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Rural landscapes, as products of the interaction between humans and nature, not only reflect the history and culture of rural areas but also symbolize economic and social progress. This study proposes a deep learning-based model for Weibo data analysis aimed at exploring the development direction of rural landscapes from the perspective of the Chinese public. The research reveals that the Chinese public's attention to rural landscapes has significantly increased with the evolution of government governance concepts. Most people express a high level of satisfaction and happiness with the existing rural landscapes, while a minority harbor negative emotions towards unreasonable new rural construction. Through the analysis of public opinion regarding rural landscapes, this study will assist decision-makers in understanding the mechanisms of public discourse on social media. It will also aid relevant scholars and designers in providing targeted solutions, which hold significant importance for policy formulation and the exploration of specific development patterns., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This paper examines the Chinese government's response to four epidemic crises, including COVID-19, and analyzes the similarities and differences in these responses. It argues that while the Chinese government learned from previous epidemics and improved its handling of subsequent outbreaks, a significant variation occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a detrimental impact globally. Existing scholarly research on China's epidemic responses has often been limited in scope, focusing on individual crises and neglecting the central-local government relationship in crisis decision-making. By adopting a comprehensive approach, this paper delves into the nuanced dynamics of China's responses to these epidemics. It highlights the variations in responses, attributing them to the Chinese government's fear of undermined legitimacy and its consideration of its international image. The government's recognition of the importance of public perception and trust, both domestically and globally, has shaped its crisis management strategies. Through a detailed analysis of these factors, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the variations observed in China's epidemic responses. It emphasizes the significance of the central-local government relationship and the government's international image in determining its actions during epidemics. Recognizing these factors can provide policymakers and researchers with insights to shape future epidemic response strategies and foster effective global health governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2021, China's promotion of common prosperity has captured global attention and sparked considerable debate. Yet, scholarly examination of the Chinese public's attitudes toward this policy, which is crucial for guiding China's strategic directions, remains limited. To address this gap, this paper collects 256,233 Sina Weibo posts from 2021 to 2023 and utilizes text mining methods such as temporal and trend analysis, keyword analysis, topic analysis, and sentiment analysis to investigate the attitudes and emotions of the Chinese people towards common prosperity. The posts holding negative sentiments are also analyzed, so as to uncover the underlying reasons for the dissatisfaction among Chinese citizens regarding common prosperity. Our analysis reveals that China's strategy for promoting common prosperity is primarily focused on economic development rather than wealth redistribution. Emphasis is placed on enhancing education, achieving regional balance, implementing market-oriented reforms, and improving livelihoods. Notably, there is increasing public dissatisfaction, particularly with issues such as irregularities in financial and real estate markets, growing wealth inequality, exploitation by capital, generation of illicit income, and regional development imbalances. These challenges necessitate urgent and effective policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of stock renewal, the construction of university campuses in China's first-tier cities has shifted from demolition and construction to renewal and upgrading, in which public landscape space is the main environment for students' daily life, learning and entertainment. Especially during the outbreak of the recent COVID-19 epidemic, it has become an important way for students to interact with nature and obtain emotional healing. In the existing studies, there is a lack of discussion on the correlation between the spatial characteristics of the updated campus landscape and students' emotional attachment, and there are few quantitative studies. Based on this, this paper takes the "Heart of Forest" landscape space as an example, and integrates multi-dimensional quantitative methods including emotional attachment scale and public semantic analysis to study and evaluate the characteristics of landscape space that affect students' emotional attachment. The results show that: (1) Overall, the landscape space renewal of the Heart of Forest provides students with positive emotional experiences and effectively enhances students' emotional attachment as well as sense of belonging to the campus. (2) Among them, the material characteristics of the site including nature-related elements, materials, structures play a positive role in promoting the vast majority of students in the process of establishing emotional attachment, which is particularly obvious for students majoring in landscape, architecture and urban planning. (3) Whether the public social space can effectively provide students with a good emotional experience is closely related to the frequency and purpose of students' use of the space. (4) The interactive characteristics such as changeability and playability fail to promote emotional attachment because of lacking of management and maintenance. The renewal and transformation of the "Heart of Forest" landscape space is generally successful in promoting students' emotional attachment, and provides a reference for the future campus landscape renewal design from different angles. In addition, the quantitative study of emotional attachment constructed in this paper coupled with multi-dimensional data provides a method for the evaluation of students' emotional experience of campus landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important means of communication, sports public opinion has been paid more and more attention by the country. This article will focus on the emergency events of sports events as the main object and research and analysis of the communication function and law in the public opinion of sports events and analyzes the characteristics of public opinion communication. This paper holds that the media play the "should be" roles in different periods, such as network public opinion monitoring and early warning, public opinion information processing and interpretation, consensus builder highlighting the mainstream, and introspection of public opinion events, and there is a media role cycle in the secondary public opinion period. Spreading law of public opinion in sports events in China: trigger-conduction-outbreak mechanism. At present, the diversified interactive mode of sports events in China makes the communication environment of public opinion in sports events more and more three-dimensional and multidimensional, and it is also convenient for us to make better use of the current regulation means of public opinion in sports events. Sports network public opinion can easily go to "post-truth." In order to strengthen the monitoring of sports public opinion and improve the ability to respond to network public opinion, using interdisciplinary thinking, this paper proposes a network public opinion guidance strategy for sports events. The experiment is aimed at the disadvantage that the trend of sports public opinion analysis and tracking is not clear. The optimization method is proposed, and the accuracy is improved by 87.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microblog has become the "first scenario" under which the public learn about the epidemic situation and express their opinions. Public sentiment mining based on microblog data can provide a reference for the government's information disclosure, public sentiment guidance and formulation of epidemic prevention and control policy. In this paper, about 200,000 pieces of text data were collected from Jan. 1 to Feb. 26, 2020 from Sina Weibo, which is the most popular microblog website in China. And a public sentiment analysis framework suitable for Chinese-language scenarios was proposed. In this framework, a sentiment dictionary suitable for Chinese-language scenarios was constructed, and Baidu's Sentiment Analysis API was used to calculate the public sentiment indexes. Then, an analysis on the correlation between the public sentiment indexes and the COVID-19 case indicators was made. It was discovered that there is a high correlation between public sentiments and incidence trends, in which negative sentiment is of statistical significance for the prediction of epidemic development. To further explore the source of public negative sentiment, the topics of the public negative sentiment on Weibo was analyzed, and 20 topics in five categories were got. It is found that there is a strong linkage between the hot spots of public concern and the epidemic prevention and control policies. If the policies cover the hot spots of public concern in a timely and effective manner, the public negative sentiment will be effectively alleviated. The analytical framework proposed in this paper also applies to the public sentiment analysis and policy making for other major public events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the existing influence evaluation algorithms often ignore network structure attributes, user interests and the time-varying propagation characteristics of influence. To address these issues, this work comprehensively discusses users' own influence, weighted indicators, users' interaction influence and the similarity between user interests and topics, thus proposing a dynamic user influence ranking algorithm called UWUSRank. First, we determine the user's own basic influence based on their activity, authentication information and blog response. This improves the problem of poor objectivity of initial value on user influence evaluation when using PageRank to calculate user influence. Next, this paper mines users' interaction influence by introducing the propagation network properties of Weibo (a Twitter-like service in China) information and scientifically quantifies the contribution value of followers' influence to the users they follow according to different interaction influences, thereby solving the drawback of equal value transfer of followers' influence. Additionally, we analyze the relevance of users' personalized interest preferences and topic content and realize real-time monitoring of users' influence at various time periods during the process of public opinion dissemination. Finally, we conduct experiments by extracting real Weibo topic data to verify the effectiveness of introducing each attribute of users' own influence, interaction timeliness and interest similarity. Compared to TwitterRank, PageRank and FansRank, the results show that the UWUSRank algorithm improves the rationality of user ranking by 9.3%, 14.2%, and 16.7%, respectively, which proves the practicality of the UWUSRank algorithm. This approach can serve as a guide for research on user mining, information transmission methods, and public opinion tracking in social network-related areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gauges COVID-19’s effect on global public perception of China and the likely implications for China’s development model and international influence. How does COVID-19 affect China’s exercise of soft power and the international community’s appraisal of it? Using global perception data from the Pew Research Centre, the paper argues that COVID-19 is likely to have dire consequences on China’s soft power and international influence based on the soft power theory. Specifically, China lost a chance to present the attractiveness of its development model – Beijing Consensus – and establish credibility for global leadership due to the universal perception of the relationship between the pandemic and China despite the country’s international efforts. The paper concludes that this will validate people’s opinions about China and accelerate an already existing trend – unfavourable image. The paper serves as a new scientific contribution to the literature on soft power and foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

G20 countries, account for the majority of global carbon emissions, need to take the lead in mitigating climate change. However, there are differences in economic, political and sociocultural backgrounds amongst G20 countries, especially between China and other G20 countries. Since the implementation of climate policies largely require domestic public support, it is vital to explore similarities and differences of public opinions on climate issues between China and other G20 countries. However, little research has investigated the micro-level climate concerns from the perspective of cross-country differences. Therefore, based on big data and text mining analysis, this study crawled user-generated data on Sina Weibo (N = 271,487) and Twitter (N = 4,874,546) from 2008 to 2019 to comprehensively catalog and compare climate opinions. Results show that climate change has become a salient issue in China and other G20 countries, with climate-related surges in public opinions always occurring after major natural, social and political events. Moreover, in China, there has been a significant shift in public attention from climate impacts to climate mitigation strategies, but in other G20 countries, people are more radical by emphasizing the climate movement and calling for authoritative actions. This study provides "snapshots" of climate communication and offers a quantification-based reference for promoting climate actions and collaborative governance., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Recycling waste is important as it can help to reduce environmental pollution caused by "waste siege". Source classification is an important part of the municipal solid waste (MSW) sorting process. The factors that prompt residents to participate in waste sorting have been debated by scholars in recent years; however, there are not many papers that focus on the complex relationships between them. This study reviewed the literature that concerns residents' participation in waste sorting, and it summarized the external factors that might influence residents' participation. Then, we focused on 25 pilot cities in China, and we analyzed the configuration impact of external factors on residents' participation using a necessary condition analysis (NCA) and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). We found no consistency between variables, nor was there one single condition that caused residents to participate in waste sorting. There are two main methods (environment-driven and resource-driven) that can help achieve a high participation rate, and three methods that can cause a low participation rate. This study provides suggestions for the implementation of waste sorting in other cities in China, as well as developing countries, with an emphasis on the importance of public participation., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This paper selects the core content of recently released Market Patterns and Investment Insights of China's Digital Content Industry in 2020–2021, and this series of reports has been published in four consecutive volumes (2015, 2017–2018, 2019–2020, 2021–2022). Based on the latest developments of the digital content industry in China, this paper probes into the market development, competitive landscape, investment and financing volume, investment hotspots, policies and public opinion environment of 10 sub-sectors, including online games, animation, online videos, short videos, live streaming, online music, digital reading, news & information apps, online education, and knowledge payment, provides an insight into the status quo of China's digital content industry in 2020–2021 and ten major development trends of the industry. Furthermore, the investment value of 10 sub-sectors is assessed from two dimensions—internal factors and external factors, with a total of 7 primary indicators and 11 secondary indicators, and the results are compared with those of the previous two editions to observe market changes. Research conclusions are as follows: (1) From the perspective of development trends: the scale expansion of China's digital content industry has slowed down; short videos continue to increase; user value operation becomes a new test under routine pandemic prevention and control; the competitive landscape among sub-sectors tends to be stable; leading enterprises expand their business territory via investment, merger and acquisition (M&A) for the integration of upstream and downstream industrial chain. (2) From the results of investment value assessment and investment trends: live streaming and online games lead the way of investment forward in the digital content industry, thanks to their mature cash realization model and huge market space, with the investment value ranking rising to the top two; in the video field, vertical content creation of short video, online video-related intelligent technology and digital marketing are worthy of attention; and in the digital reading field, focus can be placed on original content creation and novel/comic reading platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive online reviews of new energy vehicles in China are deemed crucial by companies, as they offer valuable insights into user demands and perceptions. An effective analysis enables companies to swiftly adapt and enhance their products while upholding a positive public image. Nonetheless, the sentiment analysis of online car reviews can pose challenges due to factors such as incomplete context, abrupt information bursts, and specialized vocabulary. In this paper, an enhanced hybrid model is introduced, combining Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration (ERNIE) and a deep (Convolutional Neural Network) CNN, to tackle these challenges. The model utilizes fine-tuned ERNIE for feature extraction from preprocessed review datasets, generating word vectors that encompass comprehensive semantic information. The deep CNN component captures local features from the text, thereby capturing semantic nuances at multiple levels. To address sudden shifts in public sentiment, a channel attention mechanism is employed to amplify the significance of crucial information within the reviews, facilitating comment relationship classification and sentiment prediction. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model, achieving an impressive accuracy rate of 97.39% on the test set and significantly outperforming other models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general, perception surveys toward foreign countries tend to focus on urban populations with consistently high levels of education during the analysis phase. This is because they are considered more important in influencing domestic and international politics. This paper seeks to counter these traditional perception surveys and focus on those at the frontline of development. It aims to identify the perceptions of those at the frontline of China's long-standing mining development projects in Zambia toward China and how they view development in the region. Perception surveys and focus group interviews with various social groups were conducted in Chambishi in the Copperbelt, where mining development has long been taking place. The study then identified differences in perceptions and underlying factors among those who are considered to have a high level of education. The survey results show that the public's perceptions toward China are nested. Chambishi residents, who are at the frontline of development driven by China, were found to have a favorable perception toward them. People are acutely aware that China is essential for Zambia's development. On the other hand, the high favorable perception toward China does not mean that they feel that China is psychologically close to them. Although people appreciate the diverse contributions that Chinese companies make to the region, they strongly hold the view that these contributions are "insufficient" when compared to the mining resources in the region that China is enclosing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shanghai is one of the fastest-growing metropolises and the first city in China to implement mandatory waste classification. Waste classification policy of Shanghai has attracted widespread attention since its implementation in July 2019. However, previous papers have not focused on online public attitudes surrounding the implementation of a waste classification policy in Shanghai. In order to fill this gap, this paper explored the dynamic evolution of online public attitudes towards waste classification in Shanghai by using sentiment analysis technology and topic modeling technology. It was found that the proportion of negative posts each month was about 20%; therefore, online public sentiment towards waste classification in Shanghai was generally positive. Compared with the first three months of policy implementation, the public sentiment towards Shanghai's waste classification became more positive, with the exception of two special periods. Negative posts in July 2019 mainly discussed waste's environmental hazards and policy provisions. New topics in negative posts in later months focused on some specific problems, including the process of throwing away wet waste, the allocated throwing times, the number of waste cans, takeaway meal disposal, and gathering activities. Improving the factors causing the negative sentiments in the posts will help the government better implement the policy. The paper will help the government to receive higher public support for the waste classification policy in Shanghai. The present findings also have great reference significance for other cities.

This paper examines what kind of political, institutional arrangements and the behavior of political actors under these arrangements become the stabilizing or destabilizing factors of a country's diplomatic balancing between the United States and China. Specifically, I describe the domestic politics of Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore in terms of their responses to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) promoted by the Xi Jinping administration. The analysis reveals the following points. First, in all of these countries, the growing presence of China has increased the number of stakeholders in policymaking toward China, and domestic politics regarding policymaking toward China have become more contentious. Second, as a result, each country faces the risk of internalizing its foreign policy toward China, especially on issues related to sovereignty and domestic corruption, thereby destabilizing previously balanced diplomacy between the United States and China. Third, in dealing with such risks, countries with winner-takes-all presidential systems (e.g., South Korea and Indonesia) face difficulties in controlling the internalization of diplomacy, while countries with institutional frameworks that can control destabilizing factors, such as public opinion and corruption (e.g., Japan, Vietnam, and Singapore) are characterized by the relative ease with which they can maintain balanced diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comprehensive understanding of current Chinese public attitudes toward farm animal welfare and the relevant influencing factors is essential for improving farm animal welfare and promoting further development of animal husbandry. The attitudes of 3,726 respondents in China were investigated using paper and online questionnaires. Three components (affective, cognitive, and behavioral) of attitudes toward farm animal welfare were assessed using 18 items designed based on the literature review. Influential factors of attitudes toward farm animal welfare were explored via tobit regression. The results revealed that the Chinese public not only considers farm animals to be emotional and sentient but are also sympathetic toward farm animals that suffer inhumane treatment. Although they have limited knowledge about farm animal welfare, the public believes improving farm animal welfare is beneficial, especially for food safety and human health. The Chinese public prefers regulation policies to incentive policies for improving farm animal welfare. The main factors influencing attitudes toward farm animal welfare included gender, age, education, monthly household income, area of residence, farm animal raising experience, and attention to farm animal welfare events. The effect of these influencing factors on attitudes varied. These findings provide a basis for improving Chinese public attitudes toward farm animal welfare. The implications of formulating and implementing effective policies to improve the Chinese public attitudes toward farm animal welfare were discussed [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Relaciones Internacionales (1699-3950) is the property of Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, International Relations Studies Group (GERI) Law Faculty and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: Risk perception is a key factor influencing the public's behavioral response to major public health events. The research on public risk perception promotes the emergency management system to adapt to the needs of modern development. This article is based on a risk information perspective, using the COVID-19 event as an example. From the micro and macro perspectives, the influencing factors of public risk perception in major public health events in China are extracted, and the attribution model and index system of public risk perception are established. Methods: In this paper, the five-level Likert scale is used to collect and measure the risk perception variable questionnaire through the combination of online and offline methods (a total of 550 questionnaires, the overall Alpha coefficient of the questionnaire is 0.955, and the KMO test coefficient t=0.941), and through independent samples t-test, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and other methods to draw relevant conclusions. Results: The results showed that gender and age were significantly associated with risk perception (p< 0.005), and education level was significantly negatively associated with risk perception (p < 0 0.005). Risk information attention and risk perception were significantly positively correlated (p< 0.005), media credibility was significantly positively correlated with risk perception (p< 0.005), while risk information identification and media exposure had no significant interaction with risk perception (p=0.125, p=0.352). Conclusion: Factors such as gender, age, education level, place of residence, media exposure, media credibility, risk information attention, and recognition lead to different levels of risk perception. This conclusion helps to provide a basis for relevant departments to conduct public risk management of major public health events based on differences in risk perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION The tobacco gift-giving culture in China poses a significant challenge to public health; however, there is limited research on effectively curbing the tobacco gift-giving culture and its associated tobacco gift consumption. This study examines the potential impact of two tobacco control measures that the Chinese government may consider adopting on cigarette gifting behavior in the future in Chinese society. METHODS This study employed a randomized survey experiment to examine the effects of cigarette price treatment and pictorial health warning labels (HWLs) on cigarette gifting. The total sample size of this study is 1035. Four groups of participants were presented with representative cigarettes categorized into high-, medium-, and low-priced products, along with different prices (normal and double) or external packaging imagery (normal and pictorial HWL versions). RESULTS The price of cigarettes for personal consumption forms an L-shaped distribution, and the price of cigarette gifts forms a W-shaped distribution. Increasing cigarette prices reduces smokers' willingness to gift high-priced cigarettes but stimulates the consumption of low-price cigarettes as gifts. Pictorial HWLs do not directly influence smokers' intentions to gift cigarettes, but they enhance the effectiveness of price regulation concerning medium-priced cigarette products. CONCLUSIONS If the price variance of cigarettes is not reduced, the effect of price regulation will be very limited. Implementing combined interventions of pictorial HWLs and price regulation or modifying the pricing structure of tobacco products may yield stronger control outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Review of International Affairs (04866096) is the property of Institute of International Politics & Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the rapid growth of Chinese social network users, the open yet anonymous cyberspace makes the Chinese public more inclined to express their feelings and opinions freely on the Internet, and thus generate opinions that are not conducive to the survival and development of Chinese enterprises, i.e., enterprise negative network public opinion. Based on this, this paper takes a Chinese enterprise's negative network public opinion as the research object. First, our research identifies the stakeholders involved in the dissemination process of public opinion information. Secondly, we model the decision-making behaviors of stakeholders in different stages to obtain the evolutionarily stable strategy. After that, the simulation experiment is conducted to analyze the key points of enterprise strategy adjustment in different stages of negative network public opinion dissemination. The experimental results show that: (1) In its formation stage, opinion leaders usually do not participate in the event, and thus enterprises need to focus on the active ordinary Internet users; (2) In its development stage, if an enterprise wants to reduce the loss caused by negative events, it needs to make use of online media to give corresponding positive guidance; (3) In its control stage, enterprises should take corresponding legal measures to netizens who make improper remarks on the Internet, increase the risk cost of these netizens group, and cooperate with the government's control work to guide the negative public opinion to turn in a beneficial direction. Finally, the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed model are verified using a practical case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has China delayed commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops over the last decade given its heavy public R&D investment in biotechnology and maturing GM capacity? Further, imports of GM products for consumption are allowed while similar domestic GM‐crops cannot be commercialized. The paper analyzes, from a political economy perspective, how the delay of commercialization arises from the government balancing interests and conflicts among vested interests to keep social stability based on comprehensive secondary data and unique primary survey data. Anti‐GMO activists have, over time, been able to shape the public perception of biotechnology. Their efforts have garnered widespread acceptance among interest groups and have been sufficient to raise the specter of underlying social instability, which is always near the top of mind for China's government. As a result, no movement on commercialization has been made since 2010—more than a decade ago. The failure to commercialize is important because food production would increase considerably if China were able to commercialize GM crops and the resolution of the biotechnology issue has broad implications for food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food additives play an important role in the food supply, and it has been a food safety topic of great concern to the public. There has been no systematic research on Chinese consumers' concerns, attitudes, feelings, or opinions on supervision and media coverage of food additives in the past decade, which is an area worth exploring. This study was carried out to deeply understand consumers' cognition of food additives and formulate food safety risk communication strategies of food additives in China. Big data of consumers' online public opinion of China on food additives from 2011 to 2020 was collected and cleaned up using Haina Network Public Opinion Monitoring System version 2.0 (HNPOMS V2.0), followed by data analysis and visual display with the Ansi Food Safety Risk Communication System version 2.0 (AFSRCS V2.0). The results showed that the types of food additives of concern to the public have changed from 2011 to 2020, but the amount of food additives has always been of concern. The type of incident that the public is most concerned about is the illegal addition or abuse of additives. The public's confidence in food production enterprises has been insufficient, but the functions of market supervision are becoming clearer and clearer, and their expectations are constantly increasing. Consumers' cognition level increases with the strengthening of publicity and popular science, but the influence of "self-media" on public cognition is increasing day by day, and there is cognitive deviation, making it easy to mislead the public. Consumers' cognition of food additives is the basis of risk communication. Combined with the research results, this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions on the market and social supervision measures, network media guidance strategy and risk communication strategy of China, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the dispute between China and the United States, the international field of public opinion is dominated by increasing tensions, and the network rumors triggered by the COVID-19 epidemic are intensifying. In view of the above-mentioned context, this paper focuses on the development and the evolution process of public opinions. Since the evolution of public opinion is often accompanied by the spread and diffusion of information, this paper combines the process of information diffusion with the development process of polarization behavior, and brings in the dynamic network and the timeliness factor of public opinion dissemination, so as to better explore the polarization process of public opinion under the dynamic network. Then, this paper focuses on the analysis of the parameters of the model and through the dynamic adjustment of parameters, finding out the main factors that affect the trend and development of network public opinion. In addition, this paper introduces an actual case, and takes the actual case data as the support to demonstrate the reliability and practical application value of the model. Finally, based on the simulation results and analysis of actual cases, this paper puts forward the corresponding preventive measures to alleviate the polarization behavior of the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rebound of online public opinion is an important driving force in inducing a secondary crisis in the case of public emergencies. Effective risk-information communication is an important means to manage online public opinion regarding emergencies. This paper employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to discover which conditions are combined and may result in the rebound of online public opinion. Five conditions were selected: the type of public emergency, messengers, message attributes, audience, and information feedback. The study used a sample of 25 major public emergencies that occurred between 2015 and 2020 in China. The type of public emergency, audience, and information feedback emerged as critical influencing factors. Message attributes promote the rebound of online public opinion regarding public health emergencies, while messengers play a traction role in the rebound of online public opinion on other types of public emergencies. This study extends risk-information communication theory from the perspective of the type of emergency, explores the causes of rebounded online public opinion regarding public emergencies, and provides policies and suggestions for risk-information communication and online public-opinion governance during emergencies.

Copyright of Medunarodni Problemi is the property of Institute of International Politics & Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As the world is drawn increasingly into a web of shifting geopolitics, battle lines are being drawn and alliances are re-orienting themselves. Working from the premise that the competition between the United States (U.S.) and the People's Republic of China will define the dynamics of the international system for the foreseeable future, this paper takes a look at the U.S.'s evolving posture of Integrated Deterrence and the likely Chinese response, which would have implications for Asian security. It reviews the contours of 'Integrated Deterrence' as it is laid out in the U.S. National Security Strategy 2022 and how this may shape the policy decisions of the U.S. and its partners, especially Taiwan, as well as how major U.S. regional allies, including India are likely to play their role in support of the U.S. interests. The paper also analyses China's strategic thinking, national defence policy and national security objectives that are likely to influence its choices in the evolving great power competition. Taking Taiwan as the case study, the paper finds that in addition to pursuing more traditional approaches, both the U.S. and China will consider influencing domestic public opinion in China and Taiwan as a key focus of their respective policy considerations; it also finds convergences in the related responses of South Asia's two major players, India and Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With over one billion Internet users in China, a large amount of public opinion is spreading rapidly in breadth and depth at an unprecedented speed in social networks. The establishment of an accurate public opinion dissemination (POD) model is vital for predicting and maintaining the construction of online civilization. On the basis of the traditional SIR model, a fractional-order differential is combined to solve the problem of "anomalous dissemination" in the process of actual POD. The influence of web hypers on POD in social networks is also discovered, and the S1 super-spreading node is introduced. In this paper, we propose a fractional-order SS1IR POD prediction model. The experimental results show that the model fits real data well and has small errors. Therefore, our model can play an aggressive and significant role for predicting POD in social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although numerous participatory methods and assessments have been tested in the western context, the community participation practice is still limited in China, a developing country. In addition, due to the diversity of cultural, historical, economic, and social backgrounds, Chinese community participation differs from similar international approaches. Hence it is critical to explore how engaging Chinese people with their own heritage properties can foster stewardship, multi-stakeholder connection, and support policy and strategy making.It is very challenging to preserve the character of historic urban landscapes because they change over time in a rapidly developing urban context. Research on revealing people's stories and preferences concerning the Chinese historic urban landscape in their visiting and living experience is needed to address this concern directly. The study applies a novel approach to explore public attitudes based on the fusion of social media data, land use data and other information. It examines the spatial patterns of public responses towards the government-led urban heritage conservation projects in the historic city centre of Harbin, China, in sixteen months (2021–2022). The article concludes that social media plays an important role in accessing broader communities, monitoring people's preferences, and observing heritage attributes and values for inclusive urban heritage management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on event history analysis, this study examined the survival distribution of the duration of online public opinions related to major health emergencies and its influencing factors. We analyzed the data of such emergencies (N = 125) that took place in China during a period of 10 years (2012–2021). The results of the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that the average duration of online public opinions regarding health emergencies is 43 days, and the median is 19 days, which dispels the myth of the “Seven-day Law of Propagation.” Furthermore, the duration of online public opinions can be divided into three stages: the rapid decline stage (0–50 days), the slowdown stage (51–200 days), and the disappearing stage (after 200 days). In addition, the type of event, and the volume of both social media discussion and traditional media coverage all had significant impacts on the duration. Our findings provide practical implications for the carrying out of targeted and stage-based governance of public opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: As the COVID-19 pandemic raged, controversies about governmental responses to the epidemic also emerged in China. Previous studies mainly described the phenomenon of individual differences on support for governmental responses to COVID-19 with less attention to the underlying causal mechanisms. Thus, this study tries to verify the factors influencing public support for official behaviors in COVID-19. Method: A questionnaire survey was drew on in Wuhan city during the COVID-19 outbreak. The quota sampling method was adopted according to the gender and age structure of the population in Wuhan as well as the educational structure of the urban population in China. Results: Through structural equation analysis, this study confirms that personal factors (namely conscientiousness and nationalistic ideology), behavioral factors (namely media diversity and echo chamber acts) exert significantly positive impacts on support for governmental responses. The echo chamber acts play important mediating roles in the relationship between each independent variable and support for governmental responses. Discussion: The originality of this study is that it constructs a comprehensive model of influencing factors of support for governmental responses with the personal, behavioral, and environmental factors. While contributing insight to political attitude in China, the research results also have significance for promoting public trust and constructing healthy public opinion in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a significant decision support tool, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has been legally necessitated since 2003 when the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of the P.R. China was put into effect. However, the different national development targets and the social and economic development gaps between the western region and the eastern region of China greatly influence the SEA implementation. This paper demonstrates the differences in the SEA implementation between the western region and the eastern region of China and discusses the reasons for the disparities. Reviewing government policies and conducting in-depth interviews are selected as the two main research methods. The disparities of SEA implementation existing in intervention time, alternatives, public participation, and monitoring are presented. The differences are caused by the impacts of local SEA regulations and policies, institutions and experts, public attitudes, local government attitudes, strength of Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB), funding, national government strategies, and policies and regulations of environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explicitly addresses the key works of public participation in subjective policy evaluation from the perspective of smog governance. Based on the unique data from a large survey distributed to more than 3500 respondents in 37 key cities of China, we adopt the ordered probit model to identify the factors affecting public evaluation towards the smog-governing policy. To solve the endogeneity problem, we construct an effective instrumental variable - the policy strength of government in eliminating smog to analyze empirically. The results suggest that public participation are significant and important predictors of the public evaluation, higher degree of participation is associated with more positive subjective evaluation. Further, this paper explores the role of effective public perception and concern as well as the expected subsidy. The results show that the public who actively participate into the co-governance of smog are more concern about the air quality and also have lower expected subsidy. • The impact of public participation on smog-governing policy evaluation is identified. • The policy strength of government in eliminating smog is used as instrumental variable. • Environmental and energy characteristic factors on policy evaluation are identified. • The public who actively participate into the co-governance of smog tend to give higher evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising sentiment challenges of the metropolitan residents may be attributed to the extreme temperatures. However, nationwide real-time empirical studies that examine this claim are rare. In this research, we construct a daily extreme temperature index and sentiment metric using geotagged posts on one of China's largest social media sites, Weibo, to verify this hypothesis. We find that extreme temperatures causally decrease individuals' sentiment, and extremely low temperature may decrease more than extremely high temperature. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that individuals living in high levels of PM2.5, existing new COVID-19 diagnoses and low-disposable income cities on workdays are more vulnerable to the impact of extreme temperatures on sentiment. More importantly, the results also demonstrate that the adverse effects of extremely low temperatures on sentiment are more minor for people living in northern cities with breezes. Finally, we estimate that with a one-standard increase of extremely high (low) temperature, the sentiment decreases by approximately 0.161 (0.272) units. Employing social media to monitor public sentiment can assist policymakers in developing data-driven and evidence-based policies to alleviate the adverse impacts of extreme temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Indonesia as a case study, this article aims to contribute to the existing literature on why weaker states engage in hedging by examining how Indonesia’s domestic factors influence its foreign policy decisions regarding the United States and China. The article argues that domestic and foreign policies are interconnected as domestic agendas, including the interests and aspirations of Indonesian politicians as well as public opinion, have led to variations in the country’s hedging behaviours towards the two great powers. On one hand, domestic political and economic considerations drive Indonesia to engage with the United States and China. On the other hand, the same factors can also act as hindrances that limit Indonesia’s engagement with these powers. Consequently, despite having strong defence ties with the United States, Indonesia now sees China as a major and essential economic partner that helps the country and its leaders achieve their development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"China's Approach to Addressing International Hotspot Issues: Concepts, Principles and Practices" explores China's role in resolving global hotspot issues. The article discusses China's motives and strategies in conflict resolution, emphasizing its desire to enhance global influence and its adherence to traditional Chinese culture. China's approach is based on principles such as impartiality, non-interference, and constructive engagement. It seeks to harmonize differences, maintain inclusiveness, and promote cooperation. China's practices have been widely supported and applauded, and its approach is seen as a fundamental change from previous military approaches. China advocates for dialogue, consultation, and improved relations among countries to foster peace and stability. [Extracted from the article]

Public concern regarding safety policies serious consequences is anticipated to persist over an extended duration. A study examining a case of rapid public health policy adaptation in China during the COVID-19 epidemic was conducted by gathering public opinion data from major social media platforms. A systematic approach to comprehend public opinion was developed. Five fundamental elements and four dimensions were delineated. An indicator system was established utilizing the K-means text clustering model. Public prediction, expectation, and their evolution underlying public concern were elucidated employing TF–IDF text mining models. The HMM elucidated the way public opinion influences policy adjustments. The findings underscore that public concern regarding enduring events undergoes temporal shifts, mirroring the evolution of public opinion towards policy. Public opinion aroused by both the original event and derived events collaboratively influence policy adjustments. In China, public opinion serves as a mechanism for policy feedback and oversight; notably, negative public sentiment plays a pivotal role in expediting policy transitions. These findings aid in refining policies to mitigate emergencies through a feedback loop, thereby averting the emergence of safety risks such as social unrest prompted by public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Understanding people's attitudes towards animals and their welfare is vitally important to enable governments to set a legal framework that meets people's expectation for the way in which animals are cared for in their community. Little is known about attitudes towards animal welfare in China, the biggest producer of farm animals in the world. We surveyed 1301 people from different Chinese provinces to gauge their attitudes towards animal welfare. We found that high school leavers were more concerned about animal welfare than those who had obtained a university degree. Scientists were less supportive, and artists more supportive, of good animal welfare. Rural dwellers were less concerned about animal welfare than urban residents, with village residents in the middle. Attitudes to animal welfare are not understood well in China, the country with the highest output of farm animals in the world. We surveyed attitudes of the public around China using a team of researchers to conduct individual interviews, with 1301 respondents in total. Contrary to results obtained in several other countries, high school leavers were more concerned about animal welfare than those who had obtained a university degree. We speculate that this may reflect the labour market currently existing in China, with limited opportunities for graduates. Scientists were less supportive, and artists more supportive, of good animal welfare. Urban dwellers were more concerned about animal welfare than rural residents, with village residents in the middle, which confirmed our theory that such a difference prevails in developing countries, where a large proportion of the rural population are involved in agriculture. It is concluded that education level, occupation and living place all have pronounced influences on attitudes to animal welfare in China, some of which follow international trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the global interconnectedness, it becomes essential to critically assess how global events are portrayed in the media, as this could influence public understanding, stoke sentiments, and potentially impact international relations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the portrayal of China's response by the American media became a topic of interest and contention. However, A noticeable gap remains in understanding this portrayal across different pandemic stages. This article examines how American mainstream news media has characterised China's efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic over time through a corpus-based discourse analysis. The study employs the analytical methods of ngram, keyword, and concordance lines in corpus linguistics to investigate the frequency and salience of discourse surrounding COVID-19 in China within American media. The results indicate shifting narratives in portraying China's pandemic response over time, with a noticeable trend towards negative representations. The negative representations are characterised by three themes: the stigmatisation of China, the undermining of China's achievements in combating the pandemic, and the politicisation of the pandemic. The article also indicates the perceived challenges in collaboration between America, China, and the WHO in addressing the pandemic, leading to disagreements and conflicts and impacting global mitigation efforts. This study highlights the critical role media plays in shaping public perceptions and international cooperation during global crises. Additionally, it is important for media outlets, policymakers, and stakeholders to reflect thoughtfully on their narratives, avoiding stereotypical beliefs while taking into account their effects on international relations and global collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the World Values Survey (1990–2012), this article attempts to describe and analyze the changing trends in public values during social transformations in China. It is found that public attitudes toward authority tend to be increasingly favorable over time, values in the private sphere tend to be more open, while postmaterialist values show a trend of first rising and then falling. The most salient feature of the cohort effect is that the generations born after the reform and opening-up in 1978 identify more closely with the value of respect for authority, while their recognition of postmaterialist values tends to decline. The change in values is related to China's modernization process, global cultural diffusion, and important historical events and is also deeply influenced by the two-way interaction between tradition and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: This study addresses the concern of managing and coexisting with community cats in urban areas. The study was conducted in urban China through a survey involving 5382 participants. It explores the residents' perceptions of the general health of community cats and the relationships between humans and these feline inhabitants. The findings show that about 70% of participants considered all or most of the community cats to be in good health, and about 60% reported harmonious or non-conflict coexistence. It was found that residents' relationships with community cats were associated with socio-demographic factors such as education, marital status, and income level. The study highlights the importance of customized approaches to cat management in various cities and communities. This provides useful information for stakeholders to create efficient policies and interventions for the welfare of the community cats and the people who live alongside them. The management and coexistence of community cats in urban areas is a growing concern amid global urbanization. Through a survey-based investigation, we examine the residents' perceptions of the general health of community cats and human-cat relationships in urban China. The data from 5382 participants revealed that approximately 70% of participants perceived community cats as being in good health, and 60% reported harmonious or non-conflict coexistence between residents and these cats. Around 45% of the participants rescued or helped community cats, 38% expressed their intention to adopt, and 18% complained about the issues of community cats to management staff. Linear, logistic, and multilevel-logistic regressions were employed to examine the associations between the types of cities and communities or the participants' socio-demographics and the perceived well-being of community cats or human-cat relationships. The results show that the cats in fourth-tier cities (e.g., county-level cities) had poorer living conditions than in first-tier cities (e.g., Beijing), while the cats in urban village communities (e.g., villages in the city) were less likely to exhibit good health than in ordinary commercial housing communities. The results also show that socio-demographic variables, such as educational attainment, marital status, and income level, predicted participants' relationships with community cats. This study is the first of its kind. It provides valuable insights for stakeholders to develop effective policies and interventions on cat management, emphasizing the need for tailored strategies in diverse urban settings and populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unit pricing for domestic waste, or pay-as-you-throw (PAYT), affords a promising policy option for waste classification and reduction at source. As an emerging economy, China intends to adopt the sophisticated instrument of unit pricing. The public attitude to this policy is of high relevance for its actual implementation. For the first time in China, this paper quantitatively examined the acceptability of the policy among urban residents by randomly delivering 632 questionnaires by taking Beijing, a megacity expected to introduce the practice, as an example. Based on the ordered logit model, determinants of acceptability were empirically tested including intrinsic, external and demographic factors. The results show that the acceptability rate of PAYT in Beijing is less than half, with the proportion of firm support reaching only 42.6%. The respectively low acceptability rate indicates substantial compliance costs, due to intensive resistance to policy implementation and more resources to be invested to promote acceptability. Empirical analysis further indicates that (1) regarding demographic features, aged or less educated residents tend to accept unit pricing, (2) as for intrinsic factors, a friendly environmental attitude, deeper understanding of charging policy and better social perception can significantly improve the public acceptability of the policy, and (3) in terms of external factors, better property services and transparent funding mechanisms play significant roles in enhancing public acceptability. These findings are further confirmed by replacing the dependent variable with either the willingness to pay for household waste disposal or the acceptability of the operated sewage treatment fee. The status of residents' preference for specific pricing methods is further investigated with underlying reasons being revealed. For developing regions with an urgent demand for waste reduction, it is proposed to install unit pricing in time to avoid possible growing social acceptability costs. Specific measures are proposed including changes in intrinsic factors, paying attention to focus groups, and building social consensus for unit pricing. [Display omitted] • Public acceptability of unit pricing policy is quantitatively examined in Beijing. • A random face-to-face survey is designed and conducted by covering 632 households. • The acceptability rate is only 42.6%, indicating high policy compliance costs. • Demographic, intrinsic and external factors play roles in improving acceptability. • Specific suggestions are proposed for regions like Beijing to introduce the policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collectivist culture serves as a significant cultural foundation in China. It could, to some extent, shape public attitudes toward the environment and thus influence the implementation of related policies. To examine this hypothesis, this study constructs the collectivist culture intensity index for 25 Chinese provinces spanning from 2010 to 2020. Through a fixed-effect model, we explore how the collectivist culture intensity affects pollution emissions in China. The empirical results indicate the significance of collectivism in enhancing emission reduction through environmental regulations. This conclusion remains robust even when excluding the impact of endogeneity concerns by adopting the instrumental variable approach. Heterogeneity analysis shows that collectivism is more effective in enhancing market-based environmental regulations rather than those driven by policies. Further mechanism analysis confirms that green innovation is a crucial pathway through which collectivism influences pollution emissions. These findings here will offer guidance to policymakers when formulating environmental policies for contexts with different regional cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass media are a key source of public news, significantly influencing the accessibility of certain issues through media coverage. While media coverage of rival nations is known to influence public perceptions, its potential impact on citizens' attitudes toward their own country is less explored. This study addresses this gap by investigating Chinese respondents' reactions to U.S. news stories related to food safety issues. The research reveals that exposure to negative news stories about a rival nation's food safety scandal can lead to a more favorable assessment of one's own government when the domestic government is perceived to be handling a similar issue better. Conversely, positive news about the rival nation's food safety issues or slightly negative news about a less severe issue diminishes government satisfaction. The findings suggest that the impact of international news coverage on citizens' views is shaped by comparisons between nations' performances. These findings shed light on the complex dynamics of international news and its influence on domestic perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative public opinions and views on overseas direct investment (ODI) of a multinational enterprise (MNE) will damage the image of its brand and are likely to bring it serious economic and social losses. So, it is important for the MNE to understand the formation and spread mechanism of public opinion risk (POR) in order to effectively respond to and guide the public opinion. This research proposed a multifractal-based situation optimization method to explore the POR evolution based on the media-based negative sentiment on China's ODI. The sentiment measurement is obtained by a directed crawler for gathering the text of media reports corresponding to a certain ODI event using a URL knowledge base from the GDELT Event Database. Taking the public opinion crisis of the tax evasion incident of the local arm of China's MNE in India as an example, the experiments show that this method could dynamically monitor the POR event in real-time and help MNE guide the effective control and benign evolution of public opinion of the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sudden-onset disasters put forward new requirements for on the state authorities' ability to analyze public opinion sentiment. However, traditional sentiment analysis methods ignore the contextual semantic relationships and out-of-vocabulary words, and their computational resource utilization is excessive compared to their expected accuracy. In this paper, an ALBERT-based model combined with a text convolution neural network, a hierarchical attention mechanism and the latent Dirichlet allocation is proposed to create a hybrid model enhanced with topic knowledge for sentiment analysis of sudden-onset disasters. Weibo text data from a rainstorm disaster in China are used to evaluate the model's performance. Compared with the XLNet, DistilBERT and RoBERTa models, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of achieving better performance by incorporating external topic knowledge into the language representation model to compensate for the limited vocabulary data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dialect Attitude is conceptualized as an individual's cognitive and affective evaluation of a dialect and its speakers. In the contemporary China, dialect is suffering from significant stigmatization, resulting in social inequalities, which hinder sustainable development. This study aims to reveal the Chinese public attitudes towards dialects, and clarify the potential determinants related to heterogeneous attitudes at a macro level. Methods: We combine the crawler technology and sentiment analysis to conduct a provincial cross-sectional study. We collect 1,650,480 microblogs about public attitudes towards dialects from Microblog across 31 specific Chinese provinces. Spatial regression models are utilized to clarify the influence of macro-level determinants on differences in public attitudes. Results: The present study reveals that: (1) The Chinese public generally holds positive attitudes towards dialects, with significant variation between provinces. (2) Political Resource (β = 0.076, SD = 0.036, P<0.05), Economic Development (β = 0.047, SD = 0.022, P<0.05), and Cultural Resource (β = 0.054, SD = 0.021, P<0.05) promote public positive attitudes towards dialects. (3) Political Resource and Culture Resource influence more significant in the relatively advantaged regions, and Economic Development poses a higher influence in the relatively disadvantaged regions. Conclusions: Basing on the combination of crawler technology and sentiment analysis, the present study develops the most comprehensive database which takes 1,650,480 dialects-related microblogs from 31 Chinese provinces, and describes the following scenario: (1) Overall, the Chinese public shares a relatively positive attitude towards dialects with significant variations among different provinces, (2) Political Resource, Economic Development and Culture Resource pose positive effects on Chinese public attitudes towards dialects and (3) Political Resource and Culture Resource influence more significant in the relatively disadvantaged regions, and Economic Development poses a higher influence in the relatively advantaged regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of digitization, traditional journalism is facing transformation and innovation. Among them, the interactivity of visual graphics in data journalism is crucial for attracting and retaining online users, but few studies have examined public perceptions and attitudes toward it. In this study, we proposed a model to validate the relationship between users' perceived interactivity and their attitudes toward data journalism, and we included user affective and cognitive factors (enjoyment and engagement) related to this as possible mediating variables in the model for validation. We conducted experiments (n = 75) using data journalism containing map visualizations with three levels of interactivity (low, medium, and high) in China. Furthermore, an exploratory evaluation of the experimental group provided further insights into the differences in interactions between groups, and the emerging five key concepts of data journalism design. Overall, all our hypotheses are supported, with enjoyment and engagement mediating the relationship between perceived interactivity and users' attitudes toward the news. In addition, the experimental group with higher interaction potential also reported more positive attitudes toward journalism. Therefore, if data journalism and visualization designers want to attract and retain users in the future, enhancing user interaction on news pages will be a proven method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanization has brought economic dividends to China, but it has been accompanied by inefficient land use. Meanwhile, the mechanism of forestry carbon sinks (FCSs) on land use efficiency (LUE) has not been sufficiently discussed in the context of the pursuit of "carbon neutrality" around the world. Based on the idea of the benefit–cost theory, this study investigated the impact of FCSs on LUE in 30 provincial-level regions (2006–2019) in China using the difference-in-difference model. The results showed that, first, via the mechanisms of public opinion (PO) and rewards and penalties (RP), FCSs could significantly improve the LUE in the regions, and that the former had a greater effect than the latter; second, the tests of the assumption of parallel trends showed that FCSs had a slower effect on the LUE under the PO mechanism than under the RP mechanism; third, the analysis of the LUE showed that the improvement in LUE mainly occurred in the eastern, central, and southwestern regions of China. The conclusions were as follows: (1) FCS is able to promote LUE via both the PO and RP mechanisms; (2) there is a lag in the promotion of LUE by FCS, and the lag is larger with the PO mechanism; and (3) there is spatial clustering in the promotion of LUE by FCS. In line with these conclusions, we propose policy recommendations to better exploit the policy effects of FCSs in three aspects, namely promoting the development of forestry carbon sink projects, improving the relevant mechanisms of FCSs, and improving the mechanisms of PO and RP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new situations, problems, and challenges facing urban fire safety work are gradually increasing in China, so innovating urban fire safety governance modes is an urgent task. In the fire management practice of the Chinese government, the establishment of an urban fire safety co-management system is an important measure for aggregating fire safety management resources and improving the level of urban fire safety prevention, as well as control. In order to reveal and clarify the interacting relationships and influencing mechanisms among multiple subjects in an urban fire safety co-management system, we constructed an urban fire safety co-management game model comprising fire supervision departments, production management units, and the public based on evolutionary game theory. The stability of the urban fire safety co-management game system is explored from the perspective of game subjects. The influencing factors of strategy selection between game subjects in the game system were investigated using numerical simulation analysis. The research results show that elevating the informatization level of co-management, the risk perception level of the public, and the disclosure level of fire safety information are conducive to stimulating the public's positivity to participate in co-management. Strengthening the accountability of the superior government is conducive to ensuring the supervision level of fire supervision departments. The above measures have positive value for optimizing China's urban fire safety co-management systems, establishing urban fire safety management synergy, and ensuring the stability of social fire safety situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]