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This study aims to identify the prominent topics, the distribution and association characteristics of topics and the topic evolutionary trends of Documentary Heritage Preservation and Conservation (DHPAC) research in China.

Keywords of relevant papers in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were extracted as the data source in this study. First, frequency and co-occurrence of keywords of the selected papers were obtained by using SATI. Second, co-word network indicators were calculated with the Pajek software. Then, VOSviewer was applied to optimize the visualization of the sub-communities. Finally, a topics evolution map of this research field was implemented by CorTexT.

The research topics of DHPAC research in China were unbalanced but distinct. Topics of DHPAC research in China possessed inconspicuous orientation and consistency. The core topics had less influence on the overall network. A research system had formed with archival conservation and ancient books conservation as the core research directions. Research in this field had formed four continuous evolutionary paths about ancient books conservation, salvage conservation, archival conservation and archives conservation technology science with topics fusion and differentiation coexisting. Attentions on “ancient books conservation”, “paper relics conservation”, “electronic record”, “digitization”, “minority”, “documents in the republic of China” had increased during the past two decades and new hot topics of DHPAC research kept appearing in China.

This study synthesized and analyzed the research results of DHPAC research in China from a more comprehensive perspective and revealed the topic structure and longitudinal evolution process intuitively with co-word analysis and social network analysis, which can assist researchers to improve research systematization, discover new research directions and seek cooperative research path.

This paper aims to propose a new format to present the cost of building conservation works which will better reflect the actual cost components and have a higher relevance to building conservation works.

To achieve the study's aim of presenting a new format suitable for building conservation works, a total of 16 conservation projects were selected and work items of the highest frequency were identified and aggregated into the relevant elemental component to formulate a new elemental cost format.

Work items of the highest frequency identified are partitions, doors and ironmongeries, followed by roof finishes and rainwater goods, floor finishes, external walls and windows. In addition to the usual building works, new work items such as scientific analysis, archaeology excavation and temporary roof are also found to be important.

The proposed format has yet to be tested in the local industry, which is necessary to ensure compatibility with industry needs.

This new cost analysis format includes a list of work items that are specific to building conservation works, which may guide the quantity surveyor in preparing a budget/cost estimate with higher accuracy by reducing the risk of omitted work items that are pertinent in building conservation works.

Owing to the lack of cost data information for building conservation works, estimating and controlling the cost in this area of work is very challenging. The proposed new format of elemental cost analysis designed for building conservation works seeks to fill this void by providing a guide in estimating costs for building conservation.

In developing country contexts, it has become difficult to imagine the word ‘conservation’ without ‘community’ sitting alongside it, as their combination is part of the international conservation and development lexicon. Community-based conservation (CBC) encompasses several core principles, including: involving communities in decision-making; devolving control over resource management; developing community institutions for management; incorporating traditional or local knowledge; legitimising community property rights; linking environment and development objectives and providing incentives for conservation (Barrow & Murphree, 2001; Kellert, Mehta, Ebbin, & Litchtenfeld, 2000; Songorwa, 1999; Western & Wright, 1994). All of these are employed with the aims of overcoming the limitations associated with traditional ‘top-down’ approaches to conservation (Adams & Hulme, 2001; Campbell, 2002a). Ideally, CBC should benefit both people and environments, contributing to both development and conservation. In this way CBC is directly aligned to wider discourses of sustainability and to innovations in the field of conserving natural resources.

To better understand how corporate communicators and human resources professionals can champion volunteer activities and youth engagement as evidence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability commitment, this chapter explores representations of urban youth conservation–environmental empowerment through a textual analysis of three organizations’ websites: Clearwater, the Philadelphia Zoo, and The Nature Conservancy. In addition to identifying common themes across the websites, I compared each program to the Critical Social Theory of Youth Empowerment (CSTYE) framework consisting of six dimensions for maximum success in empowering youth stakeholders (Jennings, Parra-Medina, Hilfinger-Messias, & McLoughlin, 2006). Recommendations are provided for organizations using environmental–conservation programs targeting young people – and other researchers of this phenomenon.

This paper aims to build a theoretical model of the impact of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures on the agricultural output to analyze the impact of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures on agricultural output.

Based on the field survey data of 808 farmers households in three provinces (regions) of the Loess Plateau, this paper using the endogenous switching regression model to analyze the effect of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures on agricultural output.

Soil erosion has a significant negative impact on agricultural output, and soil erosion has a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption of soil and water conservation measures. Farmers adopt soil and water conservation measures such as engineering measures, biological measures and tillage measures to cope with soil erosion, which can increase agricultural output. Based on the counterfactual hypothesis, if farmers who adopt soil and water conservation measures do not adopt the corresponding soil and water conservation measures, their average output per ha output will decrease by 2.01%. Then, if farmers who do not adopt soil and water conservation measures adopt the corresponding soil and water conservation measures, their average output per ha output will increase by 12.12%. Government support and cultivated land area have a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures.

The research limitation is the lack of panel data.

Soil erosion has a significant negative impact on agricultural output, and soil erosion has a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption of soil and water conservation measures. Farmers adopt soil and water conservation measures such as engineering measures, biological measures and tillage measures to cope with soil erosion, which can increase agricultural output.

The conclusion provides a reliable empirical basis for the government to formulate and implement relevant policies.

The contributions of this paper are as follows: the adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and agricultural output are included into the same analytical framework for empirical analysis, revealing the influencing factors of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and their output effects, enriching existing research. Using endogenous switching regression model and introducing instrumental variables to overcome the endogenous problem between the adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and agricultural output, and to analyze the influencing factors of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and its impact on agricultural output. Using the counter-factual idea to ensure that the two matched individuals have the same or similar attributes, to evaluate the average treatment effect of the behavior of soil and water conservation measures, to estimate the real impact of adaptation measures on agricultural output as accurately as possible and to avoid misleading policy recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, dissect and unravel real-life contextual human capital issues related to George Town’s built heritage from the perspectives of key stakeholders in the heritage arena.

The paper opted for an exploratory study using qualitative techniques like in-depth interviews and focus group discussions to gather insights and to listen to the voices from key stakeholders pertaining to issues related to human capital in built heritage. The data were supplemented and complemented by secondary resources such as technical reports, conservation guidelines, by-laws and case studies from other countries.

The paper provides empirical insights about real-life issues, barriers and challenges pertaining to human capital in George Town’s built heritage. The key findings from this study revealed that the quantity of professionals and builders is still insufficient and their quality of work has room for improvement.

Due to the selected research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Thus, researchers are encouraged to further test the proposed propositions by enlarging the number of respondents or administering this similar study in another locality/historic city (i.e. Malacca ‒ George Town’s twin historic city).

The paper provides practical implications for the development of the right quantity and quality of human capital for George Town’s built heritage. The findings from this study are also useful for urban managers, policymakers and conservation practitioners.

This paper fulfils an identified need to examine the real-life issues of human capital in built heritage for George Town.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how proponents of biodiversity offsetting have sought to produce an ecologically defensible mechanism for reconciling economic development and biodiversity conservation.

The paper analyses a case study biodiversity offsetting mechanism in New South Wales, Australia. Michel Callon’s framing and overflowing metaphor is used to explain how accounting devices are brought into the mechanism, to (re)frame a space of calculability and address anxieties expressed by conservationists about calculations of net loss/gain of biodiversity.

The analysis shows that the offsetting mechanism embeds a form of accounting for biodiversity that runs counter to the prevailing dominant anthropocentric approach. Rather than accounting for the biodiversity of a site in terms of the economic benefits it provides to humans, the mechanism accounts for biodiversity in terms of its ecological value. This analysis, therefore, reveals a form of accounting for biodiversity that uses numbers to provide valuations of biodiversity, but these numbers are ecological numbers, not economic numbers. So this is a calculative, and also ecocentric, approach to accounting for, and valuing, biodiversity.

This paper contributes to the extant literature on accounting for biodiversity by revealing a novel conceptualisation of the reconciliation of economic development and biodiversity conservation, producing an ecologically defensible form of sustainable development. The paper also makes a methodological contribution by showing how Callon’s framing and overflowing metaphor can be used to enable the kind of interdisciplinary engagement needed for researchers to address sustainable development challenges.

This study aims to investigate built heritage revitalisation projects in Hong Kong through a case study.

For this study, a representative built heritage revitalisation project in Hong Kong is selected study revitalisation in practice in Hong Kong. The case study adopts content analysis as the main method of analysis. It involves counting keywords, comparing content, categorising content patterns and interpreting the content of documents.

The findings reveal that in the revitalisation process, there is significant fragmentation in collaboration among government sectors and in conservation documentation and that an effective knowledge sharing mechanism and valid public engagement is needed. A conceptual framework of social network-enabled building information modelling (BIM) platform is proposed to enhance knowledge sharing and cross-sector collaboration.

The conceptual framework developed based on the case study is expected to bring practical implications to urban regeneration policies in Hong Kong.

This study views built heritage revitalisation practice as different individual projects and provides a social and technical perspective to investigate built heritage revitalisation.

Based on the survey data of 1,152 households in three provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia on the Loess Plateau, this paper aims to empirically analyze the impact of aging and off-farm employment on farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. This paper analyzes the moderating effect of social network and the mediating effect of technological cognition in this impact relationship.

Based on the above analysis, the second part of this paper is based on relevant theories and constructs a theoretical model of the relationship of aging, off-farm employment, social network, technology cognition and farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. The third part introduces research methods, variable selection and descriptive statistics analysis of variables. The fourth part, based on the data of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces in the Loess Plateau in 2016, empirically analyzes the impact of aging, off-farm employment and social network on the farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. This paper further examines the moderating effect of social network and the mediating effect of technology cognition in this influence relationship. Finally, based on the findings of the empirical study, this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions.

First, aging and off-farm employment have a significant negative impact on farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology, while social network has a significant positive effect. Second, social network has alleviated the effect of aging and off-farm employment on restraining farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. Third, aging and off-farm employment have restrained farmers’ cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Social network has promoted farmers’ cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Social network plays a moderating role in the impact of aging and off-farm employment on farmers’ cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Technology cognition plays a mediating role in the impact of social network on farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology.

This paper integrates the aging, off-farm employment and social network into the same analytical framework and reveals their impact on farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology and its action mechanism, which enriches the impact of human capital and social network on farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. Then taking the social network as a moderator variable, the paper verifies its moderating effect on the relationship of aging, off-farm employment and farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. Farmers’ technology cognition should be included in the analysis framework to examine the impact of aging, off-farm employment and social network on farmers’ cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Taking the technology cognition as a mediator variable, the paper verifies its mediating effect on the relationship of aging, off-farm employment and farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the preferred communication channels to foster energy conservation behaviour among office building users. Energy demand from the commercial sector in Malaysia is, at 33.2 per cent, the highest after the industry sector, at 45.1 per cent. The country’s progress in actively practising energy conservation is lacking, despite various energy conservation programmes having been launched in recent years. A large amount of energy is wasted by users’ poor energy conservation behaviour. To market voluntary energy conservation behaviour, the delivery of energy conservation messages using the appropriate communication channels remains an important strategy.

This paper involves two-stage data collection. The communication categories associated with a set of channels identified from expert interview serve as the basis for the second stage of empirical data gathering using conjoint analysis. A choice-based conjoint analysis assisted by Sawtooth Software is used to analyse the 525 usable empirical data gathered from a final questionnaire survey among the office building users in Malaysia.

This paper has identified five communication categories associated with a total of 19 channels. The mass media is acknowledged as the most preferred communication channel among office building users in the marketing of energy conservation behaviour, while the least preferred channel to communicate energy conservation information is audio-visual media.

This study contributes to existing literature with a novel case in Malaysia office building by identifying the preferred combination of communication channels in fostering energy conservation behaviour. The findings could benefit the building managers in marketing energy conservation behaviour among office building users to effectively achieve the desired change for sustainable development.