Kartal district, the model’s effectiveness is demonstrated for earthquake scenarios. Key insights include optimal medical centre locations, required capacities, necessary medical staff and casualty allocation strategies, all vital for efficient disaster response within the critical first 72 h.

This study innovates by integrating stochastic programming and dynamic modelling to tackle post-disaster medical response. The use of a Markov Chain for uncertain health conditions and focus on the immediate aftermath of earthquakes offer practical value. By optimizing resource allocation amid uncertainties, the study contributes significantly to disaster management and HT research.