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Article History

Received: 19 September 2024

Accepted: 13 May 2025

First Online: 2 June 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: Ethical approval was granted by the “Human Research Ethics Committee at the University Putra Malaysia UPM (JKEUPM-an Institutional Review Board -IRB) on 4 September 2023. The reference/approval number is JKEUPM-2023-676. Moreover, local approval was obtained from the “Academic Committee” (an Institutional Review Board-IRB) of Yancheng Teachers University, Jiangsu, China on 27, October 2023. The approval/reference number is YCTU20221017. The ethical procedures used in this study were in accordance with the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki.

: Each university sampled for the study obtained the informed consent of all participants before granting the data for the purposes of this study. In compliance with national regulations and institutional standards, this research did not necessitate written informed consent. The informants (employees of these universities) gave these universities the required consent. Moreover, the study utilized secondary data which does not contain any personal information regarding the respondents. The approval given by the ethics committees of Yancheng Teachers University and University Putra Malaysia allowed us to use this secondary data. This paper employs only secondary data collected by the sampled universities in China. In collecting the data, the authorities of the sampled universities obtained the consent from the participants (i.e. employees). This paper does not utilize any primary source data. The ethical approval (ref. number: YCTU20221017) provided by the Academic Committee” (an Institutional Review Board-IRB) of Yancheng Teachers University, Jiangsu, China, on 27 October 2023, has waived “informed consent” for the secondary data that this study has used.