BACKGROUND:The distribution of medical resources in China is seriously imbalanced due to imbalanced economic development in the country; unbalanced distribution of medical resources makes patients try to seek better health services. Against this backdrop, this study aims to analyze the spatial network characteristics and spatial effects of China's health economy, and then find evidence that affects patient mobility.METHODS:Data for this study were drawn from the China Health Statistical Yearbooks and China Statistical Books. The gravitational value of China's health spatial network was calculated to establish a network of gravitational relationships. The social network analysis method was used for centrality analysis and spillover effect analysis.RESULTS:A gravity correlation matrix was constructed among provinces by calculating the gravitational value, indicating the spatial relationships of different provinces in the health economic network. Economically developed provinces, such as Shanghai and Jiangsu, are at the center of the health economic network (centrality degree = 93.333). These provinces also play a strong intermediary role in the network and have connections with other provinces. In the CONCOR analysis, 31 provinces are divided into four blocks. The spillover effect of the blocks indicates provinces with medical resource centers have beneficial effects, while provinces with insufficient resources have obvious spillover effects.CONCLUSION:There is a significant gap in the geographical distribution of medical resources, and the health economic spatial network structure needs to be improved. Most medical resources are concentrated in economically developed provinces, and these provinces' positions in the health economic spatial network are becoming more centralized. By contrast, economically underdeveloped regions are at the edge of the network, causing patients to move to provinces with medical resource centers. There are health risks of the increasing pressure to seek medical treatment in developed provinces with abundant medical resources.

Road freight transportation (RFT) has received significant attention from the government, industry, and academia because of its high energy consumption and carbon emissions. To reduce the negative effects of the accelerating use of RFT, China has recently been committed to promote green RFT. Efforts made in this direction have mainly focused on supply-side policy and technical measures, while neglecting the importance of demand-side psychological and behavioral strategies. Recent research suggests that drivers play a fundamental role in generating environmental impacts during transport. Thus, the success of green RFT should also be based on a thorough understanding of the drivers’ environmental awareness and pro-environmental behavior. In this study, we investigate the current levels of environmental awareness and pro-environmental behavior among China’s RFT drivers, and explore the role of environmental awareness as defined by four main components—environmental concern, environmental attitude, environmental knowledge, and behavioral intention—in motivating pro-environmental RFT behavior. We also test the moderating effect of perceived policy effectiveness on the awareness–behavior relationship. Hypotheses are examined using a sample of 243 truck drivers with structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis. The results indicate the existence of an environmental awareness–behavior gap. We determine that the awareness score (3.2) is higher than the behavior score (3.1) because barriers to pro-environmental behavior are stronger than motivators. We also find that environmental concern, attitude, and knowledge indirectly affect pro-environmental behavior via behavioral intention. Moreover, a high level of perceived policy effectiveness facilitates the transformation of awareness into behavior, bridging the awareness–behavior gap. Our study confirms the importance of environmental awareness and effective incentive policies in encouraging pro-environmental RFT behavior. The conclusions will aid researchers’ understanding of drivers’ environmental awareness and pro-environmental behavior in China’s RFT, and compel transport policy makers and managers to implement more effective measures that promote environmentally sustainable RFT.

Satisfying the growing care demands of the elderly has become a major policy issue under the trend of rapidly aging of the population, especially in developing countries. Although the market-oriented transformation on the supply side is a sustainable way to cope with the pressing demands of elderly care in the long term, the conflict between private and public interests seriously impedes the transformation process in its early stage. From the perspective of maximizing social welfare, this study took the specific situation of China as an example and applied a Stackelberg game model to explore the optimal transformation policy that can balance such conflict of interests. By comparing the effects of two forms of subsidy in China, the results first theoretically verified the importance of subsidy in stimulating the private supply of elderly care, and then emphasized that the size of the gap between supply and demand is the fulcrum of differentiated subsidy, which determines the optimal policy for the development of the elderly care market (ECM) in each aging region. Additionally, the study showed that in the process of market-oriented transformation, the government's positive response to the demands and preferences of the public, the establishment of market supervision measures, and the increase in the elderly's affordability all play important roles in improving social welfare. These findings not only have policy implications for the marketization of elderly care in China, but also provide meaningful references for other developing countries in the word that are experiencing or about to experience elderly care problems.

Since the early 1960s, long-term care (LTC) has attracted a broad range of attention from public health practitioners and researchers worldwide and produced a large volume of literature. We conducted a comprehensive scientometric review based on 14,019 LTC articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1963 to 2018, to explore the status and trends of global LTC research. Using CiteSpace software, we conducted collaboration analysis, document co-citation analysis, and keyword co-occurrence analysis. The results showed a rapid increase in annual LTC publications, while the annual citation counts exhibited an inverted U-shaped relationship with years. The most productive LTC research institutions and authors are located primarily in North American and European countries. A simultaneous analysis of both references and keywords revealed that common LTC hot topics include dementia care, quality of care, prevalence and risk factors, mortality, and randomized controlled trial. In addition, LTC research trends have shifted from the demand side to the supply side, and from basic studies to practical applications. The new research frontiers are frailty in elderly people and dementia care. This study provides an in-depth understanding of the current state, popular themes, trends, and future directions of LTC research worldwide.