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Biometric technologies are becoming more pervasive in the workplace, augmenting managerial processes such as hiring, monitoring and terminating employees. Until recently, these devices consisted mainly of GPS tools that track location, software that scrutinizes browser activity and keyboard strokes, and heat/motion sensors that monitor workstation presence. Today, however, a new generation of biometric devices has emerged that can sense, read, monitor and evaluate the affective state of a worker. More popularly known by its commercial moniker, Emotional AI, the technology stems from advancements in affective computing. But whereas previous generations of biometric monitoring targeted the exterior physical body of the worker, concurrent with the writings of Foucault and Hardt, we argue that emotion-recognition tools signal a far more invasive disciplinary gaze that exposes and makes vulnerable the inner regions of the worker-self. Our paper explores attitudes towards empathic surveillance by analyzing a survey of 1015 responses of future job-seekers from 48 countries with Bayesian statistics. Our findings reveal affect tools, left unregulated in the workplace, may lead to heightened stress and anxiety among disadvantaged ethnicities, gender and income class. We also discuss a stark cross-cultural discrepancy whereby East Asians, compared to Western subjects, are more likely to profess a trusting attitude toward EAI-enabled automated management. While this emerging technology is driven by neoliberal incentives to optimize the worksite and increase productivity, ultimately, empathic surveillance may create more problems in terms of algorithmic bias, opaque decisionism, and the erosion of employment relations. Thus, this paper nuances and extends emerging literature on emotion-sensing technologies in the workplace, particularly through its highly original cross-cultural study.

The rapidly declining biosphere integrity, representing one of the core planetary boundaries, is alarming. In particular, the global numbers of mammals, birds, fishes, and plants declined by 68% from 1970 to 2016. One of the most widely accepted measures to halt the rate of biodiversity loss is to maintain and expand protected areas that are effectively managed. However, doing so requires substantial finance derived from nature-based tourism, specifically visitors from urban areas. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) for conducting analysis on 535 Vietnamese urban residents, the current study examined how their biodiversity loss perceptions can affect their willingness to pay for the entrance fee and conservation in protected areas. We found that perceived environmental degradation, loss of economic growth, loss of nature-based recreation opportunities, and loss of knowledge as consequences of biodiversity loss indirectly affect the willingness to pay through the mediation of the attitude towards conservation. Notably, perceived knowledge loss also has a direct positive influence on the willingness to pay for the entrance fee and conservation. In contrast, perceived loss of health is negatively associated with the attitude towards conservation. Based on these findings, we suggest that building an eco-surplus culture among urban residents by stimulating their subjective cost-benefit judgments towards biodiversity loss can be a promising way to generate more finance from nature-based tourism for conservation in protected areas and ease the domestic government’s and international organizations’ funding allocation problems. Eco-surplus culture is a set of pro-environmental attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by a group of people to reduce negative anthropogenic impacts on the environment and conserve and restore nature.

Having geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Vietnam was expected to have a high risk of transmission. However, as of 4 April 2020, in comparison to attempts to containing the disease around the world, responses from Vietnam are seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis.

Biodiversity loss is happening at an unprecedented rate, especially in countries like Vietnam, with rich biodiversity and a high population growth rate. One of the main causes of biodiversity loss in Vietnam is the unsustainable bushmeat consumption rate in urban areas. To help mitigate the demand for bushmeat, this study aims to examine the associations between biodiversity loss perceptions, perception toward the prohibition of illegal wildlife consumption, and bushmeat consumption behaviors among urban residents in Vietnam. The investigation employed the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF)—an analytical framework that combines the strengths of the mindsponge mechanism and Bayesian inference to facilitate investigation into psychological and behavioral issues—on 535 respondents from urban areas across Vietnam (mostly in the two urban centers of Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi). We found that people perceiving environmental degradation, and losses of economic growth, nature‐based recreation opportunities, health, and knowledge as consequences of biodiversity loss were more likely to support the prohibition of illegal wildlife consumption. Although urban residents tended to consume bushmeat less frequently if they perceived losses of economic growth and knowledge as consequences of biodiversity loss, the perception of environmental degradation had an opposite effect on the behavior. Additionally, people consuming bushmeat frequently and supporting the biodiversity loss preventive measure seemed to share similar features: high income and educational levels. These paradoxical results hint at the cultural additivity phenomenon—the willingness to incorporate into one's mind the new values that might or might not logically contradict their existing core cultural values—and its influence on psychology and behavior among Vietnamese urban residents. Given the influence of cultural additivity, it is recommended to put tougher measures (e.g., financial punishment) into perspective so that urban people can recognize the high “cost” of bushmeat consumption and change their perceptions and behaviors accordingly. Apart from that, social marketing, demarketing, or educational campaigns should convey knowledge and information that can help receivers relate biodiversity loss and bushmeat consumption to their subjective cost‐benefit judgments rather than the rarity of the species to avoid triggering an anthropogenic Allee effect—for example, emphasizing the penalty for consuming bushmeat and negative impacts of biodiversity loss on humans in targeted campaigns (e.g., losses of economic growth and knowledge). People perceiving environmental degradation, and losses of economic growth, nature‐based recreation opportunities, health, and knowledge as consequences of biodiversity loss were more likely to support the prohibition of illegal wildlife consumption. People consuming bushmeat frequently and supporting the biodiversity loss preventive measure seemed to share similar features: high income and educational levels, hinting at the cultural additivity phenomenon.

The military-industrial complex, military operations, and wars are major contributors to exacerbating both climate change and biodiversity crises. However, their environmental impacts are often shadowed due to national security reasons. The current paper aims to go through the devastating impacts of military operations and wars on climate change and biodiversity loss and challenges that hinder the inclusion of military-related activities into environmental crisis mitigation efforts. The information blind spot induced by concerns about national security reasons jeopardizes the efforts to involve the military-industrial complex and military operations in the global climate and biodiversity agendas. Besides that, many military-related challenges, such as specificity of operational requirements and lifecycles, dependence on fossil fuels, complex supply change, inadequate civilian technologies and innovations, and requirements of structural changes, can hinder emission reduction. Meanwhile, wars and conflicts not only threaten to drain all human and material resources available to tackle environmental problems but also inflict long-lasting destructions, pains, and trauma that can lead to hatred and distrust among nations and parties. With the rising hatred and distrust, global agreement and commitment to address climate change and biodiversity will hardly be achieved. Thus, promoting peace is the humanistic and planetary conscience.

On average, one person dies by suicide every 40 s. However, extant studies have largely focused on the risk factors for suicidal behaviors, not so much on the formation of suicidal thoughts. Therefore, we attempt to explain how suicidal thoughts arise and persist inside one’s mind using a multifiltering information mechanism called Mindsponge. Bayesian analysis with Hamiltonian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique was run on a dataset of multinational students (N = 268) of an international university in Japan. Item 9 in the PHQ-9 was used to survey suicidal ideation. The associations among four main variables, namely, (i) suicidal ideation, (ii) help-seeking willingness (informal and formal sources), (iii) sense of connectedness, and (iv) information inaccessibility (represented by being international students), were tested in four models. Sense of connectedness is negatively associated with suicidal ideation, but its effect becomes less impactful when interacting with international students. The impact of a sense of connectedness on informal help-seeking willingness (toward family members) among international students is also lessened. Informal help-seeking is negatively associated with suicidal ideation, whereas formal help is positive. The findings support our assumption on three fundamental conditions for preventing suicidal thoughts: (i) a high degree of belongingness, (ii) accessibility to help-related information, and (iii) healthy perceived cultural responses towards mental health. Therefore, systematically coordinated programs are necessary to effectively tackle suicidal ideation.

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), tremendous efforts have been made by scientists, health professionals, business people, politicians, and laypeople around the world. Covid-19 vaccines are one of the most crucial innovations that help fight against the virus. This paper attempts to revisit the Covid-19 vaccines production process by employing the serendipity-mindsponge-3D creativity management theory. Vaccine production can be considered an information process and classified into three main stages. The first stage involved the processes of absorbing information (e.g., digital data and open science) and rejecting unhelpful information (e.g., misinformation and fake news) for effectively acquiring useful insights. Useful insights were later employed by experts, enterprises, governments, and international organizations through interdisciplinary coordinated efforts for developing vaccines within a short period. Finally, the appearance of multiple types of vaccines enabled more strategic options for vaccine distribution and administration. Findings from this vaccine creativity management process could be used as critical lessons for further improvements of vaccination programs.

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students.

Modern society faces major environmental problems, but there are many difficulties in studying the nature–human relationship from an integral psychosocial perspective. We propose the ecomind sponge conceptual framework, based on the mindsponge theory of information processing. We present a systematic method to examine the nature–human relationship with conceptual frameworks of system boundaries, selective exchange, and adaptive optimization. The theoretical mechanisms were constructed based on principles and new evidence in natural sciences. The core mechanism of ecomindsponge is the subjective sphere of influence, which is the limited mental representation of information received from and processed based on the objective sphere of influence–actual interactions in reality. The subjective sphere is the sum of two sub-spheres: influencing (proactive) and being influenced (reactive). Maladaptation in thinking and behavior of the mind as an information collection-cum-processor results from the deviation of the subjective sphere from reality, which includes two main types: “stupidity” and “delusion”. Using Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 urban residents, we provide consistent statistical evidence on the proposed properties of subjective spheres. The dynamic framework of ecomindsponge can be used flexibly and practically for environmental research as well as other psychosocial fields.

Urban humans and biodiversity-related concepts are interacting with each other in many negative and positive ways. The biodiversity provides a wide array of provision and cultural-ecological services to urban residents, but it is being overexploited to the point of crisis. The crisis is largely driven by the expanding illegal wildlife trade in developing countries with a high urbanization rate and biodiversity level like Vietnam. While supply-side measures are ineffective in reducing biodiversity loss, researchers have suggested demand-side measures as supplements, such as social marketing campaigns and law enforcement in urban areas. Moreover, urban residents are also potential visitors to urban public parks and national parks, which helps generate finance for biodiversity preservation and conservation in those places. Understanding how urban residents' perceptions towards biodiversity and biodiversity-related behaviors can help improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts and sustainable urban development. Thus, this article presents a data set of 535 urban residents' wildlife consumption behaviors, multifaceted perceptions and interactions with biodiversity-related concepts, and nature-based recreation demand. The data set is constructed with six major categories: 1) wildlife product consumption, 2) general biodiversity perceptions, 3) biodiversity at home and neighborhood, 4) public park visitation and motivations, 5) national park visitation and motivations, and 6) socio-demographic profiles. These resources are expected to support researchers in enriching the lax literature regarding the role of urban residents in biodiversity conservation and preservation, and help policymakers to find insights for building up an “eco-surplus culture” among urban residents through effective public communication and policymaking.