Promoting the coupling coordinated development between ecological protection and high-quality development is an important path to achieve sustainable regional development around the world. Taking Guizhou, China as a typical case, this study builds a comprehensive evaluation index system for ecological protection and high-quality development, and then uses the coupling coordination degree model to assess the spatiotemporal characteristics of ecological protection and high-quality development. According to the findings, Guizhou’s ecological protection index and high-quality development index both exhibit an upward trend and a center-edge spatial pattern, but they also exhibit a “spatial misalignment relationship”. The coupling coordination between ecological protection and high-quality development in Guizhou has shown a continuous growth trend from near-disorder to a primary coordination, with a spatial pattern of “central > western > eastern”. This study enriches the knowledge body of sustainable development, helps Guizhou make decisions that are best for ecological protection and high-quality development, and is useful as a reference for other regions and countries.

Background/Objectives: This study aims to investigate whether rural community elderly care services can enhance older adults’ subjective well-being, with a specific focus on examining whether late-life stress mediates this association. Methods: Subjective well-being is operationalized through three dimensions: life satisfaction, positive life attitude, and depression levels. Data were collected from a sample of 796 rural Chinese adults aged 60 years and older. Regression analysis was used to assess the direct effects of rural community elderly care services on subjective well-being outcomes, while an instrumental variable two-stage least squares model was employed to test the robustness of these findings. A mediation analysis further explored the underlying mechanisms through which these services influence well-being. Results: Results indicate that rural community elderly care services exert significant direct and indirect effects on all three dimensions of subjective well-being. The indirect effects arise because these services provide social support that mitigates late-life stressors and buffers the negative impacts of adverse life events, thereby enhancing psychological well-being. Conclusions: These findings clarify the mediating role of stress in the relationship between community care services and subjective well-being among rural older adults, highlighting the importance of addressing age-related stressors in gerontological interventions. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence for the efficacy of rural community elderly care programs and offering actionable insights for developing contextually appropriate service models to meet the needs of aging rural populations. This study elucidates how rural older adults perceive community elderly care services, providing empirical evidence for government agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of policy-driven services. It further identifies key entry points for enhancing rural care service quality and promoting elderly well-being, bridging research insights with actionable strategies for policy improvement.

More and more recent studies have come to realize that the emerging industries not only occur within a city but also are impacted by the city network. This study uses a shift-share analysis (SSA) method to measure the evolutionary characteristics of the esports industry in 26 cities of the Yangtze River Delta region from 2004 to 2018. The study found that the esports industry showed a process of spreading from the central city to the surrounding small- and medium-sized cities. This phenomenon was also impacted by factors such as technological diffusion, knowledge sharing of enterprises in the city network, complementarity between industries, and common market. This study further explored the influencing factors of the esports industry’s evolution in the city network through the econometric model, and the results showed that technology spillovers and market integration effects have a significant positive effect on the esports industry’s growth. This study verifies that the evolution of emerging industries in small- and medium-sized cities can benefit from a city network. Industrial clusters within cities and city networks are complementary and jointly promote the development of emerging industries. This study expands industrial development from urban inside to city network, which provides a broader perspective for urban and regional industrial planning. Furthermore, this study provides technical support for regional development planning and reminds urban decision makers to need to establish horizontal industrial linkages in city networks to achieve integrated regional development.

Spatial heterogeneity is a fundamental aspect of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). The appropriateness of PPPs applications varies across regions. While the assessment of suitability for PPPs is crucial, it has received limited scholarly attention. This study, using China as s representative case, developed a suitability assessment model and evaluated it across 287 prefecture-level cities in China. The results reveal considerable spatial variation in the suitability of PPPs within the country. Utilizing the natural breakpoint method, this study categorized Chinese cities into four distinct levels of PPP suitability: high, medium, low, and unsuitable. 219 cities were identified as either unsuitable or having low suitability for PPPs, suggesting that PPPs may not be broadly applicable in the current Chinese context. This study not only lays the groundwork for sustainable PPP application in China but also significantly contributes to shaping strategies for successful PPP implementation globally.

The emergence and development of new industry play a key role in regional development and economic growth. This study explores the e-sports industry evolution, a typical cross-sector new industry, through a theoretical lens of the evolutionary economic geography (EEG) based on Chinese e-sports industry enterprise data between 1998–2018 and examines the influencing factor by multivariate regression. Results show e-sports industry development is a typical evolutionary process that combines spin-off, path creation, spatial evolution, and firms’ network. Furthermore, the e-sports industry is characterized by the integration of the sports and creative industries. However, technology correlated-based knowledge spillover from culture and sports does not significantly impact the e-sports industry, whereas the knowledge spillover from the information software industry promotes e-sports industry development. The regression result also confirms that the institution and culture significantly impact the industrial development. This study enriches the knowledge body of evolutionary economic geography from case studies of the e-sports industry, and also expands the existing study system of emerging industries.