Extreme poverty can be alleviated through entrepreneurship, but starting a business can be elusive among impoverished people, partly due to a lack of access to entrepreneurial opportunities. In the current literature, the source of entrepreneurial opportunity for the poor remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we used the opportunity co-creation perspective to examine the impact of opportunity co-creation on the entrepreneurial performance of the poor and its various influence pathways. We developed a chain multiple mediation model and surveyed 330 poor entrepreneurs from the Wuling Mountain Region, which used to be one of the 14 contiguous poverty-stricken areas in China until the end of 2020 when the country announced the eradication of extreme poverty. Data analysis was done using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results suggest that opportunity co-creation has a direct positive effect on the entrepreneurial performance of the poor and an indirect positive effect through the chain mediating effect of opportunity beliefs and entrepreneurial behavior. The findings confirm that opportunity co-creation is a critical factor for entrepreneurs in poor areas to overcome the lack of entrepreneurial opportunities and can also contribute to a better understanding of opportunity beliefs and entrepreneurial behavior. Furthermore, these results have important implications for poor entrepreneurs and provide opportunity co-creation solutions for poverty reduction through entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is widely recognized as a critical engine of economic growth. This is especially true in rural areas, where resources, policy support, and talent pools are often constrained. Stimulating entrepreneurial vitality in these regions has thus become an urgent policy and research priority. This study adopts an inclusive growth perspective, selecting six key elements—economic level, industrial structure, financial development, educational condition, medical condition, and social security—to construct a theoretical model exploring the configuration pathways that drive rural entrepreneurial activity. Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the study examines 982 rural regions in China and draws the following conclusions: (1) None of the six key elements is a necessary condition for rural entrepreneurial activity. (2) The “finance and healthcare-driven” type (C1), “industrial and educational balance” type (C2), “financial and educational synergy” type (C3), and “industrial and healthcare support” type (C4) are the configuration paths to achieve high rural entrepreneurial activity. The findings provide both theoretical and practical insights for stimulating entrepreneurship in rural China. Specifically, they highlight how different developmental configurations can activate local entrepreneurial ecosystems, expand employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for vulnerable groups, and contribute to sustainable poverty alleviation.

In comparison to agglomeration economies, the negative externalities of agglomeration have received less attention. Based on the punishment data of illegal loans from Chinese bank branches, this paper focuses on the relationship between density and credit misallocation to enrich the study of the negative externalities of agglomeration. After controlling for city size and a variety of other possible factors, the empirical results suggest that increased density leads to increased credit misallocation, and this result passes a series of robustness tests, including IV estimation. Agglomeration causes credit misallocation primarily through rising house prices, which causes financial institutions to favor housing-related loans. During this process, the government’s reliance on land finance causes higher house prices and, as a result, more severe misallocation. However, agglomeration does not always lead to an increase in credit misallocation. There are also cases where agglomeration does not lead to an increase in credit misallocation, which suggests that we should pay attention to differences in key characteristics between cities when studying the externalities of agglomeration.

Introduction: Social work has entered a critical period of high-quality development. As the main force participating in social governance and providing professional services, social workers directly affect the effectiveness of social governance. However, the emotional demands inherent in their work make them vulnerable to emotional exhaustion. Drawing on the theoretical perspective of emotional labor, this study explores the association between social workers’ emotional labor and emotional exhaustion, with particular attention to the mediating role of individuals’ perception of job demand. The central aim is to move beyond a general understanding of emotional labor by deconstructing the antagonistic dynamics among its internal strategies. Methods: An empirical investigation was conducted with a sample of 399 front-line social workers. The study measured participants’ emotional labor strategies, their perception of job demand, and their levels of emotional exhaustion. Mediation analysis was employed to examine the pathways linking emotional labor to emotional exhaustion through job demand, and moderation analysis was used to assess the role of supportive resources in the work setting. Results: The findings reveal that social workers generally exhibit a high level of emotional exhaustion, with deep acting being the predominant emotional labor strategy. Job demand plays a significant mediating role between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion, and this mediation displays notable “strategy heterogeneity”: Surface acting is positively associated with emotional exhaustion through increased work demands. Deep acting may predict lower emotional exhaustion by reducing the perception of work demands, thereby generating a “shielding effect” against emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, supportive resources in the work setting moderate the effects of different emotional labor strategies in fundamentally different ways. Discussion: By deconstructing the antagonistic dynamics of the internal strategies of emotional labor, this study provides a more precise and practically valuable perspective for understanding and intervening in social workers’ job burnout. The identification of “strategy heterogeneity” and the “shielding effect” of deep acting suggests that interventions should be tailored to specific emotional labor strategies rather than treating emotional labor as a unified construct. These insights offer practical guidance for reducing emotional exhaustion among front-line social workers and, in turn, enhancing the effectiveness of social governance.

Production data transparency in smart manufacturing simultaneously enhances and impairs employee performance across organizational contexts. Existing research has not resolved this theoretical contradiction. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory, cognitive appraisal theory, and conservation of resources theory, this study develops a dual-pathway model. Data transparency influences adaptive performance through a bright empowerment pathway and a dark surveillance pathway mediated by EPM-induced strain. Procedural justice of data governance and digital self-efficacy operate as a perceived-institutional boundary condition and an individual-capability boundary condition, respectively. Latent moderated structural equations were applied to survey data from 412 employees in Chinese smart manufacturing enterprises. Results support both pathways and reveal a theoretically consequential asymmetry between these boundary conditions. Johnson–Neyman analysis indicates that institutional justice attenuates the strain pathway to non-significance within the observed distribution of responses. Conversely, digital self-efficacy requires near-ceiling levels to achieve the same pattern. This asymmetry indicates that continuous moderation produces sharply different practical outcomes across the observed data range. Institutional and individual remedies therefore address the visibility paradox on different practical scales. Governance adequacy represents a more attainable managerial lever than individual capability development. These findings advance socio-technical systems theory by detailing the asymmetric buffering capacities of different organizational resources.

Background: Social participation is a key determinant of mental well-being in later life, yet population based research tends to focus on overall activity rather than on how participation is configured. In digitalized societies, unequal access to digital technologies shapes how older adults combine online and offline participation, with important but poorly understood implications for mental health. Methods: Using data from 8,427 adults aged 60 years and older in China, this study applied latent class analysis to identify patterns of digital and offline social participation based on eight indicators. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine sociodemographic and health correlates of class membership. Multiple linear regression and covariate adjusted means were used to assess associations between participation patterns, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction. Results: Four participation classes were identified: Digital active, Offline active, Digital–offline active, and Low participation. Participation configurations were strongly stratified by age, education, residence, and health status. After adjusting for covariates, older adults in the Digital active and Digital–offline active classes reported significantly lower depressive symptoms and higher life satisfaction than those in the Offline active class, while individuals in the Low participation class showed intermediate mental health outcomes. Conclusion: Mental well-being in later life depends not only on whether older adults are socially active but on how digital and offline participation are configured. In a digitally transforming society, digital engagement appears to function as a socially structured psychosocial resource, contributing to inequalities in mental well-being across later life.