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This paper aims to measure Chinese regional thermal industries’ evolution.

This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) and global Malmquist–Luenberger productivity (GMLP) index.

The results reveal that the development of Chinese thermal power industry varies significantly in different regions, and it is highly correlated with the level of local economic development. Although the change of technical efficiency and scale efficiency had different impacts on different regions from year to year, the overall GMLP index change shows a close relationship with the contemporaneous frontier shift.

The results indicate that the Chinese Government should make efforts to promote its policy implementations and regulations in thermal industries so that the contemporaneous frontier will shift toward the global technology frontier with more desirable outputs and less undesirable outputs.

As an application, this study uses DEA and GMLP index to measure the productivity of Chinese thermal industries in 30 Chinese provinces from 2006 to 2013. The results have the meaningful policy implications for decision makers in charge of Chinese thermal industries.

The purpose of this study is to test the theoretical framework of lettering case, color temperature, perceived trustworthiness and investment intentions. First, it aims to test whether the effect of lettering case on investment intentions is mediated by trustworthiness. Second, the study will examine if this process is moderated by color temperature.

Following the behavioral research method, this study employed a 2 (the fully-lowercase slogan vs the initial-uppercase slogan) by 2 (warm-color design vs cool-color design) full factorial between-subject design. Two hundred participants were recruited for the experiment to test the hypotheses.

For the lowercase slogans (vs uppercase slogans), we found that people tended to have a high level of perceived trustworthiness, which led to a high level of investment intentions. In addition, the indirect effect of the lettering case on investment intentions through the perceived trustworthiness was moderated by color temperature. Specifically, the visually warm advertisement (vs visually cool design) would strengthen the effect of lowercase slogans on customers' investment intentions.

When people make a financial decision with limited, incomplete or overly complex information, simplified visual heuristics, rather than rational algorithmic processing, play a significant role in their decision-making process. However, only a limited amount of research has addressed the effect of the lettering case on customers' perceptions and the consequent decision-making process from a financial advertising perspective. This study tries to supplement and extend the visual heuristics theory, highlighting the role of simplified heuristics, rather than rational algorithmic processing, in financial customers' decision-making process.

Drawing on goal orientation theory, this study intends to investigate whether, how and when developmental leadership influences employees’ feedback seeking behavior (FSB) and feedback avoidance behavior (FAB).

The authors used a two-wave survey of 416 full-time employees in China. The hypotheses were tested with path analyses.

Developmental leadership exerts a positive influence on employees’ FSB and a negative impact on FAB through learning goal orientation (LGO). Additionally, leaders’ high performance expectations (LHPE) not only strengthen the positive effects of developmental leadership on FSB but also intensify its weakening effects on FAB.

The findings enrich current understanding by associating developmental leadership with employees’ FSB/FAB, offering a new viewpoint on its positive impacts. This study also provides deeper insights into when the benefits of developmental leadership are intensified.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal operational strategies in a green platform supply chain and provide suggestions on the selection of sales and financing modes for the capital-constrained manufacturer.

This study combines different sales channels with financing modes and investigates three sales-financing modes, i.e. traditional sales-prepayment financing (TSPF), traditional sales-bank financing (TSBF) and online sales e-retailer financing (OSEF). By establishing and comparing Stackelberg game models of these sales-financing modes from the perspectives of economy, environment and social welfare, the optimal strategies of emission reduction, financing, pricing and service improvement are obtained.

The results suggest that as the commission rate increases to a certain level, a threshold of the cost coefficient of emission reduction can be found such that the manufacturer should choose OSEF below this threshold and TSBF above this threshold. OSEF is Pareto optimal when this cost coefficient is low, and this mode can lead to the highest social welfare when the platform loan interest rate is relatively low. The Pareto areas in TSBF and OSEF enlarge as the default coefficient decreases.

These results can provide operational insights on how to select sales channels and financing modes when manufacturer faces financial constraints in emission reduction.

This paper combines different sales and financing modes to study their comprehensive influence on the decision-makings of chain members and the resulting performance of economy, environment and social welfare.

The aim of this review is to reflect the current state of Financial Technology (FinTech) research along with its journey of development. Further, a conceptual framework showing the interaction of independent, mediating, and moderating variables with dependent variables (acceptance of FinTech products and services) along with propositions is prepared to facilitate the future researchers. This systematic literature review consists of 110 articles from 78 journals indexed in two academic databases (Scopus and/or Web of Science), extracting facts and figures about FinTech during 2016–2021. Our findings contribute to the literature by exemplifying that FinTech is a mixed set of threats and opportunities. In the present review only 18 articles belong to 2016–2017 but 54 articles are considered from 2020–2021, the increasing number of FinTech articles in high-ranking journals indicate the speedily growing popularity of FinTech. Similarly, secondary data based articles are dominating the primary data based ones. Further, regression analysis and PLS-SEM are the most popular statistical techniques among the authors of FinTech articles. To the best of knowledge of the authors, this is a unique study in which the latest FinTech research findings are skimmed.

This paper intends to provide a thematic literature review of the scholarly research articles orbiting the Sino–African education cooperation and exchange, published between 2005 and 2022.

The methodology used in this paper is qualitative in nature with a thematic approach. The author used content analysis techniques to spotlight the major themes of the topic studied. The author selected the papers and theses, based on their heuristic capacity, from two major databases for the English and Chinese literature: Web of Science and CNKI. The selection process resulted in 60 high-quality peer-reviewed articles and theses. Another 30 research articles and theses were used as supplementary resources.

The literature concentrates on six points: the historical development, the nature of the exchange, the frameworks of the cooperation, vocational training and knowledge transfer, African students in China and their experiences, and education cooperation and soft power. However, research tends to be somewhat polemical rather than an academic debate between Chinese researchers and their western peers. Therefore, empirical studies beyond the geopolitical preoccupations and the “YEA” or “NAY” to the Sino–African education exchange are critically needed.

The implications of this study go beyond the east/west or developed/developing world rhetoric and focus more on sustainable educational development on a global scale. Understanding how the literature on the Sino–African education engagement is shaping, provides valuable insights into international education in the global south. It can also be implied to approach educational engagement with other destinations such as India, Türkiye and Brazil.

This thematic literature review concentrates on the educational aspect of Sino–African relations. It compares English and Chinese peer-reviewed scholarly articles and theses on China–Africa educational engagement and has heuristic implications for sustainable educational development globally.

As an unhealthy dependence on social media platforms, social media addiction (SMA) has become increasingly commonplace in the digital era. The purpose of this paper is to provide a general overview of SMA research and develop a theoretical model that explains how different types of factors contribute to SMA.

Considering the nascent nature of this research area, this study conducted a systematic review to synthesize the burgeoning literature examining influencing factors of SMA. Based on a comprehensive literature search and screening process, 84 articles were included in the final sample.

Analyses showed that antecedents of SMA can be classified into three conceptual levels: individual, environmental and platform. The authors further proposed a theoretical framework to explain the underlying mechanisms behind the relationships amongst different types of variables.

The contributions of this review are two-fold. First, it used a systematic and rigorous approach to summarize the empirical landscape of SMA research, providing theoretical insights and future research directions in this area. Second, the findings could help social media service providers and health professionals propose relevant intervention strategies to mitigate SMA.

This paper aims to explore empirically the emergence of entrepreneurs in China’s transition context since the 1980s.

This paper applies the China Private Enterprises Survey Database and historical evidence and Chi-Square test to identify the emergence patterns of China’s entrepreneurs in different historical stages.

This longitudinal study finds that factors such as working experience, education background and social connection had strong influences on entrepreneurship, but the impact of these have varied significantly along with institutional changes over the past three decades. It also identifies that the majority of emergent entrepreneurs were formerly low-level public servants and high-qualified managers in state-owned enterprises. Additionally, significant trends including an increasing number of female entrepreneurs, a decreasing impact from political networks, improving investment in innovation and diversifying financial sources are also found.

This paper is the first to apply the Chinese Private Enterprises Survey database to investigate the emergence patterns of China’s entrepreneurs in different historical stages after the 1978 reform.

Green technology adoption (GTA) in small and micro enterprises (SMEs) is a complex multi-attribute group decision-making issue. Conflicts of opinions can hamper the achievement of group coherence. The purpose of this paper is to solve the conflict decision-making problem in SMEs.

This paper reconstructs the GTA evaluation index system for SMEs and proposes an intragroup coordination relationship model to mitigate group decision-making conflicts based on the cloud model and social networks (GCS). The numerical characteristics of these GTA indicators are determined using fuzzy theory and cloud model.

It was found that establishing a trust relationship network and a conflict coordination relationship could improve the consistency of group decision-making. The degree of coordination has subtle differences with the trust relationship. Particularly, the coordination relationship has obvious influences on the decision-making results among small groups in SMEs.

The conflict coordination model can significantly improve the consistency of group decision-making in SMEs. At the same time, it discusses the differences between the level of conflict coordination and the trust propagation in the process of group decision-making.