Featured Publications of Lingnan Researchers

China, Taiwan, and international sporting events : Face-off in cross-strait relations
Author : Marcus P. CHU
Type : Book
Published Year : 2022
Publisher : Routledge Taylor & Francis
ISBN : 9780367760588
Chu explores the politics behind Taiwanese cities’ pursuit of international sporting events, and the Chinese authorities’ strategic measures in handling the relations with Taiwan since the 1990s.
It is assumed that the Chinese authorities constantly oppose Taiwanese cities’ application for, and boycott their subsequent holding of, international sporting events. Doing so would obstruct Taiwan’s capacity to raise its visibility and influence in world society, and defend the One-China principle. In fact, the role of China in Taiwan’s pursuit of international sporting events is not invariably as a fatal obstructer, but sometimes a neutral bystander or even an enthusiastic supporter. Chu examines the reasons behind this phenomenon. Reviewing the 18 Taiwanese bidding attempts and four hosting projects, he argues that China’s inconsistent response is determined by the ups and downs of Cross-Strait political ties. As a result, this book provides insight into the nexus between sports and politics in the context of China-Taiwan rivalry.

ICT in English language education : Bridging the teaching-learning divide in South Asia
Authors : Preet Pankaj HIRADHAR; Atanu BHATTACHARYA
Type : Book
Published Year : 2022
Publisher : Springer Singapore
ISBN : 9789811690044; 9789811690068
DOI : 10.1007/978-981-16-9005-1
Is the first book to explore technology-enabled English language education in South Asia.Brings together the theory and practice of using technology in language education. Offers a valuable asset for language educators in the South Asian context.

Prof. HIRADHAR, Preet Pankaj
Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of English
About the author

Political ecologies of landscape : Governing urban transformations in Penang
Author : Creighton CONNOLLY
Type : Book
Published Year : 2022
Publisher : Bristol University Press
ISBN : 9781529214154
Connolly uses ongoing urban redevelopment in Penang in Malaysia to provide stimulating new perspectives on urbanisation, governance and political ecology.
The book deploys the concept of landscape political ecology to show how Penang residents, activists, planners and other stakeholders mobilize new relationships with the urban environment, to contest controversial development projects and challenge hegemonic visions for the city’s future.
Based on six years of local research, this book provides both a dynamic account of region’s rapid reshaping and a fresh theoretical framework in which to consider issues of sustainable development, heritage and governance in urban areas worldwide.

The socioeconomics of nationalism in China : Historical and contemporary perspectives
Author : C. Simon FAN
Type : Book
Published Year : 2022
Publisher : Routledge Taylor & Francis
ISBN : 9781032030173
This book analyzes Chinse nationalism from the perspective of social economics. It posits a conceptual framework in which national status is treated as a "luxury" while material consumption is considered as a "necessity" in people’s preferences, which implies that popular nationalism tends to increase with economic development. The book extensively uses the tools of game theory and behavioral economics to analyze inter-ethnical and international conflicts in historical and contemporary China.
The author's economic approach to the subject of nationalism brings fresh and critical insights into the Chinese historical events and relations with foreign countries. For example, it helps resolve the following puzzles: Why did most Chinse support an ethnic minority, the Manchus, to be their ruler after the collapse of the Ming Dynasty? In the Boxer Rebellion, why did the Qing Dynasty declare war against more than eight foreign powers when it knew well that any of the countries could defeat China easily? What are the fundamental causes of the 1962 Sino-Indian War and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War? Who is responsible for the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade?
This book attempts to answer the questions based on the theories of social economics and rational choice, which will interest those researching on nationalism, China studies, international relations, history and political economy. This book may be interesting to the readers of international relations and, China studies.
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“It is still light outside”: Reading and translating Se, Jie and Lust, Caution as world literature
Author : Ting Yan Isaac HUI
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Jun 2022
Source : FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction = International Journal of Interpretation and Translation
In the film adaptation of Lust, Caution, the importance of sex is apparent. This is not necessarily the case in Se, Jie. In Eileen Chang’s story, there is an interconnection between sex, death, and a ring. This relationship is portrayed differently in Julia Lovell’s Lust, Caution. Viewing Eileen Chang as world literature reveals similarities and differences between Se, Jie and Lust, Caution and their different thematic emphases. This article explores how the imageries of the ring, sex, and death are interrelated. The transaction involving the ring in Chang’s text is similar to a sexual transaction. Analyzing the difference between the source and the target texts reveals how Lovell places a “heavier” emphasis on women’s bodies, suggesting the suppression women suffer in a patriarchal society. While the thematic importance of death is also present in Lust, Caution, it is brought out by the notion of foreignness and undecipherability.

A bibliometric analysis of the trends and research topics of empirical research on TPACK
Authors : Di ZOU; Xinyi HUANG; Lucas KOHNKE; Xieling CHEN; Gary CHENG; Haoran XIE
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Education and Information Technologies
DOI : 10.1007/s10639-022-10991-z
The TPACK (technological pedagogical and content knowledge) framework is an influential theoretical foundation for teaching with technology research. This analysis of 1,608 empirical research studies of TPACK identifies trends and research topics from 2000 to 2020 using structural topic modelling and bibliometrics. The results showed that academic interest in TPACK increased over the study period. The main research topics included the development and evaluation of the TPACK framework, teachers’ development of technological pedagogical content knowledge in teacher training programmes, applications of TPACK in teaching a variety of subjects (math and science, information and communication technologies, foreign languages, programming, leadership, computational thinking, engineering, medical subjects, and geography), digital literacy, online community, and motivation and belief. The results contribute to the understanding of TPACK scholarship and could help researchers and practitioners decide on practices and research directions to follow.

Prof. XIE, Haoran
Associate Professor, Department of Computing and Decision Sciences
About the author

An exploratory study of women learners’ identity and investment in learning English in the United Arab Emirates
Author : Neil HUNT
Type : Book Chapter
Published Date : Mar 2022
Source : English Language and General Studies Education in the United Arab Emirates : Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Perspectives
Publisher : Springer Singapore
ISBN : 9789811688874
DOI : 10.1007/978-981-16-8888-1_17
The United Arab Emirates' economic growth ensures that education to tertiary level is free to all Emirati nationals. The influx of expatriate workers with Dubai's emergence as a tourist destination and centre for global trade has contributed to the positioning of English as a lingua franca and marginalisation of Arabic. This study examines the influences and attitudes towards English in female Emirati students studying on a Bachelor of Education. Data was collected through student journals, which was then analysed into thematically. Comments were drawn from each theme to construct questions which were then presented to focus groups. Results point to complex factors influencing participants' identities and reasons for investment in English. Factors that appear to be contradictory can be reconciled by viewing them as being founded on participants' Islamic faith, leading to investment in English on participants' own terms, and students' appropriation of English for their own purposes.

Prof. HUNT, Neil David
Associate Head and Asst Professor of Teaching, Centre for English and Additional Languages
About the author

Choice architecture effects on indulgent consumption: Evidence from combinations of nudges at an ice-cream store
Authors : Ga-Eun, Grace OH; Ralf VAN DER LANS; Anirban MUKHOPADHYAY
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Journal of the Association for Consumer Research
DOI : 10.1086/720454
In response to growing interest in healthy diets, various choice architecture interventions (e.g. assortment organization, traffic-light labeling) have been introduced to "nudge" consumers to healthier. In two long-running field experiments at an ice-cream store, we examined how combinations of choice architecture interventions might work together to influence purchase decisions of quantity and choice, and further intake of calories and saturated fat. Consistent with prior literature linking mental representations of food healthiness with lateral orientations, we find that displaying "virtue" flavors to customers' left reduces calories and saturated fat purchased, more so if virtue flavors are matched with green labels. These reductions are caused by a reduced purchase quantity and an increased choice likelihood of virtue options. The investigation of combinations of different choice architecture tools on purchase decisions and consumption consequences provides useful implications for researchers and practitioners.

Dr. OH, Ga-eun Grace
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Marketing and International Business
About the author

Confronting global infrastructural capitalism: The triple logic of the 'vanguard' and its inevitable spatial and class contradictions in China's high-speed rail program
Authors : Ngai PUN; Peier CHEN
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Cultural Studies
DOI : 10.1080/09502386.2022.2056219
We take infrastructure as a ‘keyword’ in foregrounding the production and the reproduction of contemporary capitalism as well as its complexities and contradictions. To tease out the capitalist dynamics of the contemporary moment as infrastructural capitalism, this paper moves beyond a dichotomous constellation of the logic of capital and the territorial logic of power, to argue how a triple logic- capital, power, and culture informs the cultural politics, attempting to simultaneously resolve the economic crisis and glorify China’s fast-speed capitalism. As the vanguard of Chinese infrastructural politics, the high-speed rail spearheads the Chinese spatial economic system towards one that is not an alternative to capitalism but, at best, a variegated form of moving capitalism, which we call infrastructural capitalism. Illuminating the political role of the infrastructural projects in creating invisible social contradictions, this article highlights a wide array of affected working-class masses who take individual and collective actions that result in the reversion of ‘the vanguard’, dissolving the condensation of the materiality of infrastructural capitalism into the global assemblage of unpredictable but inescapable contradictions driving China into global imperial rivalries and class conflicts.

Prof. PUN, Ngai
Director, Centre for Cultural Research and Development
Head and Chair Professor of Cultural Studies, Department of Cultural Studies
About the author
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Contractual controls and pragmatic professionalism: A qualitative study on contracting social services in China
Authors : Jie LEI; Tian CAI; Chak Kwan CHAN
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Critical Social Policy
DOI : 10.1177/02610183221089009
This study used the contracting projects of a district branch of the Women's Federation in Guangzhou as case examples to demonstrate both the Chinese state's contractual controls over social work organisations (SWOs) and the pragmatic response strategies of SWOs and professionals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seventeen participants, including local officials of the Women's Federation and social workers from contracted SWOs. It was found that with the ultimate goal of consolidating the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China, the Women's Federation's dual role in politics and service provision had led to normative, managerial, technical and relational controls over SWOs. SWOs and professionals were generally submissive to these controls, but they employed diverse coping strategies, including compliance, bargaining, transformation and investment in personal relationships. The interactions within the contractual relationship created a pragmatic professionalism that embraced dominant political ideologies, employed de-politicising techniques, and personally depended on individual officials.

Prof. CHAN, Chak Kwan Dickson
Director and Research Professor, Asia-Pacific Institute of Ageing Studies
About the author

Does an employee-experienced crisis help or hinder creativity? An integration of threat-rigidity and implicit theories
Authors : Inseong JEONG; Yaping GONG; Bijuan ZHONG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Journal of Management
DOI : 10.1177/01492063221082537
Although a crisis provides room for creativity, organizations often suffer from creativity deficits in such a situation. Indeed, threat-rigidity theory suggests that an employee-experienced crisis may hinder employee creativity. An interesting but unresolved question is thus, “When does an employee-experienced crisis stifle or stimulate creativity, and how?” Embedding our study in a person-in-situation creativity research stream, we introduce employee-experienced crisis, defined as the impact an employee experiences from crisis event(s) in a team, and examine its interaction with implicit theories (i.e., a fixed vs. a growth mindset) in employee creativity. We hypothesize that an employee-experienced crisis stifles employee creativity via increased job anxiety when the individual possesses a strong fixed mindset. In contrast, the same phenomenon stimulates creativity via enhanced creative process engagement when the individual has a strong growth mindset. In Study 1, we collected multisource, time-lagged field data from 506 employees working in 107 research and development (R&D) teams. The results supported our hypotheses. To further explore how the moderating effects of mindsets occur, we conducted Study 2, another multisource, time-lagged field study of 260 employees in 40 R&D teams. We found that the moderating effects of implicit theories are mediated by goal orientations (i.e., implicit theories are more distal moderators, and goal orientations are more proximal moderators). Overall, we provide an integrative account of when and how an employee-experienced crisis hinders or helps employee creativity.

Her body belongs to her nation? A feminist reading of recent Chinese and American female spy films
Authors : Kimburley Wing Yee CHOI; Hong ZENG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Feminist Media Studies
DOI : 10.1080/14680777.2022.2061031
Since the 2000s there has been a rise in female spies depicted in both Hollywood and Chinese cinema. This article employs Kaplan’s familial model and Braidotti’s discussion of body to analyze the problematic relation between women and nation in three recent female-led sexpionage spy films—Red Sparrow (2018), The Message (2009) and The Silent War (2012). Through situating these movies in the context of growing nationalism and political tension (i.e. “Cold War 2.0”) and post-feminist media texts emphasizing women’s liberated sexuality, we examine how Red Sparrow promotes American nationalism via advocating certain women’s bodily rights, whereas The Message and The Silent War promote Chinese nationalism by prioritizing women as state subjects rather than sexualized individuals. In these two Chinese films, the transcendence of the sexualized Chinese female spy-protagonist into revolutionary leader and symbolic mother figure is only realized through death by sexual and physical abuse. Although Red Sparrow asserts women’s sexual rights and challenges the notion of nation-as-family, the bodily rights it advocates operate within an individualist framework detached from the collective actions for women’s emancipation and empowerment. Red Sparrow also implicitly supports the virtuous heterosexual conjugal relationship, which reinforces heterosexism and a decidedly state-centric hierarchical and political ordering.

Intra-industry information transfer in emerging markets: Evidence from China
Authors : Keqi TAM; Beibei LIU; Sonia WONG; Rita YIP
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Journal of Banking and Finance
DOI : 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2022.106518
This study examines intra-industry information transfer in the emerging market of China, where financial and market institutions are underdeveloped and the majority of investors are inexperienced individual investors. In an analysis of the management earnings forecasts of publicly listed firms, we find that investors in China transfer information between peer firms, with a stronger transfer when earnings forecasts are more accurate and credible, and when the investors of non-announcing firms are more sophisticated. We also find that the non–market-based resource allocation and entry restrictions in China discourage intra-industry information transfer between firms. Overall, our results suggest that intra-industry information transfer in China is constrained by institutional barriers. Reforms aimed at removing these barriers can help enhance these markets’ stock price efficiency. Our results provide policy implications to other emerging markets with institutional environments similar to China.

Jeep girls and American GIs: Gendered nationalism in post–World War II China
Author : Chunmei DU
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2022
Source : The Journal of Asian Studies
DOI : 10.1017/S002191182100228X
Over a hundred thousand US servicemen were stationed in post–World War II China, resulting in the largest grassroots interactions in Sino-US history. Reexamining this unprecedented encounter in the context of American global military empire, this article investigates the sociocultural tensions caused by GIs’ sexual relations with Chinese women between 1945 and 1949. While conservatives maligned “Jeep girls” out of racial and sexual anxieties, liberals and self-identified Jeep girls invoked the language of modernity and patriotism. However, in the wake of the Peking Rape incident in 1946, the once diverse debate quickly ended as nationwide protests raged against American imperialism. In contrast with previous studies highlighting how Communist propaganda led to new anti-American sentiments, this research, by uncovering the complexities of Chinese women's experiences and their stories—which have been muffled or filtered through patriarchal agendas—foregrounds the key role of gendered nationalism in Sino-US relations.

Metaphysical nihilism and modal logic
Author : Ethan BRAUER
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Feb 2022
Source : Philosophical Studies
DOI : 10.1007/s11098-022-01793-7
In this paper I argue, that if it is metaphysically possible for it to have been the case that nothing existed, then it follows that the right modal logic cannot extend D, ruling out popular modal logics S4 and S5. I provisionally defend the claim that it is possible for nothing to have existed. I then consider the various ways of resisting the conclusion that the right modal logic is weaker than D.

Quantitative multidimensional phenotypes improve genetic analysis of laterality traits
Authors : Judith SCHMITZ; Mo ZHENG; Kelvin F. H. LUI; Catherine MCBRIDE; Connie S.-H. HO; Silvia PARACCHINI
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Feb 2022
Source : Translational Psychiatry
DOI : 10.1038/s41398-022-01834-z
Handedness is the most commonly investigated lateralised phenotype and is usually measured as a binary left/right category. Its links with psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders prompted studies aimed at understanding the underlying genetics, while other measures and side preferences have been less studied. We investigated the heritability of hand, as well as foot, and eye preference by assessing parental effects (n ≤ 5028 family trios) and SNP-based heritability (SNP-h2, n ≤ 5931 children) in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). An independent twin cohort from Hong Kong (n = 358) was used to replicate results from structural equation modelling (SEM). Parental left-side preference increased the chance of an individual to be left-sided for the same trait, with stronger maternal than paternal effects for footedness. By regressing out the effects of sex, age, and ancestry, we transformed laterality categories into quantitative measures. The SNP-h2 for quantitative handedness and footedness was 0.21 and 0.23, respectively, which is higher than the SNP-h2 reported in larger genetic studies using binary handedness measures. The heritability of the quantitative measure of handedness increased (0.45) compared to a binary measure for writing hand (0.27) in the Hong Kong twins. Genomic and behavioural SEM identified a shared genetic factor contributing to handedness, footedness, and eyedness, but no independent effects on individual phenotypes. Our analysis demonstrates how quantitative multidimensional laterality phenotypes are better suited to capture the underlying genetics than binary traits.

Prof. LUI, Fai Hong
Research Assistant Professor, Wofoo Joseph Lee Consulting and Counselling Psychology Research Centre
About the author

Social experiential learning for zero waste education in a liberal arts university
Authors : Paulina WONG; Wai Chung Gary WONG
Type : Book Chapter
Published Year : 2022
Source : Digital Communication and Learning: Changes and Challenges
Publisher : Springer
ISBN : 9789811683282; 9789811683312
DOI : 10.1007/978-981-16-8329-9_5
Critical thinking and problem-solving are recognized as key twenty-first century skills, but their development requires some fundamental shifts in pedagogy. Rapid technological advancements have allowed widespread use of communication tools and platforms, such as social networks, allowing users across the globe to exchange knowledge. Such collective sharing leads to spontaneous peer-to-peer collaboration which is crucial for sustainable social development and addressing societal challenges. However, educational pedagogies have not adapted to maximize the potential of such network effects for social learning, as prior studies examining the benefits of these technologies for learning show limited student engagement and distraction. To examine these findings further, in the present study, semester-long video logging activity related to zero-waste of 32 students attending a liberal arts university in Hong Kong was analyzed. Participants uploaded videos using a purpose-built mobile application Soqqle, which is similar to commonly used social media platforms, as it allows content sharing, as well as commenting on others’ contributions. At the end of the semester, time spent by students viewing peer videos were compared to scores it received from an independent rater. A simple linear regression shows that students who viewed their peers’ contributions for longer periods scored higher, with an average increase of 12.3% based on average minutes viewed per student. The R2 (0.276) and existence of heteroscedasticity suggest that more unknown factors are at play. Nonetheless, these results point to the benefits of learning from others, indicating that educational platforms can help students improve self-regulation, thus enhancing their critical thinking and collaboration skills, which are essential for twenty-first-century pedagogy.

Prof. WONG, Wai Chung Gary
Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Economics
About the author
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The broken promise of human capital theory: Social embeddedness, graduate entrepreneurs and youth employment in China
Authors : Yuyang KANG; Ka Ho MOK
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Critical Sociology
DOI : 10.1177/08969205221088894
Human capital theory has been one of the most influential theories in national policymaking since the 1980s. The major assertion is that individuals can attain better employment outcomes through investing in degrees and credentials. Following the economic reforms of the late 1970s, Chinese families have reverted to the tradition of investing in the education of their children, hoping that the human capital accumulated through higher education will translate into economic capital, enhancing their children’s upward social mobility. However, the rapid expansion of Chinese higher education since 1999 has caused an educational inflation, adversely affecting graduate employment. This article critically examines China’s response to global capitalism through bureaucratic adjustment of higher education expansion in managing the market transition and social reproduction of labour challenges within a relatively short historic period of ‘compressed development’. Without effective articulation between higher education expansion and the changing labour needs during the market transition, the rush to higher education expansion has created different forms of social and economic contradictions. More specifically, this article argues that social embeddedness including parental influence, institutional policies, and social capital are important factors to be considered in explaining the relationship between education and work in the Chinese context.

Prof. MOK, Ka Ho Joshua
Vice-President, Office of the President
Supervisor of Director, Lingnan Institute of Further Education
Co-Director, Institute of Policy Studies
Dean, School of Graduate Studies
Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Comparative Policy, Department of Sociology and Social Policy
About the author

Dr. KANG, Yuyang
Research Fellow, School of Graduate Studies
Research Fellow, Institute of Policy Studies
About the author

The impact of recommender systems and pricing strategies on brand competition and consumer search
Authors : CHi ZHOU; Mingming LENG; Zhibing LIU; Xin CUI; Jing YU
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2022
Source : Electronic Commerce Research and Applications
DOI : 10.1016/j.elerap.2022.101144
As a type of internet and business intelligence technology, recommender systems have been widely adopted by store brands to improve brand competition and to affect consumers’ search behaviors in the e-commerce market. This paper studies the effects of recommender systems and pricing strategies on the competition between store brands and national brands and on consumers’ search behaviors. We develop game models without and with recommender systems and analyze the equilibrium solutions under uniform pricing and differential pricing strategies. The results show that the brand-preference consumers’ market share will affect the strategy choice of recommendation system and differential pricing for the store brand. When the store brand is recommended, the store brand should adopt the differential pricing strategy and the price of the store brand will exceed that of the national brand. Furthermore, we also find that when the brand-preference consumers’ market share is low and the reservation price difference is high, the store brand can gain the competitive advantage by improving recommendation strength. In addition, a recommender system attracts consumers by converting their search costs into the recommendation costs of the system.

Prof. LENG, Mingming
Dean, Office of the Faculty of Business
Acting Director, Institute of Insurance and Risk Management
Professor, Department of Computing and Decision Sciences
About the author

The market distortion effects of mortgage tightening and transaction taxes: Evidence from Hong Kong residential resale market
Authors : Lok Sang HO; Mengna HU; Xiangdong WEI; Gary Wai Chung WONG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Pacific Economic Review
DOI : 10.1111/1468-0106.12389
By using transaction-level data, we study if two popular policies intended to cool an overheated housing market would serve their intended purposes. We found both mortgage tightening and Special Stamp Duties (SSD) actually led to higher starter home prices in Hong Kong. Mortgage tightening shifted the demand for bigger homes to that for smaller ones. The SSD that applies to resales within a specified period of the original purchase lowered turnover across the housing market. The decline in turnover is, as expected, sharpest for small flats, implying a dramatic shrinkage in second-hand supply of such homes, driving their prices up. We also found transactions bunching as many homes are held till the SSD is no longer applicable, indicating lock-in effects. Relative to those that are not subject to the SSD, the prices of properties subject to the levy are found to be lower by 6.8%.

Prof. HO, Lok Sang
Director and Research Professor, Pan Sutong Shanghai-Hong Kong Economic Policy Research Institute
Director and Research Professor, China Economic Research Programme
About the author

Prof. WEI, Xiangdong
Honorary Director, Pan Sutong Shanghai-Hong Kong Economic Policy Research Institute
Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics
About the author

Prof. WONG, Wai Chung Gary
Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Economics
About the author

The resilience divide among older adults under uncertainty : A positive sociological study of life satisfaction during the COVID-19 crisis
Author : Satoshi ARAKI
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Journal of Applied Gerontology
DOI : 10.1177/07334648221089284
While recent research has detected older adults’ resilience during the global pandemic, its unequal distribution is inadequately examined. Using the panel survey data in Japan (N = 3,725), this positive sociological study investigated who were more/less resilient under COVID-19, with attention to the heterogeneity in life satisfaction (LS). It was first confirmed that older adults’ LS had substantially improved during the pandemic, indicating their resilience on average. However, the multinomial logistic regression and the fixed effects model revealed that the shift in LS was associated with age, gender, income, family/social relationships, and heath in a nuanced way. This suggests, while older adults who have access to economic, social, and health-related resources can maintain/enhance their LS under the global crisis, those without such assets face the risk of being penalized. In these uncertain times, it is therefore imperative to shed light on the resilience divide among older adults alongside their average strength.

Prof. ARAKI, Satoshi
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Policy
About the author

Well-being and morality in Chinese culture
Author : Vivian Miu-Chi LUN
Type : Book Chapter
Published Year : 2022
Source : The Routledge International Handbook of Morality, Cognition, and Emotion in China
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN : 9781032114163
DOI : 10.4324/9781003281566-19
Well-being is about the extent to which a person lives a good life. To understand well-being, different theories have been developed and abundant research has been conducted to examine what a "good life" is now how to live it. In this paper, the literature relevant to the understanding of well-being in Chinese culture will be reviewed. Specifically, the importance of social relations in Chinese well-being will be highlighted. Building on this emphasis on interpersonal relationships, the central role of harmony in understanding Chinese well-being will also be examined with reference to the individual-centered conceptualization of well-being in the West. The implications of this relational approach of well-being to our understanding of morality in contemporary Chinese culture will be discussed.

Prof. LUN, Miu Chi Vivian
Associate Professor, Department of Applied Psychology
Associate Programme Director of the Bachelor of Social Sciences (Honours) Business Psychology Programme, Department of Applied Psychology
About the author

When doing good for society is good for shareholders : Importance of alignment between strategy and CSR performance
Authors : Rajiv D. BANKER; Xinjie MA; Carol POMARE; Yue ZHANG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Apr 2022
Source : Review of Accounting Studies
DOI : 10.1007/s11142-021-09664-y
We investigate the association between firms’ strategy and their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and whether the alignment between strategy and CSR activities affects firms’ financial performance. We describe firms’ strategies as innovation differentiation, marketing differentiation, and cost leadership Miller, (1986). We expect a higher benefit from CSR for firms that rely more on innovation differentiation and a lower benefit for firms that rely more on marketing differentiation and cost leadership. We measure firms’ strategy through a textual analysis of 10-K filings and collect CSR data from KLD Ratings. We find that innovation differentiation strategy is positively associated with CSR performance, while cost leadership (marketing differentiation) is negatively (insignificantly) associated with CSR performance. Moreover, we find that innovating differentiators with higher CSR performance achieve higher financial performance. Finally, we provide additional evidence that information asymmetry and financial constraints moderate the alignment between firms’ strategy and CSR performance.