Dan Liu

Coffee Weather Index Insurance (WII) provides smallholders with a critical buffer against climate-related losses. This study aims to investigate Chinese coffee farmers' preferences for coffee WII using a choice experiment. The results show that a majority of farmers are willing to purchase coffee WII. Attributes including the premium rate, insured amount, premium subsidy, and type of protection significantly influence farmers' preferences. Specifically, farmers favor coffee WII with revenue protection, a lower insured amount, a higher premium subsidy, and a lower premium rate. Basis risk does not significantly deter uptake. Furthermore, farmers' gender, education level, and their anticipated impact of future high temperatures on coffee production play pivotal roles in shaping WII demand. These findings offer valuable insights for insurers and policymakers, informing the design of coffee WII policies that align with local preferences and can enhance the participation of coffee farmers in WII programs.

Evaluating rural households’ subjective well-being (SWB) and identifying its determinants is crucial for rural sustainable development. This study takes Diqing Prefecture in the Tibetan region of China as a case, aiming to address two key research questions: (1) How do livelihood assets affect subjective well-being (SWB)—directly or indirectly—through the mediating role of the agricultural-income proportion? (2) Do these effects vary across different livelihood strategies? A questionnaire survey was administered to 489 randomly selected rural households in mid-2022. Two index systems were constructed: one for livelihood assets based on the Sustainable Livelihood Framework and another for SWB based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. A subgroup Tobit regression model was utilized to analyze the heterogeneous effects. The results revealed deficiencies in SWB regarding basic material for a good life and health. Human, financial, and social assets are positively associated with SWB. However, natural assets directly negatively impact SWB across dimensions of basic material, security, and freedom, although the negative effect is masked by the mediating effect of farming livelihood strategies. Notably, human assets’ positive influence significantly strengthens with the agricultural income proportion rising. Whether physical, financial, and social assets positively affect SWB depends on farm work participation. These evidence-based findings contribute to a better understanding of the heterogeneous role of sustainable livelihoods in affecting rural households’ subjective well-being and highlight the need for policymakers to design diverse, targeted policies to support rural development.

To explore the universal influencing factors and promote the development of conservation tillage technology in China, this study conducted a meta-analysis of 40 relevant studies and 42 effect sizes with a total sample size of 27071 to investigate the factors influencing farmers' conservation tillage technology adoption behavior, changes in the intensity of the influencing factors over time, the existence of heterogeneity in the influencing factors and the sources of that heterogeneity. This analysis yielded three main results. (1) The variables of gender, education, arable land area, cooperative membership, propaganda, training, economic benefit perception, eco-efficiency perception, and risk preference all have significantly positive effects on farmers' conservation tillage technology adoption behavior. (2) Most of the influencing factors are heterogeneous, but the sources of heterogeneity of the variables are not reflected in the information given in the studies. (3) Over time, the influence of gender (male) on farmers' technology adoption behavior has emerged as a negative influence, and the degrees of influence of economic benefit perception, eco-efficiency perception, and risk preference on farmers' technology adoption behavior are weakening. In the future, more attention should be paid to the influence of women on the adoption of conservation tillage technologies, and other important factors should also be incorporated to promote the adoption of conservation tillage technologies by multi-stakeholder coalitions.

Understanding the determinants of urban–rural construction land transition is necessary for improving regional human–land relationships. This study analysed the spatiotemporal pattern of urban–rural construction land transition at the grid scale in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) of China during 2000–2020 by bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis and further explored its determinants based on a machine learning method, the gradient boosted decision tree (GBDT) model. The results showed that both urban construction land (UCL) and rural residential land (RRL) increased, with an annual growth amount of UCL three times that of RRL, and the proportion of UCL (LUUR) remained stable after 2015. The determinants of UCL, RRL, and LUUR varied. The UCL mainly depended on socioeconomic factors, with their contribution exceeding 50%, while the RRL transition was mainly determined by physical geographic factors, with their contribution decreasing from 67.6% in 2000 to 59.7% in 2020. The LUUR was influenced by both socioeconomic and physical geographic factors, with the relative importance of socioeconomic factors increasing over the years. Meanwhile, the impacts of different determinants were nonlinear with a threshold effect. In the future, optimizing the distribution of urban–rural construction land and rationally adjusting its structure will be necessary for promoting urban–rural sustainability in the YRB.

With the gradual advancement of education in our country, exploring new teaching models has become a concern of people. This research mainly discusses the student-oriented classroom teaching model from the perspective of constructivism. Classroom teaching of English must implement teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and students. From the perspective of management, the results of teaching evaluation can be used to check teaching work or student learning to achieve predetermined goals, and provide a basis for scientific management decision-making. In the teaching process, teachers can pay attention to using the feedback and motivation functions in the evaluation function, collect more feedback from classes at different levels, and adjust teaching methods and strategies in time. Establish a teaching evaluation system oriented by constructivist teaching theory, so that teaching evaluation can not only fully serve the students' "learning", but also effectively promote teachers' "teaching". The values of Pearson's chi-square and likelihood ratio under the constructivist teaching model are 0.368 and 0.363 respectively, which are greater than 0.05. This research lays a solid foundation for optimizing the deficiencies of the classroom teaching model.

Background: China’s ethics committees alone are unable to meet the growing need for human participant protection. Several scandals in recent years indicate weaknesses in the protection of human participants in China. Objectives: The aim of the study is to summarize the status and problems of human research protection program in China and to explore its establishment proposals at national and hospital levels. Research design: To conduct literature retrieval, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Biomedical Document Database, and English databases Web of Science and PubMed were searched; laws, guidelines, and regulations were also searched on web by Google and Chinese search engine Baidu. Ethical considerations: No data were collected from human participants, and ethical review was not required. Findings: There are problems for China’s Human Research Protection Program, such as weak relevant legal systems, insufficient administrative supervision, and incompetent ethics committee capacities. To fully protect human participants, China should promote the development of Human Research Protection Program, which can formulate ethics-related laws, improve regulations for the protection of the safety and rights of human participants, strengthen supervision, and enforce compensation for human participants. Owing to the frequency with which human participants are recruited in hospitals in China, hospitals can utilize existing ethics committees and establish data and safety monitoring committees, quality control, fund and contract management, and conflict of interest management offices. Discussion: As a growing program, it remains necessary to learn from the experience of developed countries with high ethics standards and reformulate them to fit China’s conditions to explore potential future development. The program will also be an experience for other developing countries. Conclusion: Human Research Protection Program can strengthen communication and coordination among various hospital departments to effectively protect the rights and welfare of human participants.