With its generally recognized benefits of clean and safe working environment and good quality, prefabricated house construction (PHC) as a solution is gaining momentum in the face of various housing ...challenges in Hong Kong's construction industry. Although prefabrication has its own benefits, its fundamental disadvantages of fragmentation, discontinuity, poor interoperability, and scarce real-time information availability have imposed significant adverse influence on the schedule performance of prefabricated house construction. As a result, despite the promise of the government to provide sufficient houses and harmonious housing, schedule delay problems still frequently beset the industry of PHC. To help address schedule delay problems encountered in the construction of prefabrication housing, this research first identified and analysed critical schedule risk factors that may have significant influence on the schedule performance of PHC. Based on the identified schedule risks, the challenges and corresponding required functions for enhancing schedule performance are determined. Then, a radio frequency identification device (RFID)-enabled BIM platform that integrates various involved stakeholders, information/data flow, offshore prefabrication procedures, and state-of-the-art construction technologies, is developed to handle the critical schedule factors. Smart construction objects and RFID-enabled smart gateway work collaboratively to ease operations within the three echelons of prefabrication manufacturing, logistics and on-site assembly construction, while real-time captured data are used to form a closed-loop visibility and traceability mode in which different end users can supervise the construction statuses, progresses in real time. The developed platform can provide various services, tools and mechanisms to different stakeholders, improve the success of daily operations and decision makings throughout PHC management, such that critical schedule risks can be mitigated and the schedule performance of PHC can be enhanced to ensure timely project delivery.
This study explores the factors that influence customer citizenship behavior in the context of the customer experience of a transportation application that incorporates the concept of the sharing ...economy. In contrast to previous studies, the research framework of this study predicts customer citizenship behavior through the influence of individual customers' perceptions of product offerings (perceived quality, situational involvement, enduring involvement) on customer experience. Furthermore, considering the nature of the industry where the exchange of services occurs between individual users as both service providers and recipients, this study investigates the moderating effect of communitas. Similarly, this study also addresses how customer citizenship behavior can be encouraged through the elevation of customer experience, facilitated by behavioral engagement. By focusing on the effects of subjective user experiences with the application, this study explores the factors that can encourage customer citizenship behavior. Through this investigation, it aims to propose managerial implications that can enhance the superiority of consumer services.
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Economic sociology in Hong Kong is largely an outcome of growing research on its vibrant economic life since the 1960s. As a British colony (prior to July 1, 1997) with a predominantly Chinese ...population and undergoing export-oriented industrialization at a rapid pace, Hong Kong attracted the attention of social science researchers, both local and overseas. After the 1949 Revolution, when fieldwork in China became no longer feasible, some anthropologists simply saw Hong Kong (and Taiwan as well) as a substitute for their original fieldtrip destination (Baker 2007, 4). Sociologists, however, did not approach their research site in the same manner. But in the eyes of those sociologists whose conceptual framework was informed by modernization theory, Hong Kong was a Chinese society going through industrialization and modernization (and sometimes using the expression westernization), offering a "laboratory" for analyzing the impacts of social change on a so-called traditional society. Meanwhile, there were also researchers with a labor studies background who considered Hong Kong's success in exporting its manufacturing products to be a result of low wages and poor labor protection. So, in the early days of the development of economic sociology-related research in Hong Kong, it was a blending of sociology, human geography, and labor studies. Researchers, despite differences in their academic disciplines and each thus starting with a different set of research questions, came to unravel the socioeconomic and cultural dynamics underlying Hong Kong's rapidly changing economic structure, institutions, and organizations. (...)
The rapid decline of solar PV costs and the urgency to develop effective post-Fukushima climate/energy plans in recent years have led to an upsurge of policy interest in deploying solar in ...international megacities including New York, Tokyo and Singapore. Nonetheless, overcoming barriers to large-scale uptake of urban solar PV remains under-explored. This study conducted 57 face-to-face interviews with potential solar PV adopters from the residential, institutional, and commercial sectors in Hong Kong, to understand perceived barriers and policy preferences. We found that firstly, most interviewees perceived high upfront costs and long payback period as primary barriers. Secondly, a reduced payback period is effective in improving their attitude towards installing solar. A majority of the residential interviewees shifted away from the "low level of interest" group to higher levels of interest if payback periods could be reduced from 35 years (business-as-usual scenario) to 8 years. Thirdly, potential PV adopters had different policy preferences. While residential interviewees indicated a strong preference for subsidies, institutional interviewees leaned towards regulatory measures, and commercial interviewees preferred feed-in-tariffs. Our findings suggest that the Hong Kong government needs to adopt the enabling framework developed in this study to effectively steer, nurture, and regulate PV deployment.
Social media, an open space for the public's opinion and expression, has become an increasingly essential issue in crisis events, leading to secondary crisis communication. Realizing the potential ...risk of that, this study took the "Occupy Central" spreading on Weibo as a case, and applied topic clustering and sentiment analysis to examine the sequential characteristics of secondary crisis communication on social media in topics and emotions. Results show that the topics Weibo users discussed shifted from a political event to tourism boycott, with emotions turning increasingly negative. The turning point of such a transfer was aroused group conflicts and negative emotions elicited between people from mainland China and Hong Kong. The results indicate the necessity of emphasizing secondary crisis communication during a crisis due to the dynamic and sequential change of topics and public's emotions, which may result in new crises impacting the tourism destination where the initial crisis occurs.
This study explores how mobile instant messaging use, affordances, and social capital may directly and indirectly influence positive employee outcomes. A field survey of 245 Hong Kong real estate ...agents showed that their mobile instant messaging (MIM) use and affordances were positively associated with job performance, job satisfaction, and relational satisfaction, and with online bridging and bonding social capital. While bridging capital was not associated with any of the three outcomes, bonding social capital was positively related to the two satisfaction measures. However (with one small exception), neither type of social capital mediated relationships between MIM use and affordances, and employee outcomes.
By using transaction‐level data, we study if two popular policies intended to cool an overheated housing market would serve their intended purposes. We found both mortgage tightening and Special ...Stamp Duties (SSD) actually led to higher starter home prices in Hong Kong. Mortgage tightening shifted the demand for bigger homes to that for smaller ones. The SSD that applies to resales within a specified period of the original purchase lowered turnover across the housing market. The decline in turnover is, as expected, sharpest for small flats, implying a dramatic shrinkage in second‐hand supply of such homes, driving their prices up. We also found transactions bunching as many homes are held till the SSD is no longer applicable, indicating lock‐in effects. Relative to those that are not subject to the SSD, the prices of properties subject to the levy are found to be lower by 6.8%.
Chinese National Cinema Zhang, Yingjin
2004, 20040802, 2004-05-21, 2004-08-02, 20040101
eBook
This introduction to Chinese national cinema covers three 'Chinas': mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Historical and comparative perspectives bring out the parallel developments in these three ...Chinas, while critical analysis explores thematic and stylistic changes over time.
As well as exploring artistic achievements and ideological debates, Yingjin Zhang examines how - despite the pressures placed on the industry from state control and rigid censorship - Chinese national cinema remains incapable of projecting a single unified picture, but rather portrays many different Chinas.
'A remarkable scholarly achievement, evidenced by the author's extensive research, encyclopedic knowledge of his subject and refreshing interpretations of the major trends and developments in Chinese film history ... this book establishes Zhang as the undisputed authority on Chinese cinema in the West.' - Zhiwei Xiao, California State University
'A model of forward-looking scholarship, and a superb addition to the National Cinemas series ... eminently suited to adoption on courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.' - Julian Stringer, University of Nottingham, UK
'All in all, Chinese National Cinema is a masterly synthesis of a vast subject.' - The China Journal
1. Introduction: National Cinema and China 2. Cinema and National Traditions, 1905-29 3. Cinema and the Nation-People, 1930-49 4. Cinematic Reinvention of the National, 1945,78 5. Cinematic Revival of the Regional, 1945-78 6. Cinema and the Nation-State, 1949-78 7. Cinema and National/Regional Cultures, 1979-89 8. Cinema and the Transnational Imaginary, 1990-2002
Many countries or regions, in recent years, show a rising interest in prefabrication as a “cleaner” production strategy to meet their enormous construction demand, e.g. for housing and ...infrastructure. Along with this trend is the observation that many governments tend to set forth a high level of prefabrication as a part of their ambitious construction plan. This paper argues that unnecessarily a higher level of prefabrication is better and develops an analytical framework for questing the optimal level of prefabrication adoption in a certain PEST (political, economic, social and technological) background. This framework contains thirteen PEST factors affecting the prefabrication adoption, including policy, supply, labor, social attitude, user acceptance, and so on. These factors in combination will determine the optimal prefabrication adoption level from 0 to 4, which was defined by Gibb 2001 to represent the range from entire cast-in-situ construction to complete prefabricated building, respectively. The framework was substantiated by using Hong Kong's prominent offshore prefabrication construction as a case. It was identified that Levels 2 and 3 are the optimal level of prefabrication adoption subject to the current PEST background in Hong Kong. This paper helps to clarify the prevailing misconception that “the higher the prefabrication level, the better”. The developed framework can be used by other economies to devise their proper prefabrication roadmaps.
•This paper develops a framework for questing the optimal level of prefabrication.•The framework contains thirteen PEST factors affecting prefabrication adoption.•The underlying notion of framework is illustrated by taking Hong Kong as a case.•The proposed framework can be used to devise proper prefabrication roadmaps.
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