Urban talent retention, particularly the retention of university graduates within their host cities, has emerged as a critical driver of regional economic and social development. Previous research on whether university students stay in the cities where they went to university has focused more on socioeconomic and demographic factors than on city image and individual perceptions. This paper adopts city image theories to explore how city attribute perception and city image (including cognitive and affective images) affect the stay intentions of university students in both short- and long-term periods. Structural equation modelling shows that both cognitive and affective images are positively associated with the university students' stay intentions. Specifically, cognitive image exhibits a stronger correlation with short-term stay intentions, whereas affective image has a greater association with long-term stay intentions. Regarding city attribute perceptions, cultural quality emerges as the most significant factor in enhancing city image perception and stay intentions, followed by economic development and other attribute perceptions.

Human Creative Capital has become a key driver of urban competitiveness in the knowledge economy. However, metropolitan areas worldwide are experiencing diminishing appeal to young talents, with both high housing prices and poor housing quality being key contributing factors. This study investigates the decision-making mechanisms underlying young talents' intercity migration and housing choices in China's first-tier cities. While previous research has largely relied on neoclassical economic theories assuming rational decision-making, this study employs behavioral economics (Prospect Theory), psychological framework (Theory of Planned Behavior), and sociological perspective (Bourdieu's Practice Theory) to examine how human agency shapes migration and housing decisions under uncertainty. Through mixed methods combining surveys and interviews, the research explores four questions following an "Aspire—Adapt—Anchor" narrative, investigating why young talents are drawn to these cities, how they navigate the housing market, and what influences their housing purchase and long-term settlement decisions. The findings extend conventional economic models in three significant ways. First, beyond traditional economic factors, the aspiration for self-actualization emerges as a key driver attracting young talents to first-tier cities, mediated through distinct psychological mechanisms. Second, their housing pathways reflect the dynamic interaction between structural constraints and individual agency, with different combinations of habitus and capital leading to diverse housing strategies. Third, while these young talents are initially drawn to first-tier cities, they show heightened sensitivity to potential losses in career prospects and housing costs, with their settlement intentions significantly anchored by institutional endowments such as public sector employment and housing tenure. Current housing situations and future migration prospects mutually shape their decision-making in metropolitan areas. By illuminating these psychological mechanisms in young talents' major life decisions, this research suggests that policy interventions targeting psychological factors may be more cost-effective than traditional infrastructure-based approaches in talent retention.

Global metropolises, including first-tier Chinese cities, are confronting unprecedented challenges of talent exodus amid escalating housing costs, competitive job markets and deteriorating urban living conditions. Traditional migration theories fall short in explaining young talents' mobility decisions, as their high human capital drives them to prioritize multidimensional considerations beyond mere economic returns. This study develops a comprehensive theoretical framework integrating multiple aspects of prospect theory—reference dependence, loss aversion, endowment effects and risk attitudes—to investigate young talents' settlement intentions through logistic regression analysis of survey data from 1065 professionals across Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The research reveals that migration decisions are fundamentally shaped by asymmetric psychological evaluations: young talents demonstrate heightened sensitivity to potential losses in job prospects and housing affordability. Institutional and psychological endowments significantly enhance settlement intentions: homeownership, local hukou status and public sector employment increase staying probability, along with longer duration of residence and stronger place attachment. Notably, our findings reveal nuanced suppression effects of migration-specific risk attitude on one's general risk attitude: while first-tier cities attract individuals with higher general risk tolerance who are willing to embrace urban challenges, these individuals also tend to have higher migration-specific risk tolerance, which in turn reduces their long-term settlement intention. These insights not only advance behavioural economic understanding of talent mobility in urban areas, but also provide practical guidance for metropolitan governance. Our findings suggest that effective urban talent retention requires cities to strengthen institutional ties and guarantee stable career development rather than relying primarily on economic incentives. This approach ensures cities maintain the human capital essential for innovation and competitiveness in an era of increasing inter-urban competition.

This study explores Dutch homeowners' intentions to adopt shallow geothermal solutions for the energy transition in existing buildings, using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a theoretical framework. Through a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative elicitation interviews with 20 homeowners and a quantitative survey of 800 representative Dutch households, the study identifies key psychological and socio-demographic factors influencing adoption intentions. The findings indicate that approximately 33% of surveyed homeowners express intention to adopt geothermal technology within the next five years. Structural Equation Modeling reveals that attitudes toward geothermal technology and subjective norms significantly influence adoption intentions, while perceived behavioral control has no significant impact on intention. Economic benefits and environmental protection emerge as the strongest attitudinal drivers, with uncertainty about investment payback periods acting as the primary barrier. Normative influences from environmental advocates, suppliers, and community members also strongly shape adoption intentions. Among socio-demographic factors, higher energy cost-to-income ratios, higher income levels, and homeowners’ association membership positively influence adoption intentions, while age shows a negative correlation. These insights provide evidence-based guidance for policymakers to develop targeted interventions addressing specific psychological barriers experienced by different homeowner segments, potentially accelerating the transition to renewable heating systems in the Netherlands' existing housing stock.

Young talents are vital drivers of urban social and economic development. However, unaffordable homeownership in China’s first-tier cities increasingly marginalizes this vital demographic. Understanding young talents’ home-buying intentions and their determinants is therefore imperative for policies aimed at attracting and retaining them. While several studies have examined housing purchase determinants, few have considered behavioural psychological factors. This paper employs the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to investigate specific beliefs and background factors influencing young talents’ home-buying intentions. Analysing 1065 questionnaires from young talents across four Chinese first-tier cities using structural equation modelling (SEM), we found that multiple beliefs and background factors significantly impact buying intentions. Behavioural beliefs prove pivotal: young talents perceive homeownership as investment opportunity, source of belonging, and means to secure children’s education. Normative beliefs are influential, with individuals valuing opinions from current homeowners, family members, and partners. Control beliefs—encompassing financial constraints regarding down payments and mortgages, family support access, and settlement decisions—also significantly influence home-buying intentions. Additionally, background factors including gender, occupation, and current tenure shape various beliefs and attitudes, subsequently affecting purchase intentions. This study advances tenure choice literature by employing TPB to examine specific beliefs and socio-demographic influences. In the context of China’s sluggish real estate market, these findings offer policymakers practical guidance for stimulating housing demand by targeting the specific psychological drivers of young talents, complementing conventional economic instruments.

Evaluating the sustainable development level and obstacle factors of small towns is an important guarantee for implementing China's new-type urbanization and rural revitalization strategies, and is also a key path to promoting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11). Traditional evaluation methods (such as Analytic Hierarchy Process, AHP, and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution, TOPSIS) mainly calculate the comprehensive score of each indicator through weighting. These methods have limitations in handling multidimensional data and system nonlinearity, and they cannot fully reveal the complex relationships and interactions within the sustainability systems of small towns. In contrast, the evaluation model combining Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Catastrophe Progression Method (CPM) used in this study can better handle multidimensional data and system nonlinear relationships, reducing subjectivity in evaluation and improving the accuracy and reliability of the assessment results. The specific research process is as follows: First, based on the United Nations SDG11 framework, using multi-source big data, a theoretical framework and evaluation index system for the sustainable development of small towns suitable for the Chinese context were established. The impact of county-level factors on the sustainable development of small towns was also considered, and an entropy weight-grey correlation model was used to measure these impacts, resulting in a town-level dataset incorporating county-level influences. Secondly, the sustainability levels of 782 top small towns in China were evaluated using the comprehensive evaluation model based on PCA-CPM Model. Finally, an improved diagnostic model was used to identify obstacles influencing the sustainable development of small towns. The main findings include: 52.69% of the small towns have a sustainable development score exceeding 0.7255, indicating that the overall performance of small towns is at a medium to high development level. The development of small towns exhibits significant differences across regions and types, which are closely linked to county-level effects. Economic and social factors are the main obstacles to the sustainable development of small towns, and the impact of these obstacles intensifies from the eastern to the central, western, and northeastern regions. This study provides valuable insights for policymakers and scholars, promoting a deeper understanding of the sustainable development of small towns.

The recent revival of the private rented sector in many regions highlights the importance of understanding the well-being of private renters. While there is a consensus that private renters are less satisfied with their life than homeowners, little attention has been given to examining the life satisfaction of private renters from different sub-sectors, nor has the underlying mechanism linking residential environment and life satisfaction been thoroughly investigated. The present paper aims to address these gaps by examining the life satisfaction of private renters from different sub-sectors in Shenzhen, China. We propose a model, based on Amérigo and Aragones’ (1997) theoretical framework, that links residential environment, social exclusion, and life satisfaction. The model fits well with the data collected from 619 renters. The results showed that only 38% of the respondent private renters were satisfied with their life. Furthermore, we found urban village renters were significantly less satisfied with their life compared with renters living in commercial housing and Long-term Rented Apartments. Path analysis results suggest that some objective aspects of the residential environment, renters’ perceived social exclusion, and their residential satisfaction could explain a substantial proportion of the variances in life satisfaction while the influence of demographic variables was found to be insignificant. Perceived equal citizenship rights, perceived discrimination, and perceived reasonable rent were shown to have significant effects on life satisfaction. The paper concludes with a discussion on policy implications aimed at enhancing the life satisfaction of private renters.

In the context of skyrocketing house prices and fierce competition for talents between cities, this study explores the housing pathways of young talents and their future migration plans in Shenzhen, China. Using the housing pathways approach and Bourdieu’s theory of practice with three concepts, this study uncovers how structural factors and the often-overlooked agency factors together influence the formation of different housing pathways. Drawing on 18 semi-structured interviews with young talents, four different housing pathways were identified: staying at parents’ home, private renting to owning, talented renting, and progressive private renting. We found that the interaction of habitus and different forms of capital shapes different housing pathways. In addition, young talents following different housing pathways have various future migration plans. This paper sheds new light on the use of the housing pathways approach and Bourdieu’s theory of practice in providing a nuanced understanding of housing and migration behaviour.

With the rapid development of urbanization, it is necessary to understand the evolution of land resource carrying capacity (LRCC), so as to avoid irreversible damage to the land resources system in a specific region. Therefore, this paper aims to study the evolution of LRCC by four carrying status intervals of land resources. LRCC based on an evolutionary perspective can help the government manage land resources dynamically and rationally. This study defines LRCC from a carrier–load perspective and considers a higher or lower LRCC when facing the unbalanced relationship between socio-economic development and the supply capacity of land resources. Then, boxplots are used to investigate the LRCC in 35 major cities in China at different time points from 2012 to 2017. The results indicate that there was an increase in the number of cities with LRCC values in the unbalanced interval, with socio-economic development higher than the supply capacity of land resources. Shijiazhuang, Dalian, Harbin, Fuzhou, Chongqing, Kunming, and Taiyuan had LRCC values leaning towards an unbalanced situation. The main drivers that cause the phenomena mentioned above include policy, socio-economic development, and land use change. This study not only improves the understanding of the relationship between socio-economic development and the supply capacity of land resources and identifies the main drivers, but also provides a basis for control of LRCC according to the identifications of the main drivers

If land resources are forced to withstand greater populations than they are able to withstand, irreversible damage to the land resources system will happen in a specific region. This challenge highlights the urgency of appropriately evaluating the land resources carrying capacity (LRCC). A proper level of the capacity can ensure that land resources demands imposed by human activities are at a reasonable level. There is a need for a proper evaluation method for assessing LRCC. This study presents a new evaluation method from a load-carrier perspective for assessing LRCC by examining the relationships between the pressure caused by human activities and the supply capacity of land resources. In developing this method, a land resources system is determined by two primary components, namely carrier and load. The compositions of carrier and load are determined by applying the theory of multifunctional land use. A case demonstration is conducted to show the application of the method. The main findings can be drawn from this study as follows. Firstly, a “load-carrier” perspective method is requested for evaluating the regional LRCC, and it is effective in obtaining the value of LRCC in the demonstration case. Secondly, the composition of land resources carriers and loads embodied in the load-carrier perspective method is determined by using the theory of multifunctional land use. Thirdly, the case results suggest that seven regions are overloaded in LRCC and the other two regions are approaching the limitation of LRCC among nine county-level administration regions in Chongqing. This study contributes to the development of literature in the field of LRCC. The application of the “load-carrier” perspective method can help local governments in the case study regions make policies to ensure that land resources demands imposed by human activities are under control at a reasonable level.

In recent years, China has witnessed fierce competition for talents among cities. There is evidence that China's first-tier cities are losing their appeal for young talents due to the soaring housing prices and high living costs in first-tier cities, as well as the catch-up of next-tier cities. Therefore, uncovering what factors drive young talents to develop in first-tier cities is important for policymakers to maintain and enhance the attractiveness of first-tier cities. Most previous research on talent migration has focused on demographic and socioeconomic factors, while little research has examined the influence of psychological factors. By adopting the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this paper aims to explore what beliefs and background factors influence university students' intention to develop in first-tier cities after graduation. Using the data we collected from 1242 university students across China, we found that two-thirds of university students have the intention to develop in a first-tier city after graduation. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) results show that students' migration intentions were most influenced by their attitudes, followed by subjective norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC). Specifically, beliefs such as realizing future dreams, better job opportunities, and higher wages shape students' positive attitudes towards developing in first-tier cities. The supports from family, friends, teachers, and classmates contribute to positive subjective norms of developing in first-tier cities. In contrast, perceptions of high housing prices, high living costs, and family ties discourage students from developing in first-tier cities. Furthermore, being male, being a non-only child, studying in first-tier cities, and attending higher-ranking universities have positive influences on migration intention through the mediating effects of the TPB constructs. Policy implications were discussed to help first-tier cities attract graduates.

After being neglected since the establishment of the housing market in the 1990s, China has recently shown great enthusiasm for developing the housing rental market. It is essential to understand why people choose private renting as it enables us to better identify the demands of tenants and develop policies accordingly to promote private renting. However, at the micro-level, the determinants for people's renting intention have rarely been studied in the Chinese context. This paper aims to examine what specific underlying beliefs, as well as background factors, influence people's private renting intention in China's metropolises. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), we designed questionnaires and collected personal data from 476 private renters living in Shenzhen. We found people had generally favorable attitudes, supportive subjective norms, and high perceived behavioral control of private renting in Shenzhen. Results from a path analysis suggest that people's renting intention was most influenced by their attitudes toward renting, followed by subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. In addition, marital status and some underlying behavioral, normative, and control beliefs were also found to have significant influences on renting intention. Based on our findings, some recommendations were proposed to promote private renting, such as advertising the advantages of renting to the public, enhancing the sense of belonging of renters, and expanding the rental housing supply.

In recent years, Chinese housing policies have been shifting from encouraging homeownership toward developing the private rented sector, especially in the superstar cities. Nevertheless, what are the target groups and characteristics of private rental housing in Chinese superstar cities, and whether the private rental housing is capable of meeting private tenants' housing needs remain unclear. This paper attempts to bridge this gap from the tenant perspective by examining the determinants of private tenants' residential satisfaction. We argue that residential satisfaction should be examined within different submarkets. By adopting the Structure of Housing Provision thesis, we identified three main sub-sectors in China's superstar cities, i.e. urban village housing, commercial rented housing, and Long-term Rented Apartment (LTRA). Based on a questionnaire survey in Shenzhen, we examined the characteristics of the three subsectors and tenants living in each sub-sector. Furthermore, we evaluated whether the residential satisfaction levels varied significantly in different sub-sectors and the determinants of residential satisfaction in each sub-sector. The results of an ANOVA showed that tenants living in commercial rented housing and LTRAs were more satisfied than those living in urban village housing. The regression results showed that the determinants of residential satisfaction vary considerably among different sub-sectors. The results of this paper can be useful not only for the landlords to improve tenants' residential satisfaction but also for policy-makers engaged in private rental market development and urban renewal.

In recent years, more and more construction enterprises are expanding into overseas markets, especially in underdeveloped regions such as Africa. Compared to domestic construction projects, international construction projects have been faced with more uncertainties and increased levels of safety risks to the employees in the context of political turmoil, racism, and religious conflict in the host country. This study aims to answer what risk factors contribute to the threat to the safety of overseas employees and how safety risk factors interact, using employees from Chinese international construction companies (CICCs) in Africa as an example. A total of 39 safety risk factors were selected by literature review and case study based on Heinrich’s Domino Theory of Accident Causation. To identify the critical safety risk sources and significant risk paths, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 208 professionals who have participated in construction projects in Africa. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), a total of twelve critical risk paths and five controllable risk sources were identified. The improper behaviors of the CICCs and their employees were shown to have the largest impact on the safety of Chinese employees, through the mediating effect of the criminal offense. This study provides some insights into safety risk management in international construction projects. Meanwhile, the quantitative approach proposed can also be used by other international companies or governments in identifying the safety risk paths of their overseas workers involved in international construction projects.