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Compared with financial information, whether corporate social responsibility disclosure has impacts on debt financing cost has obviously become a heated topic in the academic. This paper selects A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets of China from 2013 to 2017 as sample to study the impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on debt financing cost, including bond financing cost and bank loan cost. In addition, this paper divides the sample into voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure group and mandatory corporate social responsibility disclosure group and studies whether the effects of voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure and mandatory corporate social responsibility disclosure on bond financing cost and bank loan cost are different. The empirical results are presented as follows: Firstly, enterprise disclosing high-quality corporate social responsibility report is more conducive to reducing the debt financing cost. Specifically, corporate social responsibility disclosure significantly lowers both the bond financing cost and bank loan cost. Moreover, the reduction impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on bond financing cost is greater than that of bank loan cost. Secondly, enterprises voluntarily disclosing corporate social responsibility reports are more conducive to reducing the debt financing cost than that of enterprises mandatorily disclosing corporate social responsibility reports. Thirdly, non-state-owned enterprises are more conducive to reducing debt financing cost than that of state-owned enterprise. The enterprises with more market competition are more conducive to reducing the debt financing cost than the oligopolistic enterprises. Finally, this paper concludes and gives policy implications. This paper amplifies the literature regarding the economic consequences of corporate social responsibility disclosure and improves the understanding of the impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on debt financing cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city development is closely related to the performance of the transportation network system. Bridges and roads are important parts of the transportation system, and are also inseparable components of the transportation network. However, the effect of the correlation between bridges and roads on the network system has not been studies thoroughly in the literature. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse the vulnerability of the road network when both bridges and roads are involved. In this paper, the urban road network is modeled into the form of network connection and node, based on the analysis of the related research results of road network vulnerability in the literature. Taking the urban roads at all levels as the connection and the transportation hubs (including bridges) as the nodes, the paper puts forward the corresponding measurement indexes and calculation methods, and establishes the importance and correlation analysis model of roads and bridges in the urban road network. At last, the model is applied to the road network which is 5 × 3 km2 besides Yangpu Bridge of Shanghai for verification, the importance and correlation of specific roads and bridges in the analyzed urban road network are calculated, which provides a certain basis for dealing with various emergencies leading to the decline of urban road network vulnerability. In this paper, the importance analysis of urban road network is extended to the bridge correlation analysis, so that the proposed model of the vulnerability assessment of the urban road network system is more suitable for the increasingly demand of road and bridge construction in China, and provides a certain basis for dealing with the decline of road network vulnerability caused by various emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2012, China's economic growth rate has been much higher than the world average; its economic aggregate ranks second in the world, people's living standards have risen significantly, and absolute poverty has been historically eliminated, laying a solid foundation for solid promotion of common prosperity. However, China is still in the primary stage of socialism, and the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development has not been fundamentally solved. It is urgent to monitor the status of common prosperity construction in all regions. By constructing an evaluation index system of common prosperity, this paper uses spatial correlation analysis model and geographically weighted regression model to assess the comprehensive development level of common prosperity quantitatively, reveal the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and analyze the main influencing factors. The results show that the comprehensive development level of China's common prosperity has been continuously improved. It gradually presents a spatial distribution pattern with Beijing-Shanghai as the development pole and the eastern coastal area as the highland, and there is a significant positive spatial correlation, but the local spatial heterogeneity has increased. The development level of common prosperity is affected by multiple factors, and the increase in per capita GDP is the leading factor in promoting common prosperity. Therefore, we should focus on promoting high-quality economic development, coordinated regional development and expanding middle-income groups, so that all people can enjoy the fruits of reform and development and ultimately achieve common prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conflict between agricultural production and environmental protection, especially vegetable production, is one of the world's most prominent concerns. The acceptance degree and possible response of new agricultural operation subjects, represented by Farmers Professional Cooperatives (FPCs), to green production policies are a core issue that must be considered when designing environmental policies in the future. Based on field survey data of 192 FPCs of vegetables in Shanghai, China, this paper uses a choice experiment method to test the willingness of cooperatives to adopt green production behaviors under different policy settings and to identify the differences under different operation scales. The results show that both mandatory policies and incentive policies have an impact on the willingness of cooperatives to adopt green production behaviors, but significant differences exist among FPCs of different operation scales. Specifically, the willingness of large-scale FPCs to adopt green production behavior is affected by key technology training and income subsidies, whereas the willingness of small-scale FPCs is only affected by income subsidies; the willingness of medium-scale FPCs is simultaneously affected by key technology training, income subsidies, and penalties. Therefore, when formulating relevant policies in the future, policy-makers should consider local conditions, including the endowment heterogeneity of the production and operation subjects, so as to enhance the level of green production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the issue of sustainable development has become increasingly important in the port industry. As port policies are altered under decentralization and governance models, the application of corporate responsibility (CR) is expanding. It is now expected that ports take on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) responsibilities. This paper focuses on the application of an ESG framework to the port industry in China, with a specific emphasis on social responsibilities. By focusing on ESG-focal issues in the port industry, we establish a model for evaluating the sustainability of ports that takes into account the three dimensions of environment, society, and governance. An empirical analysis of Shanghai Port in China is presented to illustrate the application of the framework. The paper highlights the main contribution of the ESG framework to support sustainable port development and provides recommendations for promoting the implementation of ESG and sustainable development in the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest rate market risk faced by China's commercial banks is increasing after the announcement that the interest rate marketisation is completed. This paper examines the Value-at-Risk, and statistical properties in the daily price return of Shanghai banks' overnight offered rate. The study applies two-stage approaches, combining GARCH-type models with extreme value theory. Firstly, the Markov regime switching model is used to test the regime states of the series. Secondly, the performance of different VaR models are examined. Results show that the extreme value approach estimates better at the 99% confidence level. The EGARCH-GED model is the most suitable of the employed GARCH-type models. The back-testing results support the idea that the approach used in this study is appropriate for improving commercial banks' daily risk management. This paper applies the GARCH-EVT method for interest rate measurement after China's interest rate marketisation and added regime analysis of interest rate. Suggested policy implications will help formulate policies that guide the activities of commercial banks in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deteriorating global environment has attracted wide attention in various countries. How to curb environmental pollution and achieve sustainable economic growth has become an urgent problem that we must face. As an effective tool for pollution control, environmental tax has been implemented in many developed countries and has achieved good results. As the largest developing country in the world, China introduced the first environmental tax law in its history in December 2016, which is regarded as a major reform of the green tax system. To explore the implementation effect of environmental tax in China, this paper takes 3867 Chinese listed enterprises (2015–2020) in Shanghai and Shenzhen A shares as the research sample and explores the microeconomic effect of environmental tax reform using the difference in difference (DID) method. It is concluded that the environmental tax reform can produce a positive impact on the corporate profit margins while curbing the enterprise pollution behavior. This positive effect comes from the investment improvement effect and the cost-saving effect, and this effect is heterogeneous between different regions and property rights enterprises. Therefore, the design of the tax system must be implemented with different measures. Environmental taxes have achieved positive policy results in China, contributing to sustainable economic growth. This tax reform has an important reference value for the developing countries in the industrialization stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2005, China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has increased year by year, which corresponds to the continuous decline of energy intensity. But there is limited literature concerning their relationship nowadays. To answer whether or not OFDI can reduce energy intensity, this paper selects data from 29 provinces in China from 2006 to 2015 and establishes a fixed-effects model to analyze the relationship. Further, this paper divides OFDI into technology-intensive ones and non-technology-intensive ones in order to distinguish the impact of outward foreign direct investment from different types of enterprises on the energy intensity. Combined with the micro-data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, we find that OFDI plays a significant role in reducing the energy intensity in China, and OFDI of high-technology-intensive enterprises has a greater effect on the decrease of energy intensity than that of low-technology-intensive enterprises. This paper classifies OFDI from the perspective of enterprise technology intensity, which enriches the existing research results in the field of international cooperation and energy intensity. It also overcomes the limitations of previous literature data and provides new evidence for encouraging high-tech enterprises to strengthen international cooperation from a micro level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crises constitute ideal opportunities for authoritarian leaders to promote certain narratives, shaping reality in their favor and crafting their own preferred storylines about current events. In other words: they serve authoritarian leaders on a silver platter the opportunity to instrumentalize these unforeseen circumstances to gain domestic political legitimacy by promoting strategic narratives. The COVID-19 pandemic was no exception in this regard. Ever since its onset in early 2020, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was among the most active actors worldwide seeking to capitalize on the global crisis for legitimation purposes. Whether applying narratives of governance supremacy, portraying the People's Republic of China as a "global savior," or promoting emotionally appealing nationalistic narratives, the regime used the pandemic as a window of opportunity to rebrand its international role and enhance its domestic legitimacy. When observing the CCP's communication style over the course of 24 pandemic months (2020–2022), however, major shifts become apparent regarding the main narratives crafted in communication with national audiences. Based on this, the paper focuses on the role of such narratives for legitimation claims. Using exemplary media articles collected between the outbreak of the pandemic in China in late 2019 until the harsh Shanghai lockdown in spring 2022, it thus traces the narratives employed by Chinese state elites and explores how they are intertwined with nationalism and broader power claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free-trade zones are highlands of regional development that have a radiating effect on surrounding cities. This paper uses Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA) data from 2003 to 2018, to examine the impact of the China (Shanghai) pilot free-trade zone (SPFTZ) on green total factor productivity (GTFP) in the YRDUA. It uses the regression discontinuity (RD) method and analyzes the influence mechanism with the help of the mediating effect model. The paper presents the following major findings. The establishment of the SPFTZ significantly promoted GTFP in the YRDUA, with technological progress being the main driving force. An analysis using the mediating effect model found that financial efficiency and industrial structure upgrading play a complete mediating role in GTFP growth in the YRDUA. Therefore, the SPFTZ should make use of its policy advantages, take full advantage of the effect of the green growth pole, and promote green mutual development with the YRDUA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Environmental Protection Law was revised and media public opinion supervise them, enterprises need to not only undertake more environmental protection responsibilities but also alleviate the contradiction between development and environment. By applying a multiple regression model, this paper studies the impact of air pollution on the management behavior of enterprises using the panel data of China's A-share polluting enterprises listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets between 2014 and 2019. The results of this study are as follows: First, air pollution produces a positive impact on the behavior of corporate green management. Second, media reports have brought more attention to corporate pollution and increased the positive impact of air pollution on corporate green management efforts. By further considering the internal and external heterogeneity of enterprises, the impact of air pollution on corporate green management varies when the degree of enterprise pollution and the degree of local governance differ. Moreover, this paper highlights the fact that air pollution can play a significant role in corporate green management, while media attention, as a third party, plays a regulating role in environmental supervision. This provides suggestions for strengthening green management behavior of enterprises and building comprehensive environmental supervision system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's carbon emission trading market has gradually attracted worldwide attention. In this paper, a structural VAR model and Shenzhen, a typical city in China, are selected to study the dynamic relationships between China's carbon emission rights price, energy prices, macroeconomic level, and weather conditions. Shanghai crude oil futures, the first crude oil futures contract in China, is used to describe changes in oil market as a substitute for Daqing crude oil price. The results show that the price of carbon emission rights is mainly affected by its own historical price; and the price of carbon emission rights is positively correlated with crude oil price and natural gas price, but negatively correlated with coal price; the change of macroeconomic level will still have a relatively large impact on carbon emission rights price in the current stage of economic development in China, but this impact is not significant; The impact of weather conditions on the price of carbon emission rights is not obvious. It is found that the launch of the national unified carbon market has indeed achieved certain results, but the situation that China's carbon market is still in its infancy has not been changed; further efforts are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining the supply of multiple ecosystem services of cultivated land is directly concerned to the sustainable development of human society. The ecological compensation of cultivated land is an important measure which has been major strategy to promote ecological protection of cultivated land and ensure food security in China. Although the cultivated land is immovable, when the grain transfer from surplus to poor areas, the cultivated land resources are reallocated and the corresponding ecosystem services are spilt. This paper constructs a model to quantify cultivated land resources flows hidden in the grain, calculates the compensation standard, and quantifies the compensation amount by building the eco-compensation mechanism. The typical integrated region in China, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) was selected as the study area. The results show that (1) cultivated land resources in the YRD appear the characteristics of outflow in 24 cities and inflow in 17 cities, which means the former is the recipient and the latter is the payer of eco-compensation. (2) Generally, the developed cities have much more outflow of cultivated land resources than the developing cities in the YRD. And the city of Shanghai and Hangzhou, which are the best economic developed cities in the YRD, transfers into most grain and cultivated land. (3) Paddy field and dry farmland have different eco-value, so the compensation is different, respectively. Our study can enrich the perspective of cultivated land eco-compensation and proposes policy implications for improving the eco-compensation mechanism and realizing multifunctional ecological protection of cultivated land in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic development level of the Yangtze River Economic Belt is relatively high, and the modern agricultural production has brought serious pressure to the agricultural ecological environment. At present, there is no research on the sustainable status of agroecosystem in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, based on the emergy theory, this paper analyzes and evaluates the input–output structure and sustainable status of the Yangtze River Economic Belt by calculating the input–output factors and relevant emergy indexes from 2010 to 2018. The results show that the total input and output emergy of the Yangtze River Economic Belt shows an upward trend from 2010 to 2018. The input of non-renewable industrial auxiliary emergy is too high which has been more than 80%, and the structure of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery industry is unreasonable, which makes the net emergy yield rate of the system very low, its value was only 0.23 in 2018, far less than 1, and the agroecosystem is in an unsustainable state. Except for Shanghai, most provinces and cities of the Yangtze River Economic Belt are in an unsustainable state, and the status of the agricultural ecological environment is not optimistic. From 2010 to 2018, the overall ecological environment of the agricultural ecosystem in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is not optimistic. Among them, the most affected agricultural ecosystem's sustainable development index is the cash-crop area, total population, and agricultural fixed asset investment. Relevant departments and agricultural practitioners need to change the resource input structure of the agricultural ecosystem, reduce the dependence on industrial auxiliary energy, improve resource utilization efficiency, adjust the industrial structure of agricultural output and increase the production of high-emergy products, to realize sustainable development of the agricultural ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City cluster is an effective platform for encouraging regionally coordinated development. Coordinated reduction of carbon emissions within city cluster via the spatial association network between cities can help coordinate the regional carbon emission management, realize sustainable development, and assist China in achieving the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. This paper applies the improved gravity model and social network analysis (SNA) to the study of spatial correlation of carbon emissions in city clusters and analyzes the structural characteristics of the spatial correlation network of carbon emissions in the the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) city cluster in China and its influencing factors. The results demonstrate that: 1) the spatial association of carbon emissions in the YRD city cluster exhibits a typical and complex multi-threaded network structure. The network association number and density show an upward trend, indicating closer spatial association between cities, but their values remain generally low. Meanwhile, the network hierarchy and network efficiency show a downward trend but remain high. 2) The spatial association network of carbon emissions in the YRD city cluster shows an obvious 'core-edge' distribution pattern. The network is centered around Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuxi, all of which play the role of 'bridges', while cities such as Zhoushan, Ma'anshan, Tongling and other cities characterized by the remote location, single transportation mode or lower economic level are positioned at the edge of the network. 3) Geographic proximity, varying levels of economic development, different industrial structures, degrees of urbanization, levels of technological innovation, energy intensities and environmental regulation are important influencing factors on the spatial association of within the YRD city cluster. Finally, policy implications are provided from four aspects: government macro-control and market mechanism guidance, structural characteristics of the 'core-edge' network, reconfiguration and optimization of the spatial layout of the YRD city cluster, and the application of advanced technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether logistics agglomeration and pollution reduction can form a perfect combination in space is one of the important breakthroughs for the successful green transformation of the logistics industry in the future. This paper attempts to clarify the nonlinear change law of logistics agglomeration evolution on environmental quality in China and further clarify the interpretation of informatization and legalization factors on macro-regulatory functions. Based on the panel data of 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China from 2010 to 2020, the empirical verification is carried out by means of two-way fixed effects, quantile regression, instrumental variables, and spatial econometrics. The research finds that (1) there is an inverted U-shaped change trend between logistics agglomeration and environmental quality and the low-level logistics agglomeration period has a blocking effect on pollution emission reduction. However, from the starting point of the sample interval, representative regions such as Beijing and Shanghai gradually break through the bottleneck of logistics agglomeration in the form of a pyramid, which has an incentive effect on pollution emission reduction. The above conclusions are supported by robustness tests in six ways, including eliminating extreme data disturbance, eliminating the impact of the COVID-19, controlling the impact of other factors, pollutant sensitivity testing, avoiding the interference of pollution prevention and control, and correcting the endogenous bias of the model. (2) Further analysis of superimposed spatial effects and regulatory effects shows that regional spillover pollution has spatial dependence in both geographical and economic distribution. The effect of logistics agglomeration also produces an inverted U-shaped spatial spillover effect on the environmental quality of adjacent areas. Both informatization and legalization factors help alleviate the pollution increasing effect in the low-level logistics agglomeration stage. Under the regulatory effect of informatization, the arrival of the critical point for logistics agglomeration and emission reduction will be relatively delayed. Under the regulatory effect of legalization, the arrival of the critical point for logistics agglomeration and emission reduction will be relatively accelerated. (3) There is significant regional heterogeneity in the environmental effects of logistics agglomeration. Each region needs to "suit the remedy to the case" in combination with its own situation to break through the threshold of pollution reduction as soon as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of urbanization in China has contributed to traffic events, such as traffic accidents and delays. It is difficult to detect and resolve highway traffic congestion in a timely manner using traditional methods because they are slow, require a large number of workers, and require the installation of a large amount of monitoring equipment. Therefore, it is imperative to introduce advanced technology to address these challenges. Recently, deep learning technology has made significant breakthroughs and has been widely applied to various fields with satisfactory results. Deep learning is among the most important technologies for the detection and evaluation of traffic congestion, enabling the accurate detection of the state of the expressway network's traffic congestion, the evaluation of traffic congestion, and the prediction of possible traffic congestion. This enables management to formulate traffic dredging strategies in advance to prevent the negative impact of traffic congestion on normal traffic flow. This paper proposes a framework based on deep learning for next-generation highway traffic management. This framework selects traffic congestion indicators to construct an index model, and then constructs a deep learning model based on self-coding. It predicts and classifies highway traffic environment data and excavates sample data based on the characteristics of traffic parameters. As soon as traffic data were classified, a prediction model based on SoftMax was established to detect and predict highway traffic congestion. We conducted a traffic congestion analysis of the Shanghai expressway network based on the speed performance data obtained from the China Traffic Management Bureau. As a result of their research, we developed an index to measure highway traffic congestion. For traffic control and management organizations to function effectively, it is crucial to have an accurate and clear picture of traffic network operations. We evaluated the proposed framework using data gathered from highway monitoring scenes, and the results indicated that 98.6% of the data could be correctly detected. Using the prediction model based on SoftMax for expressway vehicles during peak hours, the accuracy was 92%, and the misjudgment rate was 8%. This study demonstrates that detecting and evaluating the state of highway traffic environments using deep learning has high accuracy, can be applied to actual highway traffic systems, and is extremely useful for detecting highway congestion. This framework is a promising solution for next-generation highway traffic management and provides accurate and timely traffic congestion detection and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sepsis is a life-threatening medical condition that is characterized by the dysregulated immune system response to infections, having both high morbidity and mortality rates. Early prediction of sepsis is critical to the decrease of mortality. This paper presents a novel early warning model called Double Fusion Sepsis Predictor (DFSP) for sepsis onset. DFSP is a double fusion framework that combines the benefits of early and late fusion strategies. First, a hybrid deep learning model that combines both the convolutional and recurrent neural networks to extract deep features is proposed. Second, deep features and handcrafted features, such as clinical scores, are concatenated to build the joint feature representation (early fusion). Third, several tree-based models based on joint feature representation are developed to generate the risk scores of sepsis onset that are combined with an End-to-End neural network for final sepsis detection (late fusion). To evaluate DFSP, a retrospective study was conducted, which included patients admitted to the ICUs of a hospital in Shanghai China. The results demonstrate that the DFSP outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in early sepsis prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the green efficiency performance of the logistics industry in China's 30 provinces from 2008 to 2017. We first evaluate the green efficiency of the logistics industry through the non-directional distance function method. Then, we use the functional clustering method funHDDC, which is one of the popular machine learning methods, to divide 30 provinces into 4 clusters and analyze the similarities and differences in green efficiency performance patterns among different groups. Further, we explore the driving factors of dynamic changes in green efficiency through the decomposition method. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: (1) in general, the level of green efficiency is closely related to the geographical location. From the clustering results, we can find that most of the eastern regions belong to the cluster with higher green efficiency, while most of the western regions belong to the cluster with lower green efficiency. However, the green efficiency performance in several regions with high economic levels, such as Beijing and Shanghai, is not satisfactory. (2) Based on the analysis of decomposition results, the innovation effect of China's logistics industry is the most obvious, but the efficiency change still needs to be improved, and technical leadership should be strengthened. Based on these conclusions, we further propose some policy recommendations for the green development of the logistics industry in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investing in human capital can assist in achieving technological innovations, while the spatial spillover effects of human capital on urban innovation in urban agglomeration are largely ignored. Using the panel data of 108 cities in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) during 2011–2020, this paper explores the interactions between human capital and urban innovation with a two-way fixed effects Spatial Durbin Model framework, which incorporates the interpretation of spatial spillover effects. The results show that urban innovation in the YREB has spatial heterogeneity in the structure, which is reflected in its diffusion from the downstream cities on the eastern coast to the upstream cities in the western region. Then, the low-level human capital inhibits the development of local innovation, while intermediate and high-level human capital improves local innovation. Furthermore, the spatial spillover effect shows an opposite trend. The impact of human capital on urban innovation is not significant in the downstream cities, such as Shanghai and Nanjing. Finally, three policy directions are proposed to optimize the human capital structure of the YREB, which are, strengthening investment in human capital and technological innovation, enhancing the talent spillover effect, and improving basic education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's flower industry is developing rapidly, and the size of the retail market is increasing year by year. Studying the factors influencing residents' flower purchasing behavior and understanding their flower needs can help promote the sustainable development of the flower industry. Based on customer satisfaction theory, this paper uses 838 consumer research questionnaires from 15 districts in Shanghai to analyze the influence of customer satisfaction on residents' flower purchasing behavior by conducting a binary logit model and to investigate the moderating effect of flower purchasing purpose on the influence of satisfaction. The results show that price satisfaction and satisfaction with promotional methods have a significant negative effect on flower purchasing behavior, service satisfaction has a significant positive effect on purchasing behavior, and different customer purchase purposes lead to different intensities of the effect of satisfaction on purchasing behavior. According to the conclusion of the study, three countermeasures are proposed: to popularize the knowledge of flower culture, guide the concept of flower consumption, and promote the transformation of flower consumption to daily consumption; to conduct regular research on consumers by flower merchants to clarify consumers' needs and improve their satisfaction; to clarify consumers' purchase intention, increase the investment in the research and development and cultivation of flower products, and improve the supply level of flowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of pilot free trade zones (FTZs) is a key strategic measure taken by China to promote high-quality economic development, but there are still gaps in the research on how the establishment of FTZs affects the environmental performance of enterprises from a micro perspective. Using data from China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share resource-based listed enterprises from 2010 to 2020, this paper uses the difference-in-difference model to examine the impact of the establishment of FTZs on the environmental performance of enterprises. The study finds that after the city that the enterprise located is set up as a free trade zone (FTZ), enterprises' environmental performance has been significantly improved, and this effect has a continuous positive impact. As far as the influence mechanism is concerned, the main driving forces for the establishment of FTZs are technology effect, competition effect, and resource allocation effect, which are embodied in the significant improvement of enterprises' green technology innovation, total factor productivity, and environmental protection investment. The environmental performance of non-state-owned and large-scale resource-based enterprises is more prominently affected by the establishment of FTZs. In capital-intensive industries and the eastern region, the environmental performance improvement effect of the establishment of FTZs is more obvious. This study provides targeted suggestions for resource-based enterprises to effectively implement the environmental green development strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formulation of long-term step-by-step emission reduction plan is an important step for effective scientific emission reduction. This paper takes Shanghai as the research object, constructs PSO-LSTM model on the basis of STIRPAT model, and further constructs three dynamic policy scenarios combined with China's actual situation and makes short-, medium-, and long-term multivariate predictions for them. The study finds that only the improvement of energy consumption structure has a promotion effect on carbon emission reduction, and urbanization, industrial structure, technology level, population, and economic level all have an increasing effect, and secondly, the carbon emission reduction path of Shanghai basically achieves the core objective of steady decrease under the three scenarios. Secondly, under the three scenarios, Shanghai's carbon emission reduction path basically achieves the core objective of steady decline, but the decline in the GU scenario is more significant. It is recommended that Shanghai further adjusts its industrial structure, optimizes its energy consumption structure, promotes technological innovation and progress, and promotes the development of the circular economy model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates three-dimensional elastic–viscoplastic consolidation behaviors of transversely isotropic saturated soils. The Drucker–Prager yield criterion for isotropic materials is extended for modeling transversely isotropic medium. By coupling Perzyna's viscoplastic theory with a transversely isotropic soil model, the incremental one-dimensional (1D) Nishihara's constitutive model is established and then extended to formulate a three-dimensional (3D) material model. The method to obtaining the material parameters for the proposed model is also provided. The return mapping algorithm and algorithmic tangent matrix are presented to numerically implement the proposed theory into the finite element package—ABAQUS. We have validated the proposed theory by comparing numerical results with the uniaxial compression testing data of Shanghai soft clay and the field observations of soft soil embankments in the Dongting Lake area in China. Then, several numerical examples are conducted to study the influences of elastic–viscoplastic and transversely isotropic parameters on the time-dependent behavior of saturated soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating the co-movements between crude oil futures helps to understand the integration of the global markets. This paper focuses on Shanghai crude oil futures (INE) and study its co-movements with the international benchmarks of WTI and Brent crude oil futures in intra-day day and night trading sessions. A complex network model framework is proposed to analyse the intra-day co-movement patterns labelled by a functional data clustering approach on intra-day return curves. Our findings indicate INE is more integrated with the global market during the night session, but it shows a regional fractional effect during the day session. Based on the revealed dynamics of co-movement patterns, we further design a pairs trading strategy between INE crude oil futures and the international benchmarks. The simulation results show that the pairs trading strategy can be promisingly profitable, even during market turmoil phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a special socio-ecosystem, urban sustainability has been challenged by frequent human activities and natural disasters. Including climate into the socio-ecosystem evaluation framework, this paper constructed the climate, eco-environmental, and socio-economic evaluation index, respectively, to evaluate the core cities' socio-ecology in China's three economic circles. An improved entropy-TOPSIS method was subsequently employed to identify the contribution made by each indicator of the compound system, and a modified ternary Coupling Coordination Degree (CCD) model was developed to probe into the CCD levels among the three systems during the study. The results showed that: (1) The climate system's composite scores were characterized by inter-annual fluctuation without a time trend. However, the system's risk increased, manifesting in an increased probability of extreme weather events, especially in Shanghai. (2) The eco-environmental system witnessed an enormous stride, rising above the level of socio-economic development after 2007. Besides, the gap between the eco-environment and the socio-economy was gradually enlarged since 2014. (3) The eco-environment made the most contribution to the CCD's improvement, meaning enhancing the eco-environmental performance was of paramount significance. The findings can help the government formulate more effective measures to balance climate, eco-environment, and socio-economy to achieve sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of the Changjiang Delta is obviously affected by current rapidly rising sea level and drastically declining river discharge, and it is also vital for the sustainable development of Shanghai and the Changjiang River Economic Belt, which represent China's economic development leader and major national strategic area, respectively. In this paper, the growth pattern of Jiuduansha Island, the largest uninhabited alluvial island in the Changjiang Estuary, is studied in terms of the change in elevation, position and area over the past 50 years through using satellite-derived instantaneous shoreline positions and high/low tide exposure areas based on 497 satellite images from 1974 to 2020; and the influencing factors and future development patterns are further discussed by comparison with other alluvial islands or sandbars in the estuary The results show that Jiuduansha Island has maintained a rapid or even accelerated area growth rate, although the sediment discharge of the Changjiang River has sharply decreased in recent decades This sustained growth is mainly attributed to the existence of the estuarine turbidity maximum zone, coarsening fluvial sediment, onshore sediment replenishment by tide, cone-like geomorphology of Jiuduansha Island, and siltation promotion effect of vegetation The growth rate of the low tide exposure area of Jiuduansha Island increased from 1.9 km2 a−1 in 1974–1990 to 3.0 km2 a−1 in 1990–2020, and the growth rate of the high tide exposure area reached as high as 3.7 km2 a−1 in 1994–2020. The implementation of the Deep-Water Channel Project has significantly affected the evolution of Jiuduansha Island, including shifting the heads of Shangsha and Zhongxiasha from severe retreat to rapid accretion, and promoting tidal flat progradation seaward of the Jiangyanansha and Zhongxiasha, but restricting the growth of the low tide exposure area of Jiuduansha Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate green innovation has played a crucial role in balancing profitability and environmental protection. The existing research on determinant factors of green innovation has its main defects in emphasizing excessively enterprise's formal institutional environment and neglecting the informal institutional environment, causing an incomplete understanding of the relationship between institutional environments and corporate green innovation. To bridge this gap, using a sample of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed firms in manufacturing industry during the period of 2010–2016, we investigate how social trust, an important informal institutions, affects corporate green innovation. Our results show that social trust is positively associated with green innovation, remaining valid after applying endogenous and robustness tests. In addition, the positive relationship between social trust and green innovation is more prominent when the enterprise is non-state-owned or locates in a looser command-and-control (CAC) environmental regulations region. Further analysis shows that social trust boosts corporate green innovation via promoting knowledge sharing, decreasing financing constraints, and fulfilling more corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper enriches the literature concerning social trust and green innovation and draws back more public attention on the role of informal institutions play in promoting green innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, nitrate (NO3–) levels in winter pollution in eastern China have been increasing yearly and have become the main component of PM2.5. The factors contributing to this rise in surface NO3– concentrations remain unclear, complicating the development of targeted pollution control measures. This study utilizes observational data from Shanghai during the winter 2019, alongside box model simulations, to recreate the NO3− pollution event and identify the key factors in the growth process. The analysis demonstrated that a rise in winter ozone levels significantly promotes NO3– production by facilitating NOx conversion via gas-phase and heterogeneous reactions. These findings could explain the correlation between the synchronous increase of surface ozone and NO3− in recent years. Furthermore, simulation of control strategies for NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) identified an approach centered on ozone reduction as notably effective in mitigating winter NO3– pollution in the Yangtze River Delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disclosure of information is a necessary tool for the management of severe environmental problems, revealing how resources are used and pollution managed. This article examines the connections between corporate executives' political connections and the quality of the environmental information their enterprises disclose. It also explores the regulatory role of the assessments of officials' environmental performance. Using panel data of 236 state-owned enterprises in heavy-polluting industries listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2012 to 2016, the results show that the political connection has a significant positive effect on improving the quality of the environmental information disclosure at the 5% confidence level, and every one level increase in the political connection will improve the level of corporate environmental information disclosure by 17.8%. And also, taking environmental performance as an evaluation category for promotion purposes had a significant positive adjustment effect on the relationship between the political connections of the leader of a state-owned enterprise and the quality of environmental information that enterprise disclosed at the 10% confidence level. As our findings suggest, the evaluation of the environmental information disclosed by enterprises in emerging economies such as China requires caution. The leaders of these companies are affected by economic incentives, but are also focused on the political incentives brought about by mandatory regulations. The research provides an empirical basis for the effectiveness of environmental regulation on environmental information disclosure and also helps to understand the impact of official assessment mechanism in China's environmental development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Wutopia Lab's transformation of the Water Tower Home (shuita zhijia, also know as 'House on the House'), a top-floor unit of a residential building converted from a water tower located in a Bulinli lilong neighbourhood in Shanghai. In 2015, the top-floor unit was transformed into a three-bedroom apartment, which was featured in a popular reality TV show Dream Home. Using the concept of 'raumplan' as the primary design strategy, the design deploys various heights and platforms to re-organise the internal space while largely maintaining the exterior appearance of the building. It deliberately avoided homogeneous visual control and accommodated the residents' complex functional requirements within a highly restricted space. The research scrutinises various actors' involvement during the production of the reality TV show and the transformation process. It highlights how the design team navigated the stakeholders' complex needs and the rigid yet ambiguous policy related to the regeneration of Shanghai's unofficial urban heritage. By reflecting upon the various formal and informal design practices in this structure and its eventual demolition, the article illustrates the dilemmas in bottom-up regeneration of the historic urban environment in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on dynamic monitoring data on China's population, by using complex networks, spatial analysis and mathematical measurement, this study reveals the spatial characteristics and influencing factors of the network of flows of highly educated talents in the Yangtze River Delta region from the national and local perspectives. In the two perspectives, the network has strong isomorphism and certain differences. The in-flow of highly educated talents from cities with high administrative levels and more developed economies to Shanghai constitutes the core of the entire network. From a national perspective, highly educated talents tend to converge to the Yangtze River Delta region. From a local perspective, it was found that these talents cluster towards a limited number of cities in the region. From both perspectives, the flow network has developed into a "core-periphery" progressive hierarchical structure, with Shanghai becoming the sole core city. There is little difference in the influencing factors of talent mobility from both macro and meso perspectives. Highly educated talents would frequently flow between cities with strong economic development levels, and cities with high education level, scientific and technological level, complete infrastructure, and good aesthetics. However, geographical distance still plays a hindering role in the flow of highly educated talents, and factors such as cultural identity, institutional, and social modality differences among regions also have a certain effect on the flow of these talents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current deployment of e-bikes in large cities all over the world raises new road safety problems. The shared features of e-bikes and other types of two-wheelers, notably in terms of size and maneuverability, can lead to common road safety issues and similar accident mechanisms. This paper outlines the value of a comparative approach that includes all kinds of two-wheelers, motorized or not: bicycles, e-bikes of both the bicycle type and the scooter type, LPG and gasoline scooters, and motorcycles. For this purpose, a new self-reported risky behavior inventory was developed and its validity tested among 400 two-wheeler users in Shanghai. China, where the spread of e-bikes and other two-wheelers took place several years ago, is a useful country to study to shed light on issues that are emerging in Europe. Results indicate highly satisfactory psychometric properties of the inventory with a single-factor 12-item structure (52.81% of variance explained, α =.93) and very satisfactory fit indexes. In terms of construct validity, the eta (η) correlation ratio indicates its significant relation with self-reported previous accidents and with several criterion related experience variables. Furthermore, a high correlation was noted between the inventory scores and the maximum speed of the participants' vehicles. Ultimately, the inventory will enable future research to characterize and explain risky riding behaviors by riders of e-bikes compared to riders of other two-wheelers in China and, with some slight adaptations, these results can be applied to the European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of environmental regulation on haze pollution is a hot issue of scholar's attention. However, different types of environmental regulations have different effects on haze pollution. Based on PM2.5 annual mean data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2005 to 2016, combined with the threshold effect model to test the nonlinear impact of different types of environmental regulations on haze pollution. The results show the haze pollution in China is still serious, and there are significant regional differences in the distribution of haze pollution. The heavily polluted areas are mainly concentrated in economically developed eastern regions such as Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, while haze pollution in the central and western regions is relative light. The threshold effect of formal and informal environmental regulations on haze pollution has significant regional differences. Further, industrial structure and technological level will suppress haze pollution, while structure of energy consumption and openness will promote haze pollution. At last, according to the situation of different regions, we put forward different environmental regulation policies for provinces and cities to control the haze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a framework for describing the components and variations of pedagogic content beliefs (PCBs) held by accounting teachers in vocational schools in Shanghai. Semistructured interviews were held with 17 in-service teachers from four vocational schools in Shanghai. The findings show that the PCBs of accounting teachers are a complex that contains five components: maximizing students' learning opportunities in accounting, accounting content organization, epistemic conviction about accounting knowledge, accounting learning purposes, and causes of students' learning difficulties in accounting. Although teachers' responses show that the average endorsement of constructivist beliefs was stronger than that of traditional beliefs, it has been proven that the reform-oriented ideas are not transmitted equally in each component of teachers' PCBs. The variations of beliefs between individual teachers are inspected in relation to their teaching experience. By reflecting on the findings in relation to international empirical research on teachers' beliefs, we suggest that it is important to understand the variation in teacher beliefs and recognize the specific needs of teachers at different stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habitat quality has been widely used as an important indicator in the evaluation of regional ecological security and ecosystem services. Previous studies have focused on the influences of urbanization on habitat quality, but the protection measures about how to respond to the dynamic changes of habitat quality patterns are still unclear. This study investigated the habitat quality in the metropolitan region of China (Shanghai) by using InVEST model, and analyzed its dynamic changes from 2000 to 2017 for the sake of providing different protection objects and measures for Shanghai. The results showed that the habitat quality index (HQI) in 2017 was 0.42, and the accumulated area percentages of less than 0.4 in HQI reached 46%, whereas the habitat quality in Chongming district was the highest. The HQI and habitat protected index (HPI) showed an obvious decline tendency from suburban area to downtown area. The HQI in Shanghai gradually declined from 0.56 in 2000 to 0.42 in 2017, and the deterioration area in habitat quality nearly covered 33% between 2000 and 2017. Additionally, the area proportion of the median habitat quality (0.4 < HQI ≤ 0.6) drastically dropped, but the areas of the low (HQI ≤ 0.2) and the high (HQI > 0.8) in habitat simultaneously expanded. Therefore, the valuable habitat in the western and southern coastal wetlands, Dianshan lake and Chongming district in Shanghai should be strictly protected, which covered 30% of the metropolitan area in Shanghai, and about 17% of the region located in the inner coastal zones and northern of Chongming Island was in urgent need of habitat restoration. Our results provide vital references for the maintenance and sustainable management of urban habitats in the metropolitan region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rules of the game in Chinese education have changed since current generations of Chinese upper-middle-class parents were schoolchildren. How these elite parents were raised should not matter to how they raise their children. But Chinese elite reproduction is stickier and less certain than the habitus concept suggests. My pragmatist-inspired analysis takes into account the role that history and social change plays in Chinese elite reproduction and develops the retrospective moment of Chinese upper-middle-class childrearing. Based on interviews with 46 upper-middle-class parents in Shanghai, I show that parents draw on their past experiences when adapting to social change in their childrearing. In reconstructing the past, they reason that they must adapt to social change; reflect on their own resistance to change; and recalibrate their practices to make them more resilient to change. To raise happy and successful children, parents embrace and resist suzhi (quality) in education. The indigenous concept highlights the limits of class privilege under Chinese authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on grounded theory, the present study summarizes the transcripts from 32 in-depth interviews with Chinese community emergency volunteers to uncover the attributions of community emergency volunteering in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. Community emergency volunteering in China is affected by four main factors: inner awareness, the external environment, national policy, and publicity and advocacy. Among these factors, inner awareness and the external environment are the internal and social psychological attributions, respectively, of emergency volunteering. In addition, publicity and advocacy also play a role in both inner awareness and the external environment and, together with national policies, act on community emergency volunteering. Finally, the high level of trust of some volunteers in their ruling party and government is a deep-seated driving force of their volunteering, a factor that has not been emphasized in past studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morbidity of skin tumors (ST) in China is a great concern as the population ages. No epidemiological survey on ST in elderly communities in China has been reported. A questionnaire survey was conducted among the residents over 60 years old in a community in Shanghai, China from May 1, 2011 to November 30, 2011. The prevalence of cutaneous tumors and associated factors were analyzed. Among 2038 valid cases, a total of 78 (3.8%, 95% CI 3.0–4.7) skin cancers (SC) were confirmed. According to the final multivariate regression analysis, age, gender and previous occupation were the significantly influential factors for SC. Actinic keratosis (AK) accounted for the largest proportion (63, 3.1%) in SC. The head and neck was the physiological site with the highest incidence of SC (64, 82.1%), and AK was the most common (55, 87.3%) in head and neck SC. The common concomitant diseases of SC were hypertension (26, 33.3%) and diabetes mellitus (9, 11.5%). Seborrheic keratosis (SK) was the most common benign skin tumor with a prevalence of 100%. Men and women developed SK in significantly different parts of the body (P < 0.0001). The incidence of ST in the elderly population in Shanghai community increased with age. ST preferred to occur in the head and neck, which might be attributed to excessive ultraviolet (UV) exposure in these areas. Therefore, early diagnosis and sun-protection education are essential interventions for ST in the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 unexpectedly ensnared the entire world and wreaked havoc on global economic and financial systems. The stock market is sensitive to black swan events, and the COVID-19 disaster was no exception. Against this backdrop, this study explores the impact of COVID-19 and economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on Chinese stock markets' returns for the period spanning January 23, 2020 to August 04, 2021. The outcomes of the novel quantile-on-quantile regression analysis revealed that both COVID-19 and EPU had a significant negative impact on both Shanghai and Shenzhen stock market returns, while COVID-19 aggravated the level of economic uncertainty in both financial markets. The quantile causality approach of Troster et al. (2018) validates our main estimations. We conclude that COVID-19 and a high level of EPU enervated the returns of China's leading stock markets. Our study provides key insights to policymakers and market participants to determine the behavior of China's stock market returns vis-à-vis COVID-19 during the peak of the pandemic and beyond. Specifically, our findings apprise portfolio investors to augment their portfolio diversification fronts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important component in the disaster risk management process, residents' risk perceptions to the chemical industry have rarely been examined by scholars. Risk perception affects individuals' risk awareness, and consequentially determines people's behavioral reactions vis-a-vis typical disasters. In fact, numerous street protests in China have been waged against the operations of that nation's chemical plants, such unrest conceivably contributes to inimical consequences for the chemical business sector, government efforts to reduce the social strife, and China's commonweal. Given the import of these potential adverse outcomes and the paucity of germane empiricism in the area, this study aims to enhance understanding of the motivation of persons' resistance behaviors through examination of determinants of local residents' risk perceptions. We conducted a large-scale survey among those living in proximity to two chemical industrial parks in Shanghai and Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. Synthesizing previous research findings regarding risk perception, we constructed a structural equation model to explore the direct and indirect relationships among the determinant factors. Results showed that public engagement and social trust significantly reduced risk perceptions, while interpersonal communication and new media use positively affected the perceived risks. In addition, when people have better knowledge of risks, their perceived risk about the chemical industry declined. Our model also presented interconnected relations among these determinants, e.g., risk knowledge weakened the positive relationship between interpersonal communication and risk perception. We also found that residents' resistance behavior intention can go assertive (i.e., taking aggressive actions) and inactive (i.e., quieter ways to manifest resistance). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial agglomeration has attracted extensive attention from economists and geographers, yet it is still a challenge to identify the multi-agglomeration spatial structure and degree of industrial agglomeration in continuous space—there is still a lack of a more targeted industrial clustering method. The clustering method and the standard deviational ellipse (simply, ellipse) model have advantages in identifying the spatial structure and representing spatial information respectively. On this basis, we propose an ellipse-based approach to identifying industrial clusters. Our ellipse-based approach rests upon group nearest neighbor using the group-based nearest neighbor (GNN) ordering and spatial compactness matrix, where a number of point sequences with varying lengths, generated under the GNN ordering, are characterized by an ellipse and the elliptical parameters of these point sequences formulate the values and structure of the compactness matrix. Clustering is reformulated to identify ellipses with a specified parameter among a number of potential candidate ellipses, with significant changes (especially in the area) used as the cutoff criterion for determining the clusters' border point. Our approach is illustrated in the location pattern of firms in Shanghai City, China in comparison with four well-known clustering methods. With the combination of elliptical parameters and spatial compactness, our approach may bring a new analytical ground for future industrial clustering research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality urbanization is the core for realizing human well-beings, for which reason investigating how the relationship evolves between urbanization and eco-environment is of crucial importance. Differing from the rationale of revealing spatial spillover effects using traditional tests, we consider spatial network characteristics to enrich the notion of local coupling and telecoupling from a relational perspective. First, we adopt coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) and decoupling model (DM) to calculate the urbanization and eco-environment coupling coordination degree (UECCD) and the decoupling index (DI) in 30 provinces and municipalities of China from 2008 to 2017. Second, we use gravity model to construct urbanization and eco-environment coupling coordination network (UECCN), in which provinces are nodes and spatial connection relationships of UECCD are edges between nodes. Third, we introduce social network analysis (SNA) to reveal spatial network characteristics of UECCN without using local spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Finally, we employ spatial econometric model to reveal factors that influence urbanization and eco-environment coupling effect. The major findings and conclusions of this study are summarized as follows. (1) The main subclasses of UECCD and DI are basically uncoordinated patterns with eco-environment lagging and weak decoupling, respectively. (2) Only two spatial agglomeration types of UECCD exist, the high-high (H-H) clustering in Shanghai and the low-low (L-L) clustering in western China, whereas no significant spatial agglomeration effect is observed among most provinces. (3) The distribution characteristics of UECCN are sparse in western China and dense in eastern China, and the spatial correlation strength of UECCN improves. (4) Technological innovation plays a critical role in promoting UECCD, while the total population, per capita disposable income, coupling network structure, and environmental regulations exert significant impact on UECCD. Collectively, we propose to prioritize governance provinces with low UECCD in western China as well as adequately utilize the positive externalities of key node provinces in eastern China. Equally importantly, we suggest that it is also critical to fully exert a driving force of technological innovation on improving the UECCD by promoting renewable energy utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience is a significant uncertainty thought of water resources system security. Compared with risk analysis, resilience pays more attention to the ability of water resources system itself to deal with adverse events. However, a standard system of water resources system resilience's concept and evaluation have not yet formed. In view of this, this study had attempted to decompose the process of resisting interference of water resources system and analyzed the characteristics and influencing factors of three sub processes of resistance, recovery and adaptation. Furtherly, a new resilience evaluation index system of water resources system was explored and a three-way dicision approach for water resources system resilience analysis based on variable fuzzy sets and partial connection number was developed. Specifically, a multi-grade quantitative evaluation of water resources resilience was carried out based on variable fuzzy sets method, and then the quantitative evaluation results were transformed into qualitative decision-making results using a new three-way decision model based on partial connection number of set pair analysis. Finally, a case study of China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB) in 2008–2017 was performed and the results show that the resilience of water resources system in the YEB does not show an obvious improvement trend, or even almost stagnant. Of the 110 samples, 83.6% were at the medium level. Only 6.4% are barely at the excellent level, but they are basically in Shanghai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the scarcity of land resources, commitment to sustainable land use is particularly critical to human development and environmental protection. As a characteristic and powerful means for China to deal with the excessive expansion and inefficient use of construction land, construction land reduction (CLR) is performing a significant role in the economic, ecological and social sustainability of land use. Nevertheless, being a product of the new policy, CLR has inevitably encountered multiple barriers in meeting multifaceted sustainability requirements. In order to holistically recognize and effectively manage interactive CLR barriers with limited management resources from a time dimension, this study designs an integrated approach based on qualitative research methods, multi-criteria decision-making and strategic planning matrix for tackling the identification, evaluation and planning of CLR barriers, respectively. From an empirical study of Shanghai's CLR practice, 18 CLR barriers are summarized with their direct and indirect impacts on sustainability assessed. Based on their overall impacts and planning periods, the 18 barriers are categorized into four strategic planning zones corresponding to different types of strategies in a strategic planning matrix. Results indicate that seven barriers (deficient regulations and policies, ineffective implementation of existing regulations and policies, inadequate incentive mechanism, limited funding, contradiction of benefit distribution, incomplete information disclosure, and lack of support from subjects involved) are grouped into the priority zone where all the required resources should be allocated with the highest priority, with three (internal conflicts at all levels of governments, lack of sustainability awareness, and lack of available experience) placed into the long-term zone, requiring a sustained investment of appropriately scaled resources. Research outcomes can provide support for policy makers and practitioners to allocate their resources and efforts to better manage and overcome these CLR barriers for sustainable land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, it is noticed that more than a third of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted in the atmosphere comes from the construction sector. This CO2 concentration has a significant effect on climate change. In the new cities, tall buildings multiply as mushrooms. Some specialists believe that they can be one of the solutions to reduce the carbon content in the atmosphere. The main aim of this study is to simulate, analyze and compare the embodied carbon and operational carbon of the two tallest buildings located in the United States and China, by using Design Builder and Pleiades software: the One World Trade Center in USA and the Shanghai Tower in China. Even if the embodied carbon of these super tall buildings is very high, the operational carbon remains the most important source of carbon emissions on their whole life cycle. Future carbon emissions of these two buildings were estimated in three periods (2030, 2050 and 2080) following the A2 scenario from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The results show that the operational carbon will increase by 10.6% at One World Trade Center (1WTC, USA) and 7.8% at Shanghai Tower (ST, China) in 2050. In addition, this study analyzed the impacts of the electricity mix and photovoltaic panels on their carbon dioxide emissions. Replacing energy production based on coal by renewable energy sources in the electricity mix of these countries could induce a reduction of 47.5% and 65.6% of total operational carbon emitted by the 1WTC and ST, respectively, by 2050. Finally, 46% of the building construction cost of these skyscrapers is related to their structure and superstructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is a critical factor affecting regional carbon emissions. Clarifying the linkage between urbanization and carbon emissions can provide a decision-making reference to realize China's goal of carbon neutrality. This article examines the spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization and carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration from 2008 to 2018. A complete set of variables is considered to construct relevant land and ecological urbanization variables, and the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model and spatial Durbin model (SDM) are adopted to explore the impact of various driving factors on carbon emissions. The results indicate that (1) during the study period, the carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration exhibited a fluctuating increase and that the incremental carbon emissions followed a downward trend. (2) Carbon emissions exhibited a positive spatial correlation. Cold- and hotspot areas indicated a three-gradient pattern from west to east, and a concentric circle radiation pattern occurred with Shanghai as the core. Carbon emissions were spatially imbalanced, but the centre of gravity slightly fluctuated, with a total migration distance of 38.48 km, indicating a migration trend towards the southeast. (3) Regarding the two considered dimensions of urbanization, all driving factors except urbanization played a role in carbon emission enhancement. Consequently, for every 1% increase in economic factors, the carbon emissions correspondingly increased by 0.43–0.57%. Hence, economic factors are the most important factors promoting increased carbon emissions. In the ecological urbanization dimension, urbanization caused a non-significant decrease in carbon emissions, while there was no spillover effect on carbon emissions in neighbouring areas. Accordingly, carbon emission reduction efforts should promote the transformation of urbanization from a land-driven process to an ecologically driven process and realize the synergies among carbon emission reductions, urban development, and land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the mediator role of social capital on the association between perceived neighborhood environment and life satisfaction among older adults in urban China, and further tested the moderating effect of gender in the above paths (i.e., from neighborhood environment to life satisfaction; from neighborhood environment to social capital; from social capital to life satisfaction). We used quota sampling approach to recruit 472 respondents aged 60 years old or older in Shanghai in 2020. From the perspective of structural equation modeling, multiple group analysis was conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses. The measurement model of social capital was well established in urban Chinese community contexts. Based on the whole sample, the results of the mediation model showed that social capital played a mediation role in the association between neighborhood environment and life satisfaction. Furthermore, the results of multiple group analysis showed that the association between neighborhood environment and cognitive social capital was only significant among older women. The findings highlight the role of neighborhood environment and social capital in building age-friendly communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has experienced an increasing number of "drifting elderly" (elderly inter-province migrants because of non-employment reasons) due to urbanization and aging. Living in different environments, the elderly are susceptible to mental health problems. Thus we explore the well-being of the drifting elderly under the Chinese cultural context. According to the grounded theory approach, a qualitative study with 54 elderly inter-provincial migrant samples was conducted in Shanghai. Drawing from the "cognition, affection, and conation" theory and the migration theory, we built a framework for the drifting elderly's well-being, including the impact factors (motivation, adaption pressure, and personality), well-being status (subjective well-being, psychological well-being, and social well-being), and consequences (future plan). Implications and future research directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The Spartina alterniflora invasion across the southeast coast in China significantly reduced vegetation diversity and generated associated ecological problems. Sulfur (S) is a vital nutrient, while sulfide is phytotoxic and the impact of S. alterniflora invasion on soil S cycle remains unclear. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impacts of S. alterniflora invasion on the S cycle and associated soil microbial communities. Methods: Both field investigation and lab-scale experiments were conducted, analyzing soil sulfide and sulfate contents, soil properties over four seasons in the Jiuduansha Wetland of Shanghai, China, the high-throughput sequencing of soil microbial communities, S cycle-related functional genes and seed germination experiments. Results: The contents of sulfide, soil organic carbon (SOC), and total nitrogen (TN) in the bulk soil of S. alterniflora invaded area were higher than those in the native species S. mariqueter habitat and bare mudflat soils. Spartina alterniflora invasion increased the abundance of the Nitrospiraceae and Desulfarculaceae families and reduced that of Hydrogenophilaceae. The relative abundance of the SO42− reduction functional genes (dsrA + dsrB) in the soil was increased after S. alterniflora invasion, while that of the S oxidation functional genes (yedZ + soxY) in the soil was reduced. Seed germination experiments with different sodium sulfide concentrations (Na2S) revealed that the phytotoxicity of sulfide caused more lethal damage to S. mariqueter than to S. alterniflora. Conclusion: The S. alterniflora invasion significantly increased SOC and TN contents and reduced the abundance of sulfur-oxidizing functional genes, which led to the accumulation of soil sulfide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]