2026-04-02
Eman Al-Wreikat, Yasar Al-Hiniti, Salah Awaisheh, Hiba Kobarie, Wesam Al-Hobabseh
IntroductionDigital currencies have emerged as a significant financial innovation, raising complex legal, economic, and regulatory challenges across jurisdictions. While some countries have established comprehensive regulatory frameworks, others, including Jordan, continue to face legal uncertainty due to the absence of clear legislation. This study examines the legal status and regulatory approaches to digital currencies, with particular reference to the German and United Arab Emirates (UAE) models, and evaluates their applicability within the Jordanian legal context.MethodsThe study adopts a descriptive-analytical and comparative legal methodology. It analyzes legislative texts, institutional reports, and academic literature to assess how different jurisdictions regulate digital currencies. The research focuses on legal classification, regulatory oversight, licensing mechanisms, and compliance requirements, and compares these approaches to identify suitable regulatory solutions for Jordan.ResultsThe findings reveal significant variation in regulatory approaches worldwide. Some jurisdictions recognize digital currencies as financial instruments subject to licensing and regulatory supervision, while others impose restrictions or maintain unclear legal positions. In Jordan, the absence of a comprehensive legal framework has resulted in regulatory gaps, legal uncertainty, and limited investor protection. By contrast, the German model provides legal certainty through classification and licensing, while the UAE model offers effective institutional supervision and regulatory oversight.DiscussionThe study concludes that digital currencies can be legally integrated into national financial systems when supported by a clear and balanced regulatory framework. Based on the comparative analysis, the research proposes the adoption of a hybrid regulatory model in Jordan, combining legal classification, licensing requirements, and institutional supervision. Such a framework would enhance legal certainty, strengthen investor protection, reduce financial risks, and support sustainable financial and economic development while maintaining regulatory control.
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.17509612026-04-01
Mara J. Goldman, Robin Roth, Libby Lunstrum
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.18165842026-03-26
Rodrigo Torreblanca Contreras, César Cáceres-Seguel
The housing deficit in Chile has led to an explosive growth of informal settlements. Although investment in housing subsidies has been a priority in public policy, informal settlements continue to grow, reflecting a multidimensional and dynamic problem. Using a qualitative approach that combines focus groups and interviews with residents of settlements in the Metropolitan Area of Valparaíso and municipal officials, the study analyzes the knowledge and strategies mobilized by communities, as well as the municipalities’ perspectives on this process. Organized actions are observed for land subdivision, street layout, housing construction, infrastructure network connections, and public spaces. Additionally, mechanisms for conflict resolution and negotiation strategies with public and private actors are discussed. These knowledge and practices in the construction and management of habitat enable valuable community-public institutional articulations, which are key to advancing a new policy for settlement and community management. This self-management of habitat challenges the State’s structure in ways that demonstrate participatory, mobilizing, and democratic management. Urban informality is not a homogeneous process but different assemblages between institutions and communities generating agreements, processes, and differentiated and dynamic spaces.
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.17404112026-03-24
Dickson Adom, Samuel Awuah-Nyamekye
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.18190272026-03-23
Jehan Al Fannah
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.16918432026-03-20
Isaac Osei, Anil Carie, Lakshmi Prasanna Kanithi, Dennis Opoku Boadu
Human activity is increasingly extending into environments marked by isolation, confinement, and extreme conditions, including long-duration space missions, polar research stations, intensive care units, and other high-risk settings. In these contexts, individuals must sustain performance and wellbeing under persistent cognitive, emotional, and social strain. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are now deeply embedded in such environments, supporting decision making, monitoring, training, and, in some cases, psychological wellbeing. Yet research on AI in extreme settings has largely emphasized technical performance and automation, with comparatively limited attention to the lived experience of sustained Human–AI Interaction (HAI). This perspective paper argues that isolated, confined, or extreme (ICE) environments represent a uniquely revealing context for examining HAI. The psychological pressures characteristic of ICE settings—such as prolonged isolation, cognitive fatigue, stress, and high consequences of error—fundamentally shape how humans perceive, trust, and rely on AI systems. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature from human factors, psychology, and AI research, the paper conceptualizes ICE environments as a stress test for HAI, where issues of trust calibration, autonomy, transparency, and social attribution are amplified. Rather than treating AI solely as a decision aid, this perspective highlights how AI systems in ICE contexts may function as cognitive partners, social surrogates, or perceived teammates. The paper concludes by outlining key implications for the design, evaluation, and governance of AI systems intended for extreme environments, emphasizing the need for interaction-centered approaches that prioritize human experience alongside technical performance.
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.17955132026-03-10
Erwin Asmadi, Rizal Khadafi
This perspective article argues that the rampant spread and resilience of illegal online lending (pinjaman online or pinjol) in Indonesia is not merely a legal violation to be policed, but a symptom of a broader, deep-seated systemic failure. While government crackdowns, including the shutdown of thousands of illicit platforms and mass arrests, are necessary immediate interventions, these measures largely treat the symptoms rather than the underlying disease. We posit that the endurance of illegal fintech stems from a complex, self-reinforcing crucible of socio-economic desperation, a critical deficit in functional financial literacy, a digital culture that aggressively encourages consumption over savings, and a technological agility on the supply side that consistently outpaces regulatory frameworks. By analyzing scholarly literature and media reports, we demonstrate that this phenomenon parallels other intractable societal issues in Indonesia, such as the consumption of lethal bootleg alcohol (oplosan) and the persistent flow of undocumented migrant workers. In all these cases, high-risk illegal choices are made not out of criminal intent, but out of perceived necessity due to structural exclusion. We contend that a sustainable solution demands a radical paradigm shift: moving from a strictly punitive “whack-a-mole” approach to a holistic strategy focused on prevention and inclusion. This requires a coordinated national effort to revolutionize financial literacy education, compel the design of inclusive financial products for the informal sector, foster responsible financial habits through community leadership, and implement adaptive, technology-driven regulation. Only by addressing the root causes of both supply and demand can Indonesia hope to dismantle the illegal fintech ecosystem and build a resilient, ethical, and truly inclusive digital finance landscape.
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.16736332026-03-06
Valery Buinwi Ferim, Kgothatso Shai, Michael Fonkem
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.18087682026-03-03
Chen Yuehua, Gao Jiayao
Against the backdrop of the in-depth advancement of Digital China and the rural revitalization strategy, short video platform algorithms, as a novel cultural intermediary force, are intricately linked to the reconstruction of the political ecology of urban-rural cultural identity. Existing research on digital technology and rural development predominantly focuses on macro policy and micro individual behavior levels, lacking systematic empirical investigation into how platform algorithms, as a structural force, shape urban-rural cultural identity. This study employed a nationwide stratified sampling survey, with urban and rural residents as the research subjects, and utilized regression analysis and structural equation modeling to systematically examine the differential association mechanisms of algorithm recommendation systems on the cultural identity of urban and rural residents, as well as the moderating roles of social structural factors such as household registration and education level. The results revealed that algorithm exposure is significantly and positively correlated with users’ acceptance of rural modernity narratives, which is specifically reflected in the significant enhancement of fusion innovation identification. Urban-rural household registration, as a key social location variable, moderates the association path between algorithm exposure and reality identification: urban user groups exhibit a positive correlation between the two, whereas rural user groups show no such association. Active search behavior weakens the association with algorithm domestication, as users resist the infiltration of a single narrative through autonomous information acquisition. Notably, different short video platforms exhibit significant differences in their associations with cultural identity, and both the urbanization level of permanent residence and education level exert significant moderating effects on cultural identity and algorithm perception. Based on these findings, this study proposes the “Algorithm Domestication Gap” defining the digital cultural divide as a multi-dimensional cognitive gap within the framework of the third-generation digital divide. This concept extends the knowledge gap theory, providing a theoretical lens for understanding technology-mediated urban-rural cultural politics, and offers practical implications for digital rural construction and platform governance.
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.17368382026-03-02
Chen Jiao
Industrial structure upgrading (ISU) is the core driver of China’s high-quality economic development and rural revitalization, yet county-level economies face severe structural imbalances, with digital financial inclusion (DFI) emerging as a critical support for industrial restructuring. Based on panel data of 1,772 counties in China, threshold regression models are adopted to empirically investigate the nonlinear impact of DFI on ISU. The results show that DFI has a significant double threshold effect on ISU, with its promotional effect rising from 2.08% to 3.40% and then falling to 2.82% across successive threshold stages; a 1% increase in DFI can drive a typical county with a GDP of RMB 30 billion to achieve an annual increase of RMB 13.92 million to 22.74 million in tertiary industry output via resource reallocation from manufacturing to high-value-added services. Among the three core sub-dimensions of DFI, digitization level is the foundational driver of its overall effect on ISU, and DFI optimizes county-level industrial structure through two channels of boosting manufacturing output and facilitating regional innovation. This study enriches county-level DFI-ISU literature and provides actionable policy insights for governments to leverage DFI for industrial upgrading through strengthened rural financial digitization, optimized resource allocation, and targeted policies.
DOI: 10.3389/fhumd.2026.1787488