Food manufacturer willingness to employ blockchain technology system under the social Co-governance framework: China's situation.

The blockchain technology system has gradually come to be employed in the food supply chain system, and it has emerged that the system offers the unique function of effectively curbing counterfeiting by food manufacturers. Unlike previous research on adoption by enterprises of new technology, this paper probes into the specific evolutionary routes of game subjects from the perspective of the precondition for enterprises' willingness to employ blockchain technology on the basis of China's social co-governance framework and by establishing a tripartite evolutionary game model of food manufacturer, government and consumer. The study then tests and verifies the stability conditions of equilibrium points and the relationship between these equilibrium points and the social co-governance level through numerical simulation analysis. On the above basis, the expected market proceeds of food producers employing blockchain technology and the influence of government and consumer behavior on enterprises' selection of a behavior strategy and the level of social co-governance are analyzed. The results show that every subject selects their own behavior strategy on the basis of the balance of their respective interests, and the final stability condition of the system is independent of their initial intentions. Rather, the expected sales volume of foods employing blockchain technology, governmental behavior (e.g., supervision, casual inspection, economic punishment, and fiscal subsidies), and complaints made by consumers constitute the main factors that influence food enterprises' selection of a behavior strategy. The level of social co-governance and the behavior of both government and consumers will ultimately be accomplished by influencing enterprises' expected economic returns, and the selection of an enterprise behavior strategy internally depends on the expected economic returns from producing foods employing blockchain technology. Therefore, this paper makes relevant proposals in an attempt to assist the Chinese government to better promote and popularize the blockchain technology system among food manufacturing enterprises.

Research on the Cooperative Governance Path of Multiple Stakeholders in Doctor-Patient Disputes under the Environment of Information Asymmetry.

The number of doctor-patient conflicts and disputes in China has been increasing recently. In order to solve the current social problems of the tense doctor-patient relationship and frequent medical disputes, this article, based on grounded theory, uses qualitative analysis software to conduct grounded coding on 622 cases of doctor-patient disputes randomly selected by stratification. After successively adopting open, axial, and selective coding, the relationship structure between the causes and development of medical disputes is summarized. Furthermore, this relationship structure can be used to analyze further and discuss the causes of doctor-patient disputes from the perspective of multiple co-governance and the governance framework of doctor-patient disputes. Finally, it reminds us of the need to standardize government's regulatory responsibilities, promote the equal distribution of medical resources, strengthen the communication awareness between doctors and patients, reduce the information asymmetry between doctors and patients, and build a preventive mechanism-oriented multi-subject collaborative governance path to promote the relationship between doctors and patients in China. We provide relevant countermeasures and suggestions for harmonious development and the smooth resolution of doctor-patient conflicts.

Evolutionary game analysis of FinTech transformation: A social co-governance pattern of peer-to-peer lending market in China.

Benign exit has become the main theme of the transformation in China's peer-to-peer (P2P) lending industry. To protect the interests of investors in the benign exit process, this paper proposes a social co-governance pattern using a tripartite evolutionary game model to capture the behavior strategies of P2P lending platforms, investors, and financial regulators. The results demonstrate that there are four evolutionary stable strategies for the game model, among which the positive disposal of P2P lending platforms, the participation of the investors, and the co-governance policy of financial regulators is the optimal strategy in the benign exit process. The results also show that the initial proportion of P2P lending platforms, investors, and financial regulators would significantly affect the convergence speed of the evolutionary stable strategy. The proposed social co-governance pattern would effectively safeguard the interests of investors if incentive, penalty, and reputation mechanisms are well-designed. This paper provides in-depth implications for protecting investors' interests in the transformation of the P2P lending industry and enhancing the sustainable development of the FinTech industry.

Responsibility of citizens in food safety social co-governance in the context of China.

Objective: This study aims to identify all actors that hold some responsibility for ensuring food safety based on the complete food supply chain in the context of China's current circumstances. Methods: The study was conducted among citizens in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China. All citizens fully understood the purpose of the study and voluntarily agreed to participate. From December 10 to 14, 2020, a total of 398 valid samples were collected by the researchers using a structured questionnaire. Survey data were assessed using best-worst scaling and a mixed logit model from the perspective of citizen responsibility. Results: In descending order, responsibility for ensuring food safety goes from food producers and traders (including producers, distributors, and retailers) to the government, social organizations, news media, and finally to citizens. Food producers and traders are the actors who should take the greatest responsibility, whereas citizens bear the least responsibility. Conclusion: The responsibility of citizens in food safety co-governance should be recognized but it should not be arbitrarily extended.

Evolutionary Game Analysis of the Social Co-governance of E-Commerce Intellectual Property Protection.

By introducing the theory of social co-governance into the field of e-commerce intellectual property protection, this paper builds an evolutionary game model among the government, e-commerce platforms, and rights holders, and studies the conditions under the stakeholders form a stable equilibrium state under different constraints. Combined with numerical simulation, the influence of individual factors and factor combinations on the system stability is analyzed. Results shows that: Strictly controlling the action costs and response costs of all parties can enhance their willingness to actively deal with infringement issues; reasonable adjustment of the reward and punishment measures of government supervisory agencies can produce sufficient reverse shock and positive guidance to platform and operators; penalties should be imposed on government supervisory agencies that are not sufficiently supervised; strengthen the construction of the social environment for intellectual property protection, improve the social benefits of actively responding to infringement issues, and increase the sense of acquisition by the government, platforms and rights holders. And it provides certain positive references and suggestions for the government to formulate relevant policies.

Citizen Characteristics and Their Participation in Food Safety Social Co-governance: Public Health Implications.

Objective: Given that positive psychological capital motivates citizens to actively participate in social affairs, this study aims to provide insight into food safety risk management in China by empirically determining which individual characteristics are associated with positive psychological capital for actively participating in social co-governance. Methods: A questionnaire-based survey was undertaken between December 5 and 10, 2020. The study participants were residents of Wuxi in China over the age of 18 years. A validated and pretested questionnaires was used to elicit responses with the participants. Student's t-test and one-way analysis of variance were performed to determine which individual characteristics are significantly correlated with the psychological capital of citizens who participate in co-governance. Post-hoc multiple comparisons were performed for each individual characteristic with a significant correlation to determine which categories of these characteristics yielded the significant differences. Study data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0. Results: A total of 752 completed responses were received. Most respondents were females (52.39%), aged 26-45 (66.09%), married (70.48%), company employees (44.28%), and in good health (89.76%). Most had a household size of 3 (55.98%), a bachelor's degree (40.96%), a personal annual income of more than 100,000 yuan (26.46%), and no children aged under 18 (50.27%) or pregnant women (93.22%) in their households. Data analysis indicated that education, income, and health status significantly associate with the psychological capital of citizens to participate in co-governance. Citizens with high education, high income, and good health status have higher psychological capital to participate in co-governance. Conclusion: The present study suggested citizens are likely to actively participate in food safety social co-governance only when they have at least one of the following three characteristics: (1) higher than average income in their city of residence; (2) a bachelor's degree or higher education; or (3) good health. Therefore, motivating citizens to participate in co-governance is a long-term process in China. The fundamental strategy is to increase the income of citizens, especially among low-income groups, promote education to improve the food safety literacy of the public, and improve sanitation and public health.

Study on the Spatio-Temporal Evolution of China's Smart Water Co-Governance in G-E-P Mode.

Smart water co-governance (SWCG) is a fundamental driving force to reduce the water crisis and promote the sustainable development of water resources. To explore the applicability and development of SWCG in different regions, the authors of this paper took 31 provinces of China (with the exception Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) as research districts and used the three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to measure and compare the efficiency of smart water governance (SWG) in the government-enterprise-public (G-E-P) mode and without public participation in the government-enterprise (G-E) mode in 2019. Then, the Malmquist model was used to measure the spatio-temporal evolution of the G-E-P mode from 2010 to 2019, focusing on the analysis of the top ten provinces of the China Internet Development Index in 2019. According to the empirical analysis, the following results were obtained: (1) the efficiency of SWCG in the G-E-P mode was significantly higher than that in G-E model, as 13 provinces showed a significant decline and 10 provinces had a small change. In addition, SWCG in the G-E-P mode showed a good development trend in the eastern and southern regions. (2) The governance efficiency, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency showed upward trends, but the technological progress index and total factor productivity were still low. Therefore, SWG should vigorously promote public participation and the independent implementation of enterprises under the guidance and restriction of the government. Meanwhile, the construction of an SWG infrastructure and the level of science and technology should be strengthened. In addition, each province should adjust the input-output structure according to its redundancy or deficiency, weigh the suitability of the input level and scale, and strengthen the matching and support of the ability of multi-subjects and factors to ensure that an appropriate input-output scale level is reached and the efficiency of SWCG is improved.

Enterprise Food Fraud in China: Key Factors Identification From Social Co-governance Perspective.

Food fraud not only exacerbates human public health risks but also threatens the business development of food and related industries. Therefore, how to curb food fraud effectively becomes a crucial issue for governments, industries, and consumers. Previous studies have demonstrated that enterprise food fraud is subject to joint influences of factor at various hierarchical levels within a complex system of stakeholders. To address enterprise food fraud, it is necessary to identify the key such factors and elucidate the functional mechanisms, as well as systematic analysis of the interrelationships among clusters and factors. Hence, we grounded on a social co-governance perspective and investigated the food fraud key influencing factors and their interrelationships in an emerging food market - China, by using the DEMATEL-based analytic network process (DANP). Results showed that the identified key cluster was government regulation, social governance, and detection techniques. Four other key factors were also identified, including government regulatory capability and penalty intensity, expected economic benefits, maturity of market reputation mechanism, and transparency of supply chain. Policy implications from the social co-governance perspective for China and similar economies are discussed finally.

Improvement Path for Resource-Constrained Cities Identified Using an Environmental Co-Governance Assessment Framework Based on BWM-mV Model.

Global warming and extreme weather have increased most people's awareness of the problem of environmental destruction. In the domain of sustainable development, environmental governance has received considerable scholarly attention. However, protecting and improving the environment requires not only substantial capital investment but also cooperation among stakeholders. Therefore, based on the network structure of stakeholders, the best-worst method (BWM) and modified Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje method were combined to form an environmental co-governance assessment framework that can be used to evaluate the effects of various policies and identify strategies for further improvement through data analysis (henceforth the BWM-mV model). This mechanism is not only useful for evaluating the effectiveness of environmental governance policies but also for generating suggestions to enhance these policies. Hence, the BWM-mV model is particularly suitable for local governments with limited resources in time, money, or labor. Pingxiang City Government is currently subject to such limitations and was therefore selected as the subject of an empirical case study. The results of this study revealed that the aspects (i.e., criteria) the Pingxiang City Government should urgently improve on pertain to a high-quality information communication platform (C13) and smooth joint decision-making by stakeholders (C24).

The objects, agents, and tools of Chinese co-governance on air pollution: a review.

The social and economic development in China has not only made a series of great achievements but also suffered from increasingly serious air pollution. It is of great significance to explore the co-governance mechanism of air pollution in order to promote high-quality development and the construction of "beautiful China." Based on an analysis using the concept of co-governance, this paper reviews the research from four aspects: the multi-object relationships, multi-agent framework, and the co-governance technical tools and policy tools. The results show that the current research has many deficiencies: a lack of research on the size, direction, and driving factors of the correlation of objects; the construction of the multi-agent framework focused only on concepts and lacking the design of core mechanisms; evaluating only the effect of tools but ignoring the optimal combination of governance tools, and paying attention only to the traditional pollutants and disregarding the latest air pollution. Accordingly, this paper finds that the research should be expanded from four aspects, which include taking into account the co-governance of new air pollution, clarifying the relationship between the various types of air pollutants and the driving factors, building a multi-disciplinary research framework for co-governance, and optimizing the combination of governance policies and technical tools in order to realize high-quality development of China.

An Evolutionary Game Model for the Multi-agent Co-Governance of Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution Control under Intensive Management Pattern in China.

This paper focuses on the sustainable development dilemma of agricultural production in China under the pattern of intensive management, which is seriously challenged by agricultural non-point source pollution. The key to effectively break through the dilemma is to promote the co-governance of agricultural non-point source pollution control by stakeholders including local governments, new agricultural operators and traditional farmers. Accordingly, this paper discusses the interactive decision-making relationships between new agricultural operators and traditional farmers under the guidance of local governments, by constructing a trilateral evolutionary game model, as well as analyzing evolutionary cooperative stability strategies and realizing the simulation of evolution processes in different scenarios by MATLAB. The results show that new agricultural operators play a leading role in agricultural non-point source pollution control, whose strategies have effects such as technology spillover. The rewards from the superior government will support local governments in taking proactive action in the co-governance of agricultural non-point source pollution control, and then local governments can offer technical support and subsidies to new agricultural operators and traditional farmers for reducing their costs. Furthermore, this paper also finds that there are green synergy effects among the groups, where the variations of parameters and strategies by one group would affect the two others. Additionally, agricultural land operation rights transfers would cause traditional farmers to take more time to cooperate in the co-governance of agricultural non-point source pollution control. In order to promote the multi-agent co-governance of agricultural non-point source pollution control under intensive management pattern, this paper suggests that it should be necessary to reduce their costs and improve incentives, as well as to increase the common interests among groups and enhance their green synergy effects.

Development and Validation of a Questionnaire on Consumer Psychological Capital in Food Safety Social Co-governance.

Consumers play an important role as one of the main actors in food safety social co-governance. To create a pattern of food safety social co-governance, the active and effective participation of consumers is critical. To encourage consumers to participate in food safety social co-governance voluntarily and positively, we attempted to develop and preliminarily validate a multidimensional questionnaire on consumer psychological capital that could be used to measure the degree of consumer participation in food safety social co-governance. The aim of the initial sample (N = 170) and test sample 2 (N = 204) was to investigate the factor structure of a preliminary measure of consumer psychological capital. A 4-factor model with 23 items explained 61.05% of the total variance in item scores. The aim of test sample 3 (N = 30) was to measure the retest reliability. Test sample 4 (N = 1,076) was randomly allocated to the modeling sample (N = 538) and validation sample (N = 538) to verify questionnaire reliability and validity. Convergent validity, discriminant validity, and the internal inconsistency coefficients of the questionnaire were assessed in the modeling sample. While processing CFA, we deleted 9 items with small standardized factor loadings. The remaining 14 items in the final revised 4-factor model included self-efficacy, resilience, hope, and optimism. The fit indices of the revised four-factor model and second-order factor model in the modeling sample revealed an acceptable model fit. The convergent validity and discriminant validity of the revised model were good and acceptable, respectively. A cross-validation procedure confirmed the appropriateness of the revised four-factor model and second-order factor model in the validation sample. The cross-validation results confirmed that the fit indices of the revised four-factor model fitted the data well and the second-order factor model in the validation sample reached acceptable values. We concluded that the questionnaire developed in this study had good reliability and stable and acceptable construct validity. It could provide a theoretical basis for measuring psychological capital in food safety co-governance.

Satellite-derived spatiotemporal PM2.5 concentrations and variations from 2006 to 2017 in China.

The PM2.5 concentration is an important evaluation index for the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for its negative impacts on human health. Last decade, several fine particulate pollution episodes occurred in the vast area of China. In response to this, the Chinese government has stepped up efforts to tackle air pollution. In this paper, the temporal trends of PM2.5 and the quantitative potential impact of environmental governance on PM2.5 are analyzed for China. Due to the lack of historical records, a two-stage model was used to estimate the historical PM2.5 concentrations, combined with the newly released satellite-based aerosol optical depth (AOD) product (MODIS Collection 6.1) and other data. The estimated PM2.5 concentrations showed strong consistency with the surface observations. Furthermore, significant seasonal variations existed in the PM2.5 concentrations and the temporal trends were captured, especially in city clusters. Then eight major city clusters were selected as typical samples. All the city clusters showed decrease trends in recent years, with PM2.5 concentrations in these regions decreased by 0.269-1.604 µg m-3 year-1. From 2006 to 2017, the annual PM2.5 concentrations decreased by 7.83%-26.35% in the major city clusters among China. Technological innovation and environmental governance play an important role in the decrease of PM2.5. In order to quantify the influence of governance, environmental regulation intensity and synergy were applied as the indicators of the internal governance and co-governance in each city cluster. In most city clusters, PM2.5 concentrations were significantly negatively correlated with regional internal governance and co-governance (R = -0.596 to -0.930, p < 0.05), and the effect on PM2.5 lasted for several years. However, 1- to 2-year lagged effect was found for governance, which means that the regulatory measures should be enhanced to decrease PM2.5 in the future to achieve the SDGs in China.

Psychological Capital in Food Safety Social Co-governance.

Social co-governance of food safety is an advocacy model to deal with current global food safety risks. Food safety co-governance involves the collaboration and partnership of government, industry, and society. The success of this collaboration is dependent on the construct of positive psychological capital. This paper discusses the concept of psychological capital and its four elements of self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency in line with co-governance in food safety. Accordingly, the paper proposes that great success in food safety co-governance would be realized if the government, industry, and society nurture positive psychological capital. Psychological capital can help corporates to instill organizational commitment on employees, thus promote food safety. Furthermore, positive psychological capital can help the government to appeal to the emotions of food companies and social actors to ensure self-efficacy toward food safety. The government can inspire hope by setting food safety goals and plans to achieve them, and a reward program will motivate food companies and promote self-efficacy in co-governance efforts. The government can also reinforce the efforts of companies in leveraging the elements of PsyCap in food safety, since the production of high-quality food is also dependent on the behaviors and attitudes of the workforce. Furthermore, the government can utilize social persuasion to improve the engagement of social actors in food safety regulations.

Spatially differentiated regulation: Can it save the Baltic Sea from excessive N-loads?

The Baltic Sea Action Plan and the EU Water Framework Directive both require substantial additional reductions of nutrient loads (N and P) to the marine environment. Focusing on nitrogen, we present a widely applicable concept for spatially differentiated regulation, exploiting the large spatial variations in the natural removal of nitrate in groundwater and surface water. By targeting mitigation measures towards areas where nature's own capacity for removal is low, spatially differentiated regulation can be more cost-effective than the traditional uniform regulation. We present a methodology for upscaling local modelling results on targeted measures at field scale to Baltic Sea drainage basin scale. The paper assesses the potential gain and discusses key challenges related to implementation of spatially differentiated regulation, including the need for more scientific knowledge, handling of uncertainties, practical constraints related to agricultural practice and introduction of co-governance regimes.

Experiences from harvest-driven conservation: Management of Amazonian river turtles as a common-pool resource.

Understanding what causes variability in the outcomes of common-pool resources management and governance has important policy implications for biodiversity conservation, in particular for the conservation of wild plants and animals subject to harvest. We report an exploratory study focusing on Amazonian river turtles as a common-pool resource under harvest-driven conservation and management efforts in Peru. Based on document analysis, literature review and a series of interviews, we describe the management program as a social process and identify the most important governance and management outcomes achieved (increased turtle abundance and benefits for harvesters, harvester formalization), factors hindering and facilitating the program implementation (four natural and three societal factors), and key governance actions behind the program outcomes (awareness and capacity building, crafting and enforcing rules). We then highlight the existing knowledge gaps and the needs and possible means to address particular risks related to turtle management on a harvest-driven setting.

Grupos Balint Paideia: uma contribuição para a co-gestão e a clinica ampliada na atenção basica / Balint-Paideia Group: contribution for co-governance institutions and amplified clinic in primary health

A prática gerencial hegemônica costuma privilegiar a padronização de condutas e a fragmentação do trabalho, em lugar do apoio aos profissionais de saúde no desafio de fazer uma clínica ampliada, que reconheça a singularidade dos sujeitos e grupos. Esta prática gerencial reforça um tipo de clínica que costuma ter dificuldade para lidar com pessoas reais, uma vez que enxerga na complexidade do adoecimento e do sofrimento, apenas os aspectos diagnósticos e recortes disciplinares, com graves conseqüências para a qualidade da atenção. É necessário, portanto, que os profissionais desenvolvam tanto alguma crítica a este tipo de conhecimento universalizante (e ao hábito quase inconsciente de tomar a "parte" pelo "todo") quanto alguma capacidade de lidar com a subjetividade inerente ao trabalho em saúde (do usuário, dos grupos e dos próprios profissionais). Michaël Balint, em meados do século passado, foi pioneiro em apontar que o aprendizado clínico não se reduzia aos seus aspectos cognitivos, propondo a criação dos GRUPOS BALINT para o apoio através da discussão supervisionada de casos clínicos. O presente trabalho aborda alguns dos principais desafios da atenção básica e apresenta a elaboração e experimentação de um instrumento de apoio à gestão da clínica e formação dos profissionais: os Grupos BALINT-PAIDÉIA, que procura adaptar os grupos BALINT para a realidade atual do SUS em síntese com...

The hegemonic management practice usually focuses on the hegemonic standards of conduct and fragmentation of work, instead of supporting health professionals in the challenge to make an extended clinic, which recognizes the singularity of individuals and groups. The hegemonic practice reinforces one type of clinic that frequently shows difficulties in dealing with real people, since it withdraws from the complexity of illness and suffering, only the diagnostic aspects and disciplinary particularities, carrying serious consequences for the quality of health care as result. Hence it is necessary that professionals develop critical positions related to such universalizing knowledge (and to the almost unconscious habit of taking the "part" as the "whole") specially referring to some capacity to deal with the subjectivity which is inherent in working in health care (related to the user, to the groups and to the professionals themselves. Michael Balint, in the middle of last century, was the pioneer in pointing out that clinical learning is not reduced to its cognitive aspects. He proposed the creation of BALINT GROUPS as support...