Search Results (428)

Existing research on green transformation predominantly emphasizes “hard constraints” such as carbon taxes and environmental regulations, while neglecting “soft constraints” shaped by environmental sentiment expressions from key actors such as the public, financial institutions, media, and government. In particular, the collective influence of these multi-actor environmental sentiments remains insufficiently explored. This study fills that gap by constructing a collaborative governance framework using multi-source heterogeneous data from China spanning 2013–2023, including 330 provincial government work reports, 1862 bank annual reports, 2472 newspaper articles, and 68,519 Weibo posts, matched to 4708 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share energy companies. We quantify environmental sentiment tendencies through natural language processing, calculating the index as (negative word frequency − positive word frequency)/total word frequency at the province-year level, thus higher index value indicates more negative sentiment tendency, while green transformation is proxied by ln(green patent applications + 1). The results reveal the following: (1) More negative environmental sentiment tendencies from financial institutions, media, public, and government significantly promote green transformation in energy enterprises, with stronger effects observed from financial institutions and government. (2) Economic and climate policy uncertainty selectively weaken the impact of financial institutions’ sentiment, while the moderating effects for other actors are statistically insignificant. (3) The effect of multi-actor environmental sentiment is more pronounced for firms located in eastern China, operating under high competition or stricter environmental regulations. This study provides a novel, quantified approach to assessing multi-actor environmental sentiment tendencies, affirms the effectiveness of informal governance, and highlights the importance of stable policy in guiding corporate green transformation in emerging economies. Full article

Background/Objectives: In China, developing childcare services is a key governmental strategy to promote child health under the low-fertility context. However, young couples have poor knowledge and low acceptance of formal childcare now, creating a significant gap between need and actual choice. To fulfil the unmet need and promote the development of childcare services, raising awareness among prospective parents is necessary. Guided by the theory of planned behavior and the theory of cultural transmission and evolution, this study evaluates whether current communication practices address the theoretically important factors pertaining to effective promotion. Methods: Taking provincial capital cities and sub-provincial cities as the study sample, we conducted a content analysis of policy documents related to communication of formal childcare and a social network analysis of practical promotional activities, respectively. Results: There were a series of problems with childcare service communication. First, governmental sectors failed to pay sufficient attention to communication of childcare services, and promotional activities were basically conducted as a campaign rather than a regular style. Second, there was little effective partnership between childcare centers and community committees. Third, promotion was mainly conducted through traditional channels, and new social media were less used. Conclusions: To improve the communication of childcare services to target parents, we recommend that governments (1) strengthen communication efforts through dedicated attention and funding; (2) establish regular communication based on public–private partnership modes; and (3) employ more efficient channels, especially social media. Full article

What drives persistent urban–rural tourism satisfaction gaps: whether from promotional over-promising or structural service deficits? This distinction fundamentally determines whether territorial development resources should target marketing sophistication or productive capacity, yet remains empirically unresolved. Text-mining for 33,174 attractions across 349 Chinese cities reveals that both rural and urban destinations systematically under-promise, with description sentiment falling consistently below actual ratings, contradicting the “digital facade” hypothesis. Urban attractions nonetheless generate more positive surprises through superior service delivery (gap = 0.62 vs. 0.55). Sentiment measurement robustness is validated through triangulation of two independent dictionary-based methods ($r=0.58$, $p<0.001$) and cross-paradigm verification using a pre-trained BERT transformer ($\tau =1.000$ ranking stability). SHAP decomposition quantifies the policy implication: controllable service quality indicators, including description quality (23.2%), information richness (30.7%), and price positioning (16.5%), collectively explain over 70% of the variance in satisfaction, while fixed geographic factors (rural classification 14.9% and city-tier 14.7%) account for 29.6%, yielding a controllable-to-geographic ratio of 2.4:1. Propensity score matching with six covariates confirms a 0.074–0.100-point rural penalty persists after controlling for confounders, while non-linear analysis demonstrates that rural attractions face no marginal productivity disadvantage, and the challenge is baseline capacity, not investment efficiency. For policymakers pursuing Sustainable Development Goals 8, 10, and 12 through tourism-led regional strategies, these results mandate redirecting resources from demand-side expectation management toward supply-side infrastructure and workforce development, the true binding constraint on rural competitiveness. Full article

This paper examines when textual information from central bank communication improves forecasts of policy rate changes. Using the minutes of the Brazilian Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (Copom), we study whether textual content helps predict changes in the Selic target rate between consecutive meetings. The minutes are encoded using dense sentence-level embeddings, and low-dimensional textual factors are extracted via principal component analysis estimated exclusively on the training sample to prevent look-ahead bias. Predictive performance is assessed out of sample using an expanding-window backtesting framework and compared against standard forecasting benchmarks, including persistence and random-walk specifications, linear autoregressive models, regularized regressions, and state-space models estimated via the Kalman filter. We find that text-based predictors perform poorly when used in isolation but deliver meaningful forecast improvements when combined with short-run dynamics and regularization. These gains are economically relevant and arise primarily in episodes associated with policy rate adjustments, whereas simple persistence-based forecasts remain difficult to outperform during rate-hold periods. Overall, the results indicate that central bank communication contains forward-looking information that is valuable for forecasting policy changes, but that this information is sparse, episodic, and best extracted through disciplined regularization and dynamic modeling rather than purely cross-sectional textual signals. Full article

Promoting the commercialization of agricultural science and technology (S&T) achievements is a critical pathway toward achieving agricultural sustainability and a key governance challenge in advancing global food security and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, China faces a structural paradox: despite sustained expansion of policy supply, the performance gains in technology commercialization remain limited. To uncover the underlying causes, this study integrates Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling with the Policy Modeling Consistency (PMC) index to conduct a systematic analysis of 82 central-level policy documents issued between 2015 and 2025. The findings reveal that policy attention is heavily concentrated on upstream R&D support, while insufficient emphasis is placed on downstream “last-mile” enablers—such as diffusion services, risk-sharing mechanisms, and intermediary capacity building. Moreover, many policies exhibit structural deficiencies in temporal specificity and multi-actor coordination, which hinder the formation of closed-loop implementation chains. The results suggest that policy structural inconsistency may be a key mechanism constraining policy effectiveness. By adopting a dual analytical lens of “attention allocation–structural design,” this study provides empirical evidence for optimizing policy formulation and enhancing institutional efficacy in agricultural S&T commercialization. Full article

Local governments are key actors in driving urban renewal. To implement urban renewal initiatives, in-depth research into their policy backgrounds, institutional characteristics, and governance logic is essential. Traditional policy analysis often neglects the value dimension, which undermines the effectiveness of embedding informal institutional values. To complement existing research, this study examines 50 urban renewal policy documents issued in Guangzhou between 1978 and 2025. Using content analysis and grounded theory methods, this study incorporates the value dimension into the traditional “supply–demand–environment” policy analysis framework to examine local governments’ policy preferences in urban renewal, and to interpret its governance logic from the perspective of Williams’ four-level framework. The findings are as follows: (1) Guangzhou’s urban renewal has formed a policy system centered on supply-side policies, supported by environmental policy improvements, with value embedding, demand-driven measures, and multi-dimensional guidance as supplementary components. Local governments show a distinct preference for supply-oriented policy tools. (2) Guangzhou’s urban renewal policies present a pyramid structure with resource allocation at the core and governance structure as the foundation. The policies focus on the optimal allocation of land resources, collaborative actions among government, market, and society, the deep integration of public values, the clarification of property rights rules, and the application of digital technologies. (3) The governance logic of urban renewal forms a four-tier progressive closed-loop: from value anchoring to rule linkage, then to multi-stakeholder collaboration, and finally to factor empowerment, establishing a systematic governance mechanism that balances people-centricity and efficiency. Accordingly, urban renewal should prioritize value embedding and cultural preservation, balance investment in physical assets and human capital, optimize governance structures and policy mixes, coordinate the roles of an effective market and a capable government, improve supply–demand matching and the efficiency of resource allocation, and adjust the complementarity and applicability of policy tools. Full article

This study examined the policies governing the teaching workforce in China’s higher vocational education system. We developed a two-dimensional analytical framework (“policy content elements–policy tools”) to conduct an in-depth analysis of 124 central and provincial policy texts. The key findings are as follows: (1) Imbalance in policy tools: Authoritative and capacity-building tools dominate, while symbolic and exhortative tools are underutilized. Disparities exist between the central and provincial policies regarding the deployment of specific tools. (2) Prioritization of content elements: The strongest emphasis is placed on teacher cultivation, followed by teacher evaluation and safeguarding. Policies concerning teacher recruitment (access) have received little attention. (3) Policy misalignment: Poor coordination between policy tools and content elements undermines overall policy effectiveness. To address these issues, we propose the following: (1) Optimizing the policy tool portfolios: Reduce overreliance on authoritative tools for teacher recruitment and strengthen the use of incentive-based and capacity-building tools for evaluation and safeguards. (2) Strengthening recruitment policies: Formalize qualification standards, rigorously enforce teaching certifications, and standardize hiring procedures. (3) Enhancing policy coordination: Incorporating regional variations to improve the evidence-based integration of policy tools. These recommendations aim to refine the teaching workforce policies and advance the high-quality development in higher vocational education. Full article

Environmental tax is a key market-based instrument for promoting sustainability and reshaping corporate strategy. Using the panel data of Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2023, this study employs text mining to measure digital transformation and examines the impact of environmental tax on corporate digitalization. The results show that environmental tax significantly promotes digital transformation. The mechanism analyses reveal that green technology innovation and ESG performance serve as important transmission channels. Furthermore, the effect is positively moderated by regional marketization, environmental information disclosure, and low-carbon city policies. The heterogeneity analyses indicate stronger effects in economically developed regions and firms with greater resource endowments. The additional analysis demonstrates that environmental tax enhances both total factor productivity and green governance performance through accelerating digital transformation, achieving a synergistic green–digital transition. This study provides empirical evidence on how market-based environmental policies can foster corporate digital transformation as a pathway toward sustainable development. Full article

Denmark is internationally recognized for its stringent pesticide regulatory and monitoring regime, yet it remains unclear how sustained media attention has shaped the discursive feasibility of pesticide-free farming (PFF) as a scalable transition pathway. This study analyses the construction of PFF as a policy issue in Danish news media using 453 newspaper articles (2000–2025). Using a discursive-institutionalist framework, the analysis integrates quantitative text-analytic methods with qualitative contextual interpretation. The results show that media visibility does not translate into an expanded articulation of feasible transition pathways. Coverage is structured primarily around solution-oriented and regulatory debates, yet many solution narratives remain conditional and incremental, while health-related concerns, everyday farming practices, and livelihood dimensions remain marginal and weakly integrated. Government authorities, farming organizations, and industry actors occupy the communicative core of the discourse, whereas NGOs, consumers, and public health actors remain peripheral. Media attention peaks around regulatory debates but fails to generate cumulative discursive momentum toward integrated and scalable transition pathways. The study suggests that media narratives play a constitutive role in shaping the publicly articulated feasibility of pesticide-free agricultural transitions, highlighting the importance of plural, health-integrated, and practice-oriented media discourse. Full article

This study investigates the structure of innovation and entrepreneurship competence among university students in China. Based on an analysis of 33 policy texts on innovation and entrepreneurship education from 2010 to 2022, it constructs a structural model of university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship competence comprising the knowledge layer, ability layer, and literacy layer by employing the Onion Model. From the perspective of policy instruments, a two-dimensional competence–policy instrument analytical framework is established. The analysis reveals that the articulation of university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship competence in policy texts exhibits distinct stage-wise evolutionary characteristics. Furthermore, the current policy support system suffers from three structural imbalances: an over-reliance on supply-side policy instruments, with insufficient synergy from environmental and demand-side instruments; weak support from environmental and demand-side instruments for certain key competencies; and an emphasis on explicit knowledge over implicit literacy in the cultivation logic. Consequently, this study proposes a shift in the policy paradigm from factor input to system generation. Recommendations include optimizing the mix of policy instruments, improving the precision of interventions by environmental and demand-side instruments targeting key competencies, and reconstructing the cultivation system based on the different generative logics of explicit and implicit competence. Full article

Amid the accelerating agenda of Chinese-style modernization, China’s territorial spatial planning is undergoing a major transition and facing mounting challenges, while the theoretical foundations that support this transition remain at an early stage and require further integration. Drawing on holism, this paper operationalizes a cognition–relation–testing governance chain and develops an analytical framework to explain the institutional evolution and governance performance of China’s territorial spatial planning. Using clause- and paragraph-level evidence units from policy and planning texts, the study reviews and compares five historical stages of China’s territorial spatial planning, emphasizing simultaneous consistency across the three levels and a replicable diagnostic procedure. Building on this analysis, the paper proposes a holistic coordination pathway oriented toward modernization governance: it anchors implementation in auditable trade-off rules and executable boundary instruments, strengthens collaboration and conflict-adjudication procedures, and embeds a closed loop of “evaluation–adjustment–accountability” across the full planning life cycle, thereby providing an analytical approach and indicator toolkit for assessing the degree of governance closure in planning practice. Full article

Against the backdrop of global aging, whether the diverse content of elderly care policies can be systematically analyzed and interpreted through a unified theoretical framework remains an open question in gerontology. This study analyzes 2508 elderly care policy documents issued in China from 2000 to 2025 to assess the alignment degree between elderly care policies and the Integrated Theory of Social Gerontology, utilizing Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and a text content alignment degree model constructed based on a normalized co-occurrence algorithm. The findings reveal that all 11 topics extracted from Chinese elderly care policies correspond to the six dimensions of the Integrated Theory of Social Gerontology, with an overall alignment coefficient of 0.689, indicating moderate alignment. This threshold is defined based on domain-specific benchmarks: alignment coefficients ≥0.75 are classified as ‘high alignment’, 0.5–0.74 as ‘moderate alignment’, and <0.5 as ‘low alignment’, consistent with quantitative standards for policy-theory alignment research in gerontology. Four dimensions (public support systems, individual physical/psychological health, economic security, family-cultural traditions) show high alignment, while two (social stratification, historical context) exhibit low alignment, reflecting significant policy coverage asymmetries. Methodologically, this study develops a replicable policy theory alignment model, filling gaps in integrated gerontology policy analytical tools. Empirically, it provides the first large-scale longitudinal analysis of Chinese elderly care policies, illuminating policy design’s theoretical foundations and gaps in structural/historical dimension coverage. Full article

Translation technology has become ubiquitous in multilingual classrooms without evidence-based implementation guidance. This mixed-methods study examined K-12 teachers’ translation practices (n = 88 survey; n = 3 district leader interviews), comparing ESL specialists and content teachers to synthesize principles for effective use. Translation use was widespread (81.8%) despite minimal guidance (88.6% lack policies). Common methods included translation applications (89.6%), peer translation (72.2%), and native language texts. ESL specialists reported higher confidence (M = 3.69 vs. 3.18, d = 0.61) and perceived effectiveness (M = 3.76 vs. 3.29, d = 0.56) than content teachers—differences probably attributable to second language acquisition training. Thematic analysis of leader interviews, validated through Structural Topic Modeling, revealed professional development gaps as the strongest convergence (75% alignment). A critical divergence emerged: content teachers rated translation moderately effective, while leaders observed counterproductive practices (11.6% of segments), creating dependency rather than supporting English development. Leaders distinguished productive translation (temporary scaffolding toward English independence) from problematic practices (wholesale content translation). Findings grounded in Contrastive Analysis and Common Underlying Proficiency theory yielded seven evidence-based principles addressing temporary scaffolding, L1 literacy verification, communication versus content contexts, and sustained professional development. The scaffold-versus-crutch framework contributes conceptual clarity for distinguishing productive from counterproductive translation in technology-enhanced multilingual education. Full article

In the context of strategies for the promotion of a sustainable wine industry, the utilization of production regulations under the European Geographical Indications system is seldom contemplated. Furthermore, when such texts are considered, the focus is typically on rules for viticulture or winemaking, rather than on articles governing the boundaries of a PDO or PGI. The present study examines the manner in which regulatory innovation, when viewed from a strictly geographical perspective, can promote the sustainable growth of the sparkling wine districts of Franciacorta and Oltrepò Pavese, which are located in the Italian Lombardy region. Through a comparative analysis of Franciacorta and Oltrepò Pavese, we explore how regulatory frameworks, land-use constraints, and production capacities interact to shape environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Franciacorta’s premium positioning and global reputation are constrained by its limited geographic area, making expansion environmentally and socially challenging. In contrast, Oltrepò Pavese has substantial production potential, particularly for Pinot Noir-based classic-method sparkling wines but suffers from a fragmented identity and weak market recognition. Benchmarking the Prosecco PDO evolution, we propose a sustainability-oriented growth model integrating multiple territories under harmonized rules, termed “Grande Franciacorta”. This framework would enable controlled growth, reduce land pressure in high-density areas, enhance regional competitiveness, and support long-term ecological stewardship. This study outlines managerial implications for producers, emphasizing multi-tier product architectures, dynamic capabilities, and coordinated governance mechanisms. Policy recommendations highlight the need for regulatory frameworks that embed sustainability criteria, optimize land use, and consolidate regional reputation to ensure the long-term viability of high-quality sparkling wine production. Full article

In recent decades, governments have invested in strategic territories focused on knowledge production and application, which are strategic for socioeconomic development, particularly in urban areas. However, conceptual and terminological diversity hinders aspects such as the systematization of the literature, the advance of theoretical conceptualizations, and the formulation of coherent policies, especially in the context of socioenvironmental challenges. In this study, with the aim of consolidating this literature, we have conducted a systematic review with bibliometric and content analysis, examining publications on eight denominations associated with these territories. The literature reveals the existence of an established field; nonetheless, themes and denominations are still dispersed in the corpus. Among 400 authors, 339 published a single article, and only 13 authors have three or more studies in the sample. We identified a core of 11 journals that concentrate 73 of the 214 analyzed texts. We propose the term “knowledge territories” as an umbrella concept. A total of 114 case studies were identified. Governance is the most recurrent dimension (53% of the texts). Topics such as climate change, food production and diffuse effects of territorial occupation are rarely explored, as are the cases analyzed in the context of semi-peripheral and peripheral countries, indicating gaps and opportunities for future research. Full article