Earticle

One of the typological characteristics of Chinese is the diversification of individual classifiers. Among the diverse individual classifiers is the general classifier ‘ge,’ which is applied to a wide range of nouns, and it is combined with different nouns by crossing over semantic categories. Therefore, while past research examines the progress of ‘gehua’ from both diachronic and synchronic aspects and makes arguments on that basis, there has been no discussion or prediction focusing on the linguistic changes in the future. This paper will present a study that predicts the direction of the development of a ‘gehua’ phenomenon, if it exists, in order to overcome the limitations of past research. In the meantime, this paper also attempts to find the clues of such development in the dialects whose classifier-noun combination appears different from that of Putonghua. In order to examine the patterns of changes if the scope of application of ‘ge’ is extended in the future, this article explores three types of nouns in Putonghua, that is, Inanimate Nouns related to ‘road’ and/or ‘river’ that are combined with ‘tiao,’ event nouns that are combined with ‘jian,’ and ‘cloud’ and/or ‘flower’ nouns that are combined with ‘duo.’ For the dialects, research on existing literature was carried out and additional surveys with the native speakers of those dialects were performed where necessary. After analyzed, the classifiers in respective dialects appeared very differently when combined with the nouns listed above, and consistent implicative relations were discovered as well. As argued in 이지은(2018), this article confirms that the expansion of the scope of application of ‘ge’ shows lexical diffusion, and that the stability of the semantic association with specific classifiers is an important mechanism. Other mechanisms observed in this paper include: ∙ Hyponyms are combined with ‘ge’ more easily than hypernyms because they are more specific. ∙ The nouns that have clear individualities and boundaries are combined with ‘ge’ more readily than other nouns. ∙ The nouns more frequently in spoken language are combined with ‘ge’ easily. However, all these mechanisms are not applied comprehensively to the nouns of every semantic class, whereas there is a complex operation of various factors at play. Thus, the implicative relationships drawn upon in this paper should be seen as a broader tendency, not as an absolute rule.

Hallyu or Korean wave refers to the worldwide popularity of Korean media contents and culture. When dealing with Hallyu, previous studies mostly focused on its effect on Korea’s country image, purchase intentions of Korean product and intentions to visit Korea. Country image is formed by various political, social, economical, and cultural elements. However, previous research did not adequately reflect the multidimensional factors of country image. Therefore, this study empirically examined relationships among Korean media contents, Korea’s country image and visit intention based on multidimensional factors of its country image. In this study, three research questions were examined. First, what are the factors of Korea’s country image among Chinese college students? Second, do gender, age and the use of Korean media contents influence the factors of Korea’s country image? Third, do gender, age, the use of Korean media contents and the factors of Korea’s country image have any impact on the intention to visit Korea? To determine these research questions, this study employed a survey of 263 university students in Beijing Factor analysis was conducted to examine the first research question. The result revealed four factors of Korea’s country image – Social/economy, Koreans/culture, relation and product. To investigate the second research question, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted. The result suggested that students who increasingly watched Korean drama had a better image of Korean people and culture. To investigate the final research question, a hierarchical regression was conducted. The result indicated that students who increasingly watched Korean drama and listened Korean pop songs were more likely to visit Korea. Moreover, the image of Koreans and culture had a mediating effect on the relationship between the use of Korean drama and intention to visit Korea.

Knowledge sharing improves enterprise performance. Although many enterprises have adopted incentives that encourage employees to share knowledge, some employees still do not share professional knowledge. The influence of knowledge hiding is one of the main issues in the field of management research. To understand how self-efficacy affects team dynamics, we hypothesized (based on the Social Cognitive Theory) that knowledge hiding is associated with general self-efficacy and knowledge sharing self-efficacy; and that the influence of knowledge hiding is moderated by trust. This study enrolled 219 respondents from 5 Chinese cities to determine whether domain-specific self-efficacy influences knowledge hiding. The empirical results show that: (1) general self-efficacy has a significantly positive effect on knowledge sharing self-efficacy; (2) general self-efficacy has a significantly negative effect on knowledge hiding; (3) knowledge sharing self-efficacy has a significantly negative effect on knowledge hiding; (4) knowledge sharing self-efficacy plays a partial mediating role between general self-efficacy and knowledge hiding; (5) Trust negatively moderates the influence of general self-efficacy on knowledge hiding; (6) Trust negatively moderates the influence of knowledge sharing self-efficacy on knowledge hiding. Previous studies on knowledge hiding factors have focused on the (Western) principles of fairness and reciprocity and have not considered the situation in China. In this study, the localization knowledge hiding scale is used to explore the inhibitory effect of self-efficacy on knowledge hiding. Additionally, this study explains why it is more difficult to study knowledge hiding in China (as compared to Western countries). Western employees pay more attention to hiding strategies whereas Chinese employees pay more attention to hiding intentions because they are afraid to show their hidden intentions and affect interpersonal relations. This paper first discusses the moderating effect of trust on the relationship between self-efficacy and knowledge hiding, integrating individual traits, individual behaviors, and team atmosphere together. Next, by simultaneously studying general self-efficacy and knowledge sharing self-efficacy, this study helps understand the differences and similarities between the drivers of knowledge hiding by identifying both domain-specific characteristics of these influences and the similarities in how these influences play out in Chinese enterprises.

The study analyzes the wage gap between urban workers and rural migrant workers by region (eastern, central and western) from the perspective of China's balanced regional development policy. If the balanced regional development policy had improved its economic conditions in the Midwest, the wage gap between regions would have decreased. However, the wage gap between the two groups in the region may expand or decrease depending on the degree of changes in the group's labor demand and labor supply. In addition, the wage gap can be divided into categories described by group characteristics and those that cannot be interpreted due to discrimination. Based on this, the study analyzes the impact of balanced regional development policies on the wage gap between urban and rural migrant workers by region by using China Household Income Project (CHIP) data in 2002 and 2013 and applying the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method. According to the analysis, the wage gap between urban workers and rural migrant workers fell from 0.499 in 2002 to 0.17 in 2013. Wage gaps have significantly decreased in the western, central and eastern sectors in order, meaning China's balanced regional development policy has contributed to narrowing the wage gap between regions. The wage gap between urban workers and rural migrant workers in the region also decreased the most in the West. With the push for large-scale construction projects, labor demand for rural migrant workers' work increased relatively significantly, and consequently the wage increase rate for rural migrant workers was greater than that of urban workers. In addition, when comparing the portion of the wage gap in 2002, the results of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition showed that the western region was the highest with 86.3 percent, followed by the central part with 59.2 percent and the eastern part with 54.3 percent. It suggests that the more underdeveloped regions had a greater proportion of discriminatory factors in the wage gap before China's balanced regional development policy was implemented.

The luxury brands market had grown due to emerging economies such as Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Chinese market that is especially considered one of the most attractive markets in world. Chinese millennials, born after 80's and 90's have become the main force in the luxury brand market gradually from the perspective of consumers structure. Most of them are grown under the one child policy and received special treatment for family members. This generation is overprotected by family members and enjoy economic abundance. In addition to this, they are more cosmopolitanism and materialism than their parents because they are influenced by Western cultures. They are also independent personality and egocentric in consumption. The purpose of this paper is to study the luxury consumption behavior of Chinese millennial consumers and in order to do this, this study divides Chinese millennials' consumption motives into social-oriented motivations (eg, conspicuous, bandwagon, materialism, and Miazi) and personal-oriented motives (eg, uniqueness, self-gift giving, and quality seeking) based on the existing researches. The empirical results show that millennial consumers with higher social-oriented motivations(materialism and bandwagon) are more likely to adapt to social-adjustive attitude, on the other hand, consumers driven by personal-oriented motives (self-gifts, uniqueness and quality) form a stronger value-expressive attitude. Consumers have a higher motive to conspicuous or Mianzi, have a tendency to be in both social-adjustive and value-expressive attitude because the two motivations are related to vanity. The more social-adjustive and value-expressive attitude of Chinese millennials, the higher the intention to purchase luxury brands. The moderating effect of consumer ethnocentrism was stronger as millennials had social-adjustive attitude. On the other hand, in the case of value-expression, the moderating effect of consumer ethnocentrism is not shown.

As income continues to increase in North East Asia, coffee consumption has become a new trend as the ‘Starbucks’ syndrome shows. Especially young and urban consumers in the region have become more ever more interested in coffee. The per capita consumption of coffee in this region is still much lower than in America and Europe. However, the potential demand for coffee as a percentage of the total population is much greater. This indicates that the coffee demand and consumption will continue to expand rapidly in emerging Asian markets. Particularly, consumers in five areas including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, which use to drink tea, have now rapidly switched their drinking habits to coffee. This study evaluates whether, and if so, how incomes, prices, and drinking habits have influenced the coffee demand of the above five areas. In order to do so, an econometric model of coffee demand was specified according to a microeconomic demand theory: The demand of a good is determined by income, prices of own and related goods, and other control variables. To estimate the model, a panel data was constructed that covers GDP per capita, coffee consumption per capita, price of coffee and price of tea as a substitute in five areas such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan during the period 1961-2013. The Pooled OLS model and cross-area fixed effect model are both estimated to see if there is any area-specific effect in coffee consumption. Both estimations end up producing qualitatively similar results, signifying that our models are very robust in supporting our hypotheses. One interesting feature about coffee demand is that drinking coffee is treated as ‘addicted or habitual’ consumption such that past consumption or pattern may influence present consumption over time. To evaluate the level of influence that coffee consumption habits have over the demand of coffee in this region, two different models were estimated: one without the habit formation effects and the other one with. The model excluding the habit formation effects variable showed that coffee behaves as a ‘luxury’ good (because the income elasticity of coffee demand turns out to be greater than 1) and disposable incomes exert the most significant influence over the coffee demand. Conversely, the model including the habit formation effects variable demonstrated that the previous model overestimated the impact of all the other variables and more specifically that coffee demand becomes less responsive to raises in disposable income and also changes in prices as coffee consumption habits are formed, hence influencing. To sum up the main results, coffee demand in these areas is strongly influenced by habit formation effects and is still relatively sensitive to income growth.