With increasing water supply accidents and higher water demand, urban water supply safety (WSS) remains a crucial public policy issue in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) and their preferences to improve WSS in China, to support governments in water regulation policy design and water providers in investment-decisions. A discrete choice experiment method with the consideration of not only attributes of WSS but also attitudinal and demographic variables have been adopted to assess consumers’ WTP and preferences for WSS improvement. The results show that Chinese urban residents are willing to pay a significantly higher price for improved WSS. Demonstrated marginal mean WTP for the change of the attributes range from 0.18 RMB/m³ (0.03 USD/m³) (1 RMB was around 0.154 USD in 2016) for decreased water supply interruption to 2.33 Yuan RMB/m³ (0.35 USD/m³) for improved drinking water quality. Investments in water processing facilities and water distribution networks should come first. Cross-subsidy concerning different developing districts is the most efficient policy instrument. The study contributes to the recent literature not only by introducing attitudinal variables in choice experiment survey in water supply field, but also by revealing the correlation of choice modeling applications in WSS improvement programs.

Purpose: Using Generation Z consumers from China as an example and focusing on the nostalgia-driven design of brand spokes-character, this study sought to update research on the causal relationship between nostalgia and brand attitude for younger consumers. Two types of nostalgic brand spokes-characters (i.e., eliciting personal nostalgia and historical nostalgia) were examined separately and compared to verify their contributions to more positive brand attitude, as well as related mechanisms, that is, whether consumer trust in the spokes-character mediated the relationship between nostalgic spokes-characters and brand attitude.Design/methodology/approach: An experiment was first conducted to test the causal effects of brand spokes-characters designed to elicit two types of nostalgic feelings (i.e., personal nostalgia and historical nostalgia). Then, the authors investigated the influencing mechanism of nostalgic brand spokes-characters based on bootstrap mediation models.Findings: The results revealed that for less familiar brand spokes-characters, either type of nostalgia-driven design would enhance consumers' brand attitude. Moreover, consumer trust in the spokes-character mediated the relationship between personal-nostalgic brand spokes-characters and brand attitude.Originality/value: This study was the first to examine personal nostalgia and historical nostalgia separately regarding the effects of nostalgic spokes-characters and related mechanisms. By combining methods of experimental design and bootstrap mediation modeling, it provided a more robust evaluation of nostalgia-driven design, and supported using certain nostalgic styles for designing brand spokes-characters, which can help modern brands draw more interest from young consumers and promote more positive brand attitude.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization have presented a dilemma to traditional environmental policies, and severe haze pollution has attracted particular attention in China. This paper employed the exploratory spatial data analysis technique to analyze global and local spatial auto-correlation of environmental regulations (ERS) and haze pollution. Static and dynamic spatial panel data models were further established to investigate the influence of ERS and its spatial spillover effect on haze pollution across 31 provinces of China in 2005-2015. Results showed that significant spatial autocorrelation existed for both ERS and haze pollution in China, forming different aggregation regions in terms of geographical distribution. There was strong evidence for the “inverted-U”-shaped EKC relationship between ERS and haze pollution regardless of whether it was the static or dynamic spatial econometric model. In addition, haze pollution was not only affected by economic growth, population size, and urbanization, but also by the haze pollution in the previous period. Conclusions and control strategies that would be of great significance for implementing effective management measures were synoptically discussed.