Qi Gao

Hainan’s offshore duty-free regime is a distinctive institutional innovation that advances the Hainan Free Trade Port. Through iterative adjustments since 2011, it has delivered early gains in tourism-led consumption while revealing bottlenecks in traveller-to-purchaser conversion and regulatory capacity. This commentary distils the policy’s unique features, diagnoses stage-specific frictions and proposes targeted supervision reforms – risk-based sectional control, enterprise credit governance and digital modernisation – to align openness with enforceability.

Purpose: This paper examines the effects of import competition on firm innovation strategies in emerging economies, with a focus on China’s manufacturing sector. Design/methodology/approach: This study selects Chinese listed manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2022 as the sample and employs baseline regression analysis to assess the effects of import competition on overall firm innovation, breakthrough innovation, and incremental innovation. A threshold model is employed to examine the nonlinear relationship between import competition and innovation. Findings: The results show that import competition negatively affects firm innovation, with robustness tests confirming these results. Heterogeneity tests reveal industry- and firm-specific impacts, whereas regional innovation moderates the relationship between import competition and innovation. Further investigation reveals that moderate import competition mitigates overall innovation suppression and facilitates breakthrough innovation, whereas specific intensity ranges significantly inhibit incremental innovation, thus demonstrating nonlinear threshold effects in their relationship. Research limitations/implications: The limitation of this study lies in its sample, which is confined to Chinese manufacturing firms and may not fully represent all enterprises. The findings provide a new perspective for understanding the relationship between import competition and firm innovation, highlighting the factors that are important to consider in policy formulation and enterprise management. Practical implications: The results have significant implications for policymakers and business managers, especially when developing strategies to promote innovation and respond to import competition. Originality/value: This research highlights the threshold effects of import competition, suggesting that moderate competition may stimulate firm innovation. Furthermore, this research enriches the discourse on the role of import competition in firm innovation.

Renewable energy is absolutely necessary in order to stop the deterioration of the environment and to guarantee reliable access to environmentally friendly energy sources. Based on the conformity theory, logistic regression, propensity score matching, and stepwise regression are all used in the current study to investigate the mediating role of green intentions in the conformity tendencies of Chinese farmers’ adoption of renewable energy sources. This research was motivated by the notion of the dissemination of innovations as well as the technological adoption model, and it aims to shed light on how individuals are socialized and how green intentions mediate their conformity tendencies to adopt renewable energy sources. The results revealed that the average age of the farmers was 42 years, and they were primary school graduates. More than 50% were male. Almost 26% of farmers reported that they use renewable energy sources on their farms. Generally, the farmers were green intended and would like to adopt renewable energy sources. The regression results disclosed a significant impact of socially inspired peer adoption (p<0.01) on the farmers’ adoption of renewable energy sources. Renewable energy adoption is impacted more by the adoption of strong connections than by the adoption of renewable energy by weak relations, which means that farmers are more likely to adopt renewable energy if their peers also do so. Nevertheless, the extent to which farmers have green intentions regarding the use of renewable energy technology had a significant influence on the farmers’ conformity tendencies, influenced by the different intensities of their social networks.

The balance between human growth, economic prosperity, and the consumption of hydrocarbon energy factors has become a prerequisite for environmental sustainability. However, the complexities of these factors force researchers to work for more viable combinations of such a balance. Therefore, this study attempted to determine the factors driving environmental sustainability in leading populated economies. For this purpose, the Logarithmic Mean Division Index (LMDI) utilized to decompose critical factors such as activity, economy, real density, energy intensity, and suburban effects for the period 1999–2022. Both population and its consequences (economic activity) have been found to be the leading factors behind environmental fluctuations, and energy has a negative impact on hydrocarbon forms, while contributing positively to environmental sustainability with high efficiency and low intensity. Therefore, sustainable demographic and energy transitions can be leading pathways for environmental sustainability in developing economies.

A total of 217 questionnaires were used to empirically test the mechanism and effect of long-term orientation and governance mode preference on dual innovation in family firms. The data analysis shows that family firms' long-term orientation values have a positive effect on both contractual and relational governance modes, long-term orientation values have a significant positive effect on dual innovation, family firms' contractual and relational governance have an inverted U-shaped effect on dual innovation, and slack resources have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between family firms' long-term orientation values and exploratory innovation.

With the diversified application of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies in various management scenarios, technology-enabled management has received more and more attention. Robotic process automation (RPA) refers to business process software technology applied in various industries, including the accounting and auditing industry, to automate well-defined, repetitive tasks. However, its application in customs management has lagged because of the unique nature of this field. This study outlines the introduction of RPA technology into post-clearance audit, discusses the concept, functions, foundations and application values, constructs a framework model and explains its research and development (R&D) process. The application and implementation of RPA is elaborated using unit consumption data analysis.

With the rapid development of knowledge and the digital economy, it is a crucial to understand the role of the digital economy in improving the innovation efficiency of universities. Using the panel data of universities in 31 Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2020, this paper measures the regional innovation efficiency of Chinese universities and examines the impact of the digital economy on universities’ innovation by employing the super-efficiency DEA model along with the Malmquist index, kernel density estimation and Theil index. The analysis shows the following: (1) The digital economy has a significant positive impact on the efficiency of university innovation, but there is still much room for improvement. (2) In terms of the dynamic evolution of innovation efficiency, Chinese university performance shows a trend toward declining innovation efficiency, and the issue of inadequate investment in technical innovation is discovered, which urgently needs to be addressed. The findings of this paper offer empirical support for understanding the relationship between digital economy growth and university innovation productivity with important ramifications for the innovative expansion of higher education institutions in emerging nations.