During my doctoral studies, faced with the issue of insufficient human resources for long-term care, my research interests shifted towards volunteer organizations, time banks, and community mutual aid organizations that mobilize social members, particularly younger and healthier older adults, to provide care for older and disabled adults. Time banks, as a mechanism for mobilizing social forces to provide care for older adults, have developed rapidly in recent years and have received policy support from governments at all levels.
My doctoral dissertation focused on the application of time banks in long-term care, and I selected a typical time bank as study case to evaluate its efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability. Currently, as the principal investigator of the National Social Science Fund Youth Project titled “The Mechanism, Effectiveness, and Optimization Path of ‘Time Banks’ Embedded in the Long-Term Care System,” I am exploring how time banks, as an element within the social system, interact and integrate with other elements of the social system and the economic system to collectively impact various subsystems of the long-term care system. By employing holistic governance approaches, we aim to effectively address the fragmentation issues within the long-term care system and promote its overall improvement.