South Korea’s over 3300 islands play vital roles in the nation’s geography, economy, culture, and national security. Despite their importance, these islands face significant challenges, including population decline, aging demographics, and a severe lack of healthcare, childcare, and education facilities. With only 20% of inhabited islands connected to the mainland by bridges, coastal ferries are the primary transportation mode. However, the infrequent ferry services and numerous intermediate stops cause considerable inconvenience. This study conducts an analysis of the coastal ferry route connectivity within the Mokpo Area, focusing on proposing improvements to enhance access to community infrastructure for local island residents. This study analyzes the Mokpo Area’s coastal ferry network, identifying Dochodo as a central hub island to improve connectivity for sustainable island development. By reorganizing routes around Dochodo with larger ferries for main routes and smaller ferries for local trips, the study aims to enhance service access and boost tourism for island communities.

The female labor force participation holds significant implications for various aspects of society, the economy, and individual lives. Understanding its significance involves recognizing the multifaceted impact of women’s participation in the workforce. In this context, the current study investigates the factors influencing the female labor force participation rate in Saudi Arabia while using a set of independent variables such as GDP growth, employment-to-population ratio, inflation, urban population growth, tertiary school enrollment, labor force with advanced education, fertility rate, and age dependency ratio, covering a period from 2000 to 2022. The results reveal that the employment-to-population ratio, inflation rate, urbanization, and age dependency ratio have positive and statistically significant impacts on the female labor force participation rate. This research offers valuable insights for formulating policies to foster female empowerment and overcome the obstacles that hinder their economic participation.

The low-carbon economy is the major objective of China’s economy, and its goal is to achieve sustainable economic development. The study enriches the literature on the relationship between digital Chinese yuan (E-CNY), low-carbon economy, AI trust concerns, and security intrusion. The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) offered more ways to achieve a low-carbon economy. The digital Chinese yuan (E-CNY), based on the AI technique, has shown its nature and valid low-carbon characteristics in pilot cities of China, it will assume important responsibilities and become the key link. However, trust concerns about AI techniques result in a limitation of the scope and extent of E-CNY usage. The study conducts in-depth research from the perspective of AI trust concerns, explores the influence of E-CNY on the low-carbon economy, and discusses the moderating and mediating mechanisms of AI trust concerns in this process. The empirical data results showed that E-CNY positively affects China’s low-carbon economy, and AI trust concerns moderate the positive impact. When consumers with higher AI trust concerns use E-CNY, their feeling of security intrusion is also higher. It affects the growth of trading volume and scope of E-CNY usage. Still, it reduces the utility of China’s low-carbon economy. This study provides valuable management inspiration for China’s low-carbon economy.

Madura Island, with more than half of its population, are women encountering socio-economic problems, which eventually create high poverty and unemployment rates. However, the Madurese are also well-known for their resiliency and entrepreneurial characteristics. The effort to solve the issues by empowering the community, women in particular, has been taken seriously primarily by entrepreneurs who were born and raised in the community. Therefore, this research aims to gain insight into the current Madurese entrepreneur’s business pattern and their social concerns in order to propose a strategy to increase productivity as an effort to empower women’s communities. The methodology is qualitative research, which collects data using semi-structured interviews with representatives of the Madurese entrepreneurs in four areas of Madura Island. Their responses are then transcripted and coded for content analysis based on the designed themes. The result shows that they recognise and practise the social entrepreneurship (SE) pattern, although they do not understand the term. Subsequently, the technological application for business operations in general is still limited to the usage of digital technology (DT) for marketing and transaction activities, which helps increase business performance or productivity. Hence, the initiation of technosociopreneurship as a strategy to further develop SE activities with the hope of increasing productivity in empowering women’s communities is proposed. Further research development is advised using quantitative methods for generalisable findings.

Artificial intelligence has transformed teachers’ teaching models. This article explores the application of artificial intelligence in basic education in Macao middle schools. This study adopts case analysis in qualitative research, using a total of eight cases from the innovative technology education platform of the Macau education and Youth Development Bureau. These data illustrate how Macao’s artificial intelligence technology promotes teaching innovation in basic education. These eight cases are closely related to the application of artificial intelligence in basic education in Macao. The survey results show that Macao’s education policy has a positive effect on teaching innovation in artificial intelligence education. In teaching practice, the school also cooperates with the government’s policy. The application of AI technology in teaching, students’ learning styles, changes in teachers’ roles, and new needs for teacher training are all influential.

This article explores the development and legislative process of concession agreements within the framework of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the EU, tracing their origins to the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. Driven by national policies, the Ministry of Finance in China has promoted PPPs in infrastructure and public services. This study focuses on the basic principles, legal nature, and general rules of EU concession agreements, aiming to provide legal strategies for Chinese franchising agreement legislation by drawing on the EU’s legislative experiences.