Prewriting is the process of discovering and developing ideas before writing a first draft, which requires divergent thinking and often implies unstructured strategies such as diagramming, outlining, free-writing, etc. Although large language models (LLMs) have been demonstrated to be useful for a variety of tasks including creative writing, little is known about how users would collaborate with LLMs to support prewriting. The preferred collaborative role and initiative of LLMs during such a creative process is also unclear. To investigate human-LLM collaboration patterns and dynamics during prewriting, we conducted a three-session qualitative study with 15 participants in two creative tasks: story writing and slogan writing. The findings indicated that during collaborative prewriting, there appears to be a three-stage iterative Human-AI Co-creativity process that includes Ideation, Illumination, and Implementation stages. This collaborative process champions the human in a dominant role, in addition to mixed and shifting levels of initiative that exist between humans and LLMs. This research also reports on collaboration breakdowns that occur during this process, user perceptions of using existing LLMs during Human-AI Co-creativity, and discusses design implications to support this co-creativity process.

A common argument is that the comprehensive implementation of the river chief system (RCS) is a clear indication of the Chinese government’s strong commitment to overcoming the problem of water pollution. Scant attention, nonetheless, has been afforded to systematically examining the economic and social effects of this pioneering policy. Based on news reports and data from regions in which the RCS was piloted, this paper fills in a critical literature gap by unpacking the environmental, economic, and societal benefits accrued from this river-based management approach. Specifically, by employing a difference-in-differences (DID) method, this study shows that (1) overall, the adoption of the RCS has significantly reduced the discharge of sewage per unit of GDP and improved water quality to a considerable extent; (2) the RCS, functioning under China’s top-down bureaucratic structure, coupled with increasing encouragement of bottom-up oversight and citizen participation, has provided local governments with strong incentives to improve water quality in a timely manner in their respective jurisdictions through the introduction of a plethora of measures, ranging from increased investment in wastewater treatment to faithful enforcement of environmental regulations; (3) the positive changes anticipated as a result of the RCS cannot be materialized in regions that have difficulties sustaining economic growth or facilitating cross-boundary policy coordination; and (4) the long-term effectiveness of the RCS is based on its ability to compel local enterprises to innovate their modes of operation, ultimately leading to regional industrial upgrading. The paper concludes by discussing how these empirical findings can help policymakers devise feasible tactics for confronting the causes of China’s current environmental predicament in the context of improving the alignment of individual officials’ political aspirations with targeted environmental outcomes.

China has witnessed rapid growth in its e-commerce markets and livestreaming communities in recent years. The commercialization of livestreaming has led to the rise of e-commerce livestreamers, among which rural women constitute a substantial portion. To understand the motivations underlying these women's choices to engage in livestreaming activities and probe the extent to which they are empowered by this new form of entrepreneurship, we conducted an interview-based study with rural female livestreamers. We found that these women chose to be livestreamers for practical and self-presentation purposes and they gained a sense of self-empowerment through economic, social, intellectual, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. At the same time, however, they experienced and confronted social stigmas rooted in rural societies and the strategies they used to deal with these biases were vastly different. Our work contributes to the HCI community by providing a nuanced understanding of the motives and lived experiences of rural female livestreamers and offers design implications that could improve the everyday experiences of these livestreamers.

Does job satisfaction of street-level bureaucrats depend on intrinsic public service motivation (PSM) or extrinsic performance-contingent pay? Which factor exerts a more substantial impact on job satisfaction? Drawing on a data set of 220 frontline public service workers in Hong Kong, this study examines the nuanced relationship among PSM, performance-contingent pay, and job satisfaction. The findings show that both PSM and performance-contingent pay elevate the job satisfaction of street-level bureaucrats through a shared mediator-perceived job control. Furthermore, PSM, as an intrinsic motivator, exerts a stronger impact on job satisfaction than performance-contingent pay.