The specious present (James, 1890/1950) is the phenomenal temporal structure of the representational content of my present experience. This article is a study of the mereological structure of the specious present and what it reveals about the nature of the mind. I argue that the specious present has certain features that cannot be easily explained within the framework of physicalism about the mind — the view that consciousness is nothing over and above what is physical. In particular, the specious present (...) is a phenomenally extended (i.e.non-instantaneous) whole whose parts are conceptual abstractions and are therefore dependent on this whole. However, unlike the specious present, what is physical does not have this special property of the parts being dependent on the whole. Therefore, it is unclear how the specious present can be explained in physicalistic terms. (shrink)

With the prevalence of values and the advent of the idea of rationalist education, the values characteristic of distinct subjectivity and affectiveness face many theoretical and practical problems when taught within the framework of modern education, which seeks certainty of knowledge. The challenges that values education encounters in today’s world urgently demand that we return to the origins of human spiritual life. We must be informed by the Marxist disclosure of the intrinsic value of human existence, and grasp the intrinsic (...) isomorphism between values education and human existence within the web of original and historical dialectic relations by relying on a complementary understanding of values and the essence of education: real men possess a logic of existence that endows value independence and consciousness of edification, and on the basis of the nature of the value of human existence, values education obtains a solid foundation both in the sense of fact and of value. Human existence thus displays the value content of self-selection, self-edification, and self-improvement peculiar to it due to its mutual dependence on and fulfillment of values education. (shrink)

If God exists atemporally, could God still be temporally conscious? This article aims to clarify a conceptual space for a divine temporal mode of consciousness under the traditional assumption that God exists atemporally. I contend that an atemporally existing and conscious God – by the divine nature, and not just the human nature in Christ – could also be conscious of the temporal world – and indeed, all possible temporal worlds – through a temporal mode that is akin to human (...) temporal consciousness, albeit exempt from its limitations. I submit that although (a) God exists atemporally (ontological atemporalism), (b) God could be both temporally and atemporally conscious (bimodalism of divine consciousness), and (c) these two modes of consciousness could be unified in an absolute divine consciousness without incurring schizophrenia-like problems (unity of bimodal divine consciousness). (shrink)

Drawing on the perspective of causal reasoning and the social cognitive theory of moral thought and action, this study explores the mechanisms underlying the association between exposure to exploitative leadership and employee workplace deviance. The results of a time-lagged survey conducted in China reveal that exposure to exploitative leadership can evoke a moral justification process that leads to increased employee organizational and interpersonal deviance. A tendency toward hostile attribution bias reinforces the direct link between exploitative leadership and moral justification and (...) the indirect effects of exploitative leadership on employee organizational and interpersonal deviance, via moral justification. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed and potential directions for future studies are proposed. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate relationships among epidemic risk perception, perceived stress, mental health, future time perspective, and confidence in society during the novel coronavirus disease pandemic in China. Especially, we wonder that whether perceived stress mediates associations between epidemic risk perception and mental health and that whether future time perspective and confidence in society moderate the link between perceived stress and mental health. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 693 Chinese adults aged 18–60 years. The (...) results showed that epidemic risk perception was positively related to perceived stress, depression, and anxiety. The correlations between epidemic risk perception and depression and anxiety were reduced when perceived stress was included, suggesting that perceived stress mediated these relationships. Moreover, the boundary conditions for the associations among perceived stress, depression, and anxiety were found in the study. Specifically, positive future time perspective could buffer the negative effects of perceived stress on depression, and confidence in society could weaken the negative effects of perceived stress on anxiety. Based on these findings, practical guidance and theoretical implications are provided for the public to maintain mental health during COVID-19 pandemic. Limitations and future directions are also discussed. (shrink)

Offers a thorough, multidisciplinary picture of the informational challenges of our media ecosystem, as well as collaborative strategies for addressing them.

Individuals with narcissism are, by definition, self-centered, focus on self-benefit, and demonstrate less prosocial behaviors. Trusting strangers is risky, as it can result in exploitation and non-reciprocation. Thus, the trust may be antagonistic to narcissism. However, how narcissists make the choice to trust remains to be elucidated. The current study examined 44 participants playing as trustors in one-shot trust games, and their electroencephalograms were recorded. Individuals high in narcissism exhibited less trust toward strangers, especially following gaining feedback for their trust. (...) In addition, narcissists exhibited a larger N2 following distrust and a stronger negatively-valanced difference in feedback-related negativity after trustee feedback. Our findings provide insights into how individuals with narcissism trust strangers. The results also shed light on the temporal course of brain activity involved in trust decision-making and outcome evaluation in individuals with narcissism. (shrink)

A varied air volume air-conditioning system comprises diverse input and/or output disturbances, which are commonly nonlinear, with large lag and uncertainty. Based on the traditional control methods, testing the controlling parameters of a VAV air-conditioning system is challenging. Sliding mode control could improve the robustness of the system due to the adaptive capacity of disturbance rejection. Moreover, the fuzzy algorithm could be employed to determine the stability of a sliding control system by adjusting the parameters in the approach rate, reducing (...) the switching frequency, and weakening chatter. Fuzzy sliding mode control is investigated in this paper to improve the performance of a VAV air-conditioning system. Simulation results verify that the sliding mode control is suitable for a VAV air-conditioning system to achieve good adaptability and robustness considering the influence of multiple external variable disturbances. In addition, the chattering of the system is improved after the introduction of fuzzy control. (shrink)

As companies are transforming their branding, marketing, operations, and research and development by running online communities to build their core competitive advantages in the digital era, the silent majority is still the norm in the online community and has become the focus of online community operations. Thus, it has become the core issue that why silent behavior of online community members occurs and its impact on operation performance of the online community. According to the traditional theory of organizational behavior, this (...) study focuses on the theoretical model of the relationship between proactive personality, silent behavior of online community members, and operation performance of the online community, and further analyzes the impact of community identification on these relationships. Eight hundred online community members in China participated in this study. The results indicate that: proactive personality has a significant negative impact on acquiescent silent and defensive silent behavior of the online community members, and a significant positive impact on prosocial silent behavior of the online community members; The acquiescent silence and defensive silence have a significant negative impact on online community operation performance, whereas prosocial silence has a significant positive impact on community operation performance; The acquiescent silence and defensive silence have a significant mediating effect on the relationship between proactive personality and community operation performance; Online community identification has a moderating effect on the relationship between silent behavior and online community operation performance. The study proposes the mechanisms and double-edged sword effects of the silent behavior of online community members from the perspective of personality traits. On the one hand, it generalizes the research of traditional organizational silent behavior theory to the context of the online community. On the other hand, it provides reference and inspiration for the theoretical research and practical management of silent behavior of online community members. (shrink)

As the development trend of the future housing field, green housing is an effective way to reduce pollution, save energy, and promote industrial upgrading. At the same time, the green house is of great significance to change the development mode of the construction industry and promote the sustainable development of the social economy. This study proposes a comprehensive research model to examine the influencing mechanism of residents’ intention to purchase green buildings. The proposed model is empirically tested using data collected (...) from 1,338 urban residents in China. Based on logit, probit, and ivprobit models, factors such as personal characteristics, housing price, and the number of real estate ownership are selected to conduct empirical analysis and mechanism analysis on willingness that affects consumers’ purchase of green houses. The results show that housing assets significantly affect the willingness of householders to pay for green houses. The more houses they own, the higher their willingness to pay for a green house will be. Similarly, if the housing prices are higher, householders are more willing to buy a green house. The amount of housing assets will affect the willingness of householders to pay for green housing through the way of individual happiness. In terms of the characteristics of the householder, if the householder is more educated, unmarried, his willingness to buy a green house will be stronger, and owning housing assets may affect the individual happiness due to the housing wealth effect brought by rising housing prices. People with more housing assets are more likely to have the happiness brought by higher wealth, which may affect the purchase intention of householders. (shrink)

In the context of the slowing growth of the real economy and the rapid development of the financial industry, more and more non-financial companies are participating in the financial industry for the purpose of development and profit expansion. China has gradually appeared the phenomenon of corporate financialization. This paper uses the panel fixed effect model empirically examines the effect of political turnover on corporate financialization by using data of listed companies and top prefecture level officials in China between 2007 and (...) 2020. We find that the turnover of mayors significantly decreases corporate financialization, while the turnover of party secretaries has no impact on corporate financialization. Moreover, these results are moderated by the characteristics of government officials and firm’s characteristics. Our results further show that changes by mayors increase fixed asset investment and decrease cash holdings, and, thus, reduce corporate financialization. These findings could assist in solving the “from real to virtual” problems, strengthening financial services, and realizing high-quality economic development. (shrink)

Using listed firms in China over the period 2010–2018, we investigate the association between directors’ network and quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure from the lens of resource-based view. We find a significantly positive effect of directors’ network centrality on the CSR disclosure quality, and the effect is more pronounced when the firm (1) invests less in advertising; (2) is followed by less analysts; (3) is less financially constrained; and (4) has no assurance of sustainability report. Furthermore, we document (...) that independent directors’ network centrality is positively associated with CSR disclosure quality. Our findings have important implication for practitioners, policy makers, and regulators. (shrink)

BackgroundThere are limited sensitive evaluation methods to distinguish people’s symptoms of peripheral fatigue and central fatigue simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate them after acute exercise with a simple and practical scale.MethodsThe initial scale was built through a literature review, experts and athlete population survey, and a small sample pre-survey. Randomly selected 1,506 students were evaluated with the initial scale after exercise. Subjective fatigue self-assessments were completed at the same time.ResultsThe Acute Exercise-Induced Fatigue Scale was (...) determined after performing a factor analysis. In the exploratory factor analysis, the cumulative variance contribution rate was 65.464%. The factor loadings of the total 8 questions were 0.661–0.816. In the confirmatory factor analysis, χ2/df = 2.529, GFI = 0.985, AGFI = 0.967, NFI = 0.982, IFI = 0.989, CFI = 0.989, and RMSEA = 0.048. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the scale was 0.872, and it was 0.833 for peripheral fatigue and 0.818 for central fatigue. The intra-class correlation coefficient for the scale was 0.536, and the intra-class correlation coefficients for peripheral fatigue and central fatigue were 0.421 and 0.548, respectively. The correlation coefficient between the total score of the AEIFS and the SFSA score was 0.592.ConclusionOur results demonstrate that the AEIFS can distinguish peripheral fatigue and central fatigue and can also reflect their correlation. This scale can be a useful evaluation tool not only for measuring fatigue after acute exercise but also for guiding reasonable exercise, choosing objective testing indicators, and preventing sports injuries resulting from acute exercise-induced fatigue. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to improve the entrepreneurial performance and sports morality of college teacher-and-student entrepreneurs. Consequently, psychological capital is creatively combined with social and political education to explore college entrepreneurs’ EP and sports morality. First, following a theoretical model implementation, this article proposes several hypotheses. Then, a questionnaire survey was designed, and the data were analyzed. The results show that gender has little impact on EP and sports morality; PsyCap significantly affects the EP of college entrepreneurs at (...) the age of 33–38 years; in terms of educational background, average scores of PsyCap + SPE of bachelors are the highest, followed by masters or above, and finally, the college undergraduate; the average score of PsyCap + SPE of married respondents is 4.0, while that of the unmarried is 3.7; there is a significant difference between college entrepreneurs’ EP under the dimension of the basic enterprise situation; and the average score of the length of entrepreneurship is 9.87, which has the most significant impact on the EP and sports morality, and the significance of sports morality is 0.04. Among them, the most significant impact on EP and sports morality is weekly sports participation, with a score of 9.67. Therefore, PsyCap + SPE plays a positive role in the EP of college entrepreneurs. In contrast, sports morality has little impact on EP. This study provides a reference for the research on the influence of entrepreneurship and sports morality of college entrepreneurs. (shrink)

As traditional methods such as questionnaires for measuring risk propensity are not applicable in some scenarios, a nonintrusive method that could automatically identify individuals' risk propensity could be valuable. This study utilized Defense of the Ancients 2 single match data and historical statistics to train predictive models to identify risk propensity by machine learning methods. Self-reported risk propensity scores from 218 DOTA 2 players were paired with their behavioral metrics. The best-performing model occurred with Gaussian process regression. The root mean (...) square error of this model was 1.10, the correlation between predicted scores and self-reported questionnaire scores was 0.44, the R-squared was 0.17, and the test–retest reliability was 0.67. We discussed how selected behavioral features could contribute to predicting risk propensity and how the approach could be of potential value in the application of perceiving individuals' risk propensities. Moreover, the limitations of our study were discussed, and recommendations were made for future studies in this field. (shrink)

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 has become the most devastating public health event of the 21st century. The different performances of governments and people in different countries and regions show that national values may play an important role in the prevention and control of COVID-19. Based on data from the seventh wave of World Values Survey and the Human Freedom Index report in 2020, three national value factors are extracted in this manuscript, including religious belief, government (...) satisfaction and individual freedom. Then ordinary least squares regression regression model is constructed to explore the influence of these three value factors on the prevention and control of COVID-19 and some heterogeneity analysis is implemented. The results show that religious belief and individual freedom significantly increased the COVID-19 infection rate, while government satisfaction significantly reduced the COVID-19 infection rate. The study findings have the ability to hold up after a range of robustness. For countries and regions with different COVID-19 testing policies, the influence of national values is different. Only in countries and regions with high testing rate policies and complete systems of the prevention and control of COVID-19, the influence of national values is significant. Based on these findings, a series of targeted policy recommendations for building national values in the post-epidemic era are proposed. (shrink)

To reduce the workload of paper evaluation and improve the fairness and accuracy of the evaluation process, a writing assistant scoring system for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners is designed based on the principle of machine learning. According to the characteristics of the data processing process and the advantages and disadvantages of the Browser/server (B/s) structure, the equipment structure design of the project online evaluation teaching auxiliary system is further optimized. The panda method is used to read the (...) data, the clean method is used to realize the data preprocessing, the model test is carried out, the cross validation method is selected, the data is divided in advance, and the process of programming the problem scoring system is further optimized, the automatic scoring technology is constructed by English teaching recognition module, feature extraction module and scoring module, the table structure of programming problems is designed, the auxiliary evaluation program of English writing is designed, and the design of writing auxiliary scoring system is completed. The analysis of the experimental results shows that the accuracy of the system is close to 90%, and the total average difference is 0.56. The system can normally take out a variety of test papers. Considering the subjectivity of manual scoring and the impact of key code setting on scoring, the carefully set key code can effectively improve the scoring accuracy of the system. The scoring strategy of the automatic scoring system is effective and the scoring effect is good, and it can be used in practical application. (shrink)

Although work engagement as a positive organizational behavior has gained considerable achievements in recent years, there is still a lack of content research based on certain culture, job, and group characteristics. This study conducts a grounded theory research on work engagement by coding and analyzing the interview files from public servants working in the government located in Eastern China. The result shows a five-dimension construct of work engagement, which includes loyalty to the work, commitment to the working relationships, positive emotion, (...) initiative action, and priority for mixed roles. Additionally, the current study also constructs a theoretical model which discovers the dynamic variables motivating the process of work engagement and the influence of Confucianism. (shrink)

Aesthetic experiences play an important role in human culture and spiritual life and are closely related to aesthetic perception and appreciation of art, music, literature and natural landscapes. With the development of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, our understanding of aesthetic experiences continues to deepen; in this context, the study of neuroplasticity has attracted widespread attention. This study explores in detail how this process affects the perception of aesthetic cognition, thereby enhancing the aesthetic experience in several key ways. The study finds (...) that neuroplasticity plays a role in the evolution of an individual’s perception and appreciation of beauty, as it facilitates adjustments in perception, attention, emotion, and cross-perceptual integration based on individual experiences. These findings provide a theoretical basis for deepening the perception and appreciation of beauty and insights to better understand and advance the aesthetic experience provided by art, music and literature. Future research will explore how to maximise the use of neuroplasticity to enhance the quality and depth of the aesthetic experience, advance the field of aesthetic psychology and art research and further enrich and satisfy individuals’ perception and experience of beauty. (shrink)

Focusing on the domain of self-compassion, this study explored the promotion mechanism of online learning behavioral engagement of international students in China under COVID-19. Positive emotion and self-improvement motivation were selected as mediators. Participants were 606 international students from 8 countries who were studying online in their own countries due to the international travel restriction of COVID-19. Results showed positive emotion and self-improvement motivation completely mediated self-compassionate mindfulness and OLBE of international students. Positive emotion and self-improvement partially mediated SCM and (...) OLBE of international students respectively. Students with higher SCM engage with online learning more in that they possess more positive emotion and self-improvement motivation. This study suggested that SCM may facilitate OLBE via positive emotion and effective self-improvement motivation. (shrink)

The principle of differential marginality (Casajus in Theory and Decis 71(2):163-–174) for cooperative games is a very appealing property that requires equal productivity differentials to translate into equal payoff differentials. In this paper we apply this property to axiomatic characterizations of values. We show that differential marginality implies additivity and symmetry under certain conditions. Based on this result, we propose new characterizations of the equal division and the equal surplus division values. Finally, we characterize two classes of convex combinations of (...) values, i.e., α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-egalitarian Shapley values and α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-equal surplus division values, by employing differential marginality and establishing the uniqueness of these values on inessential games. (shrink)

With the advancement of China’s economic transformation, the impact of economic policy uncertainty on family firms has become increasingly significant. The “familism” of family firms makes them more motivated to maintain family harmony, pursue innovative activities, and the long-term development of enterprises when faced with economic policy uncertainty. In this paper, we employed the data of listed Chinese family firms from 2010 to 2018 to analyze the impact of economic policy uncertainty on family business innovation activities, analyze the inherent characteristics (...) of family firm innovation, and find the path that enables the innovative activities of family firms and provides a valuable experience for the innovation of private enterprises in economic policy uncertainty. We provide evidence that economic policy uncertainty positively relates to family firm innovation. Moreover, the relationship is affected by factors such as directors’ executive background and access to state-owned equity. Further analysis indicates that economic policy uncertainty can promote family firms’ innovation activities by improving their risk-taking, internal capital market circulation, and reducing political connections. (shrink)

This article puts forward a novel class of Bézier smooth semi-supervised support vector machines(BS4VMs) for classification. As is well known, semi-supervised support vector machine is introduced for dealing with quantities of unlabeled data in the real world. Labeled data is utilized to train the algorithm and then adapting it to classify the unlabeled data. However, the objective semi-supervised function is not differentiable globally. It is required to endure heavy burden in solving two quadratic programming problems with inversion matrix operation. To (...) solve this problem, the interpolation Bézier functions for replacing the non-smooth term have been investigated. Firstly, the development of the novel BS4VMs classifier is introduced. Then, the non-linear model and convergence analysis are presented. To show how the BS4VMs can be practically implemented, experiments on synthetic and real data sets are offered. The theoretical analysis and experiments comparisons clearly illustrate the BS4VMs are superior to the proposed methods in both cross-validation classification accuracy and calculating time. (shrink)

The rapid development of Internet technology has facilitated the dissemination of information that can threaten national security and public health, and effectively controlling the process of public opinion communication is an important topic in contemporary social network research. This paper establishes an official information-controlled public opinion propagation model based on the delay, latency, and conversion of public opinion communication under the control of official information. According to the influence and importance of the network nodes, we theoretically derive the attitude conversion (...) probability of the nodes, making the model more in line with the actual situation. Through actual cases, we analyzed the important influence of official information on the public opinion communication process and provided a theoretical basis for the government and relevant departments to supervise and correctly guide the public opinion network, which has certain practical significance. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 in China, people have been exposed to a flood of media news related to the pandemic every day. Studies have shown that media news about public crisis events have a significant impact on individuals' depression. However, how and when the duration of attention to pandemic news predicts depression still remains an open question. This study established a moderated mediating model to investigate the relationship between the duration of attention to pandemic news and depression, (...) the mediating effect of risk perception, and the moderating effect of future time perspective on the relationship. In early February 2020, 701 individuals from 29 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across China were asked to self-report their duration of attention to pandemic news, level of depression, risk perception, and future time perspective during the COVID-19 outbreak. Results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the duration of attention to news on COVID-19 and depression; risk perception mediates the association between the duration of attention to pandemic news and depression; and future time perspective plays a moderating role between risk perception and depression. The findings of the present study provide theoretical implications and practically throw some light on alleviating the public's depression during pandemic periods. We highlight that the individual's hope for a better future, focusing on positive news, and time perspective balance during an epidemic disease are also beneficial to promoting positive emotion and reducing depression. (shrink)

Because academic entrepreneurship is an innovation driving force in China’s economy, teachers are key knowledge creators in the process of entrepreneurship. Therefore, it is particularly important to give attention to the individual psychological mechanism factors at play in the process of teachers in higher education academic entrepreneurship. The purpose of this study is to identify individual psychological capital and role conflict issues among university teachers in China. To accomplish this aim, we investigated the emergence of positive academic entrepreneurial intents, continued (...) through the process of academic entrepreneurship, and clarified the impact of psychological capital and role conflict on entrepreneurial intent. Based on the theory of planned behavior, we constructed a research model from the perspective of entrepreneurial intent prior to entrepreneurial action. We established a cohort of teachers in 17 higher education institutions in southern China, with psychological capital and role conflict as the prior independent variables and the teachers’ academic entrepreneurial intent as the dependent variable. Using quantitative analysis, SPSS 22.0, and AMOS 23.0, we conducted reliability and validity tests, correlation analysis, and structural equation models on the collected data. We reached the following conclusions: psychological capital has a positive effect on attitudes toward academic entrepreneurship; psychological capital has a positive effect on perceived behavioral control; role conflict has a negative effect on perceived behavioral control; academic entrepreneurial attitudes have a positive effect on academic entrepreneurial intent; perceived behavioral control has a positive effect on academic entrepreneurial intent; subjective norms have a positive effect on academic entrepreneurial intent. We also provide some suggestions about academic entrepreneurship for university administrators. (shrink)

It has been contended that ostracism is prevalent in the workplace, and there has been increasing research interest in its potential effects. This paper extends the theoretical framework of workplace ostracism by linking it with affective commitment and intention to leave from the perspective of job embeddedness. Using time-lagged data from China, we apply job embeddedness theory to confirm that workplace ostracism decreases the cultivation of job embeddedness, which in turn undermines affective commitment and induces intention to leave. We also (...) find that intrinsic work motivation strengthens the detrimental effects of workplace ostracism on job embeddedness such that the negative relationship is stronger when intrinsic motivation is high rather than low. We further discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and offer future research directions. (shrink)

Nowadays, depression is the world’s major health concern and economic burden worldwide. However, due to the limitations of current methods for depression diagnosis, a pervasive and objective approach is essential. In the present study, a psychophysiological database, containing 213 subjects, was constructed. The electroencephalogram signals of all participants under resting state and sound stimulation were collected using a pervasive prefrontal-lobe three-electrode EEG system at Fp1, Fp2, and Fpz electrode sites. After denoising using the Finite Impulse Response filter combining the Kalman (...) derivation formula, Discrete Wavelet Transformation, and an Adaptive Predictor Filter, a total of 270 linear and nonlinear features were extracted. Then, the minimal-redundancy-maximal-relevance feature selection technique reduced the dimensionality of the feature space. Four classification methods distinguished the depressed participants from normal controls. The classifiers’ performances were evaluated using 10-fold cross-validation. The results showed thatK-Nearest Neighbor had the highest accuracy of 79.27%. The result also suggested that the absolute power of the theta wave might be a valid characteristic for discriminating depression. This study proves the feasibility of a pervasive three-electrode EEG acquisition system for depression diagnosis. (shrink)

This study introduces the self-construction methods of consumers and the tendency characteristics of experiential purchase to study the effects of physical purchase and experiential purchase on wellbeing. The dependent self-builders obtain higher happiness from experiential purchase; however, the independent self-builders get higher happiness from physical purchase. Furthermore, consumers with a high purchase experience get higher happiness from experiential purchase. Consumers with high material consumption tendency get significantly higher happiness than physical purchase from experiential purchase. Consumers with high materialism tendency gain (...) higher happiness in experiential purchase, which is in line with the expectations of self-construction and consumption theories. This study provides the first evidence for the impact of self-construction methods on wellbeing with different consumption choices. (shrink)

BackgroundThe prognosis of patients undergoing lung cancer treatment might be influenced by mental health status. Resilience is one of the important predictors to reflect the mental health status. It has been shown that patients with higher levels of social support, self-care self-efficacy, and positive coping have greater resilience. This study aimed to determine the mediating role of self-efficacy and positive coping in the relationship between social support and psychological resilience in patients with lung cancer.MethodThis is a cross-sectional study that was (...) conducted in in the oncology departments and thoracic surgical wards of four tertiary hospitals in Hunan Province, China, between November 2016 and November 2017. Three hundred and three patients who were undergoing treatment for lung cancer volunteered their participation in the study. Participants completed questionnaires, including the Chinese version of the Perceived Social Support Seale Scale, the Chinese version of Strategies Used by People to Promote Health Scale, and the Chinese version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale.ResultsMediation analysis indicated that self-care self-efficacy and social support partially mediate the effect of social support on resilience. Direct paths from social support to self-efficacy, self-efficacy to positive coping, positive coping to psychological resilience, self-efficacy to psychological resilience, and social support to psychological resilience were significant. The indirect paths from social support to self-efficacy and self-efficacy to psychological resilience were also significant. The chain mediation from social support to self-efficacy, self-efficacy to positive coping, and positive coping to resilience were significant.ConclusionSelf-efficacy and positive coping play an important role in the relationship between social support and resilience in patients receiving cancer treatment. Social support not only directly influenced psychological resilience but also indirectly influenced psychological resilience through self-efficacy and positive coping. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore whether the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas of China. The results suggest that the usage of credit cards will be affected by the behavior of other farmers; namely, the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas. We also verify that women, older, and low-academic farmers show stronger peer effects. The results emphasize that, compared with the mass farmers and vulnerable farmers, the usage of elite farmers is more (...) likely to affect the same behaviors of other farmers. Our study contributes to prior literature by giving empirical insights into the consequences of peer effects on the credit card usage of farmers, which conduces to a better understanding of the financial decision-making of farmers. The research may provide a practical implication for the optimal design of policy interventions. On the one hand, banks and other financial institutions can promote innovative financial products in rural areas with the help of peer effects; on the other hand, regulators can regulate farmers’ wrong financial behaviors by the social multiplier of peer effects to reduce systemic risks in rural finance. (shrink)

The small- and medium-sized tourism and hospitality enterprises are the main forms of enterprises in Macao. This study put forward a new framework of survival and sustainable development from the perspective of competitive advantage and regional soft environment, which significantly holds theoretical and practical research value. The study obtained cross-sectional data of 317 small- and medium-sized tourism and hospitality enterprises in Macao through a large-scale questionnaire survey. This article used exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to test the reliability (...) and validity of each factor system and its measurement scale. The variance analysis is used to judge the differences between the elements. The regression analysis is used to verify the hypothesis of a causal relationship between factors. The structural equation analysis is used to fit the model and make necessary amendments. The results reveal that the government service environment has a significant positive impact on the ability of an entrepreneur. In addition, the regional soft environment significantly impacts the competitive advantage of small- and medium-sized tourism and hospitality enterprises in Macao. Contrary, the impact of laws of Macao on the acquisition of financial resources and the promotion of entrepreneur ability and innovation ability is found insignificant. In conclusion, the results showed that market of Macao lacks venture investors where enterprises cannot obtain funds through angel financing or risk financing. (shrink)

English as a verb-medial language has a short-before-long preference, whereas Korean and Japanese as verb-final languages show a long-before-short preference. In second language research, little is known regarding how L1 processing strategies affect the ultimate attainment of target structures. Existing work has shown that native speakers of Chinese strongly prefer to utter demonstrative-classifier phrases first in subject-extracted relatives and DCLs second in object-extracted relatives. But it remains unknown whether L2 learners with typologically different language backgrounds are able to acquire native-like (...) strategies, and how they deviate from native speakers or even among themselves. Using a phrase-assembly task, we investigated advanced L2-Chinese learners whose L1s were English, Korean, and Japanese, because English lacks individual classifiers and has postnominal relative clause, whereas Korean and Japanese have individual classifiers and prenominal RCs. Results showed that the English and Korean groups deviated from the native controls’ asymmetric pattern, but the Japanese group approximated native-like performance. Furthermore, compared to the English group, the Korean and Japanese groups favored the DCL-second configuration in SRs and ORs. No differences were found between the Korean and Japanese groups. Overall, our findings suggest that L1 processing strategies play an overarching role in L2 acquisition of asymmetric positioning of DCLs in Chinese RCs. (shrink)

New types of artificial intelligence products are gradually transferring to voice interaction modes with the demand for intelligent products expanding from communication to recognizing users' emotions and instantaneous feedback. At present, affective acoustic models are constructed through deep learning and abstracted into a mathematical model, making computers learn from data and equipping them with prediction abilities. Although this method can result in accurate predictions, it has a limitation in that it lacks explanatory capability; there is an urgent need for an (...) empirical study of the connection between acoustic features and psychology as the theoretical basis for the adjustment of model parameters. Accordingly, this study focuses on exploring the differences between seven major “acoustic features” and their physical characteristics during voice interaction with the recognition and expression of “gender” and “emotional states of the pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model.” In this study, 31 females and 31 males aged between 21 and 60 were invited using the stratified random sampling method for the audio recording of different emotions. Subsequently, parameter values of acoustic features were extracted using Praat voice software. Finally, parameter values were analyzed using a Two-way ANOVA, mixed-design analysis in SPSS software. Results show that gender and emotional states of the PAD model vary among seven major acoustic features. Moreover, their difference values and rankings also vary. The research conclusions lay a theoretical foundation for AI emotional voice interaction and solve deep learning's current dilemma in emotional recognition and parameter optimization of the emotional synthesis model due to the lack of explanatory power. (shrink)

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of urban public transportation capacity, citizens’ travel has become more and more convenient, but there are still some potential problems, such as morning and evening peak congestion, imbalance between the supply and demand of vehicles and passenger flow, emergencies, and social local passenger flow surged due to special circumstances such as activities and inclement weather. If you want to properly guide the local passenger flow and make a reasonable deployment of operating buses, it (...) is necessary to grasp the changing law of public transportation short-term passenger flow. This paper builds a short-term passenger flow prediction model for urban public transportation based on the idea of integrated learning. The goal is to use the integrated model to accurately predict the short-term passenger flow of urban public transportation, using Multivariable Linear Regression, K-Nearest Neighbor, eXtreme Gradient Boosting, and Gated Recurrent Unit as the four seed models, and then use regression algorithm to integrate the model and predict the passenger flow, station boarding and landing, and cross-sectional passenger flow data of the typical representative line 428 in the “Huitian Area” of Beijing from January 1, 2020, to May 31, 2020. Finally, the prediction results of the submodels are compared with those of the integrated model to verify the superiority of the integrated model. The research results of this paper can enrich the short-term passenger flow forecasting system of urban public transportation and provide effective data support and scientific basis for the passenger flow, vehicle management, and dispatch of urban public transportation. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship plays a significant role in promoting the social and economic development of a country. At present, entrepreneurship education is widely carried out in universities and colleges in order to improve students’ entrepreneurial ability, and then to provide support for the formation of a comprehensive entrepreneurial situation. As entrepreneurship education has gradually become a hot topic of teaching for innovation and entrepreneurship education of international students, studies on the influencing mechanism of entrepreneurship education of international students in relation to their (...) entrepreneurial behavior are conducive to providing theoretical basis and empirical evidence for international students’ entrepreneurship education, so as to pertinently guide international students’ innovation and entrepreneurship practice. This study aims to explore the influence of entrepreneurship education, government support for entrepreneurship, global competence, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention on the entrepreneurial behavior of international students in the Republic of Korea. It summarized and drew on the results of the existing literature research. According to the contents and points of research, this study takes the international students studying in Korea as the sample and uses statistical analysis software, SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 24.0, to establish a structural equation model to conduct empirical study on the influencing mechanism of entrepreneurial behavior of international students in Korea, so as to better understand the influence of entrepreneurship education in Korean universities and colleges on entrepreneurial behavior of international students in Korea. Based on the analysis results, this study puts forward the theoretical basis for the policies related to effective management of entrepreneurship, which will help alleviate the unemployment of young people studying in Korea and the tight labor market supply and demand. (shrink)

The virtual display of products in e-commerce brings new problems of information asymmetry, and the overload of digital information also increases the difficulty of consumers' purchasing decisions. The real-time interaction between the streamer and the consumer during live streaming e-commerce will promote consumers' understanding of the product, reduce information asymmetry, and increase consumers' purchase intention. However, why do people trust the untouchable and unfamiliar streamers from live streaming e-commerce to purchase online? To understand this phenomenon, based on the perspective of (...) the information asymmetry theory and parasocial relationship theory, this research identified how social capital affected purchase intention in live streaming e-commerce. Through a questionnaire survey of live viewers, the purchase intention model constructed by empirical testing was used. The findings showed that the streamer's professionalism, the reciprocal expectation of live streaming, and the viewer's parasocial relationship could effectively increase the viewer's purchase intention. The occurrence of a streamer's negative public events could significantly reduce the viewer's purchase intention. The scale of live streaming and the streamer's commitment had no significant impact on the viewer's purchase intention. Trust played an intermediary role between the streamer's professionalism and parasocial relationship and the viewer's purchase intention. (shrink)

From the perspective of the complex system, university ranking is a complex system that involves multiagent actors, which evolve over time. Yet, current major university rankings fail to reflect the system dynamics of the university innovation system. In this paper, we apply the complex system model in the field of the university innovation system in the context of university ranking in the countries along the Belt and Road, which is a long-term overlooked field. We introduce a new method of university (...) ranking based on the “winning and losing” relationship to measure the relative competitiveness between universities. This paper contributes to complex system research, the Belt and Road research, and the university ranking arena. (shrink)