Soft Infrastructure Research Articles

Volunteer Motivations in Military Sports Events: The Case of 2019 Military World Games

The 2019 Military World Games was the largest special sports event in the history of Military Sports Events. Volunteers as a soft infrastructure play a critical role in the success of the Military World Games. However, few systematic studies have been conducted on volunteer motivation of Military World Games. Drawing on the social identity theory, a theoretical model has been developed, which includes a new theme-related motivation of love of military based on the version of VMS-ISE scale. Through investigating 2,114 respondents, results show that motivations of expression of values, patriotism and city involvement, interpersonal contacts, personal growth, love of sport, and love of military have positively impact on volunteer satisfaction. Especially, volunteers with the deep passion of military sport would highly increase volunteer satisfaction. Follow-up analyses may contribute a deeper understanding and practical guidance of organizers to recruit and manage volunteers in special sport events with the certain theme.

Exploring the future of commercial dispute resolution in Asia: Accelerating efficiency and effectiveness in ADR

AbstractSince 2017, Japan has rapidly developed its hard and soft infrastructure to accelerate the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in Japan, such as establishing the Japan International Dispute Resolution Center and the Japan International Mediation Center, Kyoto, as well as amending the Foreign Lawyers Act. The legislative process to amend the Japanese Arbitration Act is underway and discussions to accede to the Singapore Convention are ongoing. Mediation and settlement discussions involving judges during the litigation process are traditionally common in Japanese court practices, which would have some implications for investor–state mediation, which is a recent hot topic in the field of investor–state dispute settlement. Numerous means of further improving the efficiency and effectiveness of ADR proceedings have been discussed globally, including mid-stream conferences, Calderbank offers, the use of mediation in complex disputes, and the advanced use of Arb-Med-Arb proceedings utilizing party-appointed arbitrators.

Between Geopolitics and Development: The Belt and Road Initiative and the Limits of Capital Accumulation in China

What drives China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? While some claim that the BRI is primarily about economic development, others see it as a grand strategy of a rising power with hegemonic aspirations. Is the BRI about development or geopolitics? This article adopts a political economy approach to bridge the developmental and geopolitical perspectives on the BRI. The primary argument is that the BRI signifies an attempt by the Chinese state to manage internal problems of capital accumulation by externalising development. In this sense, this is a typical crisis of capitalist development which generates a drive for geographic expansion and restructuring. The distinguishing feature of the BRI, apart from its sheer scale, is its emphasis on connectivity. Rather than simply exporting excess capital and capacity onto others, the BRI seeks to re-territorialise developmental spaces by connecting them via economic corridors consisting of hard and soft infrastructure networks. It is also contended here that in the process of constructing new infrastructures of capital, the BRI creates space for new forms of asymmetric interdependence between China and its partners. To the extent that such asymmetric relations generate costs of exiting China-centred networks, the initiative serves a geopolitical as well as a developmental function. Asymmetric interdependencies, whether they are by design or by-products of enhanced connectivity, thus facilitate China’s pursuit for a more prominent role in the international order.

Does Standardization Improve Carbon Emission Efficiency as Soft Infrastructure? Evidence from China

Standardization in energy-saving and emission-reduction measures has become increasingly important. The impact of standardization on carbon-emission efficiency in China was explored by using panel data from 2002 to 2017. The results showed that standardization significantly improved China’s carbon-emission efficiency, which remained robust after a series of tests. Furthermore, the development of industry standards had a greater effect on the improvement of carbon-emission efficiency in the economically developed coastal areas, while the development of national standards significantly promoted the improvement of carbon-emission efficiency in the inland areas. An assessment of the impact mechanism demonstrated that standardization affects carbon-emission efficiency through technological progress, industrial modernization, and economies of scale. We compared our findings with the existing literature regarding the governance of a low-carbon economy; we also considered the subsequent policy implications of our findings in terms of sustainable economic development.

Soft infrastructure: the critical community-level resources reportedly needed for program success

BackgroundThe mechanisms typically used to fund health promotion in communities, either as part of an effort to scale-up programs or to support the design of local activities, often pay insufficient attention to the foundational means of enhancing well-being. Only recently have researchers begun to critically ‘unpack’ how funding processes connect with and activate local community capacities.MethodsWe conducted a thematic analysis of 33 interviews with policy and program administrators in public health and local community workers and volunteers. We invited them to expound on their understandings of resources - specifically, what needs to be in place to make funded programs successful and/or what do communities draw on to make funded programs effective.ResultsPolicy and program administrators reflected mostly on the importance of traditional resources, such as adequate funding and staffing. Community-based participants often went further to describe psychological and sociological resources – the “soft infrastructure” which included trust and hope. Both groups emphasised the importance of building networks and relationships at multiple levels. Community workers also provided examples of how resources grow and improve in value in combination with other processes or through pathways of resource use or resource distribution. So, resources like information/knowledge are made more valuable when relayed locally. Physical amenities (e.g., meeting spaces, kitchens) have an instrumental role, but also act powerfully as a symbolic resource for identity. Participants reported that funding processes can damage the resources required for community health improvement. Funding instability undermines capacity. The ongoing threat of funding removal was described by one administrator as community “bullying”.ConclusionsProcesses of health promotion funding, and even standard processes of program scale-up and readiness assessment, risk underestimating the range of resources that are fundamental for community health improvement, particularly among disadvantaged communities. Funders should design ways to resource communities so that there is constant attention to and coaching of critically important diverse processes of resource growth, independent of program-specific funds.

Holistic management of next generation manufacturing system

The manufacturing system is a widely addressed subject. Many researchers have worked since a significant number of years in this field. Still, manufacturing system performance is capped by the insufficient level of accordance between manufacturing system and product. At the same time, global energy and global information networks have been created during recent years. Besides other applications, these networks can be turned in hard and soft infrastructure supporting the manufacturing system. For this reason, many specialists consider that the conceptual rebuilding of the manufacturing system is a notable challenge. This paper answers to this challenge by suggesting a holonic technique for manufacturing system management at basic, operational level. The proposed technique lays on the following hypothesis: i) next generation manufacturing system will be a modular cyber-physical system, ii) the typical management task is decision making, and iii) the procedure for decision making consists in options identification, followed by their comparative assessment. The approach is to manage the manufacturing system activity by holonic modelling of the system functioning, followed by the identification of a dedicated holarchy. The proposed technique aims to mitigate system performance in what concerns responsiveness capacity, investment efficiency and production costs. The technique is presented in architectural conceptual manner.

The ‘soft infrastructure’ of the Belt and Road Initiative: Imaginaries, affinities and subjectivities in Chinese transnational education

Drawing upon qualitative research conducted at Xiamen University (XMU) and its overseas campus, Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM), this article provides an analysis of transnational education as a component of the soft infrastructure of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We examine XMUM within wider geopolitical and cultural diplomacy in Asia and as a transnational site in/through which new regional imaginaries, affinities and subjectivities are produced and contested. We highlight the role of historical and cultural affinity—as well as its omission/disruption—in giving shape to XMUM, the limited extent to which mainland Chinese students perform their role as cultural ambassadors, and the multiple imaginative post‐study geographies of international and local students that simultaneously centre and decentre China. In doing so, we contend that students' narratives/practices reinforce but also present alternatives to the imaginaries, affinities and subjectivities that Chinese transnational education institutes such as XMU and XMUM seek to produce through the vehicle of the BRI.

Creative Revitalization in Rural Japan

Different disasters throughout history have prompted Japan to develop diverse approaches to recovery, revitalization, and local resilience. The current global COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. In this paper, we argue the need to study the impacts of COVID-19 on outside major cities such as Tokyo as such areas were already experiencing socioeconomic decline. Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture is a city that has also been undergoing extensive post-disaster reconstruction after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), notably through various bottom-up approaches, often initiated by volunteers and migrants bringing new, creative ideas to community revitalization. These efforts continue to shape the social life of its residents during COVID-19, making Ishinomaki an important case study in both disaster reconstruction and rural revitalization. This paper examines examples in which creativity played a key role in revitalization, recovery, and community resilience in Ishinomaki over the last decade to shed light on current creative revitalization initiatives at the grassroots level, initiated and carried out by citizens. Drawing on an ethnographic approach conducted remotely in the form of semi-structured interviews, the paper presents the personal narratives of a diverse range of residents and social networks committed to rebuilding the soft infrastructure that is often overlooked compared to hard infrastructure. The paper proposes suggestions for the future based on lessons learned from the past decade, and hopes to illuminate how Japan’s rural areas are adapting to a new normal in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Koncepcja smart city a COVID-19. Wykorzystanie nowych mediów w obliczu pandemii

This article aims at examining the use of the potential of media in the urban space in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic on the example of the largest city in Poland – Warsaw. The author analyses the so-called new media, which were created on the basis of information and communication technologies, paying attention to both the channel (soft infrastructure) and the medium (hard infrastructure). The main research method is the case study of the mentioned city, which allows identifying good and bad practices in the use of new media in the city and the strategic objectives of the analysed cities. The study is based on the analysis of literature, strategic documents, brochures and websites. The research hypothesis is that the city authorities of Warsaw, adapting the smart city strategy during the pandemic, develops a communication system based on the Internet platform. The research results show that the municipal authorities in Warsaw are implementing the smart city concept by using new forms of media and technology as both targets and tools for its implementation. During the pandemic, the city’s various digital media were developed with content dedicated to COVID-19, and activities dedicated to informing and communicating with residents are undertaken through Warszawa 19115 platform.

Synthesis and Corrosion Resistance of FeMnNiAlC10 Multi-Principal Element Compound.

A multi-principal element FeMnNiAlC10 bulk alloy was produced by vacuum arc melting. The same alloy was sintered as a thin film on a silicon substrate by ion beam sputter deposition. The bulk alloy has a multiphase structure the elements predominantly segregating into iron manganese carbides and nickel aluminium phases. The thin film is amorphous without detectable phase segregations. The absence of segregation is attributed to the film composition and deposition onto substrate at temperature below 400 K. The corrosion resistance of the thin film alloy was evaluated in 3.5% NaCl. The FeMnNiAlC10 thin film alloy has better corrosion resistance than 304SS. The hardness of the thin film was approximately 7.2 ± 0.3 GPa and the reduced Young’s modulus was approximately 103 ± 4.6 GPa. FeMnNiAlC10 thin film could be a good candidate for coating oil and gas extraction soft iron infrastructure.

Favours within 'the tribe': Social support in coworking spaces

AbstractEmerging from the changing social, technological and cultural changes to work, coworking has been positioned as a new economic engine composed of collaboration and community, providing support for entrepreneurship, innovation and soft infrastructure for economic development. However, an alternative interpretation of coworking suggests it responds to the isolation and insecurity of self‐employment by the formation of ‘community’ to provide mutual support to navigate precarious work conditions. Faced with contrasting accounts of coworking, using in‐depth interviews and ethnography of a coworking space, this paper explores the support members of the community offer by drawing on the concept of social support. It contributes to our understanding of social support in an entrepreneurial context and explores a more nuanced and darker side to social support in coworking spaces. While coworkers engaged with others to provide emotional, informational and instrumental support, social support also revealed exchange relationships underpinned by reciprocity, which reinforced precarious work conditions.

User Innovativeness and Fintech Adoption in Indonesia

The integration of the financial industry and financial technology (Fintech) plays a pivotal role in increasing financial services reach and inclusion for the large unbanked population in Indonesia. Fintech adoption optimization expands the financial access to formal financial institutions, especially to vulnerable groups such as the unbanked population who predominantly reside in rural areas far from formal financial institutions. Fintech is viewed as a game changer to bring finance to the unreached communities via information technology and digital financial landscape. In this causal research, data collection was done via online questionnaires to 485 Fintech users between December 2020 and April 2021. Data analysis and path modelling was performed using smartPLS 3.0 software. Result shows user innovativeness as a significant predictor, directly and indirectly affecting the adoption of Fintech in Indonesia, while user attitude found the most important factor towards Fintech adoption. Financial literacy is the least important variable to predict Fintech adoption, contrary to popular belief. This indicates that Fintech usage requires less financial literacy and is potential to reach unbanked population and those with low financial literacy. To make Fintech more inclusive, the government needs to accelerate improving Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure such as widening mobile broadband penetration and soft infrastructure by encouraging Fintech startup, allowing regulatory sandbox for startups, and driving financial institutions to innovate through Fintech to bring financial services to unbanked population.

Conserving living heritage site in Portuguese settlement, Melaka world heritage site: issues and conservation elements

A living heritage site symbolizes the integration between tangible and intangible cultural heritage. It has a traditional community, or a specific area in the environment of a traditional settlement. Rapid urban development poses significant threats to heritage sites, with deterioration and destruction of heritage by introducing pollution, political wars, growing tourism activities, and natural disasters. Conservation of living heritage is by accenting the role of the core community staying in traditional settlements within the heritage area. The city of Melaka was declared as World Heritage Site in 2008 and the government engaged in significant urban development to accommodate the increasing number of tourists landing, and it has threatened its heritage site. Such act jeopardised the core community of Portuguese Settlement with the risk of obliteration of its cultural heritage in the future and this is due to insufficient conservation of community’s cultural heritage from soft infrastructure approaches. Hence, the purpose of this article is to highlight the issues faced by the Portuguese community and discuss elements of community participation, awareness, and stakeholder’s involvement to conserve the community’s cultural heritage. It is done by qualitative methods of interviews, and document analysis of relevant literature, reports and standards. The result reveals the main issues faced by the community are authenticity, vulnerability of modernisation and development hazard, and losing its community. The output of the paper would be beneficial to stakeholders, practitioners, and researchers to develop a sustainable community within the heritage site while maintaining its heritage value.

Mitigating the Impacts of Development Corridors on Biodiversity: A Global Review

Development corridors are extensive, often transnational and linear, geographical areas targeted for investment to help achieve sustainable development. They often comprise the creation of hard infrastructure (i.e., physical structures) and soft infrastructure (i.e., policies, plans, and programmes) involving a variety of actors. They are globally widespread, and likely to be a significant driver of habitat loss. Here, we describe the development corridors phenomenon from a biodiversity perspective and identify the elements of best practice in biodiversity impact mitigation. We use these to carry out a review of the peer reviewed literature on corridors to respond to three questions: (i) how impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services are assessed; (ii) what mitigation measures are discussed to manage these impacts; and (iii) to what extent do these measures approximate to best practice. We found that of 271 publications on development corridors across all continents (except for Antarctica) mentioning biodiversity or ecosystem services, only 100 (37%) assessed impacts on biodiversity and 7 (3%) on ecosystem services. Importantly, only half of these (52, 19% of the total 271 articles) discussed mitigation measures to manage these impacts. These measures focused on avoidance and minimisation and there was scant mention of restoration or ecological compensation illustrating a deficient application of the mitigation hierarchy. We conclude that the academic literature on corridors does not give sufficient consideration to comprehensive mitigation of biodiversity impacts. To change this, impact assessment research needs to acknowledge the complexity of such multi-project and multi-stakeholder initiatives, quantify biodiversity losses due to the full suite of their potential direct, indirect and cumulative impacts, and follow all the steps of the mitigation hierarchy impact framework. We suggest a series of research avenues and policy recommendations to improve impact assessments of corridors towards achieving better biodiversity outcomes.

Mutual Gains from Eurasian Railway Connectivity

This paper analyzes the relationship between Eurasian rail services (especially the China–EU services that have flourished since 2011) and the overland “Belt” part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The initial market-driven stimulus was from car and electronics firms linking their East Asian and European production networks, and the establishment of Eurasian value chains remains an important theme. As regular rail freight services between China and Europe became more frequent, between more termini and offering more ancillary services, trade costs were reduced along the BRI Belt with mutual benefits for Asian and European countries. The paper first documents the growth and current status of the overland rail freight services; the sound economic foundation for the rail services and the continued growth of traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic indicate the sustainability of this part of the BRI. It then discusses the relationship of the Eurasian rail services to the wider BRI, emphasizing the importance of multiple routes and of connections to ports. Finally, the paper reviews the literature on the economic gains from improved rail connectivity and on the relationship between hard and soft infrastructure. The principal conclusion is that market-driven commercial incentives, public policies and the BRI have contributed to the success of the Belt mainlines and links to Indian Ocean ports are expected to integrate the currently separate Belt and Road.

Entrepreneurial motivational factors and operational performance of small-scale industries in Yanya

To address the growing labour unemployment rate in Nigeria, several hard and soft intervention policies have been put in place by the Nigerian government and supporting partners. Based on the assumption that unemployment, government interventions, and personal ambition can motivate individuals into entrepreneurship, this study examined the effect of entrepreneurial motivational factors on the operational performance of Small Scale Industries (SSIs) located in Yanya, Abuja. Relying on a cross-sectional survey research design, 337 practicing entrepreneurs, random sampling technique and multiple regression analysis, the study found that facilitating and compelling motivational factors are the significant predictors of SSIs’ performance, while ambitious motivational factor is negatively but significantly impactful on SSIs’ performance. It, therefore, suffices to recommend that the Nigerian government and organized private sector should collaborate to increase the stock of hard and soft infrastructure, especially in the industrial estates and business clusters, to enhance entrepreneurship participation and inclusiveness

Segmentation of the Caledonian orogenic infrastructure and exhumation of the Western Gneiss Region during transtensional collapse

The (ultra)high-pressure Western Gneiss Region of the Norwegian Caledonides represents an archetypical orogenic infrastructure of a continent–continent collision zone. To test established exhumation models, we synthesize the geochronology and structures of major basement windows and provide new ages from poorly dated areas. Migmatite U–Pb zircon samples date melt crystallization at c. 405 Ma in the Øygarden Complex, expanding the spatial extent of Devonian migmatization. Micas from shear zones in the Øygarden and Gulen domes yield 40 Ar/ 39 Ar ages mostly between 405 and 398 Ma, recording the exhumation of metamorphic core complexes. On a larger scale, the youngest ages of various geochronometers in different segments of the Western Gneiss Region show abrupt breaks (10–30 myr) across low-angle detachments and sinistral transfer zones, which also correspond to metamorphic and structural discontinuities. We explain the segmentation of the orogenic infrastructure by partitioned post-orogenic transtension due to lateral and vertical rheological contrasts in the orogenic edifice (strong cratonic foreland and orogenic wedge v. soft infrastructure). Differential crustal stretching dragged out deep levels of the orogenic crust below low-angle detachments and became progressively dominated by sinistral transfer zones. Collapse obliterated the syn-collisional structure of the orogenic root and resulted in the diachronous exhumation of distinct infrastructure segments. Supplementary material: Complete analytical results are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5241710

Transport Infrastructure and Regional Integration in the Middle East

AbstractThe soft aspects of the infrastructure of regionalism in the Middle East have previously been studied, while the impact of the region’s hard infrastructure, in particular transport infrastructure, has received little attention. This paper contributes to the study of regionalism in the Middle East by investigating the relationship between hard infrastructure and economic integration. It analyzes whether the state of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure in the region promotes regional trade. This is done by addressing the following sub‐questions: 1) What is the condition of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure in the Middle East? And 2) What is the relationship between domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure and regional trade in the Middle East? These questions are answered by examining Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey as representative samples of the broader region. It is argued that regionalism relies on the development of domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure and where the latter is limited, regionalism cannot deepen. The study concludes that domestic and cross‐border transport infrastructure performance is weak in several of the countries studied and that this weakness hinders regional economic integration regardless of the level of the region’s soft infrastructure.

Trade Facilitation Effects on International Trade: Evidence From Lower-Middle and Upper-Middle-Income Countries

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of trade facilitation on international trade, as well as the effects of two dimensions: hard and soft infrastructure. Using 18 primary variables, we constructed four indicators of 30 lower-middle-income and 33 upper-middle-income countries over the period 2011-2017. After applying the system-generalised method of moments (GMM), the main finding is that all trade facilitation indicators have a significant effect on exports. However, improvements in physical infrastructure are more likely to increase exports than the efficiency of borders, transport, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and institutions, from the most significant to the least significant. It is also found that the effect of hard infrastructure on exports is virtually the same as that of soft infrastructure. Hard and soft infrastructure must therefore be considered at the same level, as the effectiveness of international trade depends on both.

ВПЛИВ ДІДЖИТАЛ-ТЕХНОЛОГІЇ НА РОЗВИТОК СОЦІАЛЬНОЇ ВІДПОВІДАЛЬНОСТІ БІЗНЕСУ

The article examines the problematic issues of determining IT technologies and digital technologies in the context of their impact on the development of society and geo-economic processes, which determined the need to form new standards of business ethics, business rules, and business communication, that is, the formation of new standards of social responsibility of business. The author's definition and classification of technologies, and their features, formed on a functional and technological basis into classes: a class of information production technologies, a class of Internet technologies, a class of network technologies, a class of artificial intelligence technologies are given. Structural changes in digitalization that have already influenced the digitalization of business and which need to be actively implemented are considered. It also explored how the development of hard and soft infrastructure affects the development of the digital economy, an increase in GDP and the development of Ukraine as a whole.