Search Results (20)

As Chinese firms play pivotal roles in global supply chains, multinational corporations face increasing pressure to ensure ESG accountability across their sourcing networks. Current ESG rating systems lack transparency in incorporating China’s unique industrial, economic, and cultural factors, creating reliability concerns for stakeholders managing supply chain sustainability risks. This study develops an explainable artificial intelligence framework using SHAP and permutation feature importance (PFI) methods to predict the ESG performance of Chinese firms. We analyze comprehensive ESG data of 1608 Chinese listed companies over 13 years (2009–2021), integrating financial and non-financial determinants traditionally examined in isolation. Empirical findings demonstrate that random forest algorithms significantly outperform multivariate linear regression in capturing nonlinear ESG relationships. Key non-financial determinants include patent portfolios, CSR training initiatives, pollutant emissions, and charitable donations, while financial factors such as current assets and gearing ratios prove influential. Sectoral analysis reveals that manufacturing firms are evaluated through pollutant emissions and technical capabilities, whereas non-manufacturing firms are assessed on business taxes and intangible assets. These insights provide essential tools for multinational corporations to anticipate supply chain sustainability conditions. Full article

Education plays an essential role in ensuring the social sustainability of blood donation. As altruism may be insufficient to support donor engagement, this study assesses the effectiveness of incentives on ensuring the social sustainability of blood donation. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 319 medical students about socio-demographic variables, donation frequency, altruism dimensions (impure, self-regarding, reluctant, egalitarian warm glow, and kinship), the perceived importance of monetary (travel compensation, meal vouchers) and non-monetary incentives (free blood screening, paid leave, refreshments, recognition gifts), and willingness to donate during a blood donation social marketing campaign in November 2021 and November 2022. Data were analyzed in SPSS 20 using chi-square, ANOVA tests, and multiple regression models. The key findings indicate no significant associations between donor categories and incentives, but meal vouchers, free medical testing, refreshments, and recognition gifts were linked to self-regarding altruism. Additionally, neither incentives, altruism dimensions, nor their interaction predicted willingness to donate blood. These findings highlight the need for education-driven approaches to ensure a long-term commitment of blood donors, by integrating educational, sustainable curricular or extracurricular activities. Integrating blood donation awareness into formal education may cultivate a culture of civic responsibility, expanding the donor pool and strengthening the social sustainability of blood donation. Full article

Voluntary blood donation plays a crucial role in public health by ensuring a stable supply of blood and its components, essential for medical treatments including surgeries, trauma care, and chronic disease management. Voluntary donors, often healthier individuals, enhance the safety of the blood supply and play a vital role in emergency preparedness. Beyond its societal benefits, regular blood donation may offer health advantages for donors, including improved cardiovascular health due to reduced iron levels and psychological benefits stemming from altruism and a sense of social responsibility. Public health initiatives are instrumental in fostering blood donation through education, awareness campaigns, and targeted donor recruitment strategies. These efforts encourage a culture of social responsibility, inspiring community participation and improving overall healthcare system sustainability. Despite these efforts, challenges such as fluctuating donation rates, aging populations, and shifting demographics underscore the need for ongoing initiatives to ensure a sufficient blood supply. As a public health priority, voluntary blood donation demands continuous promotion and innovation to meet the growing demand for blood products and maintain healthcare system resilience. This review highlights the public health significance of voluntary blood donation, with particular focus on its benefits for donors and its role in supporting healthcare systems. Full article

In recent years, despite global improvements in development, food scarcity and waste remain critical issues impacting food security, human health, and environmental sustainability. China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs reports that China’s food loss and waste rate is approximately 22.7%, amounting to 460 million tons annually, with the consumption and post-harvest processing stages facing the highest losses. To address these issues, China enacted the Anti-Food Waste Law in 2021, aiming to reduce food waste through clear responsibilities, incentives, and penalties for government agencies and relevant stakeholders. While scholars note that the law represents a significant shift from moral to legal governance in tackling food waste, some argue that its provisions lack sufficient specificity. This article assesses the effectiveness of China’s anti-food waste legislation using case studies and comparative analyses, highlighting the challenges in defining and implementing the law within China’s cultural framework, where food signifies abundance and prosperity. Additionally, the article explores successful international practices, including the 2030 Champions Program and similar efforts in Europe and Japan, to inform China’s strategy. The key recommendations for policy improvement include strengthening accountability and governance, establishing a food hierarchy for sustainable resource management, enhancing data collection on food waste, promoting food donation mechanisms, and transitioning from a solely government-led regulatory approach to a multi-dimensional co-regulation model. Full article

At present, China regards philanthropy as an important component of social security, social governance, and the third distribution of resources. Structural changes in government expenditure can drive the adjustment of social resources; therefore, it is fundamental to investigate the macroeconomic transmission effect of government expenditure on the development of the philanthropic sector in order to promote the sustainable development of philanthropy and ensure the fairness and justice of social distribution. The results of a regression analysis on provincial panel data from 2007 to 2020 indicated the following: (1) Government expenditure exhibits crowding-out effects on various dimensions of the philanthropic sector. (2) In terms of regional development disparities, government guidance shows crowding-out effects on the development of philanthropy in the eastern and central regions; meanwhile, it demonstrates complementary effects on the dimensions of charitable donations and the number of social organizations in the western region. (3) Furthermore, in terms of the regional distribution of social organizations by industry, government guidance in the eastern region exhibits crowding-out effects on the numbers of social organizations in the fields of science and technology, education, culture, health, and sports; meanwhile, in the western region, it shows complementary effects. Additionally, in the central region, it shows a complementary effect only in the cultural sector, with crowding-out effects in other industries. Therefore, greater flexibility should be granted to the philanthropic sector, in which the construction of hub-type philanthropic organizations and the creation of regional industry cooperation platforms promote the relatively balanced development of philanthropy. Full article

The documentation, preservation and rescue of biological diversity increasingly uses living biological samples. Persistent associations between species, biosamples, such as tissues and cell lines, and the accompanying data are indispensable for using, exchanging and benefiting from these valuable materials. Explicit authentication of such biosamples by assigning unique and robust identifiers is therefore required to allow for unambiguous referencing, avoid identification conflicts and maintain reproducibility in research. A predefined nomenclature based on uniform rules would facilitate this process. However, such a nomenclature is currently lacking for animal biological material. We here present a first, standardized, human-readable nomenclature design, which is sufficient to generate unique and stable identifying names for animal cellular material with a focus on wildlife species. A species-specific human- and machine-readable syntax is included in the proposed standard naming scheme, allowing for the traceability of donated material and cultured cells, as well as data FAIRification. Only when it is consistently applied in the public domain, as publications and inter-institutional samples and data are exchanged, distributed and stored centrally, can the risks of misidentification and loss of traceability be mitigated. This innovative globally applicable identification system provides a standard for a sustainable structure for the long-term storage of animal bio-samples in cryobanks and hence facilitates current as well as future species conservation and biomedical research. Full article

The effectiveness of the economic policies implemented by a country/region directly affects its economic growth potential. Cultural Heritage Festivals are a sector of the creative economy that, by promoting culture, may have a significant impact on national/regional sustainable economic development. This study assesses the implementation of the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) and the estimation of the Willingness To Pay (WTP) demand curve, using data collected for the Kalamata Dance Festival as a case study, in order to evaluate creative economy investments. The results obtained indicate that the CVM is an appropriate method for evaluating festivals and suggest that females, spectators with high incomes and high educational levels, and visitors to Kalamata (non-residents) show an increased Willingness To Pay. These findings can be useful to cultural heritage festival organizers in developing appropriate policy strategies: targeting the social groups with the greatest Willingness To Pay; adjusting the pricing mechanism accordingly; modifying annual memberships/donations/sponsorships, indirect resources, and tax revenues and grants; and optimizing investments and allocating resources. Furthermore, the findings of this study will be particularly useful for Greece in designing relevant cultural sustainable development policies for exploiting the potential of the Cultural Heritage Festival, in synergy with the tourism sector, which already contributes a major share to the country’s GDP. Full article

This article presents the methodology and collective work strategies that constitute the Club de Lectura y Museo Comunitario de Sierra Hermosa (Sierra Hermosa Community Museum and Reading Club) in Zacatecas, Mexico, a space founded by visual artist Juan Manuel de la Rosa, a native of this place. The museum emerged as a small library in 2000; and a short time after its founding, the museological program incorporated textile workshops and an exhibition gallery for a collection organized with local and external donations. It also operates with a system of rotation within the town. This article reviews the historical, theoretical, and critical implications around the conception and action of the museum, with a focus on the colonial and the migration status that sustains the reality and history of this rural locality, situated on the Tropic of Cancer in the north of Mexico. In the context of extreme violence, extractive politics, and migratory crisis in Zacatecas, this article analyzes two artistic productions by the local painter Luis Lara and artist Cristóbal Gracia, developed in the context of this experimental and rural museum curatorial program. Moreover, this article redefines concepts such as the border, mobility, and cultural contact in an artistic, museological, and pedagogical context, and proposes alternatives to study Sierra Hermosa’s memory, history, and landscape. Full article

Based on the principle of “who protects and benefits will compensate”, in recent years, many Chinese herders have begun to voluntarily participate in sustainable grassland ecological compensation by donating money. However, this traditional strategy may have brought about “the tragedy of the commons”. A new strategy described as “wealthy herders pay money, ordinary herders participate in supervision, and relevant departments post a list of participants at the end of each month”, which was trialed in the Keshiketeng Banner, Inner Mongolia, China, attempts to solve “the tragedy of the commons”. This new strategy is neither “Leviathan” nor “Privatization”; it creates a third way for grassland herders to achieve spontaneous cooperation in protecting grassland ecology. This article presents a theoretical analysis framework and experimental simulation method using this new strategy. Considering the importance of face culture and gossip in herders’ social lives, this study used a public goods game (PGG) model to analyze and experimentally simulate the effect of this new strategy. The simulated data show the following: (1) Compared with the traditional strategy, this new strategy promotes cooperation more effectively. It requires less money, time and human capital from herders and can mobilize more herders to participate in sustainable grassland ecological compensation, leading to the emergence of a cooperation equilibrium among herders. (2) In this new strategy, the total contributions of herders are inversely proportional to herders’ “reputation tolerance”, and they are directly proportional to herders’ “income level”, “total budget” and “satisfaction and emotion”. The cooperation level is inversely proportional to “reputation tolerance” and “income level” and directly proportional to “total budget” and “satisfaction and emotion”. (3) The advantage of this new strategy is that it is robust to changes in the exogenous coefficient. Our research contributes to the application of the PGG model in the sustainable development of various resources and developing new approaches to mitigating “the tragedy of the commons”. Full article

The apparel consumer, one of the vital stakeholders in the apparel supply chain, has a significant role to play in moving the clothing industry in a sustainable direction. From purchasing and care practice to donation and disposal, every step of their decisions impacts the environment. Various internal and external variables influence those decisions, including culture, customs, values, beliefs, norms, assumptions, economy, gender, education and others. Therefore, we believe having a scientific understanding is very important, because consumers need to be aware of what makes eco-conscious apparel behavior; only then will the circular transition be eased. However, the key concern is whether the apparel consumers are aware of this knowledge or not. Therefore, we formulated a prospective study from a life cycle thinking point of view with a key focus on synthesizing apparel consumer behavior concerning clothing acquisition, maintenance and disposal through the circular economy lens. Hence, a circular economy lens framework is proposed, followed by three research questions’ (RQ) formulation: RQ1. What is the current norm of clothing acquisition, maintenance and disposal behavior?; RQ2. Is apparel consumer clothing acquisition, maintenance and disposal behavior circular-driven?; RQ3. What is the sustainable way of clothing acquisition, maintenance and disposal? These questions are followed by circular economy lens framework development for apparel consumers. Second, following the research questions, state-of-the-art literature-driven decisions were gathered to form constructive consumer-centric decisions over the apparel lifecycle. Third, building on this synthesis, a critical discussion is offered, following the decision-tree approach to inform relevant behavioral guidelines for consumers and other stakeholders in the apparel supply chain. Overall, our findings on apparel consumer behavior through the circular economy lens could serve as new guidelines for consumers to exercise mindful clothing consumption behavior. Full article

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted underlying disparities in health, healthcare access, and other social factors that have been documented for racial/ethnic minorities. The social-distancing mandate exacerbated the impact of social determinants of health, such as unemployment and food insecurity, particularly among underserved minority populations. We highlight intervention outcomes and lessons learned from the Florida International University (FIU) Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine (HWCOM) NeighborhoodHELP’s response to pandemic-related food insecurity among Miami Dade County’s underserved population. Methods: Following the stay-at-home mandate, a weekly needs assessment of program households was conducted by the NeighborhoodHELP team, during which food insecurity emerged as a pandemic-related urgent need, rising from three percent of program Households in March 2020 to 36.9 percent six months later. Consequently, the program staff collaborated with another FIU department, community partners, and a benefactor to develop a food donation and delivery project. Results: Fifteen hundred and forty-three culturally appropriate food boxes were delivered to 289 participating households, comprising 898 household members, over a 14-month period. Conclusion: This project underscores the importance of leveraging community assets to address their needs during a crisis and the significance of sustained community engagement for researchers and service providers who work in underserved communities. Full article

This study aimed to determine the compliance of management practices instituted in a third sector entity based on governance guidelines established by Brazilian organizations. It was exploratory qualitative research. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and documentary analysis; data analysis was performed by content analysis. The researched entity has a structure that meets the compliance function composed of three axes: (a) normative, referring to the adoption and formalization of the integrity program from instances, mechanisms and procedures dealing with ethical conduct, internal controls, laws, rules, regulations and risk management to which the entity is exposed, with complete adherence to the guidelines; (b) commercial, referring to the adoption and formalization of mechanisms covering relationships with partners, customers and suppliers, such as the accountability of funds raised; however, contingencies arising from the COVID-19 pandemic required mechanisms not yet foreseen for the accountability of resources from private donations. This axis had low adherence to the guidelines: (c) organizational, referring to the adherence and commitment of senior management to the policies instituted with a view to preserving the net worth, a financial sustainability and corporate social responsibility with almost complete adherence to the tested guidelines. In conclusion, organizations that depend on resources need an institutionalized compliance structure to ensure high levels of adherence, because as they become more reliable, they will receive more credibility and legitimacy. This study, based on the perceptions of managers, contributes to demonstrate the relevance of governance and the establishment of a culture of compliance in the third sector. Full article

Tendon defects require multimodal therapeutic management over extensive periods and incur high collateral burden with frequent functional losses. Specific cell therapies have recently been developed in parallel to surgical techniques for managing acute and degenerative tendon tissue affections, to optimally stimulate resurgence of structure and function. Cultured primary human fetal progenitor tenocytes (hFPT) have been preliminarily considered for allogeneic homologous cell therapies, and have been characterized as stable, consistent, and sustainable cell sources in vitro. Herein, optimized therapeutic cell sourcing from a single organ donation, industrial transposition of multi-tiered progenitor cell banking, and preliminary preclinical safety of an established hFPT cell source (i.e., FE002-Ten cell type) were investigated. Results underlined high robustness of FE002-Ten hFPTs and suitability for sustainable manufacturing upscaling within optimized biobanking workflows. Absence of toxicity or tumorigenicity of hFPTs was demonstrated in ovo and in vitro, respectively. Furthermore, a 6-week pilot good laboratory practice (GLP) safety study using a rabbit patellar tendon partial-thickness defect model preliminarily confirmed preclinical safety of hFPT-based standardized transplants, wherein no immune reactions, product rejection, or tumour formation were observed. Such results strengthen the rationale of the multimodal Swiss fetal progenitor cell transplantation program and prompt further investigation around such cell sources in preclinical and clinical settings for musculoskeletal regenerative medicine. Full article

Diverse cell therapy approaches constitute prime developmental prospects for managing acute or degenerative cartilaginous tissue affections, synergistically complementing specific surgical solutions. Bone marrow stimulation (i.e., microfracture) remains a standard technique for cartilage repair promotion, despite incurring the adverse generation of fibrocartilagenous scar tissue, while matrix-induced autologous chondrocyte implantation (MACI) and alternative autologous cell-based approaches may partly circumvent this effect. Autologous chondrocytes remain standard cell sources, yet arrays of alternative therapeutic biologicals present great potential for regenerative medicine. Cultured human epiphyseal chondro-progenitors (hECP) were proposed as sustainable, safe, and stable candidates for chaperoning cartilage repair or regeneration. This study describes the development and industrial transposition of hECP multi-tiered cell banking following a single organ donation, as well as preliminary preclinical hECP safety. Optimized cell banking workflows were proposed, potentially generating millions of safe and sustainable therapeutic products. Furthermore, clinical hECP doses were characterized as non-toxic in a standardized chorioallantoic membrane model. Lastly, a MACI-like protocol, including hECPs, was applied in a three-month GLP pilot safety evaluation in a caprine model of full-thickness articular cartilage defect. The safety of hECP transplantation was highlighted in xenogeneic settings, along with confirmed needs for optimal cell delivery vehicles and implantation techniques favoring effective cartilage repair or regeneration. Full article

Using the extended theory of planned behavior, this study examined individuals’ cognitive and psychological determinants of their intentions to donate to nonprofit organizations (NPOs) with either a positive or negative chief executive officer (CEO) reputation. With the use of online survey data (n = 371), the similarities and differences in the relationships between the determinants were analyzed for the two NPO CEO reputations. To verify the hypotheses, multiple regression was used to analyze the data. The results reveal that for NPOs with positive CEO reputations, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, moral norms, past behavior, and identification had positive effects on the intention to donate. In contrast, for NPOs with negative CEO reputations, subjective norms and identification had positive effects on the intention to donate. Attitude toward the NPO was not related to donation intentions regardless of the CEO’s reputation. These findings suggest the need for strategies to increase the public’s intentions to donate to problematic NPOs with negative reputations. Additionally, a strategy to further strengthen the intention to donate in the case of a positive CEO reputation is proposed. Theoretical and managerial implications of the results are also discussed, highlighting important considerations for CEO reputations and NPO management in the short and long terms. Full article