Dingtao Zhao

Timing crisis information release via television

When and how often to release information on television are important issues in crisis and emergency risk communication. There is a lot of crisis information, including warnings and news, to which people should have access, but most of it is not significantly urgent to interrupt the broadcasting of television programmes. Hence, the right timing for the release of crisis information should be selected based on the importance of the crisis and any associated communication requirements. Using recursive methods, this paper builds an audience coverage model of crisis information release. Based on 2007 Household Using TV (HUT) data for Hefei City, China, the optimal combination of broadcasting sequence (with frequencies between one and eight times) is obtained using the implicit enumeration method. The developed model is applicable to effective transmission of crisis information, with the aim of reducing interference with the normal television transmission process and decreasing the psychological effect on audiences. The same model can be employed for other purposes, such as news coverage and weather and road information.

Estimating the growth models of news stories on disasters

An ink jet printing apparatus responsive to an input digital image for producing a halftone image on a receiver, such as a lithographic plate, having halftone dots with each halftone dot being formed by one or more microdots in a screen dot of selectable areas, including an adjustable printhead for delivering different volumes of ink droplets which, when they contact the receiver, forming microdots of different areas according to the selected screen dot size. The apparatus delivers ink to the printhead and is responsive to a selected screen dot size and the digital image to control the printhead to form ink droplets of different volumes to produce a halftone image on the receiver.This article is focused on the changes needed in design to create positive solutions for all involved in design processes. It draws upon the rich discussion and discourse from a conference focused on positive design involving managers, designers, and IT specialists, all focused on overcoming the problem-based focus and decision paradigms to enhance all phases of the design processes to develop sustainable solutions for real issues in a changing world. Therefore, all fields using design, consciously or not, including management, Information Communication Technology (ICT), and designers as well, need to redesign their processes and first rethink their design paradigms on a meta level.

The influence of peer characteristics and technical features of a social shopping website on a consumers purchase intention

A research model based on the SOR framework was built to investigate social shopping website users purchase intention.Peer members qualities and system affordances affect consumers perceived utilitarian and social value.Both perceived utilitarian and social value of a social shopping website lead to purchase intention. This paper aims to reveal the influence of peer-member characteristics and technical features of a social shopping website (SSW) on consumers purchase intentions. Following the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this study operationalizes stimulus as website features and peers qualities, organism as experiential shopping values, and response as the purchase intention of users. The research model is empirically tested with survey data from 313 real SSW consumers. The results suggest that similarity, benevolence and expertise of peer members in the community and the websites support for recommendations positively impact shoppers perceived utilitarian value of the SSW. Moreover, users perception of peers similarity and benevolence positively affect their sense of social value of using the platform. Finally, both perceived utilitarian and social value predict individuals consumption intentions.

Environmental Issues and Policy Priorities in China: A Content Analysis of Government Documents

Not all environmental issues get the same level of policy attention because of the limited capacity of the political and administrative system to consider all issues simultaneously. This article explores the priority attached to different environmental issues in China through a content analysis of 1,564 government documents during the 1999 to 2008 period. The analysis focuses on four issues, namely pollution types, high-polluting industrial sectors, environmental policy instruments and the implementation of international environmental treaties. The empirical results provide useful insights into changing policy priorities in the area of environmental protection so as to gain a better understanding of the roles of environmental regulation in China.

Carbon pricing and electricity market reforms in China

As a large emerging economy, China is exploring to establish a carbon-pricing system to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The electricity sector which generates the greatest amount of China’s carbon dioxide emissions should be covered by such a carbon-pricing system. The review of the three main stages of China’s electricity market reforms shows that the degree of electricity marketization is relatively low, which might become an obstacle to carbon pricing. This paper develops theoretical and empirical models to analyze the impacts of carbon pricing on electricity supply under two scenarios, namely, marketization and regulation. It is concluded that the electricity market reform is a prerequisite for the development of carbon pricing. Without market-oriented reforms of electricity pricing in China, carbon pricing might lead to a shortage in electricity supply. Potential electricity market reforms to encourage market competition and promote market-oriented electricity pricing are also suggested.

Creative industries agglomeration, regional innovation and productivity growth in China

This paper falls into the broad area of economic geography and economics of creativity, and it presents an alternative approach to explain why total factor productivity (TFP) growth is different across China’s regions. It establishes an empirical model to estimate the spatial agglomeration effects of creative industries on regional TFP growth, using China’s provincial panel data during the period of 2003 to 2010. We found that the creative industries agglomeration (CIA) has significant and positive impact on regional TFP growth. The result also implies that the CIA can facilitate regional TFP growth through promoting regional innovation instead of improving regional efficiency. Therefore, we argue that policy makers should take some measures to retain and establish more creative zones.

Regional innovation environment and innovation efficiency: the Chinese case

ABSTRACT The main goal of this paper is to analyse the connotation of ‘regional innovation environment’ and explore the relationships between the regional innovation environmental components and innovation efficiency (IE). Three regional environmental factors were extracted, namely, economic infrastructure (EI), the quality and structure of innovators (QSI) and regional openness (RO). The relationships between the regional innovation environmental components and innovation efficiency present a chain structure as RO–EI–QSI–IE. Only the QSI component affects IE directly, and all of the effects are positive. Based on these results, the characteristics of Chinese regional innovation systems were analysed, and the implications on science & technology policy were discussed.

Modeling pollution control and performance in China's provinces

The paper constructs a pollution control performance (PCP) evaluation model by introducing the norm of n-dimensional space. The PCP of 30 Chinese provinces for the period of 2003-2008 is evaluated based on the model and the factors influencing Chinas pollution control are further examined. It is found that: (1) Chinas PCP has improved rapidly but there is a large regional imbalance with the PCP of Eastern China being much better than that of Central and Western China; (2) to improve the level of Chinas PCP, government policies should consider industrial structure adjustment, restricting industry entries and increased investment in pollution abatement and R&D.

Public engagement with firms on social media in China

An increasing number of companies use social media such as micro blogs to promote celebrities in Internet communities. Companies may run their official micro blogs differently, which in turn leads to different public engagements on micro blogging sites. This study takes a perspective on the adoption behaviours of micro blogs in enterprises by looking at the relationship between media frame and audience frame based on the China Fortune 500 firms in 2014. The results show that the updates, active days and followings are associated with public engagement with the corporate official micro blogs. In particular, we found information overload from information updates. The marginal utility of the public engagement decreases as number of updates increases. The results also show that the daily variance of updates has a significant influence on the audience frame.

Public reaction to information release for crisis discourse by organization: Integration of online comments

Abstract This study explores how online comments influence public reactions to organizational crisis discourses based on five scenarios depicting typical online comment patterns. Through an empirical study involving 621 participants, several key findings are obtained. First, online comments have a significant effect on post-crisis reactions involving emotions, attitudes and behavioral intentions. However, except in the case of perceived comment manipulation, public reaction patterns associated with overwhelmingly positive and non-overwhelmingly positive comments are not significantly different and are friendlier to the crisis organization than the other three patterns. Moreover, reactions associated with the pattern in which there are no online comments are quite similar to those associated with the pattern of non-overwhelmingly negative comments. Second, positive emotions enhance perceived organizational integrity, whereas negative emotions reduce this perception. Third, perceived comment manipulation has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between positive emotion and perceived organizational integrity and a positive moderating effect on the relationship between negative emotion and perceived organizational integrity. Finally, emotions and perceived organizational integrity are found to be predictors of loyalty and boycott intentions. The findings of the study extend the present knowledge on crisis communication by highlighting the impact of online comments on the post-crisis reactions of the public and also provide crisis managers with guidelines on how to deploy appropriate crisis communication strategies.