The Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone in Hengqin (Intensive Cooperation Zone) has emerged as a pivotal economic hub, attracting Macao residents and enterprises. However, disparities in contract-related rules between the zone and Macao have led to legal challenges. This article delves into a comparative study of contract laws between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Macao. Analyzing key facets such as pacta sunt servanda, freedom of contract, principle of equity, contract form, principles of interpretation, and termination of contract, the study identifies nuanced differences. Recognizing the imperative of aligning contract laws for the Intensive Cooperation Zone’s development, the article advocates for a unified legal environment. To achieve this, the author proposes a model contract law that prioritises the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) as the basis. Notably, Macao’s contract-related rules should govern aspects not covered by the CISG given the policy trend in the Intensive Cooperation Zone. The proposed model law serves as a foundation for legislative reform, aiming to address the existing disparities and promote the Intensive Cooperation Zone’s economic growth.

Blockchain technology has increasingly attracted the attention of the financial service sector, customers, and investors because of its distinctive characteristics, such as transparency, security, reliability, and traceability. The paper is based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The study comprehended the literature and the theories. It deployed the technology-organization-environment (TOE) model to consider technological, organizational, and environmental factors as antecedents of blockchain adoption intention. The paper contributes to blockchain literature by providing new insights into the factors that affect the intention to adopt blockchain technology. A theoretical model incorporates antecedents of blockchain adoption intention to direct an agenda for further investigations. Researchers can use the model proposed in this study to test the antecedents of blockchain adoption intention empirically.

eGovernment projects are capital intensive and have high probability of failure because of the dynamic and technological laden environment in which they operate. The number of skilled labour and technicalities required are often not available in quantity needed to sustain such project. There is always the need to have in place adequate risk assessment framework to guide the execution and monitoring of eGovernment projects. Several studies have been conducted on the critical success factors relating to risk assessment of eGovernment projects to understand the reasons for the high rate of failure. Therefore, there is need to review these articles and categorize them into different research domain in project risk assessment so as to reveal domain with more or less research and those that need to understand the future research directions in risk assessment for eGovernment projects. Using the positivism paradigm, this study utilized the Systematic Literature Review methodology to collect 147 articles from the following academic databases namely IEEE, Preprints, WorldCat Discovery, ArXiv. Ohio-state University databases, Science Direct, Scopus, ACM, NWU digital library, Usenix, Jise database, Sagepub, MDPI Academia published between 2013 to 2023. Different inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied pruning to 48 articles that were used for the study. The results show the classification of articles in risk assessment for eGovernment projects into those that discusses project analysis, review, framework, maturity and model tools, implementation, and integration, applied methodology and evaluation with the percentage of articles published in each domain with the past 10 years. The various critical success factors that should be considered in the development of a robust risk assessment framework were discussed and future research directions in eGovernment risk assessment were given based on the reviews.

This article examines the factors influencing sustainable entrepreneurship (SE) in Arab countries, focusing on economic, social, and technological dimensions. Using data from various sources and structural equation modeling, the study explores the relationships between these factors and SE sustainability. The findings reveal that economic factors, such as GDP per capita and foreign direct investment (FDI), positively influence SE sustainability, emphasizing the need for a conducive economic environment. Social factors, measured by Internet usage and the Human Development Index (HDI), also significantly impact SE sustainability, highlighting the importance of access to information and education. However, technological factors like patent applications and high-tech exports did not show a significant positive relationship with SE sustainability, suggesting a minimal direct impact on SE longevity in Arab countries. These insights have implications for policymakers, stressing the importance of fostering economic growth and enhancing social infrastructure to support sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. Despite its robust methodology, the study has limitations, such as incomplete data for certain countries, affecting the generalizability of the findings. Future research could explore additional factors influencing SE sustainability, further investigate the role of technology, and expand the geographical scope to include more Arab countries.

Compared with their fellow citizens in the city, rural residents are more likely to be affected by ecological restoration programs and policies. Yet no one has conducted a large-scale study of how ecological conservation impacts rural livelihoods and the economic status of rural households, especially in China. To fill that knowledge gap, I collected and analyzed relevant data from 2007 to 2018 for western and eastern China. I found that the relationship between western China’s green coverage rate and rural income followed an inverted U curve whereas that between its green coverage rate and urban-rural income gap was instead U-shaped, suggesting that ecological restoration has come to eventually negatively impact the economic welfare of rural residents in western China; however, the complete opposite was found in eastern China. Greater urbanization, financial support, and infrastructure such as education, medical, and Internet services would help to improve the current situation in western China. This suggests the government should take actions—such as improving the quality of farmer training to the rural residents and improving infrastructure construction—to help farmers acquire a new source of income and narrow the urban-rural income gap in parallel to implementing ecological restoration projects.