The focus of this study is to identify the key determinants that influence tourists’ intention to use augmented reality (AR) technology and explore the moderating effect of millennials on the relationship between subjective norms and tourists’ intention to use AR technology. The results indicate that (1) tourists’ attitude towards AR technology is significantly and positively affected by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, while perceived risk does not significantly influence their intention to use; (2) there are strong positive interactions between the attitude towards and subjective norms of AR technology and tourists’ intention to use this technology; and (3) nonmillennial tourists’ intention to use AR technology is less influenced by subjective norms compared to the results from millennial tourists. The results of this study will help the application of tourism AR technology for different age groups and contribute to the sustainable development of tourism.

China has embarked on a radical transformation of its online and mobile games industry since its government announced its ambition to be a global sporting power. This study investigates Chinese electronic sports (eSports) in the context of platform governance and platform capitalism, through a case study of the platformization of Tencent, one of China’s largest media conglomerates. We employ a boundary analysis of platform documentation, a document analysis of policies, financial data, and ethnographic interviews to examine the interactivity and flow of power arising from direct state control and the processes of commercialization and professionalization. To support our proposal that the state and corporations, while genetically different, are mutually constitutive, we explore concepts of the platformization of infrastructures and infrastructuralization of platforms. This study proposes that the Chinese eSports industry has an umbrella-like structure and challenges the assumption that China is an authoritarian system with a one-size-fits-all policy. Our results imply that games industry professionals invite funding bodies to work jointly with government to develop alternatives for the eSports industry. Meanwhile, we show how Tencent utilizes its expansion of capital fluidity and data-driven multidimensionality, moving toward an ecosystem of platform dependency, organizational homogenization, and deep power asymmetries.

Situated in China’s neoliberal context and its rapid development of information communication technologies (ICTs), this study aimed to examine how disabled people in China transformed themselves into new self-enterprising subjects in the wave of ‘Internet + Disability.’ In order to answer this question, this study tried to develop an analytical framework to illustrate the disability practices that situated in the ICTs and neoliberal context, underpinned by the discourse of ‘self as enterprise,’ and demonstrated by the practices of entrepreneurship and employment. Based on the research design of case studies and methods that included ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study explained how a disabled entrepreneur, Mr. Yuan, took advantage of the wave of ‘Internet + Disability’ to realize his dream of entrepreneurship and face the uncertainties of a precarious entrepreneurship. It also explained how Mr. Yuan’s employees achieved their dreams of employment but suffered the precariousness of enterprising subjects.

Based upon thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in South China, this study employs Lauren Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism to examine how Chinese rural migrant workers – an economically and culturally disadvantaged group – use digital dating services and select dates. It juxtaposes the rural migrant workers’ encouraged engagement with digital dating with interview accounts which reveal that digital dating presents a large sum of obstacles to the fulfilment of sexual and romantic desire. Our research shows that these obstacles (both ‘virtual' and ‘real') are highly gendered, which is partly related to a cultural shift towards materialism in the Chinese society. Specifically, rural migrant men have described themselves as being harshly excluded or exploited on the dating scene, whereas rural migrant women have reported that they have unwittingly dated men with deceptive profiles or developed romantic relationships that were dashed by economic turmoil. Hence, the study empirically extends the literature on digital dating beyond its traditional focus on Western contexts. It also clearly demonstrates that, while digital dating ignites a sense of possibility and desire, particularly among individuals of lower socioeconomic status, it fails to support these users in tackling the structural inequalities obstructing realization of their desire.

The field of electronic sports (eSports) is thriving worldwide but has received limited attention as a cultural and creative industry (CCI). This study is the first to employ three layers (productivity, robustness, and niche creation) of the business ecosystem (BE) to systematically examine the flourishing eSports sector and its development as a CCI-BE. It also maps out the dynamic and emerging stakeholders that have contributed to the eSports ecosystem. We conducted content analysis combined with observations, fifty interviews with elite stakeholders, and analysis of financial and investment data. We found that the development of eSports as a CCI-BE reflects great potential and precarity. First, the business agenda of the media conglomerate Tencent aligns with the ‘cultural confidence’ slogan proposed by the government, thus ensuring the robustness and stability of the eSports ecosystem. Second, municipal governments, local real estate developers, and eSports tournaments are increasingly interconnected and their contemporary business models and innovation activities in the eSports industry have co-evolved. Third, the role of real estate developers remains nascent without the ability to coordinate and co-evolve with the eSports value chain. eSports may provide a novel converging territory for contemporary cultural and creative industries/traits in the Chinese digital society.

There is a paucity of literature on the roles of media exposure, general trust, and their interactions in long-term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms after a natural disaster. Trying to address this knowledge gap, our study aimed to (a) investigate whether exposure to media coverage during the traumatic event and general trust directly affected adult survivors’ long-term PTSD symptoms 10 years after the 5.12 Wenchuan earthquake, and (b) to identify the potential differential pattern of the influence of media exposure on PTSD symptoms for adult survivors with various levels of general trust. Using cross-sectional methodology, we surveyed participants (N = 1000) recruited from six disaster-affected counties. We assessed PTSD symptoms, media exposure, general trust, demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, and earthquake exposure. Data were analyzed descriptively and with Tobit regression analyses. Reversed relationships between general trust and PTSD were verified, whereas no direct links were found between media exposure and PTSD. Interaction tests revealed that media exposure alleviated PTSD for high-trust survivors, but aggravated PTSD for low-trust survivors. These results suggest that general trust building should be considered in post-disaster construction activities.