The virtual brand community has become an important marketing tool for companies. A successful brand community marketing strategy should attract a large number of consumers. Although past studies have revealed consumer motivations for participating in virtual brand communities, they fail to answer an important question: Why is it so easy for some virtual brand communities to attract users while others have such difficulty? In this study, product characteristics are hypothesized to be important factors that determine consumer motivation to participate in (...) brand communities. Product characteristics can directly affect how actively consumers participate in brand communities. The results of questionnaires show that product complexity, product symbolism, and product satisfaction have a positive influence on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. Notably, the duration of product use has a regulating effect on the influence of product satisfaction and product symbolism. A long period of product use weakens the influence of product satisfaction on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. On the contrary, a long period of product use strengthens the influence of product symbolism on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. This study enriches the literature on brand community participation and has implications for companies that aim to utilize brand communities for marketing. (shrink)

Drawing upon Roland Barthes’ posthumously published notebooks from his 1974 trip to China, in which he remarks upon the ‘complete absence of fashion. Clothing degree zero’, this article offers a ‘late’ reading of Barthes’ interest in fashion, suggested here as a form of writing. In reference to the late works, specifically Barthes’ penultimate lecture course on the Neutral and Travels in China, supplemented by François Jullien’s comments on Barthes’ trip to China, as well as mention of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Chung (...) Kuo-Cina, it is possible to draw together a reading of fashion as a neutral form. As a final step, reflection is given to Susan Buck-Morss’ reading of ‘history as passing’, as discontinuous moments. Barthes’ writerly mode – which works upon incidental details – is revealed to be a pertinent method. (shrink)

As the most frequently used tool for measuring empathy, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) is often scored by researchers arbitrarily and casually. Many commonly used IRI scoring approaches and their corresponding measurement models are unverified, which may make the conclusions of subsequent variable relation studies controversial and even misleading. We make the first effort to summarize these measurement models and to evaluate rationality of the common scoring methods of the IRI by confirmatory factor analysis, focusing on model fitting, factor loading, (...) and model-based reliability simultaneously. The results show that most of these models do not fit well, indicating that the scoring approaches of the IRI corresponding to these models may be problematic. Relatively speaking, better scoring approaches of the IRI include summing empathic concern and perspective taking as the total score of the IRI and reporting the score of perspective taking as cognitive empathy. (shrink)

When a widely reused ontology appears in a new version which is not compatible with older versions, the ontologies reusing it need to be updated accordingly. Ontobull has been developed to automatically update ontologies with new term IRI(s) and associated metadata to take account of such version changes. To use the Ontobull web interface a user is required to (i) upload one or more ontology OWL source files; (ii) input an ontology term IRI mapping; and (where needed) (iii) provide update (...) settings for ontology headers and XML namespace IDs. Using this information, the backend Ontobull Java program automatically updates the OWL ontology files with desired term IRIs and ontology metadata. The Ontobull subprogram BFOConvert supports the conversion of an ontology that imports a previous version of BFO. A use case is provided to demonstrate the features of Ontobull and BFOConvert. (shrink)

BackgroundPostgraduates usually face more life challenges than undergraduate students, including social, emotional and financial issues, and the prevalence of mental health problems in postgraduates is higher than undergraduates. Therefore, the attention on postgraduates’ mental health status is needed.ObjectivesThe current study explored the relationship between postgraduates’ emotional intelligence and well-being by investigating the mediating effects of social support and psychological resilience and the relationship between them through the construction of a chain mediation model.Method1,228 postgraduates completed the Emotional Intelligence Scale, the Social (...) Support Rate Scale, the Psychological Resilience Scale, and the Subject Well-being Scale.ResultsThere is a chain effect between postgraduates’ social support and psychological resilience mediated by their emotional intelligence and well-being, with a total effect value of 0.049.ConclusionEmotional intelligence has a predictive effect on postgraduates’ well-being. The mechanism of this effect includes the indirect effects of social support and psychological resilience. Study results revealed the relationship mechanism between emotional intelligence and postgraduates’ well-being, and provide reference for explorations of how to development postgraduates’ emotional intelligence and further improving their abilities to strengthen their emotional resilience. (shrink)

To describe and analyze the unstable periodic orbits of the Rucklidge system, a so-called symbolic encoding method is introduced, which has been proven to be an efficient tool to explore the topological properties concealed in these periodic orbits. In this work, the unstable periodic orbits up to a certain topological length in the Rucklidge system are systematically investigated via a proposed variational method. The dynamics in the Rucklidge system are explored by using phase portrait analysis, Lyapunov exponents, and Poincaré first (...) return maps. Symbolic encodings of the periodic orbits with two and four letters based on the trajectory topology in the phase space are implemented under two sets of parameter values. Meanwhile, the bifurcations of the periodic orbits are explored, significantly improving the understanding of the dynamics of the Rucklidge system. The multiple-letter symbolic encoding method could also be applicable to other nonlinear dynamical systems. (shrink)

Social exclusion has a significant impact on cognition, emotion, and behavior. Some behavioral studies investigated how social exclusion affects pain empathy. Conclusions were inconsistent, and there is a lack of clarity in identifying which component of pain empathy is more likely to be affected. To investigate these issues, we used a Cyberball task to manipulate feelings of social exclusion. Two groups participated in the same pain empathy task while we recorded event-related potentials when participants viewed static images of body parts (...) in painful and neutral situations. The results showed early N2 differentiation between painful and neutral pictures in the central regions in both groups. The pattern at the late controlled processing stage was different. Parietal P3 amplitudes for painful pictures were significantly smaller than those for neutral pictures in the social exclusion group; they did not differ in the social inclusion group. We observed a parietal late positive potential differentiation between painful and neutral pictures in both groups. LPP amplitudes were significantly smaller in the social exclusion group than those in the social inclusion group for painful stimuli. Our results indicate that social exclusion does not affect empathic responses during the early emotional sharing stage. However, it down-regulates empathic responses at the late cognitive controlled stage, and this modulation is attenuated gradually. The current study provides neuroscientific evidence of how social exclusion dynamically influences pain empathy. (shrink)

The rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 forced many countries to enforce complete lockdown and strict quarantine policies. The strict lockdown and quarantine affect the psychological state of people toward cryptocurrency. The current research aims to examine the effect of COVID-19 on Bitcoin prices concerning cumulative deaths and confirmed cases. The research comprises daily data from January 20, 2020, to April 30, 2020, during the initial worldwide breakout of COVID-19. This research employed the augmented Dickey-Fuller test to check the stationarity of (...) data, the co-integration test for the interdependency of variables, and the vector error correction model for identifying the direction and long or short-run relationship between Bitcoin prices and COVID-19. The research results show that Bitcoin prices are negatively significant and related to COVID-19 in the short-run. A unidirectional relationship between Bitcoin prices and cumulative deaths is also observed. Investors and the public’s psychological state were positively significant to Bitcoin prices in the long-term because of cashless transactions, unbanked, and less risky virus traveling. The second reason behind the positive psychological relation is un-centralization and easy-to-make payments by Bitcoin. This study’s finding provides timely evidence to decision-makers on Bitcoin price volatility and its impacts on the public’s psychological states regarding COVID-19. (shrink)

E-commerce has led to a significant increase in internet purchases. The marketing sector is very competitive these days, and marketers have a difficult task: understanding the behavior of their customers. Strategic marketing planning relies heavily on consumer behavior since the consumer acts as the user, buyer, and payer in that process. Consumers’ behavior changes in response to shifts in the factors that influence it. The purpose of this research is to show how Internet usage influence on consumer impulsive buying behavior (...) of agriculture products through moderating role personality traits and emotional intelligence in China organic market. The data gathered in three months from January to March 2022, due to COVID-19 pandemic data was gathered through an online survey questionnaire sent by Chinese social media platforms including WeChat and an email address. The PLS-SEM technique and the SmartPLS software version 3.2.8 were used for data analyses. The result revealed that internet usage positively and significantly influences consumer impulsive buying behavior. Also, both moderator personality trait and emotional intelligence positively and significantly moderate the relationship between internet usage and consumer impulsive buying behavior. Lastly, theoretical and practical implications, and future directions were discussed. (shrink)

An analysis is presented of the problems that have existed for over 20 years in the moral education curriculum in primary schools of China. These include the separation of moral education from children's lives, the moralizing and memorization used as the basic methods of teaching and learning, and the overlaps between courses on society and ideological moral character. The paper then introduces the main innovations in the contemporary reform of the primary moral education curriculum, including lifelong moral education as its (...) theoretical foundation and making the development of children's morality relate to life, with ‘real’ everyday life events as source materials for textbooks. Embodied in the textbooks are some new ideas behind the revised educational objectives, such as putting oneself in another's position, ecological interdependence, ‘win‐win’, dialogue, sharing and diversity. As the curriculum is child centred so the textbooks use a dialogical pedagogy. In conclusion the paper considers ongoing and new challenges for moral education in primary schools to be faced by the curriculum reform. (shrink)

The aim of our research is to demonstrate that intentionality as a major property of consciousness and as a basic state of mind plays an important role in all the activities in which the subject is related to the objective world. This paper is based on John Searle’s theory of intentionality. Both ideological cognition and practical activity are object oriented activities. However, the objects targeted by them and the ways they are associated with their subjects are different. The function of (...) intentionality of ideological cognition is mainly reflected on its directedness, whereas in practical activities—on its motivating and regulating capacities. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Endnotes.

Projections regarding future energy consumption and carbon emissions are crucial when the aim is to design policy for global emissions control. What is the different models’ take on the projections for global emissions and, in particular, China’s role in the global picture? Do they anticipate similar results? If not, why are the results different? What key parameters do they use, and how do they affect the final findings? This Article attempts to answer these questions and, starting from there, to further (...) analyze what it means for the challenge of China’s future emissions reduction potential and for the overall goal of global emissions reduction. (shrink)

PurposesThis paper aims to discuss the relationship between college students’ sports participation, school bullying, emotional intelligence and self-esteem. At the same time, it explores the intrinsic mechanisms of school bullying, in order to provide a reference for reducing bullying phenomenon among college students, and pave the way for college students to lead happy, healthy and confident lives.MethodsA total of 1,317 students from four universities in Southwest China were selected as subjects for this survey. They were selected by stratified random sampling, (...) and the data needed was obtained using a structured questionnaire. The data was subsequently processed with statistical software SPSS19.0 and AMOS21.0.Results Sports participation has a significant and positive correlation with emotional intelligence and self-esteem, likewise, it has a significant negative correlation with school bullying. Emotional intelligence has a marked positive correlation with self-esteem, at the same time it has a significant negative correlation with school bullying. In addition, self-esteem is strongly negative correlated with school bullying. Sports participation has a direct effect on school bullying. Emotional intelligence and self-esteem also play a significant mediating role between sports participation and school bullying, and the chain mediating force of emotional intelligence—self-esteem also reaches a significant level.ConclusionSports participation affects school bullying among college students not only directly but also indirectly, such as through emotional intelligence, the mediating role of self-esteem, and the chain mediating role of emotional intelligence to self-esteem. Apart from sports participation, emotional intelligence is another key factor that affects college students’ school bullying. Therefore, while attaching great importance to college students’ sport participation, schools should also provide courses aimed at developing students’ emotional intelligence. (shrink)