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Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The digital economy serves as a pivotal catalyst for sustainable and eco-friendly development. This study employs a suite of advanced econometric models, including the fixed effects, mediation, threshold and moderation model, to elucidate the intricate dynamics by which the digital economy influences carbon emissions through the lens of green innovation. Building on the existing research on digital economy, green technology innovation and carbon emissions, this paper takes a dual-innovation perspective and divides green technology innovation into disruptive green technology innovation and incremental green technology innovation. And from the government and the public level, it explores how social concerns affect the effect of digital economy on carbon emissions. The analysis is grounded in a comprehensive dataset encompassing a decade of provincial-level data from 2011 to 2021 across China's 30 provinces. The benchmark regression outcomes indicate the digital economy's ability to substantially cut down carbon emissions; the threshold effect and mediating effect models demonstrate that a single-threshold effect exists and that disruptive and progressive green technological innovations mediate such ability. Additional research reveals that the digital economy's impact on carbon emissions could be positively moderated by public and governmental attention. Eastern and western regions in China, as well as those with high levels of foreign investment and low levels of technological transaction activity, are more affected by the digital economy in terms of carbon emission reduction. Our conclusions offer practical recommendations for digital economy's coordinated advancement and carbon emissions mitigation, and guide local governments to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the green innovation effect of investor preference on Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2020. We observe that investors with environmental protection preferences can significantly increase enterprise green innovation. The baseline conclusions remain robust after we conduct multiple sensitivity tests, such as establishing a shift-share instrumental variable (Bartik IV), using the Heckman's two-step method, changing the regression methods, substituting the core variables, adopting the DID method, and considering investors' ownership. Our analysis shows that the green innovation effect of environmental investors is highly pronounced in companies with a high level of indebtedness and low managerial ability. We verify that environmental investors can improve the green innovation level of enterprises through two potential mechanisms, namely, easing corporate financing constraints and incentivising managers. In addition, political and public attention can strengthen the positive relationship between environmental investors and green innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyze the influence of board characteristics, ownership structure, and public attention on the disclosure of information related to climate change in the banking industry. This study uses panel data from financial reports and corporate sustainability in the banking sector. The data is processed using the Eviews application, using a sample of 348 companies from 2018 to 2021. The results show that the presence of women on the board, foreign board members, foreign ownership, and public attention all have a positive and significant effect influence. In contrast, board size and institutional ownership have a negative influence on the disclosure of climate change information by banking companies in different countries. Statistical tests also show that although the level of climate change information disclosure by banking companies is relatively good, there is still room for improvement to be in line with evolving standards. The study also looks at public attention through media coverage, as measured through Google Trends, which has the potential to impact climate change information disclosure, especially in sectors that are sensitive to the issue. Furthermore, the study conducted additional tests by categorizing the sample based on companies located in countries with high and medium rankings in the climate change performance index, as well as grouping them by region (Asia, Americas, and Europe). This research has important practical and theoretical contributions, advancing the understanding of the application of legitimacy and stakeholder theories to climate change and the factors that influence climate change disclosure strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I examine whether public attention to a natural disaster affects the likelihood of firms using external financing (only debt, only equity, or a mix of debt and equity) following the disaster. The helpful (or harmful) view of public attention predicts that increasing public attention to the disaster can help companies to use (or hinder them from using) external financing following the disaster. For this investigation, I construct two indices: (1) an index of public attention to natural disasters and (2) an index of natural disaster intensity. Consistent with the prediction of the helpful view, the likelihood of using a combination of debt and equity financing in the aftermath of a severe disaster is higher when people pay more attention to it. By contrast, when people pay less attention to severe disasters, firms are more likely to use only debt or equity financing, which confirms the harmful view. I provide evidence that the moderating effect of public attention on the relationship between the likelihood of using external financing and natural disaster intensity varies across types of natural disasters and types of online information sources (websites, online news, images, and YouTube videos). Furthermore, smaller firms that often face difficulties obtaining external financing are more likely to benefit from increased public attention to disasters when they want to use only debt financing and less likely to benefit when using equity financing. Finally, I provide evidence that the substitution of internal funding sources for external sources in the aftermath of a disaster depends on the level of public attention to the disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing exposure to heatwaves threatens public health, challenging various socioeconomic sectors in the coming decades. Prior studies mostly concentrated on the heatwaves occurring in specific regions by examining temperature durations, ignoring the fact that heatwaves typically swept across a large area. To comprehensively assess the effects of heatwaves, we jointly analyzed public attention to heatwaves using a dataset of over 10 million geo-located Weibo tweets across 321 cities in China. By considering spatial disparities, two kinds of public attention at city level, namely the number of heat-related tweets (NHTs) and the ratio of heat-related tweets (RHTs), were designed to indicate the severity and location of heatwave impacts, respectively. The heat cumulative intensity was used as a proxy for heatwaves, which exhibited more significant correlations with RHTs than NHTs. The multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model was employed to investigate the spatiotemporal variations of environment, demographic, and economic-social factors. Six city groups were clustered with MGWR coefficients that were consistent with the seven geographic subregions of China. This research provides a new perspective and methodology for public attention to heatwaves using geo-located social sensing data and highlights the need for actions to mitigate future heatwave stress in sensitive cities.

Abstract Collective attention and memory involving significant events can be quantitatively studied via social media data. Previous studies analyzed user attention to discrete events that do not change post-event, and assume universal public attention patterns. However, dynamic events with ongoing updates are common, yielding varied individual attention patterns. We explore memory of U.S. companies filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy and being mentioned on X (formerly Twitter). Unlike discrete events, Chapter 11 entails ongoing financial changes as the company typically remains operational, influencing post-event attention dynamics. We collected 248,936 X mentions for 74 companies before and after each bankruptcy. Attention surged after bankruptcy, with distinct Low and High persistence levels compared with pre-bankruptcy attention. The two tweeting patterns were modeled using biexponential models, successfully predicting (F1-score: 0.81) post-bankruptcy attention persistence. Studying bankruptcy events on social media reveals diverse attention patterns, demonstrates how pre-bankruptcy attention affects post-bankruptcy recollection, and provides insights into memory of dynamic events.

Abstract Today, advertising science is a tool that helps advertisers to design their advertising to meet the needs of the audience. In this regard, knowing and understanding the audience is one of the most important points that advertisers should pay attention to before advertising in order to better attract the audience. This study has been done with the aim of billboards and infographics analysis related to promoting preventive behaviors and vaccination against the Coronavirus disease pandemic and investigating the opinion of the general adult population of Iran. The method used in this research is the qualitative method. In this research, according to the type of data and research goals, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s discourse theory method has been used. The sample size includes 36 advertising billboards and infographics. Data collection has been done through searching the sites and websites of health networks and medical education centers in Iran, taking pictures of infographics and billboards in public places, and also receiving archive files of pictures from the public relations of health networks and medical services. The data was collected from February 19, 2020 to December 30, 2022 (the time frame of the pandemic and public vaccination program in Iran). Then, an online survey about promoting preventive behaviors and taking vaccination against the Coronavirus disease pandemic was designed in SurveyMonkey and its link was provided to the audience through virtual networks and other platforms. The assessment of validity involved experts in infection control and linguistics. The reliability of the measurement, determined through the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient, yielded a coefficient of 0.968. In this study, data analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics software, version 15.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). Finally, users’ opinions about of billboards and infographics were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results of component analysis and surveys show that visual components such as «The staring look at the spectator (Demand)», «Head-on Shot (inclusion)», «Down Shot (Creating a sense of participation for the represented person)», «Close-up (intimate/individual relationship)», «Level Shot (equality)» and «High-Angle Shot (Presenting power)» in medical advertising has had a great impact in arousing public opinion to create a positive attitude towards preventive measures and vaccination during the Coronavirus disease epidemic. The results of this research show that in visual communication, visual components play a significant role in creating and maintaining target ideologies. Also, advertising in the field of preventive measures in medical sciences requires certain rules that determine people’s culture and the main foundation of their attitude and thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to know such knowledge and learn it by the medical staff to deal with critical situations.

In order to provide insights into how various page views are influenced by public engagement with weather information and to shed light on the patterns of warning issuance across different seasons and regions, this study analyzes the multi-dimensional characteristics of city weather forecast page views and the spatiotemporal characteristics of early warning information in China, from 1 March 2020 to 31 August 2023. This is achieved by utilizing the daily page views of city weather forecasts and meteorological warning data, comparing the public's attention to weather during holidays versus regular days, assessing the public's attention to weather under different meteorological warning levels, and performing statistical analysis of the spatiotemporal scale of meteorological disasters. Our analysis shows that compared to weekends and holidays, the public pays more attention to the weather on weekdays, and the difference between weekdays and national statutory holidays is more significant. Due to the widespread impact of heat waves, typhoons, severe convective weather, and geological disasters caused by heavy rainfall, public awareness and participation in flood season weather forecasting have significantly increased. Under red alerts, flash floods, typhoons, and geological risks are the primary concerns. Orange alerts predominantly feature flash floods, rainstorms, typhoons, snowstorms, and cold waves, while sandstorms attract the most attention during yellow alerts. Droughts, however, receive relatively less attention regardless of the warning level. Seasonal patterns in the issuance of meteorological warnings reveal a peak in summer, particularly with typhoons and rainstorms being the main concerns in July, followed by high temperatures and additional typhoon warnings in August. Heavy sea surface wind warnings exhibit a strong seasonal trend, with the majority issued during the winter months. Regionally, southern China experiences the highest frequency of severe convection weather warnings, with provinces such as Jiangxi, Guangxi, and Hunan being the most affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, advertising science is a tool that helps advertisers to design their advertising to meet the needs of the audience. In this regard, knowing and understanding the audience is one of the most important points that advertisers should pay attention to before advertising in order to better attract the audience. This study has been done with the aim of billboards and infographics analysis related to promoting preventive behaviors and vaccination against the Coronavirus disease pandemic and investigating the opinion of the general adult population of Iran. The method used in this research is the qualitative method. In this research, according to the type of data and research goals, Kress and Van Leeuwen's discourse theory method has been used. The sample size includes 36 advertising billboards and infographics. Data collection has been done through searching the sites and websites of health networks and medical education centers in Iran, taking pictures of infographics and billboards in public places, and also receiving archive files of pictures from the public relations of health networks and medical services. The data was collected from February 19, 2020 to December 30, 2022 (the time frame of the pandemic and public vaccination program in Iran). Then, an online survey about promoting preventive behaviors and taking vaccination against the Coronavirus disease pandemic was designed in SurveyMonkey and its link was provided to the audience through virtual networks and other platforms. The assessment of validity involved experts in infection control and linguistics. The reliability of the measurement, determined through the Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient, yielded a coefficient of 0.968. In this study, data analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics software, version 15.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). Finally, users' opinions about of billboards and infographics were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results of component analysis and surveys show that visual components such as «The staring look at the spectator (Demand)», «Head-on Shot (inclusion)», «Down Shot (Creating a sense of participation for the represented person)», «Close-up (intimate/individual relationship)», «Level Shot (equality)» and «High-Angle Shot (Presenting power)» in medical advertising has had a great impact in arousing public opinion to create a positive attitude towards preventive measures and vaccination during the Coronavirus disease epidemic. The results of this research show that in visual communication, visual components play a significant role in creating and maintaining target ideologies. Also, advertising in the field of preventive measures in medical sciences requires certain rules that determine people's culture and the main foundation of their attitude and thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to know such knowledge and learn it by the medical staff to deal with critical situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs the undesirable output super-efficiency SBM-DEA model to reassess the green innovation efficiency (GIE) of 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020. We pioneer the examination of public attention (PA) influence on GIE and spatial spillover effects, employing the spatial Durbin model. Additionally, a spatial mediation model, incorporating big data technology as a mediator, is adopted. Key findings are as follows: 1) Significant spatial correlations exist in PA and GIE. 2) Improved PA in one province can help enhance the GIE in neighboring provinces but cannot directly impact the local GIE. 3) The positive impact of PA on local GIE follows an indirect path. Specifically, PA elevates the level of big data technology in the local and neighboring provinces, and this positive technological spillover effect significantly enhances the GIE across the entire region. 4) Industrial structure and research and development intensity also influence GIE to some extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses whether people's attention to climate change emergency contributes to the stock market returns by accounting for the mitigation role of the corporate social performance proxied by ESG score. We address one research question: how does climate change attention affect the investors' trading behavior and, consequently, the stock price returns of local firms? The Google Search Volume Index (GSVI) is used to evaluate the attention parameter. In a global setting, made by 2941 stocks in both advanced and emerging economies between 2006 and 2019, we revealed that attention to climate change helps investors to have a significantly positive effect on returns of stocks with high ESG scores compared to low sustainable stocks. Moreover, we observe an interesting changing in the relationship between corporate social performance and people attention, when deepening the analysis from the perspective of sectorial distribution. Our results are robust to different risk factor models, environmental policy stringency framework, sin industries focus, and when changing people's attention indicator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) is a crucial decision in the internationalization strategy of firms and they confront diversified environmental policies and practices of host countries, when engaging in cross-border investments. However, there is a lack of research to investigate whether foreign direct investment (OFDI) is an important factor affecting the environmental commitment of firms. This study aims to empirically analyze the impact and mechanism by which firm outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) influences pro-environmental commitments, utilizing data collected from Chinese listed companies between 2010 and 2020. The results show: 1) there is a significant positive relationship between firm OFDI and pro-environmental commitments; 2) mechanistic tests show that the OFDI can promote pro-environmental commitments through two channels: public attention and technological learning capacity; 3) heterogeneity analysis reveals that the green effects of OFDI are more pronounced firms with institutional investors and state ownership, as well as in firms situated in host countries with more stringent environmental regulations; 4) further analysis reveals OFDI-induced greater green commitments generated real environmental and economic outcomes: firms invested more in environmental protection and reduced CO2 emissions. In the meantime, they experienced lower excessive debt risk and higher innovative performance. The findings have positive implications for the promotion of firms’ pro-environmental behavior and sustainable development.

Secondary vocational education (SVE) is responsible for cultivating talents with moral and technical skills, receiving widespread attention from scholars and the public. Studying the two attentions can broaden the research perspectives and promote the development of SVE. However, there are the following problems: 1) the public attention and academic attention of SVE cannot be accurately characterized; 2) the relationship between the public attention and academic attention of SVE cannot be clear; 3) the impact of public attention and academic attention on SVE cannot be predicted. To address the above issues, this paper puts forward the PLSH (Pearson correlation–Linear regression, Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA), and Holt-winters model) framework. It involves four research steps: 1) public attention and academic attention are obtained for SVE; 2) the correlation between them is analyzed and a linear model is developed; 3) the performance of the SARIMA model and Holt-winters model are conducted, and the best model is adopted to predict the public attention; 4) academic attention is predicted using the results from the previous step. The study shows that the PLSH framework can characterize academic and public attention to SVE, effectively reflecting their correlation and predicting their growth trends.

As an emerging development model, green development requires the participation of the government, the market, and the public. It needs the formation of a positive interaction between policy guidance, market demand, and public will in order to realize a win–win situation comprising sustainable economic development and environmental protection. Thus, we explored green-development-related policies in China and defined four areas: industrial energy preservation, petrochemicals, agriculture, and the integration of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Then, we analyzed how public attention relative to green development policies impacted the return of stock indices in the green industry using the Baidu search index. The research study was conducted on all trading days of A-shares in China from 1 January 2013 to 1 January 2023. In total, 2430 valid datasets were observed and curated over these 10 years. The public attention to green development policies was classified into four categories: industrial energy efficiency, petrochemicals, agriculture, and the Yangtze River Economic Zone. The attention focused on a category was measured by the number of searches of keywords that were the category's names on the Baidu platform. The number of searches was considered the variable representing the public's attention relative to each area of green development policies. The results showed that the increase in public attention to green development policies was not correlated with the increase in the return on investment (ROI) of green and carbon-neutral industries. In addition, information on green development policies had no significant effect on encouraging individuals to participate in investments in the green industry and had little effect on the financing of the carbon-neutral industry. The lack of details for green development policies and effective guidelines for potential investors needs to be overcome in order to encourage investment and financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Management international / International Management / Gestiòn Internacional is the property of Management International and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly shocked the Chinese economy. Due to its contagiousness and health risks, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the tourism industry when the government established controls such as lockdowns and restrictions on the movement of people. We built a balanced panel data of all listed Chinese A-share tourism companies from January 20, 2020, to April 26, 2020, and we used an POLS model for empirical regressions to explore the impact of public attention about COVID-19 information on tourism companies' stock returns. The results show that public attention, reading, commenting, and retweeting of COVID-19 information tended to influence investors' psychological expectations and sentiment, leading to negative investor evaluations of tourism companies' stock prices, which may eventually make tourism companies' stock returns undervalued in the short run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Investigates stability and change of actors in issues in a mature policy discourse. • Applies a temporal network analysis of the policy discourse in three subsequent periods. • Shows how international and national policy processes trigger change in the discourse coalitions over time. • Shows that key actors and most salient issues remain stable in a policy discourse linked to a mature policy subsystem. Policy discourses are important platforms for political actors to express their preferences on certain issues and are usually linked to a specific policy subsystem. From a research perspective, they have the potential to indicate ideological coalitions, policy change and learning. Using discourse network analysis, we identify core policy actors, issues, and coalitions in Switzerland's climate policy discourse and investigate how they have evolved over the past 15 years. In line with the policy process literature, we expected to see more stability than change in the discourse linked to the mature climate policy subsystem. However, our results have shown that policy discourses are more volatile than policy subsystems, and that national and international policy developments are able to trigger change, particularly in terms of the configuration of actor coalitions and the issues discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to provide insights into how various page views are influenced by public engagement with weather information and to shed light on the patterns of warning issuance across different seasons and regions, this study analyzes the multi-dimensional characteristics of city weather forecast page views and the spatiotemporal characteristics of early warning information in China, from 1 March 2020 to 31 August 2023. This is achieved by utilizing the daily page views of city weather forecasts and meteorological warning data, comparing the public’s attention to weather during holidays versus regular days, assessing the public’s attention to weather under different meteorological warning levels, and performing statistical analysis of the spatiotemporal scale of meteorological disasters. Our analysis shows that compared to weekends and holidays, the public pays more attention to the weather on weekdays, and the difference between weekdays and national statutory holidays is more significant. Due to the widespread impact of heat waves, typhoons, severe convective weather, and geological disasters caused by heavy rainfall, public awareness and participation in flood season weather forecasting have significantly increased. Under red alerts, flash floods, typhoons, and geological risks are the primary concerns. Orange alerts predominantly feature flash floods, rainstorms, typhoons, snowstorms, and cold waves, while sandstorms attract the most attention during yellow alerts. Droughts, however, receive relatively less attention regardless of the warning level. Seasonal patterns in the issuance of meteorological warnings reveal a peak in summer, particularly with typhoons and rainstorms being the main concerns in July, followed by high temperatures and additional typhoon warnings in August. Heavy sea surface wind warnings exhibit a strong seasonal trend, with the majority issued during the winter months. Regionally, southern China experiences the highest frequency of severe convection weather warnings, with provinces such as Jiangxi, Guangxi, and Hunan being the most affected.

Flagship species are a highly effective approach in conservation. We propose the distinct but complementary concept of flagship events: natural or anthropogenic occurrences that attract public attention. Flagship events have high potential value for biodiversity conservation by engaging people with wildlife and helping to garner support for conservation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the media discourse about Islamophobia in Spain. Specifically, an overview of all the appearances of the term in four Spanish newspapers (ABC, El Mundo, El País, and La Vanguardia) is provided with the aim of finding out when the term was first used and became standard language. The study also demonstrates the links with the public interest and identifies the ideological and terminological attitudes in the discourse of each newspaper. The corpus includes 1475 news articles since the first reference (in 1987) to the term Islamophobia and May 2022, which were quantitatively examined in two steps. While the first was manual and served to document the historical background, the second allowed us to monitor the media content by means of Sketch Engine. Furthermore, the searches for the term "islamofobia" in Google Trends from Spain were also reviewed. The main findings show that both terrorist attacks in Western countries and the controversies surrounding freedom of speech are key to the emergence and normalisation of the concept, particularly since 2015. However, the interest of each newspaper differs, with El País covering the topic most frequently. This left-wing newspaper offers some notable variations in terminology as well. While the three right-wing newspapers consistently relate Islamophobia to threat, the vocabulary used in El País underpins the victimisation of the Arab-Islamic population. According to the Sketch Engine analysis, the usual terms that occur in combination with Islamophobia are racism, terrorism, violence, hate, anti-semitism, and xenophobia. Finally, Google Trends data confirmed the peak in public interest in the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks (17A). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a violation of moral integrity, corporate financial irregularities not only cause losses to investors and other stakeholders, but the enterprise itself is also punished by the relevant regulatory authorities. However, to realize their own interests, some enterprises still violate laws and participate in financial irregularities. Good environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance can reduce corporate risks, improve financial status, and constrain financial irregularities. This study empirically clarifies the impact of ESG performance on financial irregularities in Chinese listed companies. Furthermore, we examine the moderating role of stakeholder attention—that is, the public, media, and institutional investors. Based on 1050 observations of non-financial and non-real estate companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock exchanges from 2011 to 2020, this study examines the impact of ESG performance on financial irregularities using a fixed-effects model. Additionally, we verify the moderating effect of public, media, and institutional investor attention to the impact of ESG on financial irregularities. The results indicate that firms with better ESG performance have fewer financial irregularities. At the same time, the greater the attention of the public, media, and investors, the stronger the inhibitory effect of ESG performance on financial irregularities. This study helps broaden the relevant corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial management theories and provides theoretical support for enterprises to improve ESG performance and inhibit financial irregularities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Exploring the public’s cognition toward carbon neutrality is conducive to improving the quality and effectiveness of policymaking, and promoting the realization of carbon neutrality goals. This study aims to explore the public’s attention and sentiment toward carbon neutrality from the perspective of social psychology. Methods: Using posts on carbon neutrality from the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo as the data source, this study uses statistical analysis, the Mann-Kendall method, keyword analysis, the BERT model, and the LDA model to explore public attention and sentiment. Results: The results show that: (1) men, people living east of the Hu line (economically developed regions), and the public in the energy finance market are more concerned about carbon neutrality; (2) high public attention and great dynamic changes in public attention toward carbon neutrality could be trigged by highly credible government or international governmental organizations’ information; (3) public sentiment toward carbon neutrality is mostly positive; however, specific topics affect public sentiment differently. Discussion: The research results contribute to policymakers’ better understanding of the trend of public attention and sentiment toward carbon neutrality, and support improvements in the quality and impact of policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green technology innovation of heavily polluting enterprises is a critical way to alleviate environmental pressure and promote sustainable development. However, the ways in which the interaction of influencing factors affects heavily polluting enterprises in green technology innovation in China have not been fully addressed and need to be investigated in this field. This paper explored the impact of government environmental regulation, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and public attention on promoting green technology innovation of heavily polluting enterprises based on S-O-R (stimulus–organism–response) and stakeholder theories. The panel data of A-share listed companies in China's heavily polluting industries from 2008 to 2020 was used to investigate their interactions by adopting POLS (Pooled Ordinary Least Square) method. The main results show that (1) environmental regulation has a significant positive effect on green technology innovation; it especially has a great impact on state-owned heavily polluting enterprises; (2) CSR plays a mediating role between environmental regulation and green technology innovation; (3) public attention has a moderating effect between CSR and green technology innovation and also moderates the indirect effect of environmental regulation on green technology innovation through CSR. The results illustrate that green technology innovation should be not only guided by governmental regulation, but also supplemented by enterprises' internal driven force and public supervision, which can give implications for promoting the development of green technology innovation and optimizing environmental policy tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the comprehensive green transformation of China's economic development, the people's demand for a beautiful ecological environment is growing, and air pollution has become one of the focuses of public attention. The widespread use of the Internet has provided new ways for the public to understand environmental pollution. In this paper, a combined gray relation analysis and bidirectional long short-term memory model is proposed for predicting public attention about air pollution in three cities: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The prediction of public attention is influenced by a variety of factors, and nine influencing factors were selected for gray correlation analysis in this study. Subsequently, seven key factors with strong correlations were selected as input indicators for the prediction model to predict public attention. When compared with the results of other models, the combined GRA-BiLSTM model proposed in this study has good predictive performance. Finally, taking into account the effect of lags, lagging in the input indicators can significantly improve the predictive performance of the model, verifying the existence of lags in public concern about air pollution. The environmental protection department can pay attention to the public attention about air pollution to better control it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging development model, green development requires the participation of the government, the market, and the public. It needs the formation of a positive interaction between policy guidance, market demand, and public will in order to realize a win–win situation comprising sustainable economic development and environmental protection. Thus, we explored green-development-related policies in China and defined four areas: industrial energy preservation, petrochemicals, agriculture, and the integration of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Then, we analyzed how public attention relative to green development policies impacted the return of stock indices in the green industry using the Baidu search index. The research study was conducted on all trading days of A-shares in China from 1 January 2013 to 1 January 2023. In total, 2430 valid datasets were observed and curated over these 10 years. The public attention to green development policies was classified into four categories: industrial energy efficiency, petrochemicals, agriculture, and the Yangtze River Economic Zone. The attention focused on a category was measured by the number of searches of keywords that were the category’s names on the Baidu platform. The number of searches was considered the variable representing the public’s attention relative to each area of green development policies. The results showed that the increase in public attention to green development policies was not correlated with the increase in the return on investment (ROI) of green and carbon-neutral industries. In addition, information on green development policies had no significant effect on encouraging individuals to participate in investments in the green industry and had little effect on the financing of the carbon-neutral industry. The lack of details for green development policies and effective guidelines for potential investors needs to be overcome in order to encourage investment and financing.

With the popularity of new media, the relationship between the media and the public has changed considerably. A comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the relationship between the public and media can reveal the development of news media in China and help provide some constructive advice to improve their quality. Therefore, we establish vector autoregression (VAR) models between the media and the public on 160 network trending events from 2011 to 2018 based on the Baidu Index. In specific terms, we explore the causal relationship between them with the Granger causality test and analyze the dynamic effects using the impulse response function (IRF) analysis. Our findings suggest that there are satisfactory two-way interactions between the news media and the public in China (especially in the event categories directly related to people’s livelihood, such as safety misadventure, natural disasters, food and drug safety, and entertainment) and that the public plays a leading role for most events. We also find that the news media lags behind users generally, which prompts us to propose the three-relay hypothesis to explain its dissemination mechanism. Also, the impulse responses of attention to negative events are generally more drastic than those to positive events. For hot network events in China, the time span and sample size of our research are large, increasing the results’ reliability.

IntroductionExtinction Rebellion (XR) is one of the central players in climate movements in the United Kingdom. Considering the historical relationship that environmentalists have had with science and scientific knowledge, we examine the current treatment of science in the narrative put forward by XR United Kingdom.MethodsUsing mixed qualitative methods, the group's online press releases for the year 2019 were analysed, alongside fieldwork from 2 weeks spent at the United Nations' climate conference in Glasgow in 2021. The fieldwork data consists of participant observation combined with semi-structured interviews.ResultsThe movement's demand to “tell the truth” utilises a narrative established on a fact-based enlightenment. This is complemented by notions of a fixed temporal deadline and predicted societal collapse. We highlight prominent perspectives that came to light and identify three main positions that the activists held with respect to science.DiscussionThe findings show the positioning of science and scientific knowledge as a supreme authority, which acts to depoliticize the discourse and induces reductionism in imagining climate futures. This positioning, combined with the centrality of apocalyptic imagery, hampers the construction of alternative futures and fails to engage meaningfully with climate justice.

Analyzing the relationship between Internet attention and teaching research can provide a reference for extracting and identifying research hot spots in the discipline. Currently, many kinds of literature obtain social hot‐spot information based on a single platform, such as the Baidu Index, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Web of Science. Still, they ignore the common information reflected between the Baidu Index platform and the professional academic platform and the lack of relationship demonstration between them. Therefore, based on the CNKI database and Baidu Index platform, the most critical data statistical analysis service platform in the Internet era, this article proposes a relationship modeling and prediction framework (RMPF). First, RMPF analyzes the relationship between public attention and teaching research from the perspective of "high school information technology" by word frequency analysis and Pearson. Second, RMPF constructs the relationship model between them using leave‐one‐out cross‐validation. Third, RMPF predicts the development of subject teaching and research using the autoregressive integrated moving average model and multiple regressions. The results show that the correlation coefficient between public attention and teaching research is more than 0.65 from the perspective of "high school information technology," showing a strong positive correlation. In recent years, the focus of high school information technology discipline tends to be integrating multimedia technology, cloud classroom, artificial intelligence, and other technologies and disciplines. In addition, discipline literature volume growth will slow in the next 2 years, with an average annual publication of 350 articles. The overall number of literature decreased by about 120 compared with 2020. Based on the proposed RMPF, this study clarifies the relationship between subject attention and teaching research through experimental demonstration and provides an implementation framework reference for researchers of relevant literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human monkeypox has become a public health problem globally. Google Trends Index (GTI) is an indicator of public attention, being potential for infectious disease outbreak surveillance. In this study, we used lag‐correlation analysis to evaluate the spearman correlation coefficients between public attention and monkeypox epidemic by −36 to +36 days‐lag in top 20 countries with most cumulated cases until September 30, 2022, the meta‐analyses were performed to pool the coefficients of countries among all lags. We also constructed vector autoregression model and Granger‐causality test to probe the significance of GTI in monkeypox forecasting. The strongest spearman correlation was found at lag +13 day (r = 0.53, 95% confidence interval: 0.371–0.703, p < 0.05). Meta‐analysis showed significantly positive correlation when the lag was from −12 to +36 day, which was most notable on the third posterior day (lag +3 day). The pooled spearman correlation coefficients were all above 0.200 when the lag ranged from +1 to +20 day, and the causality of GTI for daily case was significant in worldwide and multiple countries. The findings suggested a robust association between 13‐days‐priority GTI and daily cases worldwide. This work introduced a potential monitor indicator on the early warning and surveillance of monkeypox outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between corporate philanthropy (CP) and audit fees. Using corporate donation data from China, our investigation finds that CP is significantly positively associated with audit fees. Resource‐seeking purpose and the enhanced publicity effect may be plausible channels behind this relationship. We further find that the frequency and intensity of donations reinforce this positive association. Additional analysis reveals that the resource‐seeking effect exists in any type of enterprise, while the enhanced publicity effect only exists in non‐SOEs. Our main results remain robust to a battery of additional tests. Overall, our findings suggest that by increasing audit workload and prospective audit risk, CP could make auditors more conservative such that they charge a higher audit fee. This article emphasizes the dialectic institutional stakeholder perspective in understanding the economic consequences of CP. Both the theoretical contributions and practical implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the panel data of 274 cities from 2011 to 2019, this article studied the impact of the digital economy on the low-carbon transformation and space overflow effect on the city's low-carbon transformation and used the panel threshold model to calculate the regulatory effect of public attention. Studies found the following: (1) The digital economy, the urban low-carbon transformation level, and public attention show regional differences, manifesting as the distribution of "point clusters" and "decreasing from east to west", and as far as the speed of change, after the year 2015, the annual increase of various indicators increased. (2) The role of digital economy development and urban low-carbon transformation levels have a "U" relationship. At present, most cities across the country have passed the point of inflection, which presents a significant promotion effect. However, in a comparison of regional coefficients, the Eastern region > Western region > Midlands. (3) The development of the digital economy has a significant "siphon effect" on the impact of urban low-carbon transformation. (4) With the increase in public attention in the region, the positive promotion of the digital economy on the urban low-carbon transformation has gradually increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature indicates that environmental decentralization leads to a "race-to-the-bottom" and lax environmental regulations, resulting in severe border water pollution. Therefore, the Chinese central government launched the Environmental Comprehensive Administrative Enforcement Reform (ECAER) in 2018, characterized by the centralization of power and functions. However, the exact impact of ECAER on border water quality remains unclear. Utilizing the exogenous shock from ECAER and surface water quality data between July 2018 and December 2020, this study identifies the causal relationship between ECAER and border water quality. Using the staggered difference-in-differences approach, this study found that environmental centralization leads to a significant deterioration in border water quality. This influence is more prominent in regions with lower river classes and better historical water quality. Further analysis revealed that the deterioration in border water quality was mainly centered around the downstream stations, with no significant change in the upstream stations of the administrative boundary. This implies that local governments strategically respond to environmental centralization by polluting their neighbors. However, public attention to water pollution issues could mitigate the border water pollution effect of environmental centralization. This study provides valuable insight into the long-standing debate on the effectiveness of environmental (de)centralization and has policy implications for global water pollution control. [Display omitted] • Environmental centralization reform significantly deteriorates border water quality. • River class and historical water quality affect centralization reform's policy effect. • Environmental centralization causes local governments to pollute their neighbors. • Public attention to water pollution issues can alleviate border pollution effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A hierarchical multi-subject attention framework is proposed. • Verify air quality improvement is due to attention from government, public, media. • Only public and media attention boosts air quality with spatial spillover. • Laws and regulations, enforcement, and investment are all effective mechanism. • Different types of attention affect air quality through distinct mechanisms. Attention from social subjects, such as the government, public, and media, serves as a vital diver for urban environmental improvement. While most empirical studies about environmental attention have discussed only one or two of these subjects so far, the literature overlooks the potential collective influence. Drawing on the concept of attention and stakeholder theory, this paper integrates government, public, and media into a unified framework. Utilizing data from Chinese prefecture-level cities spanning from 2012 to 2020, this paper reveals how multi-subject attention influences air quality, including its spatial spillover effects and specific mechanisms. This study finds that 1) multi-subject attention could effectively inhibit air pollution, the direct effects of government, public, and media attention are -7.278, -0.077, and -0.502, respectively. 2) Only the public and media attention have significant cross-city suppressing effects on air pollution. Specifically, the spillover effects of the public and media attention's proxy variables are -4.003 and -1.850. 3) Overall, multi-subject attention can effectively reduce air pollution by establishing environmental laws and regulations, strengthening environmental enforcement, and increasing environmental protection investment. However, there are significant differences in the ways government, public, and media attention improve air quality in local and surrounding cities through these three mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Analyzing the relationship between Internet attention and teaching research can provide a reference for extracting and identifying research hot spots in the discipline. Currently, many kinds of literature obtain social hot‐spot information based on a single platform, such as the Baidu Index, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Web of Science. Still, they ignore the common information reflected between the Baidu Index platform and the professional academic platform and the lack of relationship demonstration between them. Therefore, based on the CNKI database and Baidu Index platform, the most critical data statistical analysis service platform in the Internet era, this article proposes a relationship modeling and prediction framework (RMPF). First, RMPF analyzes the relationship between public attention and teaching research from the perspective of “high school information technology” by word frequency analysis and Pearson. Second, RMPF constructs the relationship model between them using leave‐one‐out cross‐validation. Third, RMPF predicts the development of subject teaching and research using the autoregressive integrated moving average model and multiple regressions. The results show that the correlation coefficient between public attention and teaching research is more than 0.65 from the perspective of “high school information technology,” showing a strong positive correlation. In recent years, the focus of high school information technology discipline tends to be integrating multimedia technology, cloud classroom, artificial intelligence, and other technologies and disciplines. In addition, discipline literature volume growth will slow in the next 2 years, with an average annual publication of 350 articles. The overall number of literature decreased by about 120 compared with 2020. Based on the proposed RMPF, this study clarifies the relationship between subject attention and teaching research through experimental demonstration and provides an implementation framework reference for researchers of relevant literature.

Air pollution is imposing substantial health and economic burdens on billions of people around the world. Although the impacts of air pollution on human health and economic growth have long been recognized, empirical evidence on whether and how air pollution affects firms' employee protection remains unclear. Using a sample of publicly listed Chinese firms from 2010 to 2019, we show that air pollution can significantly increase firms' employee protection. The results indicate that employee protection is an effective substitute for poor air quality in firm headquarters. Further analyses suggest that public pressure enhances the influence of air pollution on firms' labor protection, while environmental regulation lessens the positive relationship between air pollution and employee treatment. Overall, we emphasize that air pollution is a significant non-economic determinant affecting firms' human capital stock and employee treatment strategy. This study would be of particular interest to economists, managers, and regulators who are concerned about designing optimal environmental and welfare policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the subject of pollutant emissions, enterprises play an important role in environmental governance and should consciously fulfil their environmental responsibility. So, can the enterprise perform environmental responsibility to increase their investment in research and development (R&D)? Based on the data from China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed enterprises in 2011–2019, this paper explores the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility and R&D investment and examines the dual moderating effects of public attention and intellectual property protection. It is found that the implementation of corporate environmental responsibility can promote R&D investment. Public attention moderates the positive relationship between corporate environmental responsibility and R&D investment; it seeks that the positive relationship becomes higher with public attention. With higher regional intellectual property protection levels, the moderating effect of public attention on corporate environmental responsibility and R&D investment will be more obviously higher. This research provides theoretical support for enterprises to fulfil their environmental responsibilities and a new perspective for revealing the factors of enterprises' R&D investment, which can offer a foundation for future research and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the media discourse about Islamophobia in Spain. Specifically, an overview of all the appearances of the term in four Spanish newspapers (ABC, El Mundo, El País, and La Vanguardia) is provided with the aim of finding out when the term was first used and became standard language. The study also demonstrates the links with the public interest and identifies the ideological and terminological attitudes in the discourse of each newspaper. The corpus includes 1475 news articles since the first reference (in 1987) to the term Islamophobia and May 2022, which were quantitatively examined in two steps. While the first was manual and served to document the historical background, the second allowed us to monitor the media content by means of Sketch Engine. Furthermore, the searches for the term “islamofobia” in Google Trends from Spain were also reviewed. The main findings show that both terrorist attacks in Western countries and the controversies surrounding freedom of speech are key to the emergence and normalisation of the concept, particularly since 2015. However, the interest of each newspaper differs, with El País covering the topic most frequently. This left-wing newspaper offers some notable variations in terminology as well. While the three right-wing newspapers consistently relate Islamophobia to threat, the vocabulary used in El País underpins the victimisation of the Arab-Islamic population. According to the Sketch Engine analysis, the usual terms that occur in combination with Islamophobia are racism, terrorism, violence, hate, anti-semitism, and xenophobia. Finally, Google Trends data confirmed the peak in public interest in the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks (17A).

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To analyze the differences in the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of online attention to sudden torrential rain public events in Shanxi and Henan provinces in China, and their influencing factors, the Baidu index search platform was used to obtain the online attention of 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) nationwide for the 20 July 2021 to 9 August 2021 Henan torrential rain and the 5 October 2021 to 25 October 2021 Shanxi torrential rain. The geographical concentration index, the coefficient of variation, the Moran index, and the Pearson correlation were used to analyse the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of the online attention of the floods in Shanxi and Henan and their influencing factors. The study shows that: (1) from a temporal perspective, the daily internet attention of both the Shanxi and Henan torrential rain reached its highest value on the third day, showing a sharp rise followed by a sharp fall in an inverted "V" pattern, and compared to the prolonged and continuous torrential rain in Shanxi, the short-lived precipitation and broken ring of the Henan torrential rain were seriously urgent, showing a higher internet attention. For example, the highest daily attention in Shanxi was only 73,643, while the highest daily attention in Henan was 56,054, which is 7.6 times higher than the former. The Geographical Concentration (G) index of internet attention for torrential rain in Shanxi increased from 1.55 to 8.25 within three weeks, with attention shifting from scattered to concentrated, while the G-index for torrential rain in Henan showed an inverted "V" shape; the Coefficient of Variation (CV) index for torrential rain in both provinces showed a downward trend within three weeks. (2) In terms of spatial distribution, the regional distribution of the network concern about the torrential rain in Shanxi and Henan is uneven. The provinces and cities with a higher concern about the torrential rain in Shanxi are mainly some eastern provinces and cities, such as Jiangsu, Beijing, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hainan, etc., who have signed coal protection agreements with Shanxi. The provinces and cities with a higher concern about the torrential rain in Henan are mainly the economically developed coastal provinces or provinces adjacent to Henan, such as Beijing, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Shaanxi, etc. The concern of each city for the torrential rain in the two provinces is in line with the law of distance decay. (3) In terms of influencing factors, the level of regional economic development, demographic factors, and Internet penetration and distance all have a certain influence on the level of attention to sudden torrential rain, and the study found that the level of economic development and demographic factors have the most significant influence on the level of internet attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tiantian Xie,1 Tao Tan,2 Jun Li3,4 1Centre De Recherche Sur Les Liens Sociaux (CERLIS), Paris Descartes University, Paris, France; 2Institute of New Rural Development, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 3School of International Relations, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 4School of Management, Curtin University, Perth, WA, AustraliaCorrespondence: Tiantian Xie Tel +33-651-837-168Email tiantian.xie@etu.parisdescartes.frBackground: A novel coronavirus (COVID-19) caused pneumonia broke out at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. Many cases were subsequently reported in other cities, which has aroused strong reverberations on the Internet and social media around the world.Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the reaction of global Internet users to the outbreak of COVID-19 by evaluating the possibility of using Internet monitoring as an instrument in handling communicable diseases and responding to public health emergencies.Methods: The disease-related data were retrieved from China’s National Health Commission (CNHC) and World Health Organization (WHO) from January 10 to February 29, 2020. Daily Google Trends (GT) and daily Baidu Attention Index (BAI) for the keyword “Coronavirus” were collected from their official websites. Rumors which occurred in the course of this outbreak were mined from Chinese National Platform to Refute Rumors (CNPRR) and Tencent Platform to Refute Rumors (TPRR). Kendall’s Tau-B rank test was applied to check the bivariate correlation among the two indexes mentioned above, epidemic trends, and rumors.Results: After the outbreak of COVID-19, both daily BAI and daily GT increased rapidly and remained at a high level, this process lasted about 10 days. When major events occurred, daily BAI, daily GT, and the number of rumors simultaneously reached new peaks. Our study indicates that these indexes and rumors are statistically related to disease-related indicators. Information symmetry was also found to help significantly eliminate the false news and to prevent rumors from spreading across social media through the epidemic outbreak.Conclusion: Compared to traditional methods, Internet monitoring could be particularly efficient and economical in the prevention and control of epidemic and rumors by reflecting public attention and attitude, especially in the early period of an outbreak.Keywords: public attention, COVID-19, internet monitoring, search index

This study pinpoints the areas in gerontological research that have commanded the most public attention as scored by Altmetric. We collected 12,740 outputs published in gerontological journals over 5 years from 2017 to 2022. Next, we identified the top 5% of outputs with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores. After removing duplicate publications and those without an abstract, 588 outputs remained. Our content analysis of the abstracts was conducted deductively and inductively. Theme 1 (50%; N = 293) revolved around "Health and Well-Being" (Theme 1). Theme 2 (28%; N = 164) was about "Health Services, Interventions and Innovations." Theme 3 was about "Informal and Long-Term Care" (13%; N = 80). Theme 4 focused on "Structural Inequalities" affecting older adults (9%; N = 51). Gerontologists should strengthen collaboration with other stakeholders to better engage the public across different age-related issues. These partnerships will enable the creation of initiatives that better serve the needs of aging populations., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The implementation of China's Beautiful Village Initiative was an extraordinary achievement and aroused extensive public attention. However, existing research mostly focuses on the construction and seldom on public attention towards the Beautiful Village Initiative. For this reason, this paper investigated the spatiotemporal characteristics of public attention based on the Baidu index using time-constrained clustering and the spatial autocorrelation test. Our results showed that the evolutionary process can be divided into three stages: very little national attention (2011-2012), injection of a strong impetus (2013-2015), and rooted in the people's minds (2016-2020). Spatially, provincial public attention demonstrated obvious spatial differentiation and stable spatial autocorrelation, with Low-Low clusters in Northwest China and High-High Clusters in East, Central, and North China. Spatial econometric models were further utilized to quantify the effects of socioeconomic factors on public attention. The results of the SEM model proved the existence of spatial spillover effects and indicated that the urbanization rate, population density, education level, and network popularity rate all positively affected public attention. The relationship between Beautiful Village construction and public attention was uncoordinated and, in most provinces, advances in public attention were ahead of the construction level. Our findings contribute to the understanding of public attention towards the Beautiful Village Initiative, and policy suggestions we proposed would be applied to increasing public awareness and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media can offer strategic communicators cost-effective opportunities to reach millions of individuals. However, in practice it can be difficult to be heard in these crowded digital spaces. This study takes a strategic network perspective and draws from recent research in network science to propose the network contingency model of public attention. This model argues that in the networked social-mediated environment, an organization's ability to attract public attention on social media is contingent on its ability to fit its network position with the network structure of the communication context. To test the model, we combine data mining, social network analysis, and machine-learning techniques to analyze a large-scale Twitter discussion network. The results of our analysis of Twitter discussion around the refugee crisis in 2016 suggest that in high core-periphery network contexts, "star" positions were most influential whereas in low core-periphery network contexts, a "community" strategy is crucial to attracting public attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]