Drawing on field research and interviews with six families in a peri-urban setting in Jiangsu Province, this study examines how Liangtouhun arrangements connect caregiving, family recognition, and lineage continuity. Liangtouhun is understood as a marriage arrangement involving ongoing coordination with both spouses’ natal families, rather than a uniform pattern of alternating co-residence. The analysis identifies four related patterns: participants explained the arrangement through childcare needs and obligations to aging parents; caregiving contributions were invoked to justify claims for recognition; participants attached differing degrees of flexibility and significance to residential, surname, and ritual practices; and competing expectations were expressed through fairness, reciprocity, and family responsibility. Existing surname allocations are distinguished from unimplemented spousal agreements and prospective preferences. Care-for-recognition describes how practical support was connected to claims for involvement and belonging, without assuming a fixed exchange. Adaptive patriliny captures how bilateral participation can coexist with, and reconfigure, continuing commitments to descent-based family continuity. These commitments were expressed by members of both spouses’ natal families. The study therefore complicates an interpretation of bilateral participation as necessarily displacing patrilineal practices, while recognizing that the evidence does not establish the preservation of male decision-making authority.
Women play a fundamental role in agriculture, yet gendered social norms significantly shape their participation and access to benefits within farming systems. While these norms influence agricultural structures and practices, their impact on women’s agency and economic contributions remains insufficiently examined. Our study addresses this gap by critically examining the influence of gendered social norms in coastal farming in Bangladesh. Data were collected from 320 men and women engaged in traditional farming across two coastal sub-districts in Barishal division using an open-structured questionnaire. The results are categorized into five interrelated domains of social norms shaping the coastal farming system. Findings reveal that while women have access to financial resources, their control remains limited. Structural barriers, not lack of interest, hinder their adoption of agricultural technology. While their leadership roles are accepted, decision-making opportunities remain restricted. Mobility constraints in farming and markets further limit agency, while gender meta-norms reinforce traditional domestic and childcare responsibilities. The Social Norms Index indicates that 85% of descriptive norms (what is typical) and 44% of injunctive norms (what is appropriate) in coastal farming systems are restrictive. Hence, descriptive constraints contribute more to women’s economic and social resilience as well as gender inequalities than normative norms. Women perceive social norms as more restrictive than men, highlighting persistent gender disparities. Despite this, findings suggest that social norms are dynamic, evolving through socio-political, cultural, and economic shifts. While progress is gradual and uneven, it presents opportunities to renegotiate patriarchy. The study recommends gender-transformative interventions that promote equitable participation, agency, and decision-making opportunities for women within farming systems while remaining responsive to local social contexts.
With the acceleration of China’s urbanization process and the population agglomeration effect driving sustained growth in housing demand, soaring housing prices and increasingly prominent housing affordability issues have significantly impacted the happiness of urban youth. Previous studies have lacked a specific focus on the housing burden faced by urban youth. This paper first explores the mechanisms through which housing affordability influences the Subjective well-being of youth. Using data from the 2018 China Household Income Project (CHIP), it empirically examines the impact of housing affordability on youth happiness. Furthermore, the moderating effects of education level and total household debt were verified. To address potential endogeneity issues, the study tested the residual inclusion method. The results show that there is a robust negative correlation between housing burden and the life well-being of urban youth. The higher education level of the head of household can alleviate this correlation to some extent, while the total amount of household debt exacerbates the negative impact. The innovative contribution of this study lies in its sociological perspective and use of large-scale survey data to empirically demonstrate the negative impact of housing burdens on the subjective well-being of urban youth, while also examining heterogeneity and the moderating effects of education and family debt.
In China, the rapid spread of digital life has accelerated the growth of online food delivery services. This study investigates user experience in Meituan and Eleme, the country’s two largest platforms, and identifies key user needs to inform improvement strategies. Findings show that users value interface interaction quality, information quality, personalized services, and expanded same-city delivery functions. These needs reflect a shift from basic usability to greater emphasis on overall experience, value in use, and food health. Based on these insights, the study proposes several enhancement strategies: reorganizing interface visual structures according to user needs, developing AI-driven healthy food recommendation systems, improving same-city delivery services, strengthening the credibility of post-purchase reviews, and increasing the visibility of food information. These results offer practical guidance for improving user experience in Chinese online food delivery apps and provide implications for similar platforms in other countries.
Exposure to natural environments has well-documented benefits for emotion regulation and cognitive functioning. However, whether media-based nature exposure is similarly associated with negative psychological states and the emotional-processing mechanisms potentially involved remains unclear. Using one survey study and two experimental studies, we examined the associations between media-based nature exposure, negative psychological states, and emotional information processing at two temporal scales: habitual exposure to nature-related media content and brief experimental exposure to nature videos. Study 1 used an online survey to examine the associations of perceived real-world greenness and the frequency of nature-related media exposure with negative psychological states. Study 2 employed a dot-probe task to assess attentional bias toward emotional faces after participants viewed natural environment videos. Study 3 used a valence-evaluation task to examine changes in the perceived valence of emotional faces following video exposure. The results showed that (1) greater perceived real-world greenness and more frequent media-based nature exposure were associated with lower levels of negative psychological states; (2) attentional bias toward negative faces was lower after exposure to natural environment videos than after exposure to the neutral video; and (3) valence ratings of neutral and positive faces were more positive following exposure to natural environment videos, whereas ratings of negative faces did not differ significantly between the two video conditions. Overall, these findings provide preliminary evidence that media-based nature exposure may be associated with negative psychological states and emotional information processing.
