Dataset Information

China's Silk Road and global health.

ABSTRACT: In 2013, China proposed its Belt and Road Initiative to promote trade, infrastructure, and commercial associations with 65 countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. This initiative contains important health components. Simultaneously, China launched an unprecedented overseas intervention against Ebola virus in west Africa, dispatching 1200 workers, including Chinese military personnel. The overseas development assistance provided by China has been increasing by 25% annually, reaching US$7 billion in 2013. Development assistance for health from China has particularly been used to develop infrastructure and provide medical supplies to Africa and Asia. China's contributions to multilateral organisations are increasing but are unlikely to bridge substantial gaps, if any, vacated by other donors; China is creating its own multilateral funds and banks and challenging the existing global architecture. These new investment vehicles are more aligned with the geography and type of support of the Belt and Road Initiative. Our analysis concludes that China's Belt and Road Initiative, Ebola response, development assistance for health, and new investment funds are complementary and reinforcing, with China shaping a unique global engagement impacting powerfully on the contours of global health.

SUBMITTER: Tang K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7159269 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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China's Silk Road and global health.

Tang Kun K Li Zhihui Z Li Wenkai W Chen Lincoln L

Lancet (London, England) 20171208 10112

In 2013, China proposed its Belt and Road Initiative to promote trade, infrastructure, and commercial associations with 65 countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. This initiative contains important health components. Simultaneously, China launched an unprecedented overseas intervention against Ebola virus in west Africa, dispatching 1200 workers, including Chinese military personnel. The overseas development assistance provided by China has been increasing by 25% annually, reaching US$7 billion i ...[more]

PMID: 29231838

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Project description:Humanity's demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what earth can regenerate in that year, creating an urgent need for more sustainable behavior. Here, the focus is on a particular factor that so far has been overlooked in facilitating sustainable behavior, namely smell. The two-fold aim of this study was (i) to investigate whether ambient scent could enhance customers' subjective experience and spending behavior in a sustainable environment, and (ii) to elucidate the affective and cognitive pathways from scent to spending. To test this, a double-blind field experiment was designed where customers of a second-hand clothing store (N = 57) could face one of three conditions: fresh linen scent (pleasant and semantically priming "clean clothing" increasing the products' value), vanilla sandalwood scent (pleasant control odor), or regular store odor (odorless control). Buttressed by prior research, the fresh linen scent was expected to cause the strongest increase in spending behavior due to its positive semantic association with the product (i.e., clean clothing). The results indeed showed that fresh linen scent almost doubled consumer spending vs. the odorless control and the pleasant control odor. Other factors potentially affecting consumer behavior (e.g., weekday, weather, odor awareness) were uncorrelated. Whereas a conceptually-driven mediation analysis showed that only fresh linen scent increased mood and evaluations of the store, staff, and products, these variables did not mediate the relation between scent and spending. An explorative structural equation model suggested cognitive priming to be mainly responsible for increasing consumers' spending in the fresh linen condition by enhancing the general store evaluation. Further support is needed to corroborate the indirect findings that specific scents can follow a "cold" semantic road and a "hot" affective road to spending. At minimum, consumers are no "zombies" that empty their pockets in the presence of whatever odor; the smell needs to have a meaningful link to the (sustainable) context at hand to influence consumer behavior.

Dataset Information

China's Silk Road and global health.

Publications

China's Silk Road and global health.

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