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The Chinese government has implemented the policies to regulate executive (CEO) pay in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with the aim of promoting wage equality. This study examines whether these policies affect the motivation of CEOs to engage in green innovation (GI). By analyzing data from Chinese listed SOEs between 2008 and 2017, the study reveals an unintended environmental consequence of regulating CEO pay. We found a negative causal relationship between regulating CEO pay and GI. Moreover, we provide evidence that social capital act as a mitigating factor promotes cooperation and a shared sense of responsibility towards sustainable practices. Additionally, government subsidies provide financial incentives and support for businesses to invest in sustainable practices and technologies, which can offset the negative impact of CEO pay regulation on GI. The results of this study offer policy recommendations to encourage sustainable environmental initiatives; the government should increase its support for GI and introduce new incentives for managers. Overall the study findings are robust and remain valid even after conducting rigorous testing with instrumental variables and other robustness checks., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper extends our understanding of agency in second language (L2) students' academic English socialization by reporting on an investigation into how two mainland Chinese doctoral students enacted their agency in feedback-seeking for improving academic English writing during their studies in an English-medium university in Hong Kong. The findings show that the ways in which they exercised their agency to seek language feedback from socializing agents varied between individuals and in different feedback-seeking contexts. In particular, their enactments of feedback-seeking agency are found to be differentially shaped not only by their academic writing goals, but also by the habitus derived from their past experiences and the forms of social and cultural capital they accumulated prior to and during their doctoral studies. The findings also reveal that their language ideologies regarding the role of native-speaker norms in academic English writing mediated their feedback-seeking agency by exerting influence on their academic writing goals and their perceptions of different socializing agents as affordances for their language socialization. Overall, this paper offers more nuanced understandings of agency in L2 students' academic English socialization and illustrates the complex and dynamic interplay between agency, goal, habitus, capital and language ideology in shaping their feedback-seeking behaviour.

This paper draws on 'diaspora at home', a concept that encapsulates the unique dynamics between Hong Kong and mainland China, as an analytical tool to explore the cross-border experiences of 23 Hong Kong students at 11 universities in mainland China. It empirically ascertains how the made and imposed claims and identifications of these Hong Kong students resulted in inclusion and exclusion as their interactions with their mainland peers and institutions deepened. Specifically, it highlights how their 'diaspora at home' status offered exclusive access to privileged higher education opportunities, preferential treatments and opportunities for upward social mobility. Meanwhile, such a status also resulted in an overwhelming sense of political liability as they unwittingly became 'political tokens' and suspected political subjects amid the increasingly tense political atmosphere between mainland China and Hong Kong. This paper pinpoints the relevance of class and politics in understanding how diasporic groups engage with higher education.

This paper intervenes in debates on Chinese higher education and social (re)production strategies in the contemporary African diaspora, developing the link between 'Chinese' capitals, social status and spatial mobility. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with both disadvantaged and middle-class African international students, I unpack how migration to China will enable them to accumulate prized forms of capital and position advantageously in different spheres of African society. The paper focuses on two 'Chinese' capitals--specifically high proficiency in the Chinese language, and exposure to and internalisation of Chinese lifestyles and practices--which are convertible to profit, distinction and secure coveted jobs in their respective home countries. By exploring how China's 'in the middle' position within the global political economy and exercising its soft power over peripheries are reflected in the ways these African students and their families play the 'class game' and make higher education choice, this paper moves beyond the 'West' vs. 'the Rest' gaze and nuances an emergent mobility pattern within the Global South. I conclude by presenting an argument that in seeking these 'Chinese' capitals, the students and their families may enhance China's geopolitical standing and facilitate its movement towards the 'core' within the arena of the world (knowledge) system.

The involution of family education is a significant issue in China's current basic education and has brought certain heavy burdens and negative impacts to both parents and students. Using the desk research method, this paper describes the manifestations of family capital embeddedness in the process of family education involution, analyzes its causes, and explores countermeasures to address it. The study suggests changing traditional social concepts and regulating the governance of out-of-school educational institutions, balancing the allocation of educational resources among schools, reforming the evaluation mechanism of school education, and enhancing parental cognitive levels and abilities to make rational decisions about education.

International Mindedness (IM) is recognised as being a key component of an international education (Hill, 2015). However, IM is also acknowledged as an 'under-reported and under-researched aspect of elite [international] education' (Bunnell et al, 2020). This has led to the concept being described as 'enigmatic and under-defined' by researchers (Poole, 2017) and 'fuzzy' by practitioners (Barratt-Hacking et al, 2016: 38). This paper will attempt to conceptualise IM by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theories of fields and habitus. It will show that IM can not only be thought of in terms of a specific habitus but that the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the schools that offer International Baccalaureate programmes can, and do, also play a significant role in creating the field (and subsequent structures within the field) in which IM can take root in students. The data and analysis in this paper are taken from a more substantial, recent, mixed-methods case study focusing on IM. The case study was conducted in a Chinese IB international school (of the type described by Poole, 2019: catering largely for Chinese students) on the Chinese mainland that offers the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme and Diploma Programme. It is a private fee-paying school, which accepts students mainly from the local but also from the expatriate community.

In this paper, we engage with Chinese diasporas research through recourse to Bourdieu's relational, reflexive sociology. We start with the historical and recent developments of Chinese diasporas research and point out the potential of using Bourdieu to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of this research. While we see a steady stream of Bourdieu-informed Chinese diasporas studies and acknowledge their contribution and innovation, we observe that some studies use Bourdieu's capital and/or habitus without field. In response, we draw on Bourdieu's relationalism to highlight the significance of 'fielding' Chinese diasporas research. In addition, we turn field analysis onto Chinese diasporas researcher-selves through Bourdieu's reflexive tool of participant objectivation. In this vein, we ponder over the positions and position-takings of Chinese diasporas researchers within and beyond the academic field of Chinese diasporas. To conclude the paper, we make a call to shift the intellectual landscape by developing a research agenda to sociologise Chinese diasporas challenged by complex and difficult issues of power, politics, and participation. Our critical sociological approach may have implications for doing scholarship reflexively and relationally in other research fields.

This paper analyses the forms of, and the reasons for developing extracurricular activities by fellow participants in an alternative teacher preparation programme in China. We frame the paper through Bourdieu's sociology. Our interviews with 16 fellows reveal that fellows manoeuvre their capital portfolio to develop both academic and non-academic forms of extracurricular activities. Reasons for developing extracurricular activities include using available resources through capital conversion, expanding students' horizon through contemptuous habitus; and taking into account the local needs. Despite fellows' good intention to compensate local students, we call for reflexivity to transform their contemptuous habitus into one that realises local values.

The recovery of the global economy in the aftermath of COVID-19 faces enormous challenges. Ensuring stable income growth of the population has become an important means for developing countries to ensure sustained economic development. Raising the overall income of the population is a public initiative that benefits all citizens; therefore, governments of developing countries should promote the implementation of relevant public policies and the provision of public goods to ensure that existing economic instruments can benefit the entire population. In this regard, public space, as a typical form of public good, may play an important role in promoting the benefits of existing economic policies for all residents. This paper examines how residents' use of public space contributes to their income growth through social capital. Hypotheses are tested based on an econometric analysis of 1565 questionnaires received from Chinese workers. The results show that residents' use of public space can indeed be an important way to increase their income, which is realized through the enhancement of social capital. The research presented in this paper provides a new influence variable of public space to improve residents' income. Further, it improves people's understanding of the three classical concepts—public space, social capital, and income—by establishing the logical connection and theoretical explanation of physical space, emotional space, and value space in human society. The conclusions of this paper highlight the important role of public space in urban and rural development planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes data from the China Education Panel Survey 2013-2015 to examine the effects of family time and money inputs in education on adolescent academic performance from the perspectives of home social capital, cultural capital, and shadow education. Home time input in education is more vital to teenager academic progress than money input. Domestic social capital and cultural capital as well as weekend shadow education positively impact child academic results. Home-based parental participation as a key component of domestic social capital has the most significant influence on teenager academic improvement, while weekend supplementary tutoring generates the weakest effect; workday extracurricular tutoring even negatively affects student academic achievement. School-based parental involvement differs among families of different classes, with a significant negative effect on academic results of teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds. Due to the absence of heterogeneity effects of home time input in education on academic progress of students from various social backgrounds, parental time investment should be taken as the most effective means to improve academic performance of adolescents from underprivileged classes.

An increasing number of studies have focused on the relationship between neighbourhood environment and depressive symptoms among older people. However, the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. This study examined the association between neighbourhood environment and depressive symptoms among older urban Chinese adults and the mediator role of social capital in this association. Using a quota sampling approach, 472 respondents aged 60 years or older were recruited from 23 urban communities of Shanghai, China, in 2020. Depressive symptoms were measured with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Social capital was measured by two latent constructs: cognitive social capital (e.g., trust, reciprocity, belongingness) and structural social capital (e.g., memberships, social participation). Perceived physical neighbourhood environment was assessed in terms of health care, security, and public transportation status. Structural equation modelling was conducted to test the study hypotheses. Health care services in the community had a direct effect on depressive symptoms (β = -0.097, p < .05). Cognitive social capital played a mediator role in the relationship between physical neighbourhood environment and depressive symptoms (community health care: β = -0.124, p < .01; community security: β = -0.284, p < .01). The mediator effect of structural social capital in the relationship between physical neighbourhood environment and depressive symptoms was not significant. The findings highlight the role of physical neighbourhood environment in fostering community-based social capital and promoting mental health among older adults in urban China. Policy strategies could focus on improving community health care and security to promote mental health., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The fast-developing Internet is changing the way people interact, this new phenomenon helps people build and accumulate online social capital. However, the influence of online social capital on individual health is controversial. Based on the social capital theory, this study examined the effect of online social capital on health in subgroups with different levels of offline social capital. Data from the China Family Panel Studies of 2016 were used (N = 13,910), and the propensity score matching approach was used to address potential endogeneity problems. The results show that offline social capital had significant positive associations with individual health; although online social capital had few effects on individual health overall, significant health effects of online social capital were observed in subgroups with different offline social capital levels. In subgroups with less general trust and neighborhood social capital, more online social capital was associated with less depression; while in subgroups with more neighborhood social capital, more online social capital was associated with an elevated probability of two-week morbidity. Our findings further clarify the relationship between online/offline social capital and individual health. Online social capital can be considered as a supplement of offline social capital when it comes to health promotion, and more online contact should be encouraged when offline social capital of individuals or within the community is scarce., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Some authors argue that access to elite universities can bring about a 'habitus transformation' for working-class students, however in this paper, based on a three-year life history study, it is suggested that the transformative effects of the elite university experience come about in relation to and constrained by the working-class habitus. Working-class students tend to choose the strategy of 'compartmentalising' to manage their experience of university -- engaging primarily academically and sideling the social aspects of university life. This paper offers a very complex account of such compartmentalising, in which the lack of appropriate capitals, emotional injuries, habitual dispositions and the application of instrumental rationality are fused together to make up the university experience for working-class students. The analysis demonstrates the 'conspiracy' of reflexivity. Reflexivity does not necessarily bring changes in and challenges to an existing "habitus"; rather reflexivity conspires with and tends to reinforce it. This demonstrates the continuing role of habitus in maintaining class domination in elite settings and raises questions about the effects and effectiveness of the widening participation agenda in HE.

Emergencies continue to become ever more complex; responding to them, therefore, often is beyond the capabilities and capacities of any single public agency. Hence, collaboration among these actors is necessary to prepare for, respond to, and recover from such events. This seldom occurs in an effective or efficient manner, however. Drawing on resource dependence theory and the concept of social capital, this paper reveals that different types of collaborative relationships exist within the collaborative network. Super Ministry Reform of Emergency Management in China serves as a case in point. By evaluating network efficiency and classifying the collaborative relationships of involved government agencies, four types are identified: resource-redundant; resource-complementary; resource-dependent; and resource-isolated. The different influences of collaborative relationships explain why the reform is not that effective, although it has led to the merger of several core departments in the emergency management network. The findings are a reminder to consider network structure and collaboration types when engaging in institutional design., (© 2021 The Authors Disasters © 2021 ODI.)

The proportion of international students in Chinese higher education is increasing, however, there remains little research that explores their motivations and how their learning of Chinese influences their identities and imagined futures. In this paper, we address the need for research on South-South migration--specifically Sino-African relations--and draw on the concept of linguistic capital to explore what it means for 15 self-funded international students from six different African countries. The findings highlight African youths' negotiation of power matrices in different fields and their desire for Chinese linguistic capital. The acquisition of such capital would position themselves advantageously in terms of employability and social prestige within the geopolitical and geo-economic context of China-Africa relations. In documenting their investment in Chinese language learning, the study compels us to reflect on the intersection of identity, ideology and capital within the language acquisition process and what Chinese language learning has come to mean for those from the peripheral nation-states.

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in 'hard-to-staff' schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious universities to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years. One programme of this kind in China is the 'Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers' (EGRT). In this paper, we repurpose Bourdieu's sociology to understand the power shift and social change through EGRT fellows' position-(re)takings in subjective and objective crisis during their EGRT service term. Interviews with 16 EGRT participants reveal two themes: (1) In the initial stage of EGRT service, contemptuous habitus navigated EGRT fellows to a position of assumed privilege and misrecognised the arbitrary value of educational capital; (2) Over the EGRT service term, position-retaking gradually came to the fore. EGRT fellows learned to recognise a range of rural teachers' attributes termed as 'localised pedagogical capital'. We conclude the paper with some recommendations for EGRT to transform both EGRT fellows and local teachers into reflexive sociological workers. These recommendations have important implications for a long overdue response to the urban-oriented rural education.

This paper investigates the power landscapes within Chinese universities, against the larger backdrop of China's attempt to build modern university governance systems for developing world-class universities. Drawing upon Fairclough's three-dimensional conceptions of discourse and informed by Pierre Bourdieu's key conceptual notions of field and capital, the paper provides a critical discourse analysis of statutes of 10 top Chinese universities in terms of their texts, discursive practices and social practices and thus analyses existing power relations. The statute texts construct a hierarchical field of power by wording the 'core' stakeholder Party Committee as the leadership, using content sequence as a measure of power ranking, and including only limited stakeholders in the joint governance mechanism. Regarding discursive practices, faculty members' participation in the formulation and distribution of university statutes is insufficient. The social practices identify with statute texts in terms of power relationships between Party Committee members, administrators and academics.

On the basis of the 2013 China Migrants Dynamic Survey provided by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, we explored the impact of neighbourhood choice on the socioeconomic integration of migrants and the underlying mechanism. When problems with endogeneity were controlled, the findings showed that neighbourhood choice had a significant positive effect on the socioeconomic integration of migrants, that is, compared with migrants living in informal neighbourhoods (urban villages or outdated inner-city housing), those living in formal neighbourhoods (commercial housing, affordable housing or work unit housing neighbourhoods) displayed higher socioeconomic integration. Further research found that neighbourhood choice did not directly affect the socioeconomic integration of migrants in China, partly because migrants living in formal neighbourhoods established localized social capital (contacting local residents and government personnel, seeking help from them and increasing expenditures on local invitations and gifts) to promote better integration into the city, and they had a stronger willingness to settle down, which encouraged them to work harder, actively integrated into the mainstream society., (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Every year, a number of Chinese undergraduates from urban teacher universities are selected as volunteer pre-service teachers to teach in schools located in underdeveloped rural areas. In this qualitative case study, the researchers explore four pre-service teachers' 1-year experience as volunteer educators in rural schools, their communities of practice in the south and west of China, and present their reflections on the challenges, including how their responses (re)shaped their teacher identity. It is found that these pre-service teachers have built their social capital through rural teaching experience, and they have begun to construct their professional teacher identity within that transitional community of teaching practice. The paper contributes to discussions of pre-service teacher education and pre-service teacher identity construction in the context of secondary education in rural China and in other parts of the world.

The enrolment of Chinese middle-class children in elite international kindergartens is a big education industry in China. Our paper is situated in the broader sociology of elite schooling which has yet to fully explore how middle and upper middle-class parents are increasingly sending their children to elite international kindergartens. We present a case study from Shenzhen, China with a view to showing how the curriculum and the routine of its practices are used to cultivate the elite child for competitive advantage in the educational rat race in China. The approach of Bourdieusian accumulation of capital theory is used to unravel the categories of capital embedded in the curriculum. We term these 'start-up capital' which has exchange value for students to gain competitive advantage in their application to key primary schools and their onward schooling trajectories in China. Our case study provides a window into how social advantage and class are reproduced as soon as the child sets foot in an elite international kindergarten.

This study examined how the family capital of upper secondary school students impacted on their geospatial thinking skills and explored the mediating effect of their academic achievement in geography. A total of 1,018 upper secondary school students participated. The results of our mediation analysis conducted using the PROCESS modeling tool revealed that family capital has a direct predictive effect on students' geospatial thinking and an indirect predictive effect via their academic achievement in geography. Therefore, this paper aims to redistribute family capital, so as to effectively apply it to the cultivation of students' geographic academic achievement and geographic spatial thinking ability.

This paper explores how a novel university governance model at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), largely learned from the West, has been implemented in the highly institutionalised and centralised Chinese higher education system. For this purpose, we first constructed an analytical framework, integrating the conceptualisation of an innovation process in higher education and the concept of embedded agency. This framework was then applied to analyse eight interviews, seven policy documents and six news media reports in our empirical investigation of the case university. Our major research findings are: the governance model adopted by SUSTech was a disruptive innovation and it was mostly challenged by the incompatibility between the norms around the governance model and the institutional context of Chinese higher education; this challenge was mitigated through three agency strategies, labelled by the metaphors of "new wine in a new bottle," "new wine in an old bottle" and "old wine in a new bottle." Successfully implementing these strategies calls on the visions, skills of playing power games and social capital of those initiating the innovation. Finally, we discuss the theoretical contribution and practical implications of the study in the conclusion.

Excellence and equality is an essential goal of compulsory education in China. This goal, however, is difficult to achieve in practice because of the difficulties in balancing between excellence and equality and in sustaining equality as a result of resource redistribution. This article uses the data of the nationally representative China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) and discusses the possibility of advancing educational excellence and equality in compulsory education based on Coleman's theory of social closure. To be more specific, social capital can be increased by means of school-family cooperation so as to achieve excellence and equality in compulsory education. Our main findings include: first, school-family cooperation system is conducive to the growth of social capital for families; second, it adjusts the direct influence of family background on the social closure production; third, it helps achieve excellent development of compulsory education by increasing family social capital; finally, the school-family cooperation system facilitates even distribution of social capital among different classes and equal development of compulsory education. On such a basis, this paper further discusses the policy implications of these findings.

This paper revisits the scope of Catherine Malabou's thinking as a development of the ontological turn in continental philosophy. It puts this excursion of thinking alongside an account of education in modernity as the apotheosis of biopower. It aligns biopower, as manifest in education, as form of 'technological enframing'. In this it challenges the dominant assumption that education is somehow, ultimately, independently of its manifest form, a force for good. Foregoing the idealist addiction to education as redemption, then, it sees Malabou's contribution as significant in terms of a fundamental, ontological rethinking of education and the social politics of our time. It is argued that Malabou's contribution offers a significant contribution to rethinking education as biopower and clearing away the dominant, redemptive myths of modern and contemporary ontotheology. This is a position never entertained in the field of philosophy of education.

Purpose: Based on the perspectives of social capital, image motivation and motivation affordances, this paper explores the direct and moderation effects of different kinds of motivations (i.e. relationship-based motivation, community-based motivation and individual-based motivation) on users' continuous knowledge contributions in social question and answer (Q&A) communities. Design/methodology/approach: The authors collect the panel data of 10,193 users from a popular social Q&A community in China. Then, a negative binomial regression model is adopted to analyze the collected data. Findings: The paper demonstrates that social learning, peer recognition and knowledge seeking positively affect users' continuous contribution behaviors. However, the results also show that social exposure has the opposite effect. In addition, self-presentation is found to moderate the influence of social factors on users' continuous use behaviors, while the moderation effect of motivation affordances has no significance. Originality/value: First, this study develops a comprehensive motivation framework that helps gain deeper insights into the underlying mechanism of knowledge contribution in social Q&A communities. Second, this study conducts panel data analysis to capture the impacts of motivations over time, rather than intentions at a fixed time point. Third, the findings can help operators of social Q&A communities to optimize community norms and incentive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the concept of social capital developed by Bourdieu and Coleman as well as the Chinese concept of "guanxi" ([foreign characters omitted]) or relationships facilitates students' access to postgraduate education in a case study of a university in southeast China. The study comprises an initial survey of 381 first-year postgraduate students and a series of interviews with 30 participants. Social capital and "guanxi" inform analysis of the data. The results reveal that students from different social backgrounds employ different forms of social capital and "guanxi" networks in their decision-making about postgraduate education. They contribute to conceptualizations of how social capital is generated through "guanxi" in the Chinese educational context.

Studies in relation to working-class students at elite universities document on the one hand the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in dealing with class domination while on the other indicate a new form of domination and disadvantages working on these working-class 'exceptions' -- they may achieve academically at university but experience various exclusions and self-exclusions in areas of social life. By drawing on a very small sample of 'counter-evidence' and 'exceptions within exceptions' -- working-class students who achieve great social accomplishments at elite universities -- this paper further explores the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in negotiating class domination and the possibilities of transcendence. We demonstrate the creative and transformative ways in which class domination is dealt with and document the prevalence of high-level reflexivity. Furthermore, we distinguish different forms and degrees of reflexivity, which then indicate the 'contingency' of reflexivity -- the relation of the possibilities of reflexivity to the unequal distribution of social, cultural and economic capitals. We further argue that what appears to be a form of self-emancipation achieved by the 'transcending group' in our study also involves the discrete and insidious reproduction of social inequality.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of studies on antecedents of the corporate reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) from the perspectives of employees. Design/methodology/approach: The approach is an examination of previous literature on antecedents of corporate reputation in HEIs, published between 2010 and 2020. Findings: The findings show that general and specific factors of corporate reputation in HEIs are being employed as strategic tools to survive the competitive nature of the higher education landscape. Originality/value: Factors of corporate reputation in HEIs from the perspectives of employees are an understudied area with little academic literature available.

Understanding the ways that international students seek information and help in the host country is essential for improving academic, social, cultural, and welfare support for this student cohort. However, there is a dearth of literature that documents how international students in the vocational education and training (VET) sector do so. This paper aims to fill this gap. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 Chinese international students undertaking diploma and associate degree programs in Australia, this research shows that the ways in which Chinese international students seek help prior to their departure and after their arrival at the host country, largely depends on the nature of the issues they confront. The data also reveals that students' use of education agents is not limited to the pre-departure stage, as is indicated in the existing literature, but throughout their journey in the host country. Notably, the role of agents has become increasingly important in Chinese international students' decision-making processes during their transition from diploma to associate degree and higher education programs.

There is a huge funding gap in the abandoned mines ecological restoration in China. It is of great research value to explore how PPP model can better introduce social capital into the low-profit ecological restoration of abandoned mines. Based on the innovation perspective of the central government's reward and punishment system, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of "local government-social capital", analyzes the interaction and behavior mechanism of core stakeholders in the operation process of abandoned mines ecological restoration PPP mode, and discusses the influence of evolutionary equilibrium strategy and parameters change on evolutionary strategy under different scenarios by Matlab simulation. The research shows that the abandoned mines ecological restoration needs the support of the central government. When the local government lightly punishes the low-quality service of social capital, the central government needs to pay higher costs to promote all parties to actively participate in the operation and supervision of the PPP project. The revenue and cost of government supervision, the operating subsidy for social capital and the cost saved by social capital in providing bad service are the key factors affecting the evolution of the game between government and social capital. Punishment can effectively spur social capital to keep the contract and operate in the project, but the punishment effect will be ineffective without government supervision. Finally, some suggestions are put forward, such as establishing a long-term supervision mechanism and a reasonable income mechanism for PPP projects, increasing penalties for violations, attracting third parties to reduce supervision costs and strengthening communication between the two parties, so as to make the project take into account the economic performance of social capital and the social welfare of government departments, and achieve dual Pareto improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer participation is critical to achieving successful food safety governance. However, in the field of food safety governance, consumer participation faces the dilemma of collective action. Based on social capital theory, this study introduces a total of 1229 questionnaires from online food consumers in China were collected by randomly distributing electronic questionnaires to online shoppers, and tests the effect and mechanism of social capital on consumer participation in food safety governance. By using ordered regression and multinomial logit models, the empirical results show that social capital can reduce the adverse effects of free-riding on consumers' participation in food safety governance and in fact will ultimately encourage consumers to participate in food safety governance. Furthermore, social capital will enhance people's participation in food safety governance through two paths: promoting consumers' sharing of food safety information and promoting consumers' direct supply of safe food. The conclusion of this paper provides inspiration for the promotion of consumer participation in the public affairs related to food safety governance in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores social capital development between operational faculty members delivering Sino-British transnational partnerships. Research focuses on two Sino-British 'joint programme' partnership case studies in order to investigate boundary spanning and the development of social capital between UK and Sino academics involved in programme delivery. Since social capital is posited as a central facet in the development and institutionalisation of successful partnerships, understanding how to grow, nurture and maintain productive levels of social capital between operational academics could significantly improve and strengthen transnational partnerships. Findings suggest that boundary spanning is a useful tool, enabling individuals to interpret, transmit and filter knowledge, facilitate resource transmission and represent their organisations, building cohesion and commitment between stakeholders. The research concludes that boundary spanning can improve social capital between operation faculty members, and that senior leaders at higher education institutions should consider it as a tool with which to manage and evolve their international educational partnerships.

Bourdieu's concept of field offers an alternative explanation for the inevitable gap between policy initiative and implementation. While the existing literature mostly concentrated on the dichotomy of macro- and micro-politics in enacting education policies, the missing attention to meso-level, local governments as policy interpreters and implementers in some developing countries with a vast territory, China and Russia, for example, has hindered deeper exploration in policy studies. Adopting cross-field effects as the theoretical base and applying Bourdieu's conceptual triad as a whole, rather than considering habitus, practice, or field separately, this study examines Chinese transnational higher education (TNHE) policy enactment by subnational authorities, aiming to: first, contextualize Bourdieu's theoretical and empirical approaches in various political/economic systems while consider the policy practice at meso-level; second, demonstrate the essentiality of conversation rate and standard of capitals in field analysis; and third, based on these analyses, explore the formation of institutional habitus as a way of explaining the perennial inequality in the Chinese higher education (HE) system. The paper concludes with a theoretical reflection that Bourdieu's ever-developing definition of habitus and the criticism of his unavoidable relapse to objectivism result from the indiscriminate use of individual and institutional habitus.

Mobile application (app), with its expansive reservoir of data and content, harbors considerable promise in advancing health outcomes at both the individual and population levels. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of scholars that concretely examine the dynamics of health information acquisition within mobile app. This research presents a conceptual model aimed at investigating the potential ramifications of health information acquisition on both individuals' psychological and physical well-being. Concurrently, this research attempts to illuminate the underlying mechanisms behind these correlations through evaluating the mediating role of bonding and bridging social capital. The obtained results of a web-based survey conducted among 656 college students in mainland China suggest a positive association between health information acquisition and bonding and bridging social capital. Moreover, the study reveals that the impact of health information acquisition via mobile applications on psychological and physical well-being is significantly mediated by college students' bonding and bridging social capital. The cultivation of bonding social capital could exert a direct and positive influence on college students' physical well-being. However, there appears to be no discernible correlation between bridging social capital and physical well-being. Taken collectively, these findings not only complement extant theoretical perspectives within the scholarship concerning mobile app usage for health improvement, but also furnish several pragmatic guidelines for healthcare professionals and mobile app designers., 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 © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This paper examines how social capital formed by effective parental practices within Chinese families influences student achievement. Survey responses from 266 students from Grades 4 to 6 in a suburban elementary school in China were analysed to identify their perceptions of parental practices (support, pressure, help, monitoring and communication) at home. Coleman's concept of social capital serves as a framework to examine specific Chinese parental practices to influence their children's achievement. Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that parent-child communication was the most important factor in promoting student learning, whereas high level of parental help was not viewed as a useful resource for increasing achievement. The findings supported Coleman's assertion about the role of social capital in generating human capital for the next generation. This paper offers evidence that social capital is useful in examining parental practices associated with student achievement in China. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

This paper examines family influences on Uighur (a Muslim ethnic minority in northwestern China) students' experiences in Xinjiang classes in an inland China boarding school. Supported by the concept of family social capital, the paper argues that, although family structure becomes deficient for Uighur students away from home, their families can still facilitate their boarding school life through parental educational expectations, the influence of relatives, problem-solving advice, and institutional assistance. (Contains 9 notes.)

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between human capital and rural laborers' willingness to return to their hometowns based on the moderating effect of identity in China. The results show that the level of human capital significantly affects the willingness of the mobile population to return to their hometowns, but this effect is reversed, i.e., the increase in the level of human capital reduces the willingness of rural laborers to return to their hometowns. The urban identity of rural laborers after flowing into cities has a significant positive moderating effect on their willingness to return to their hometowns. Improving the carrying capacity of economic development in rural areas, further strengthening infrastructure construction in rural areas to provide the material basis for rural revitalization and labor force return, and at the same time strengthening the education and training of farmers to enhance their main status is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The present paper seeks to analyze the role of social networks in the process of career exploration, including its main effect on search intensity, and moderation effect on the linkage between search intensity and job search confidence. Design/methodology/approach: It is a longitudinal design with 239 USA and 165 Chinese graduating students. Findings: Social networks in job search have greater effects on job search intensity in the USA sample. Moderation effects could be detected in the Chinese sample, and "guanxi" search (a Chinese reference to social networks) minimizes job search confidence and job satisfaction. Research limitations/implications: Social networks, particularly "guanxi" search in China, could reflect interdependency in job search process, and might constrain job choice. Originality/value: The paper examined the cultural differences of "guanxi" search construct, and compared the role of social networks ("guanxi" search) in cross-cultural settings. (Contains 7 tables and 3 figures.)

The mainstream type of intergenerational inheritance of family firms in China is typically based on the "son inheriting his father's business" model. However, the current research on the intergenerational inheritance of family businesses mainly focuses on the impact of the personal capabilities of the successor, rather than the successor's interpersonal relationships such as marriage. This paper uses literature analysis and case studies to study the impact of the successor's marriage on the family business by refining the indicators of what constitutes a well-matched marriage. The findings show that the marriage of the second generation has a significant impact on the intergenerational inheritance of the family business, as such marriage helps to expand the social capital of the second generation of the family and improve the performance of the business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Drawing from social capital theory and resource dependence theory, this paper aims to test the relationship between top management team (TMT) government social capital and firm's innovation performance via firm's network prestige, and the moderating effect of TMT academic social capital. Design/methodology/approach: The authors collected data from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research Database as well as A-share listed firms' annual reports, and finally generated a sample of 922 firms and 2,464 firm-years from 2008 to 2014. UCINET 6.0 was used to analyze the data. Findings: The authors find that the government social capital of TMT is positively related to firms' innovation performance and firms' network prestige plays a mediating role in this relationship. In addition, TMT academic social capital can strengthen the links between TMT government social capital and innovation performance through firms' network prestige. Originality/value: This paper not only contributes to literatures on the mechanism in the relationship between government social capital and firms' innovation, but also to literatures on the effectiveness of the heterogeneity of firm's social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While health inequality has been the focus of past scholarly discussions, COVID-19's outbreak and spread have provided a new arena for discussing health inequality, particularly in the context of urban-rural disparities in China. This paper explores the impact of COVID-19 on urban-rural health inequality, and the roles played by socioeconomic status and social capital., Methods: A cross-sectional observational collected data on demographics, mental health, socioeconomic status, and social capital. An online survey was administered from August 27 to August 30, 2020, and, 1936 valid samples were received. Mental health was measured using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-18). This study applied the ordinary least squares regression (OLS) model, and data analysis was performed using STATA., Results: There were 1936 participants, with an equal distribution of genders. Multiple regression analysis showed that the mental health levels of rural youth were superior to those of urban youth ( p  = 0.049), especially when the epidemic was not severe ( p  = 0.013). Socioeconomic status had a significant positive promotion effect on mental health ( p  = 0.008), but the interaction effect between socioeconomic status and the urban-rural divide indicated that the promotion effect of socioeconomic status on the mental health of urban youth was greater than that of rural youth ( p  = 0.04). Social capital had a significant positive promotion effect on mental health ( p  = 0.000), and the interaction effect indicated that this promoting effect did not differ between urban and rural areas ( p  > 0.05)., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Xiao.)

This study explores the impact of farm households' social capital characteristics and local government policies on the selection of farmland transfer contracts in China's rural industrial revitalization context. Utilizing field research data from 1,979 households in ethnic areas of Hunan Province, this paper constructs an econometric model to assess how farm households' social capital and local governments' involvement in rural industrial revitalization influence farmland transfer contract selections. The findings indicate that, lacking government program support, farmers' social capital significantly affects contract type and duration, but not the rent. Specifically, farmers possessing extensive social capital prefer verbal and short-term contracts (coefficients of 0.525 and 0.643, significant at the 5% level), whereas their influence on rent (coefficient of 2.418, significant at the 5% level) manifests under government program support. These results challenge the conventional theory of farmland transfer contracts and offer substantial empirical support for the development of local government policies in rural industrial revitalization, underlining the critical role of government guidance and social capital in enhancing farmland transfer., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 He, Huang. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Enhancing green innovation for business sustainability represents a pressing global challenge. In the context of the manufacturing industry, the relationship between proactive green innovation (PGI) and structural social capital (SSC) remains a profoundly under-researched area. Drawing upon the theories of social capital and dynamic capability (DC), this study investigated the relationship between SSC and PGI within manufacturing enterprises via three individual and sequential mediating factors, namely cognitive social capital (CSC), relational social capital (RSC), and DC. Adopting a cross-sectional quantitative design, this study collected survey data from 485 manufacturing sector employees in China using purposive sampling. Structural equation modeling analysis of the data revealed no significant direct impact of SSC on PGI, but a strong indirect impact through the sequential mediating influences of CSC, RSC, and DC. The findings suggests that PGI within manufacturing enterprises is not wholly shaped by SSC; rather, firm-level dynamic capabilities, characterized by a sequential mechanism, plays a crucial role in achieving PGI within these enterprises. This paper offers both theoretical and practical contributions and provides recommendations for future research based on its limitations., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Xinxiang Gao. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Chinese humanitarian actors have worked frequently with the Chinese diaspora in disaster‐affected areas, but little, if any, research has been conducted into the important role of the diaspora in disaster response and humanitarian assistance. This paper investigates what local knowledge the Chinese diaspora has offered to humanitarian actors from the People's Republic of China (PRC), and how this has contributed to their effectiveness. Based on a case study of the semi‐autonomous Indonesian province of Aceh in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, this paper argues that the diaspora can serve as a linchpin in local and international humanitarian action. It can do so by strengthening networks and bringing together local ethnic communities, local governments, and the PRC's humanitarian actors, while also offering local knowledge in the form of contextual memory. Such local knowledge may have to be fully utilised to address any underlying ethnic tensions in disaster‐affected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To actively respond to the challenges posed by population aging, people are paying more and more attention to healthy behavioral lifestyles, and the impact of social capital as an informal system on health behaviors cannot be ignored. This paper explores the impact of social capital on health behaviors of middle-aged and older adults based on 2020 CHARLS data. Using binary logistic regression models, we discussed the association between social capital and five health behaviors. The results suggest that structural social capital significantly increases physical activity and physical examination behaviors among middle-aged and older adults but also decreases the probability of abstinence behaviors. Cognitive social capital increases the probability that middle-aged and older adults will have a reasonable amount of sleep and physical activity. However, it also decreases the probability that smoking cessation behaviors will occur. Further attention needs to be paid to the role of social capital, the creation of a harmonious social environment and the enhancement of social trust, the strengthening of communities and grass-roots social organizations, and the provision of more platforms for the participation of middle-aged and older adults in social activities, to improve the quality of the healthy lives of middle-aged and older adults and, in turn, to promote the establishment of healthy behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]