Information disclosing willingness in mobile internet contexts

Purpose This paper aims to learn about consumers’ information disclosing patterns in the mobile internet context by investigating how demographic, geographic and psychological factors influence their information disclosing willingness (IDW).Design/methodology/approach Drawing on self-disclosure theory, the authors carried out simple linear regression analyses on a Chinese sample of 10,000 participants.Findings The results revealed that significant gender differences exist between males and females in their IDW in mobile internet context, and females have higher IDW than males do. And the authors also found that first-tier (third tier) citizens have the lowest (highest) IDW in their mobile internet usage.Originality/value This study offers three implications. First, this paper captures the insight of IDW within the mobile internet context, while previous studies mostly focus on the desktop internet context. Second, the results show that females have higher willingness to disclose than males do in the context of mobile internet, which is different from the findings of prior studies that females have higher privacy concerns and lower disclosing willingness in the context of desktop internet. Thirdly, this research introduces city tiers as a new approach to the study of IDW, which is one of the first studies exploring the geographical effect on information privacy.

Coping with COVID-19 Stressors: Adverse and Protective Factors Responding to Emotions in a Chinese Sample

Background: The potential roles of affective responses to environmental stressors in individuals' physical and mental health are complex and multi-faceted. This study, then, explores Chinese citizens' emotional responses to COVID-19-related stressors and influence factors which may boost or buffer such effects. Methods: From late March to early June (2020), a cross-sectional study was conducted using an anonymous online questionnaire included demographic characteristics, COVID-19-related stressors related to individuals' daily functioning, and the self-assessed impact of protective and adverse internal factors on emotions. Results: 1,662 questionnaires were received from residents in 32 Chinese provinces classified by prevalence level according to COVID-19 infections. Among the 17 positive and negative emotional responses, agglomerative hierarchical clustering revealed four subclassifications: (1) stress relations; (2) missing someone relations; (3) individual relations; and (4) social relations. Additionally, heightened regional prevalence levels positively corresponded to intensity of stress relations. Lowest intensity of social relations was found in the areas surrounding Wuhan and coastal areas. Specially, economic- and work-related stressors as well as negative self-perceptions (e.g., suppression, emotionally unstable, self-denial) implicated in negative emotions. While positive emotions were tied to demographic characteristics (e.g., high education, young age and male) and protective traits (e.g., creativity, sympathy, social responsibility), and inversely linked to relationships- and pandemic-related stressors, etc. Conclusion: Associations were clearly noted among Chinese residents' emotions to specific stressors during pandemic. Providing appropriate psychological resources/supports during future or extended public health crises may help offset the cognitive burden of individuals striving to regain an adequate level of normalcy and emotional well-being.

The role of parenting, self-compassion and friendships in depressive symptoms among young people in the UK and China

Self-compassion, being kind to oneself in difficult times, is a way of relating to oneself that promotes better mental health, but little is known about how self-compassion affects interpersonal relationships. The current study examined the association between self-compassion and adolescent depressive symptoms from an interpersonal perspective in different cultural contexts. Adolescents (N = 422/570, Mean age = 14.44/13.41, UK/China) completed questionnaires about their perceptions of their parents' behaviour towards them, self-compassion, friendships and depressive symptoms. Structural equation modelling revealed that positive parenting was positively associated with higher self-compassion, positive friendship quality, and with fewer depressive symptoms in both samples. Additionally, we confirmed a negative association between self-compassion and depressive symptoms. The pathway from positive parenting to lower depressive symptoms via higher self-compassion was also corroborated in both cultures. Contrary to our hypothesis, positive quality of friendship was associated with higher depressive symptoms in both countries. Conflicts were associated with more depressive symptoms in the Chinese sample only. There was evidence of a negative association between self-compassion and conflicts in the Chinese sample only. Finally, the direct association between self-compassion and depressive symptoms was greater in the UK sample, whereas in the Chinese sample, interpersonal factors were more strongly associated with self-compassion and depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that self-compassion may be a useful therapeutic target to improve social functioning and mental health among adolescents and that it may be necessary to account for cross-cultural differences in interpersonal factors when designing psychological interventions.

Associations of 24-Hour Movement Behavior with Depressive Symptoms and Anxiety in Children: Cross-Sectional Findings from a Chinese Sample

This study examined the associations between adherence to 24-hour movement behavior guidelines (24-HMB) and the mental-health-related outcomes of depressive symptoms and anxiety in Chinese children. Data on movement behavior from 5357 children (4th and 5th grades), including physical activity, recreational screen time and sleep, were self-reported using the Health Behavior School-Aged Children Survey. Depressive symptoms and anxiety were self-reported using the Chinese version of the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, respectively. Depressive symptoms and anxiety were treated as categorical variables. Only 3.2% of the participants met physical activity, screen time, and sleep 24-HMB guidelines. Ordinal logistic regressions showed that, compared with participants who met the 24-HMB guidelines, participants who met none (odds ratio (OR) = 2.62, 95% CI: 1.76–3.90) or any one of the guidelines (OR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.27–2.77) had higher odds of depressive symptoms. Similarly, there were higher odds of anxiety in participants who met none (OR = 2.32, 95% CI: 1.45–3.70) or any one of the recommendations (OR = 1.62, 95% CI: 1.03–2.57) compared with participants who met all the 24-HMB guidelines. Meeting the 24-HMB guidelines is associated with better mental-health-related outcomes in Chinese children. Because of the low prevalence of Chinese children meeting the 24-HMB recommendations, the present findings highlight the need to encourage children to regularly engage in physical activity, decrease their time spent sitting, and improve their sleep patterns.

Developing Prototype Simulants for Surface Materials and Morphology of Near Earth Asteroid 2016 HO3

There are a variety of applications for asteroid simulants in asteroid studies for science advances as well as technology maturation. For specific purpose, it usually requires purpose-specialized simulant. In this study, we designed and developed a set of prototype simulants as S-type asteroid surface materials analogue based on H, L, and LL ordinary chondrites’ mineralogy and terrestrial observations of near-earth asteroid 2016 HO3, which is the Chinese sample return mission target. These simulants are able to simulate morphology and reflectance characteristics of asteroid (469219) 2016 HO3 and, thus, to be used for engineering evaluation of the optical navigation system and the sampling device of the spacecraft during the mission phase. Meanwhile, these prototype simulants are easily to modify to reflect new findings on the asteroid surface when the spacecraft makes proximate observations.

Living fast in the Triassic: New data on life history in Lystrosaurus (Therapsida: Dicynodontia) from northeastern Pangea

Lystrosaurus was one of the few tetrapods to survive the Permo-Triassic mass extinction, the most profound biotic crisis in Earth’s history. The wide paleolatitudinal range and high abundance of Lystrosaurus during the Early Triassic provide a unique opportunity to investigate changes in growth dynamics and longevity following the mass extinction, yet most studies have focused only on species that lived in the southern hemisphere. Here, we present the long bone histology from twenty Lystrosaurus skeletal elements spanning a range of sizes that were collected in the Jiucaiyuan Formation of northwestern China. In addition, we compare the average body size of northern and southern Pangean Triassic-aged species and conduct cranial geometric morphometric analyses of southern and northern taxa to begin investigating whether specimens from China are likely to be taxonomically distinct from South African specimens. We demonstrate that Lystrosaurus from China have larger average body sizes than their southern Pangean relatives and that their cranial morphologies are distinctive. The osteohistological examination revealed sustained, rapid osteogenesis punctuated by growth marks in some, but not all, immature individuals from China. We find that the osteohistology of Chinese Lystrosaurus shares a similar growth pattern with South African species that show sustained growth until death. However, bone growth arrests more frequently in the Chinese sample. Nevertheless, none of the long bones sampled here indicate that maximum or asymptotic size was reached, suggesting that the maximum size of Lystrosaurus from the Jiucaiyuan Formation remains unknown.