Understanding public trust in water managers: Findings from the Netherlands

Is China approaching the inflection point of the ecological Kuznets curve? Analysis based on ecosystem service value at the county level

Accounting for the ecosystem service values (ESVs) and discussing the relationship between the ESVs and economic development can help achieve sustainable ecological development. Therefore, this paper evaluates the county-level ESVs of various land types in China, and depicts the distribution of ESVs in various urban agglomerations. In addition, the nonlinear relationship between ESVs and economic development is revealed. The main findings are as follows: (1) From 2000 to 2018, the ESVs in China decreased, and the decline rate of ESVs in urban agglomerations is much higher than that of China as a whole. (2) The decline rate of ESVs in core cities is much higher than in urban agglomerations, and the decline rate of ESVs is higher in areas close to core cities and lower in areas far from core cities. (3) The ecological Kuznets curve of China has a positive "U" shape, and the ecological Kuznets curve of urban agglomerations has an "N" shape; the ecological Kuznets curve of core cities has a positive "U" shape, while the ESVs of other cities decreases monotonically with the increase of the economic level.

Influencing Factors of Public Satisfaction with COVID-19 Prevention Services Based on Structural Equation Modeling (SEM): A Study of Nanjing, China

Service satisfaction with public policies is an important component of public service quality management, which is of great significance to the improvement of public service quality. Based on an online questionnaire survey and in combination with the characteristics of public policies and services, in this study the influencing factors of residents' satisfaction with COVID-19 pandemic prevention services were analyzed with structural equation modeling. The results reveal that the data fit the model well, and all the hypotheses formulated in this study were supported. Among the factors that were found to directly affect residents' satisfaction with pandemic prevention services, perceived quality (PQ) has the greatest impact on satisfaction, followed by the disaster situation (DS) and policy expectation (PE). The observed variables that have significant impacts on the latent variables were also explored. Regarding the main findings, the residents who were seriously affected by the pandemic tended to have lower satisfaction with the policies and services provided by the government. Moreover, the improvement of PQ was found to significantly increase pandemic prevention service satisfaction (SS). Finally, the residents with a good psychological status during the pandemic were found to have higher satisfaction. According to the results, implications for the prevention and control practices of similar public health emergencies are proposed.