Xinyue Zhang

Environmental pollution is a serious threat to human existence, and the prime objective of governments is to decrease carbon emissions in each sector of the economy. New energy vehicles (NEVs) have the potential to alleviate the severity of significant environmental pollution and climate change concerns. However, despite government efforts, the market share of NEVs is still in the nascent stage compared to that of traditional vehicles. This study empirically investigates the role of environmental concerns (ENC), green purchasing behavior (GPB), and environmental attitudes (ENT) in NEV adoption intentions to decrease environmental pollution in the transportation sector. For this purpose, data were collected from 465 NEV consumers through face-to-face surveys in ten Chinese cities through purposive sampling. The PLS-SEM econometric approach was used to analyze the collected data. The findings revealed the significant positive impact of ENC, GPB, and EAT on the adoption intentions of NEVs. The EAT and GPB also have a strong mediating role in the relationship between ENC and the adoption intentions of NEVs, demonstrating that the ENC strongly enhances the adoption intentions of NEVs through EAT and GPB. Moreover, the study also found a strong positive impact of perceived knowledge, risk, and value of NEVs on the adoption intentions of NEVs. Educating people about the usefulness of improving environmental quality can enhance the adoption of NEVs in China. Moreover, TV shows and social media reports on the environmental benefits of NEVs can also encourage their adoption.

Due to the massive global impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the call for social and environment responsibility has grown stronger, and discussion regarding responsible leadership has been aroused. Agreement on the antecedents of responsible leadership has not yet been reached, however, and most studies are theoretical and focus on the personal characteristics of leaders. In this paper, we explore the antecedents of responsible leadership behavior at the organizational and situational level, through case studies of companies in China. Based on the organizational strategy, organizational ownership, mass media, crisis, local community, and other influencing factors, we determine two types of responsible leadership behaviors: Proactive responsible leadership behavior, which involves leaders showing initiative in dealing with relationships with stakeholders both inside and outside the organization, as well as voluntarily striving to assume relevant responsibilities in order to achieve economic and/or social development goals; and passive responsible leadership behavior, which involves acts of being responsible to some stakeholders under pressure from external circumstances or when unexpected events occur, even though this behavior may go against the actor’s original intention. We further explore the influence mechanism of these factors on responsible leadership and discuss the development trend from passive to proactive responsible leadership behavior.

Green development is a significant concept that cannot be ignored in contemporary society. However, in the context of China’s transition from high-speed growth to high-quality development, the complex impact of urban development has brought great challenges to the urban green environment. In this paper, the impact of urban development on green development efficiency (GDE) was studied. First and foremost, a Super-SBM model was introduced to measure the GDE of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta during 2009–2018. Moreover, a Tobit model was used to analyze the correlation between four urban development factors, including economic development and GDE. According to the results, the mean GDE of the Yangtze River Delta is 0.824, and the GDE in most cities there has shown a fluctuating growth trend in this decade. By comparison, the GDEs of coastal cities and cities in the southeast of the Yangtze River Delta were generally higher than those of cities in the north, indicating that the green development is geographically unbalanced, and there is spatial heterogeneity in the area studied. The study’s results also suggest that the urban economic development, innovation level, and government planning play a significant role in stimulating urban green development, and that the expansion of urban construction area hinders the improvement of GDE.