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Article History

Received: 11 October 2023

Accepted: 7 November 2023

First Online: 17 November 2023

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: Approval was obtained from the Science and Technology Ethics Committee of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences before the data collection. The Committee reviewed the ethical applications including information regarding the potential participants, the way how the researchers contact the participants and obtain participants’ informed consent and communicate to them the right to withdraw, as well as how the researchers share findings with participants, protect participants’ privacy and store the data safely. The reference number is UCASSTEC23-001. Please note that when the current research started, the Science and Technology Ethics Committee was an unofficial working group affiliated to the Office of Science and Research Management at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. The unofficial status means that the Committee was not authorized with their institutional seal. According to the relevant regulation in China, the ethical reference number could only be guaranteed from organization or association with institutional seal. Thus, we did not obtain the reference number (UCASSTEC23-001) until the official launch of the Science and Technology Ethics Committee of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. In May 2023, the Science and Technology Ethics Committee have gained their official status (See Appendix The official announcement regarding the founding of Science and Technology Ethics Committee of University of Chinese Academy of Science [In Chinese]). Responding to this journal’s request for the ethical reference number, we resubmitted the application to the committee who reevaluated our ethical practices (See Appendix The reevaluation application for the ethical practices submitted to the Science and Technology Ethics Committee of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences). The applications include our detailed record of the research process and detailed descriptions of our ethical practices. After the reevaluation, we obtained the sealed approval form with the reference number guaranteed from the Science and Technology Ethics Committee of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in October 2023 (See Appendix The sealed ethical approval with reference number from the Science and Technology Ethics Committee of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences).

: Written and oral informed consent were obtained from all participants. Prior to the interviews, the researchers have explicitly told participants the purpose of this study and the voluntary nature of their participation. They were also made aware that they had the freedom to withdraw from the study at any stage, without facing any negative consequences or penalties. After obtaining participants’ informed consent, the researchers started the interview process. Before turning on the audio recorder, the researcher explicitly asked for all participants’ oral consent.