Beibei Qin

The renovation of dilapidated housing has become a focal point of social concern. However, traditional approaches—such as repair and reinforcement or unified demolition and relocation—face bottlenecks that hinder sustainability. There is an urgent need to explore new models for addressing the risks posed by dilapidated residential buildings. In recent years, multiple regions have explored the “original demolition and original reconstruction” approach for dilapidated housing. For instance, Zhejiang Province introduced the “Resident-led Renewal” model, sparking widespread attention and discussion. This model is characterized by residents serving as the primary investors. However, the manner in which stakeholders—particularly residents—collaborate in governance and interact during the renovation process under this model remains unclear. Using the Zhegong New Village original demolition and reconstruction project as a case study, this paper employs social network analysis to construct relational networks encompassing information, trust, consultation, and support. It quantitatively reveals the characteristics of social networks among stakeholders and their interactive practices within the Resident-led Renewal model. Findings reveal that in this case, “Resident-led Renewal” primarily manifested through residents serving as principal investors and establishing a Self-Driven Renewal Committee to submit the original demolition and reconstruction application on behalf of residents to local authorities. In stakeholder interactions, the government and community neighborhood committees play a coordinating role in the renovation process. However, resident organizations and residents themselves ranked lower in metrics such as reciprocity and degree centrality, indicating their limited influence during the renovation process. To alleviate the pressure of the government’s excessive involvement and enhance resident participation in the “original demolition and original reconstruction” process, efforts should focus on: raising residents’ awareness and capacity for participation; ensuring accessible channels for resident involvement; clarifying the rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders; and establishing a standardized approval process for “original demolition and original reconstruction” projects. This approach would realize a “Resident-led Renewal” model characterized by government guidance and resident participation.

The renovation of old urban residential areas is and will continue to be an important part of urban renewal in China. The renovation of existing old urban residential areas focuses more on the physical level of renovation and pays insufficient attention to the improvement of collaborative community governance. However, collaborative community governance is the key to sustainable renovation. This study aims to explore the formation mechanism of multiple subjects’ collaborative governance in the renovation of old urban residential areas. A general collaborative governance theoretical framework was adopted and adjusted by innovatively introducing the improvement of collaborative community governance in old urban residential areas as an important variable in collaborative results. Data were collected through 853 questionnaires in 16 provinces across China and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Data analysis reveals the following conclusions: (1) institution design and the collaborative process have significant positive impacts on collaborative results, while facilitative leadership has a negative impact; (2) the collaborative process is an important mediating variable on collaborative results; (3) government departments’ and residents’ self-governing organizations play important roles in improving collaborative community governance. Face-to-face dialogue and consultation, information disclosure and transparency, and reaching an intermediate consensus are important mediator variables. The research results provide theoretical support and practical suggestions for promoting the improvement of multiple-subject collaboration through old urban residential area renovation.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant deficiencies in global health emergency preparedness, highlighting the critical importance of health equity. This study investigates the role of public health infrastructure in promoting health equity, utilizing data from 31 provincial regions in China. The analysis examines the mediating role of medical service utilization (hospitalization and outpatient services) and the moderating effect of health insurance. The findings indicate that public health infrastructure is significantly associated with health equity. Medical service utilization partially mediates this relationship, with health insurance further moderating the positive impact of hospitalization utilization on health equity, though not for outpatient services. Regional analysis reveals heterogeneity, with public health infrastructure exerting a significant effect on health equity in the central–western regions but not in the eastern region. This research underscores the importance of accessible public health infrastructure and comprehensive health insurance in eliminating health disparities, providing valuable insights for policymaking aimed at fostering health equity.

The ecological behavior of property management enterprises is crucial to the performance of green buildings. The understanding of property management enterprises’ ecological behavior, however, is rather limited. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanism of the affecting factors upon the ecological behavior of property management enterprises. The qualitative analysis method was used to collect and identify the influencing factors, which were further classified as those of stimulus, status, scenario, and result. A theoretical model of the action mechanism of influencing factors and related hypotheses has been constructed based on the planned behavior theory. The proposed hypotheses have been empirically analyzed by the quantitative analysis of a questionnaire survey. The results indicate that there are significant differences in ecological behavior implementation under different status factors, while the impact of enterprise nature on property management ecological behavior is not significant. Regarding the stimulus factors, market pressure and government regulation are the main external incentive factors. The scenario factors could be resistant forces and moderate the implementation of ecological behavior. For the result factors, property management enterprises pay attention to whether the implementation of ecological behavior can produce direct benefits. The research findings constitute valuable references for further development of the property management industry.

The organization of construction in the People’s Republic of China has over recent decades undergone radical restructuring. The announcement of Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door strategy in 1978 marked the beginning of the transition towards the espoused socialist market economy and the progressive introduction of market mechanisms. Existing research tends to focus on the derivation of “critical success factors” rather than the lived realities of those directly involved. In contrast, the current paper adopts a sensemaking perspective that privileges the transient roles and identities of those involved in the micro-processes of project organizing. The empirical focus lies on the sensemaking narratives of middle managers within three state-owned construction enterprises in the Chongqing city region. The findings illustrate how market mechanisms such as bidding and tendering play out in complex ways involving hybrid arrangements between new and pre-existing ways of working. The terminology of project management is seen to have played a performative role in establishing the “project” as the essential unit around which the socialist market is organized. Middle managers are further found to maintain multiple identities in response to the experienced paradoxes of the socialist market economy. The research provides new insights into the micro-processes of project organizing in China with broader implications for transitional economies elsewhere.

The Chinese government announced the Clean Energy Heating Program in northern China in 2017, promoting clean energy for residents’ winter heating. The key difficulty of implementing this policy initiative lies in rural areas. This research hence focuses on evaluating the implementation of this policy in rural areas. Rural residents who directly benefit from, and are integrally involved in, the implementation process in Shandong Province were surveyed to evaluate their satisfaction with this policy. In order to identify their satisfaction indicators and obstacle factors, a TOPSIS obstacle model adjusted by entropy weight was developed. An evaluation system of the indicators of residents’ satisfaction with the policy was developed and converted into a questionnaire. The designed questionnaire was distributed to 341 rural residents in Jinan, Zibo and Heze in Shandong province. Data analysis suggests that, at the fiscal subsidies level, supporting infrastructure, technical supports and support organizations are four important factors affecting rural residents’ satisfaction. The key obstacle factors identified include technical support, supporting infrastructure, the operation subsidies level, heating cost, period of subsidies and achieved temperature. Corresponding suggestions for further clean energy heating policy design and implementation in rural areas in northern China are provided.