ALBERT

Description: The 2020–2021 global pandemic has brought significant changes to social and economic life. Companies must begin to rethink their business models and values to meet these new challenges. Given the process of intermediation, which has an indirect and catalytic impact, banks have a responsibility and opportunity to transform the economy by, for example, lending to projects that encourage decarbonization and/or green energy. The purpose of this paper is to examine the MagNet Hungarian Community Bank’s approach as a values-based bank in order to compare how the operation of the bank differs from that of traditional ones—even if these apply the Corporate Social Responsibility approach. The findings of an exploratory study of MagNet’s responsible and sustainable way of doing business can help other sectors and companies cope with the global crisis and be a part of the transition to an inclusive, fair, and decarbonised economy. The data for this study were collected using semi-structured interviews with eleven bankers and three customers of MagNet Bank in 2019, as well as bank documents. Using this information, we created a business model for the bank, using the Business Model Canvas method. Within the business model we highlighted how MagNet Bank integrates principles of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, with the aim of truly integrating sustainability into the core of their corporate genetic makeup, instead of as a partial or insincere measure. With the projection of the models onto each other, we emphasize the role of values in the business model. The combination of the models indicates potential learning points for the further development and long-term success of the bank and serves as an example of good practices for others. This is especially relevant when considering the greater need for improved crisis and risk management due to the pandemic and for the integration of sustainability considerations into business operations which have increased the impetus in the financial sector towards sustainability.

Description: Generational renewal and the incorporation of women into the rural world are fundamental for the sustainability and modernisation of the agricultural sector. Hence the special government protection granted to the sector, which appears in both European legislation on rural issues and in the global strategy of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Rural Development Goals involving a commitment to measures aimed at helping young farmers to set up agricultural holdings and especially at encouraging women to engage in farm management. In the case of Spain, this is nothing new, given that Law 35/2011 on the Shared Ownership of Agricultural Holdings became a veritable revolution in terms of gender in the rural world when it came into force. The results section discusses the practical application of funding for young farmers to start up an agricultural holding through a technical and economic study, and a case study of a first-time farm set up by a young female farmer. The main contribution of this work lies in answering two questions. The first one is to evaluate the efficiency of the subsidies for young people to set up farms in terms of offering a decent, stable livelihood for young men and women in Spain and the Valencian Region. The second one attempts to verify the effectiveness of both European and Spanish active public policies to encourae young men and women to join the agricultural sector.

Description: Microcredit financing is extensively considered as an effective development method for poverty mitigation and women empowerment. Nevertheless, relevant studies reflected opposing outcomes on microfinance effects consisting of positive, zero, and negative impacts. Thus, this research investigated Al-Amal Bank’s microcredit impacts on women empowerment in Yemen, one of the poorest Middle Eastern nations. A panel dataset and primary and secondary data were gathered through household surveys and propensity score matching to restrict intangible variables’ possible effects. The empirical results revealed that microcredit had a significant positive effect on monthly household incomes and accumulated asset values. Although microcredit facilitated female entrepreneurship and income generation for improved household incomes and expenditure, no influence was found on female household decisions and mobility following the patriarchal system practised in many Arabian nations, including Yemen. Hence, the study finding has theoretically and practically contributed to the body of knowledge in three ways. First, a novel proof of how microcredit interactions affected several Yemeni women empowerment elements was identified. This study also provides new insight into the empowerment theory by explaining how access to microcredit influences numerous features of women’s economic and social empowerment. Lastly, social and family traditions significantly influenced female attributes and lifestyles by reflecting how communal and family rituals affected microcredit impacts on women empowerment and vice versa. Conversely, this study guides Yemeni policymakers and those from other nations on extending financial services for self-development to reduce poverty and drive women empowerment rather than relying on government and international agencies.

Description: Global warming and climate change are threatening life on earth. These changes are due to human activities resulting in the emission of greenhouse gases. This is caused by intensive industrial activities and excessive fuel energy consumption. Recently, the scheduling of production systems has been judged to be an effective way to reduce energy consumption. This is the field of green scheduling, which aims to allocate jobs to machines in order to minimize total costs, with a focus on the sustainable use of energy. Several studies have investigated parallel-machine shops, with a special focus on reducing and minimizing the total consumed energy. Few studies explicitly include the idle energy of parallel machines, which is the energy consumed when the machines are idle. In addition, very few studies have considered the elimination of idle machine times as an efficient way to reduce the total consumed energy. This is the no-idle machine constraint, which is the green aspect of the research. In this context, this paper addresses the green parallel-machine scheduling problem, including release dates, delivery times, and no-idle machines, with the objective of minimizing the maximum completion time. This problem is of practical interest since it is encountered in several industry processes, such as the steel and automobile industries. A mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed for use in obtaining exact solutions for small-sized instances. Due to the NP-hardness of the studied problem, and encouraged by the successful adaptation of metaheuristics for green scheduling problems, three genetic algorithms (GAs) using three different crossover operators and a simulated annealing algorithm (SA) were developed for large-sized problems. A new family of lower bounds is proposed. This was intended for the evaluation of the performance of the proposed algorithms over the average percent of relative deviation (ARPD). In addition, the green aspect was evaluated over the percentage of saved energy, while eliminating the idle-machine times. An extensive experimental study was carried out on a benchmark of test problems with up to 200 jobs and eight machines. This experimental study showed that one GA variant dominated the other proposed procedures. Furthermore, the obtained numerical results provide strong evidence that the proposed GA variant outperformed the existing procedures from the literature. The experimental study also showed that the adoption of the no-idle machine time constraints made it possible to reduce the total consumed energy by 29.57%, while the makespan (cost) increased by only 0.12%.

Description: Single cell protein (SCP) is the first product of the fermentation process and has proven to be a good protein alternative. Food competition is becoming more intense as the world’s population continues to grow. Soon, SCP may be able to compensate for a protein deficit. Various global businesses are focusing on SCP production, and the scope of its application is expanding as time and knowledge increases. High quantities of SCP can be produced by microorganisms, such as algae, yeast, fungi and bacteria, due to their fast development rate and the significant level of protein in their chemical structure. Beside proteins, SCP contains carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, minerals, vitamins and several important amino acids. SCP has been an effective substitute for more expensive protein sources such as fish and soybean products. In conclusion, SCP can easily replace traditional protein sources in human and animal feed without detrimental effects. Potential substrate candidates and optimization strategies for SCP production have been extensively studied. This review article focuses on the various aspects of SCP, from its production, using different substrates, player microorganisms and nutritional benefits, to its economic aspects.

Description: This paper analyzes the impact of a Weather-Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) on the Technical Efficiency (TE) of smallholder groundnut farmers in the context of climate change in India. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to study the TE of smallholder farmers, which range between 0.58 and 1, with a mean of 0.79. Using the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique, we find that the TE of smallholder farmers improves when they participate in a WBCIS using three matching methods. Increasing the coverage of farmers under a WBCIS can help in reducing smallholder farmers vulnerability to climate change.

Description: Building Information Modeling (BIM) is recognized as one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. The pace of implementation of BIM in AEC has increased during the past decade with an enhanced focus on sustainable construction. However, BIM implementation lags its potential because of several factors such as readiness issues, lack of previous experience in BIM, and lack of market demand for BIM. To evaluate and solve these issues, understanding the current BIM implementation in construction organizations is required. Motivated by this need, the main objective of this study is to propose a tool for the measurement of BIM implementation levels within an organization. Various sets of indexes are developed based on their pertinent Critical Success Factors (CSFs). A detailed literature review followed by a questionnaire survey involving 99 respondents is conducted, and results are analyzed to formulate a BIMp-Chart to calculate and visualize the BIM implementation level of an organization. Subsequently, the applicability of the BIMp-Chart is assessed by comparing and analyzing datasets of four organizations from different regions, including Qatar, Portugal, and Egypt, and a multinational organization to develop a global measurement tool. Through measuring and comparing BIM implementation levels, the BIMp-Chart can help the practitioners identify the implementation areas in an organization for proper BIM implementation. This study helps understand the fundamental elements of BIM implementation and provides a decision support system for construction organizations to devise proper strategies for the effectual management of the BIM implementation process.

Description: This paper zeros in on Buddhist-led community rebuilding with a special reference to Sannae District in Namwon, Jeonbuk Province in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Until the 1990s, the district witnessed the traditional sense of community rapidly disappearing along with tidal rural-urban migration and agricultural industrialisation. Since the late 1990s, Silsang-sa, an about 1200-year-old Buddhist monastery located in the rural district, has strived to help revitalise the rural community. Reverend Tobŏp, the head monk of the monastery, brought attention to the overarching Buddhist doctrines of ‘dependent arising’ and ‘Indra’s Net’ that every phenomenon arises only in relation to others. To start with, in 1998 Reverend Tobŏp set up an organic agriculture training camp on Silsang-sa Farm for prospective rural migrants. In 2001, he established Silsang-sa Small School, which is an alternative secondary school with Buddhist ecology and economics included in the curriculum. Owing to increasing in-migration, Sannae District has gradually evolved into a socially and economically vibrant and sustainable community in which a variety of social clubs and commercial cooperatives have burgeoned.

Description: In this paper the properties of clay bricks with 5 wt%, 10 wt%, and 20 wt% sewage sludge ash (SSA) were studied and compared with the properties of control bricks made of 100% clay. Sewage sludge (SS) was collected at two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Croatia—WWTP Zagreb and WWTP Karlovac—and incinerated at a temperature of 900 °C The bricks were produced on a laboratory scale. A total of seven types of bricks were produced—control bricks and six types of bricks as combinations of different wt% of SSA generated from SS that was collected at two different WWTPs. The physical and mechanical properties of produced bricks were tested. Compressive strengths of bricks with 5 wt% SSA (54.0–54.5 N/mm2) and 10 wt% SSA (50.2–51.0 N/mm2) were higher compared to the control bricks (50.4 N/mm2), while bricks with 20 wt% SSA (37.0–43.9) N/mm2) had noticeably lower compressive strenght. The coefficient of saturation was lower for bricks with SSA compared to control bricks. The initial absorption values were more pronounced for SSA fractions of 20 wt%.

Description: How to promote renewable energy investment is central to energy transformation and green development. To take China’s “green credit guidelines” policy as a quasi-natural experiment, we investigate the impacts of green credit policy on renewable energy investment. Using the samples of 1021 Chinese listed enterprises during 2007–2017, we find that: Firstly, the introduction of the green credit guidelines has promoted renewable energy investment. Secondly, short-term debts play a mediating role in the impacts of green credit guidelines on renewable energy investment, while long-term debts play a masking role, and financing constraints do not play a significant role. Thirdly, the heterogeneous impacts on renewable energy investment are reflected in different ownerships and enterprise scales, with significant impacts on the state-owned enterprises and small ones.

Description: This paper concerns the development of an automatic tool, based on Fuzzy Logic, which is able to identify the proper solutions for the energy retrofitting of existing buildings. Regarding winter heating, opaque and glazing surfaces are considered in order to reduce building heat dispersions. Starting from energy diagnosis, it is possible to formulate retrofitting proposals and to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention considering several aspects (energy savings, costs, intervention typology). The innovation of this work is represented by the application of a fuzzy logic expert system to obtain an indication about the proper interventions for building energy retrofitting, providing as inputs only few parameters, with a strong reduction in time and effort with respect to the software tools and methodologies currently applied by experts. The novelty of the paper is the easy handling properties of the developed tool, which requires only a few data about the buildings: not many such methods were developed in the last years. The energy requirements for winter heating before and after particular interventions were evaluated for a consistent set of buildings in order to produce the required knowledge base for the tool’s development. The identified appropriate inputs and outputs, their domains of discretization, the membership functions associated to each fuzzy set, and the linguistic rules were deduced on the basis of the knowledge determined in this was. Therefore, the system was successfully validated with reference to further buildings characterized by different design and architecture features, showing a good agreement with the intervention opportunities evaluated.

Description: Historical buildings often fail to meet today’s building and fire protection regulations due to their structure and space restrictions. For this reason, if such buildings encounter fire, serious damage will be resulted. The fire of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris (Notre-Dame de Paris) in April 2019 highlights the seriousness of this problem. In this study, the historical building of “Tamsui Church” was selected as an example. The Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was adopted to analyze the scale of damage and possible hazards when the wooden seats in the church are on fire, and improvement measures were proposed to ensure that such buildings can be used under safer conditions. It was found that the existing seat arrangement will cause the spreading of fire, and the maximum heat release rate is 2609.88 kW. The wooden roof frame above the fire source will also start to burn at 402.88 s (6.6 min) after the fire, which will lead to a full-scale fire. To maintain the safety of the historical building, it is necessary to add active firefighting equipment (smoke detector and water mist system).

Description: The exhaust emissions from Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) are currently one of the main sources of air pollution. This research presented a method for improving the exhaust gases and the performance of a Spark-Ignition (SI) engine using a water vapor injection system and a Non-Thermal Plasma (NTP) system. These two systems were installed on the intake manifold to investigate their effects on the engine’s performance and the characteristics of exhaust emission using different air/fuel (A/F) ratios and engine speeds. The temperatures of the injected water were adjusted to 5 and 25 °C, using a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) temperature control device. The total hydrocarbons (HC), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and engine torque were measured at different A/F ratios and engine speeds. The results indicated that the adaptation of the water vapor injection system and NTP system increased the content of the combustibles and combustion-supporting substances while achieving better emissions and torque. According to the test results, while the engine torque under 25 °C water+NTP was raised to 7.29%, the HC under 25 °C water+NTP and the NOx under 25 °C water were reduced to 16.31% and 11.88%, respectively. In conclusion, the water vapor injection and the NTP systems installed on the intake manifold could significantly reduce air pollution and improve engine performance for a more sustainable environment.

Description: The adoption of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) practices within urban areas is gaining interest due to the environmental impacts entailed by the development of cities. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about how the relationships between industrial and urban areas can be modelled. In this context, this research aimed at posing a conceptual model to understand and represent Urban-Industrial Systems (UIS). To this end, a set of worldwide previous UIS experiences were overviewed to identify the agents, dynamics, and collaboration opportunities that characterize them. The multi-perspective analysis of these cases indicated that UIS are complex systems, which means that they are autonomous, self-organized, responsive, nonlinear, and willing to consolidate their resilience. As such, Agent-Based Models (ABM) were suggested to be the most suitable approach for their representation.

Description: The progress of technology has led to the emergence of new teaching methods, among which Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) can be found in an attempt to promote the integration of technology and knowledge, combining technology, pedagogy and theoretical content. The aim of this research is to analyze the significance and evolution of the TPACK concept in the publications contained in Web of Science (WoS). The research method chosen is based on bibliometrics, specifically on the analysis of academic performance and on the analysis of co-words. The total number of documents analyzed is 471. The results show that research on TPACK is on the rise, increasing progressively in recent years. The main area of research is education and educational research, with articles, written in English, being the medium used by researchers to present their results. It can be concluded that, although there is an established research base, there is no single line of research. In this case, the main lines of research are “framework-framework-TPACK” and “technology-pedagogy-beliefs”. It can be determined that the studies on TPACK deal with the integration of technological resources and the analysis of their perception in student learning.

Description: Soil nitrogen in farmland ecosystems is affected by climate, soil physical and chemical properties and planting activities. To clarify the effects of these factors on soil nitrogen in sloping farmland quantitatively, the distribution of soil total nitrogen (TN) content, nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N) content and ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N) content at depth of 0–100 cm on 11 profiles of the Luanhe River Basin were analyzed. Meanwhile, soil physical and chemical properties, climatic factors and NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) were used to construct a structural equation which reflected the influence mechanism of environmental factors on soil nitrogen concentration. The results showed that TN and NO3-N content decreased with the increase of soil depth in the Luanhe River Basin, while the variation of NH4-N content with soil depth was not obvious. Soil organic carbon (SOC) content, soil pH, soil area average particle size (SMD) and NDVI6 (NDVI of June) explained variation of TN content by 77.4%. SOC was the most important environmental factor contributing to the variation of TN content. NDVI5 (NDVI of May), annual average precipitation (MAP), soil pH and SOC explained 49.1% variation of NO3-N content. Among all environmental factors, only NDVI8 (NDVI of August) had significant correlation with soil NH4-N content, which explained the change of NH4-N content by 24.2%. The results showed that soil nitrogen content in the sloping farmland ecosystem was mainly affected by natural factors such as soil parent material and climate.

Description: Energy consumption in buildings depends on the local climate, building characteristics, and user behavior. Focusing on user interaction, this research work developed a novel approach to monitoring and interaction with local users by providing in situ context information through graphic descriptions of energy consumption and indoor/outdoor environment parameters: temperature, luminosity, and humidity, which are routinely measured in real-time and stored to identify consumption patterns and other savings actions. To involve local users, collected data are represented in 3D color representation using building 3d models. A simplified color scale depicts environmental comfort (low/comfortable/high temperature/relative humidity) and energy consumption (above/below usual patterns). We found that these indices induced user commitment and increased their engagement and participation in saving actions like turning off lights and better management of air conditioning systems.

Description: Prior studies in the contemporary literature have largely ignored the important role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in shaping employees’ views of self and nature. Although researchers have recently started to pay considerable attention to explore the link between CSR and environmental sustainability, determining how CSR can be effective in shaping the proenvironmental behavior of employees that is missing in the existing literature. The objective of the present research study is to test the impact of microlevel CSR activities to induce environmental performance of an organization with a mediating effect of employees’ pro-environmental behaviors. This study argues that CSR activities of an organization motivate the workers to rethink the relationship between self and nature; hence, they are encouraged to participate in activities that are helpful in terms of preserving the environment, such as participating in pro-environmental activities at the workplace. The proposed model of the study was tested in the banking sector of Pakistan and analyzed by using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique in AMOS software. The results revealed that microlevel CSR activities, using employee proenvironmental behaviors as a mediator, directly and indirectly influence environmental performance of a bank. The results of the present study are helpful for policymakers of different banking institutions to understand how they can reduce the environmental footprint of their bank by using a well-planned CSR program that can induce transcendent emotions in employees to create a sustainable environment.

Description: The sharing market includes the idle product sharing by the owner and the firm’s new product sharing. Companies participating in the sharing economy choose to withdraw from the market because it is always difficult to make a profit, due to heavy asset investment, but there is no such worry for owners who do not need cost input. At the same time, we have observed that the sharing products launched by companies are difficult to meet the rental needs of consumers. Based on the above findings, we have constructed a model where there is a market where a monopolistic manufacturer sells and rents out at the same time, and owners who purchased new products can choose to rent out products when they are idle. Because of the uncoordinated supply and demand matching of the sharing market and the excessively high unit cost input, our research found that: (1) the barriers for the manufacturer to enter the sharing market are always high—for example, the manufacturer will choose to enter the sharing market only when consumers have a high rate of availability of sharing products. Only when the cost of products in the sharing market is not low will the manufacturer choose to provide sharing services; (2) the competition between the two products in the sharing market weakens the demand cannibalize in the sales market; (3) the manufacturer enters the sharing market to promote the owner’s income. The owner’s earnings will increase with the rising of sharing products’ availability.

Description: This paper describes the greening of ash dumps from two thermal power plants located in Romania, in the villages of Mintia and Doicești, two rural areas neighboring middle-sized cities, both with architectural, archaeological and landscape heritage. Currently, the two Romanian villages have different fates in the context of shrinking cities, and solutions from the industrialized country of Germany that are more advanced in closing polluting thermal power plants are examples of this. Thus, the greening of industrial waste is one of the current challenges of the energy shift towards renewable energy. Nature-based solutions such as the proposed use of the biodegradable geo-textile in the greening is one of the current trends. The development of the biodegradable geo-textile was contemporary with the creation of the International Building Exhibition (Internationale Bauaaustellung—IBA) Emscher Park in the ancient industrial coal mining Ruhr area, in Germany; later research, around 10 years ago, explored soil pollution at these two Romanian thermal power plants. A recent research study investigated the conversion of the industrial buildings of the thermal power plant in Doicești, however, these buildings were demolished at the end of last year. Mintia thermal power plant continues to function. This paper explores the current challenges of industrial brownfields, energy shift, ecology, the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris and “Laudato si”, spanning 30 years of history and the legacy of the research over this time.

Description: Consumers are becoming increasingly aware and sensitive to the negative environmental impact caused by the fashion industry and by consumers’ high consumption of fashion. This study analyzes people’s unfiltered comments and behaviors on social media sites related to the sustainability of fashion products. Recently, the number of social media data, called big data, has exploded, transcending the level that can be analyzed with existing tools. This study aims to identify consumers’ perceptions of sustainable fashion using the search words “sustainable fashion” to examine public opinion trends found in SNS big data. Text mining was employed to extract meaningful words from the SNS texts using semantic network analysis to analyze the connectivity and propagation trends. The text data were collected from Facebook using the Google search engine to detect tendencies in the occurrence of keywords related to sustainable fashion in SNS over the past five years (2016~2020). The results revealed that the keywords “eco-friendly”, “ethical”, and “recycle” had the highest frequency and centrality. As a result of grouping the keywords based on their correlations, sustainable fashion texts from the SNS data could be classified into four groups: “supply chain of sustainable fashion”, “circular fashion”, “fashion business concepts for sustainability”, and “academic importance of sustainable fashion”. This study strengthens the extent of research by using SNS big data and provides guidelines for product development and communication strategies for a sustainable fashion industry based on customers’ meaningful opinions.

Description: Due to the expansion of nearby mining operations, the city of Kiruna, an arctic city in Sweden, has been undergoing a massive urban transformation, led by the mining company, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB), which is the largest iron ore producer in the EU. This paper explores this relocation in a three-sphere transformation framework that has sustainability as the outcome (practical sphere), and analyses it as a socio-spatial transformation process, including political decisions as its driving forces (political sphere), to examine how this outcome and decisions represent individual and collective values (personal sphere). The analysis of three spheres is used as a tool to understand how and why Kiruna’s urban transformation is deemed to be sustainable, as it claims, and which it is being globally acknowledged for. Methods include analysis of Kiruna’s new master plan, media representations, and interviews with key actors of the project, who include municipal planners; the mining company’s planning developers; consultants, as the designers of ‘Kiruna 4-ever’ and the new city center; as well as the city’s residents. The analysis is a critique of the approaches that fit this project into either the critique of market-led spatial production, or as an example of best practice, based on its participatory processes. Results indicate that although Kiruna’s relocation is claimed to be a transformation of collective values, practical and technical transformations were dominant, which represents only partial responses in the framework. Therefore, a multi-voice narrative challenges the sustainability of Kiruna’s transformation.

Description: The Republic of Korea is the fastest aging country in the world, and its silver market, which is the market segment broadly defined as senior citizens, began to emerge in 2008 as Korean baby boomers started to retire. Given that the assets of households headed by individuals 55 years of age and over are much higher than those of average Korean households, it is essential for Korean financial institutions targeting elderly consumer groups to understand their credit card usage behavior, as it can be very attractive and provide the potential to lead to sustainable growth for institutions, while the market targeting for this group has not been well developed yet. This study examined elderly Korean consumers’ credit card usage behavior in terms of key demographic variables. In this study, we found that the number of cards owned was negatively related to age and positively related to income level. In addition, those who were not retired owned more credit cards than those who were. Although the average monthly expenditure by credit cards was positively related to income, it was not significantly different in terms of age or retirement status. The findings from this research provide significant implications for marketers of credit card companies when searching for key target groups, particularly elderly consumers.

Description: The Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin are the two most important watersheds in China, which consist of several key ecological function areas and are crucial in terms of economic contributions. The evaluation of the ecosystem service value and the quantitative acquisition of the regional ecological quality status are necessary for supporting the ecological protection and high-quality development of the two basins. By considering basic data and adopting different ecological function models, this study was carried out to evaluate the value of ecosystem services in the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin from 2015 to 2018 in terms of provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services. Additionally, analysis was conducted in combination with economic indicators. The results showed that there were great differences in the ecosystem patterns between the Yellow River Basin, where grassland accounted for 45% of land use, and the Yangtze River Basin, where forest accounted for 39% of land use. The values of the ecosystem services of the two basins had similar spatial distributions, with higher values upstream (west) followed by downstream (east) and lower values in the middle (central China). The total annual ecosystem value of the Yangtze River Basin was more than three times that of the Yellow River Basin. In addition, the ecosystem services value of most counties in both basins was higher than their GDP, and there was a positive trend of transforming ecological benefits into economic benefits in the Yangtze River Basin. This research provides a methodology for evaluating ecosystem valuation. The results are helpful for formulating and implementing eco-compensation and payments for ecosystem service policies among different regions in the basins, and the results lay a foundation for the spatial planning and high-quality development paths of key basin areas in China.

Description: For the first time in the scientific literature, this research shows an analysis of the implementation of circular economy techniques under sustainable development framework in six municipalities with a depressed economy in Colombia. The analysis is based on solid waste data production at a local scale, the valuation of the waste for subsequent recycling, and the identification and quantification of the variables associated with the treatment and final disposal of waste, in accordance with the Colombian regulatory framework. Waste generation data are obtained considering three different scenarios, in which a comparison between the simulated values and those established in the management plans are compared. Important differences have been identified between the waste management programs of each municipality, specifically regarding the components of waste collection, transportation and disposal, participation of environmental reclaimers, and potential use of materials. These differences are fundamentally associated with the different administrative processes considered for each individual municipality. This research is a good starting point for the development of waste management models based on circular economy techniques, through the subsequent implementation of an office tool in depressed regions such as those studied.

Description: This article places the topic of “social innovation” in the context of the paradigm shift of the 1980s. This shift from Fordism to post-Fordism has led to a weakening of the model of the European welfare state. Social innovation has become an instrument to promote regional self-responsibility and entrepreneurial activity by local authorities. The concept of social innovation has become widespread among various disciplines and controversially used by them. Referring to regional and corporate success stories based on the commitment of grassroots movements and civil society has its shortcomings, as the new spatiality regimes show increasing disparities. The article shows the different lines of conflict in the discussion about social innovations and makes suggestions for the specification and delimitation of the concept. Using two case studies on social innovations from mountain regions of Switzerland, based on standardized interviews, including the results of a social network analysis, the article distinguishes between adaptive and transformative social innovations. The adaptive social innovations analysed did not result in changing the inferior position of the regions; however, they prevented even greater destabilization by mobilizing the dynamic actors in the valley to work together. This is helpful for ensuring that the urban majority continues to show solidarity with the population in rural and mountain areas. The constructive interaction between public, private, and civil society institutions is seen as the key factor of social innovation in the European peripheral areas to which most mountain areas belong.

Description: This study examines the spatiotemporal variations in diatom assemblages and selected metal concentrations (Pb, Cr, Cd, Al, and Zn) in bed sediments of lakes Telaga Pengilon and Telaga Warna in Dieng, Indonesia to document natural and/or anthropogenic changes in the local aquatic and terrestrial environment. The analyses focused on sediments collected from a 150-cm core taken from a sill between the two lakes, which exhibit significant differences in water chemistry. The core was subdivided into 14 stratigraphic intervals allowing for an analysis of the vertical (and temporal) variations in diatom composition and selected metal concentrations. A total of 103 taxa from 25 genera were identified in the core. Diatom assemblages were dominated by Eunotia (56%), Pinnularia (17.2%), and Frustulia (4.6%). The most abundant species was Eunotia, a diatom that can tolerate a wide range of pH conditions. Given that pH within waters of the two lakes differs significantly, the abundance of Eunotia suggests that pH in the area between Telaga Pengilon and Telaga Warna varied through time, potentially ranging from about 2.5 to 8. Changes in pH were likely related to alterations in hydrological conditions. Metal concentrations varied with depth/time of deposition within the core. Peak metal concentrations appear to be related to the influx of debris from a volcanic eruption. Based on the principle component analysis (PCA), the input of volcanic materials also influenced diatom assemblages and resulted in a distinct layer of broken diatom frustules. Relatively low metal concentrations in surface sediments suggest that the erosion of hillslope soils in response to agricultural activity did not significantly impact the lakes.

Description: The world is fighting against the impacts of the climate crisis. Although the technical feasibility of 100% renewable energy systems was already verified by a variety of research studies, there were still more than 200 GW of unsustainable new coal power capacity under construction at a global level in 2018. To achieve the required carbon neutrality, current energy systems need to be transformed toward sustainable energy. The review of the literature has shown that several barriers for carbon-neutral technologies exist, which currently impede the sustainable transition. This paper focuses on the development of an enabling framework to overcome existing barriers to facilitate sustainable and carbon-neutral technologies at the national level. Additionally, it should support decision makers to consider all underlying criteria of this urgently needed energy transition. The criteria of such an enabling framework can be classified in 11 categories, which are (1) environmental and ecological protection; (2) society, culture, and behavior; (3) equity and justice; (4) knowledge; (5) energy markets; (6) energy policy; (7) legal requirements; (8) finance; (9) institutions; (10) infrastructure; and (11) clash of interests. Even though some criteria differ from country to country, a strong governmental support for the transition is always required to be successful.

Description: The change in the thermal and energy state of the water droplet is defined numerically. The influence of droplet dispersity on the interaction of the transfer processes was evaluated. In influence of the Stefan flow was considered as well. The internal heat transfer of the droplet was defined by the combined heat transfer through effective conductivity and radiation model. The results of the numerical modeling of heat and mass transfer in water droplets in a wet flue gas flow of 1000 °C highlight the influence of the variation in heat transfer regimes in the droplet on the interaction of the transfer processes in consistently varying phase change regimes. The results of the investigation shows that the inner heat convection diminishes intensively in the transitional phase change regime because of a rapid slowdown of the slipping droplet in the gas. The radiation absorption in the droplet clearly decreases only at the final stage of equilibrium evaporation. The highlighted regularities of the interaction between combined transfer processes in water droplets are also valid for liquid fuel and other semi-transparent liquids sprayed into high-temperature flue gas flow. However, a qualitative evaluation should consider individual influence of dispersity that different liquids have.

Description: The sharing economy, based on collaboration, sharing, and innovation, has brought about a disruptive revolution in the transformation of the economy and provided a new operating mechanism for promoting sustainable consumption. Therefore, exploring which signals in the sharing economy can effectively stimulate customer consumption behaviors is of great significance. The research uses the signal-interpretation-response (I-I-R) model to build a research framework for customer sustainable consumption behaviors in the context of the sharing economy. With the help of web crawler technology, we captured customer online review data on Airbnb, the sharing accommodation platform, to study the driving path to interpret how multiple signals from different sources influence sustainable consumption behaviors. Regression research shows that the scores in the customer signal, the sustainable services provided in the service provider signal, the super-host certification in the platform signal, and the interactive effects of the three signals have a significant positive impact on customer sustainable consumption behaviors. Consequently, the increase of customer sustainable consumption behaviors improves sales performance. Furthermore, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) found five configurations for customer sustainable consumption behaviors based on different property types. The research results provide a reference for strengthening customer sustainable consumption behaviors and improving the service quality of platforms and service providers.

Description: This study improves an approach for Markov chain-based photovoltaic-coupled energy storage model in order to serve a more reliable and sustainable power supply system. In this paper, two Markov chain models are proposed: Embedded Markov and Absorbing Markov chain. The equilibrium probabilities of the Embedded Markov chain completely characterize the system behavior at a certain point in time. Thus, the model can be used to calculate important measurements to evaluate the system such as the average availability or the probability when the battery is fully discharged. Also, Absorbing Markov chain is employed to calculate the expected duration until the system fails to serve the load demand, as well as the failure probability once a new battery is installed in the system. The results show that the optimal condition for satisfying the availability of 3 nines (0.999), with an average load usage of 1209.94 kWh, is the energy storage system capacity of 25 MW, and the number of photovoltaic modules is 67,510, which is considered for installation and operation cost. Also, when the initial state of charge is set to 80% or higher, the available time is stable for more than 20,000 h.

Description: The doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) uses the rotor’s kinetic energy to provide inertial response for the power system. On this basis, this paper proposes an improved torque limit control (ITLC) strategy for the purpose of exploiting the potential of DFIGs’ inertial response. It includes the deceleration phase and acceleration phase. To shorten the recovery time of the rotor speed and avoid the second frequency drop (SFD), a small-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) is utilized by the wind-storage combined control strategy. During the acceleration phase of DFIG, the BESS adaptively adjusts its output according to its state of charge (SOC) and the real-time output of the DFIG. The simulation results prove that the system frequency response can be significantly improved through ITLC and the wind-storage combined control under different wind speeds and different wind power penetration rates.

Description: Food product transportation is one of the most problematic tasks considering the specific expectations in the context of the transport conditions. It seems to be a significant challenge for the freight carriers’ decision-makers. The proper organization and management of that process is the basis for the appropriate fulfilment of the needs of customers, related, among others, to the proper quality of delivered products (such as freshness, expiration date, etc.). The additional challenge in this context is the efficient delivery at the city area, taking into account typical city transportation problems, such as congestion, narrow ways, lack of the unloading areas, etc. The role of these tasks is analyzed in this paper, on the basis of the chosen parameters and technologies of the transportation process. The purpose of this paper is to study the rational freight fleet formation in the case of changing the parameters of material flow in time. It was found that with the other unchanged parameters of material flow, the change in ambient temperature affects the technological process of transportation, the type of vehicle for its movement and the structure of the vehicle fleet. Accordingly, the types of vehicles (tent or insulated) necessary for the movement of certain material flows, which require special conditions for their transportation, have been determined, in compliance with the temperature regime and periods of their use. The organization scenarios of the transport service of the studied distribution processes were proposed, taking into consideration the change in conditions for the transportation of material flow, purchase of insulated semitrailers or their rent. The proposed versions were calculated and evaluated under the given conditions, and based on the net present value, the best of the proposed options was found: the purchase of one insulated semi-trailer while hiring the remaining insufficient insulated vehicles.

Description: It is important to understand the dynamics of soil carbon to study the effects of waste amendment inputs on soil organic carbon decomposition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of waste amendment carbon input on the soil organic carbon (SOC) content, soil particulate organic carbon (POC) content and soil organic carbon mineralization rate dynamics. A 60-day experiment was carried out in the laboratory. The following treatments were compared: (1) CK: soil without amendments; (2) FW1: soil with food waste compost (soil/food waste compost = 100:1); (3) FW2: soil with food waste compost (soil/food waste compost = 100:2); (4) GW1: soil with garden waste compost (soil/garden waste compost = 100:0.84); (5) GW2: soil with garden waste compost (soil/garden waste compost = 100:1.67); (6) FGW1: soil amendments mixture (soil/food waste compost/garden waste compost = 100:0.5:0.42); (7) FGW2: soil amendments mixture (soil/food waste compost/garden waste compost = 100:1:0.84); the inputs of amendment carbon to FW1, GW1 and FGW1 were 2.92 g kg−1, the inputs of amendment carbon to FW2, GW2 and FGW2 were 5.84 g kg−1. The results showed that the addition of waste amendments increased the amount of cumulative mineralization from 95% to 262% and accelerated the rate of soil mineralization. After adding organic materials, the change in the soil organic carbon mineralization rate could be divided into two stages: the fast stage and the slow stage. The dividing point of the two stages was approximately 10 days. When equal amounts of waste amendment carbon were input to the soil, there was no significant difference in SOC between food waste and garden waste. However, SOC increased with the amount of amendment addition. However, for POC, there was no significant difference between the different amounts of carbon input to the garden waste compost treatments. SOC and POC were significantly correlated with the cumulative emissions of CO2.

Description: This article identifies how project life cycle characteristics and automation and robotic technologies influence the sustainability of public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects. The result of the article is a model of how public and private collaborations can leverage technology and project organization to make infrastructure more sustainable. Based on a comprehensive literature review, the model subdivides sustainability into engineering, project management, environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Engineering sustainability concerns the applicability of technologies to infrastructure PPP sustainability. The project management sustainability is decisive for ultimately creating environmental, social and economic sustainability within and beyond infrastructure PPP projects. The model identifies that the procurement phase is of particular importance for sustainable infrastructure PPPs. Successful sustainable infrastructure procurement likely includes such factors as increased transparency, participation, and stable, capable project alliances with a shared vision and clear goals. The model also identifies that, throughout the whole project life cycle, actions in the form of collaboration, experimentation and platformization promote sustainability. The findings in this article add to the understanding of how transformation toward increased sustainability can be achieved by individual organizations, their network, and ecosystems of public, private and civic actors.

Description: Smallholder farmers in Chimanimani District, Zimbabwe, have grappled for a long time with the effects of climate change despite the locally and externally driven resilience-building initiatives in place. This paper adopts a qualitative approach to explore the encountered adaptation barriers. Smallholder farmers, Agricultural Technical and Extension Services (AGRITEX) officers, and the traditional leadership fraternity were randomly selected from the district’s 22 rural wards as study participants. Data were solicited using focus group discussions and face-to-face interviews that were corroborated by researcher observation methods. The data were analysed using thematic content analysis of key perspectives drawn from smallholder farmers, traditional leaders, and extension officers who work with farmers. What was unveiled is an assortment of barrier dynamics related to climate, finance, infrastructure, generational change, water resources, inefficient bureaucracy, gender inequality, and health barriers. Vensim PLE 7.3 software was used to illustrate barrier components as they act together to cripple smallholder farmers’ efforts to raise their adaptive capacity. Adaptation barriers are complex and, therefore, cannot be addressed using policies that are fragmented. The paper recommends a multidimensional approach by policy makers to analyse adaptive barriers to build more climate resilience within smallholder farmer communities.

Description: The production of food within cities through urban agriculture can be considered as a nature-based solution and is argued to be an important response to the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as to climate change and other urban challenges. However, current research on urban agriculture is still fragmented, calling for a systematic and integrative assessment of different forms of urban agriculture and the drivers and constraints for their effective realization. In this context, the Special Issue presents conceptual and empirical research articles from around the world on the impact and implementation potential of various types of urban agriculture. The studies of this Special Issue cover a broad range of impact and implementation dimensions, asssessment methods and geographical backgrounds that can support future studies to develop a systemic perspective on urban food production.

Description: Background: This paper highlights the effects of internal factors on restructuring state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and investigates how these factors have positive or negative effects on applying a new structure in SOEs companies. Yemen Telecom (YT) is an example of an SOE company that belongs to the government and has a social responsibility. By following scientific theories related to research’s factors, we tried to tie our hypotheses to the theories applied to make our factors near reality and be applicable in the future. Methods: In this study, we used empirical research by making an investigation by distributing a questionnaire amongst people who have a relationship with Yemen Telecom. Moreover, the structural equation model (SEM) was used in the current study as the statistical technique for the collected data. Results: The results of this study indicate that illiteracy in using the computer (IIUC) and applying the IT Software (AIS) has adverse effects on reconstructing telecom companies (RTC); also, AIS has a causality effect between illiteracy in using computers (IIUC) and RTC. Moreover, support from top management (SFTM), infrastructure (INF), and efficiency and effectiveness of managerial operations (EaE) have positive effects on RTC. Conclusions: This study concluded that IIUC, TMS, INF, and EaE have an apparent effect on RTC, and AIS has a causality effect between IIUC and RTC. Moreover, the study declares that there is less significance between AIS and RTC.

Description: To complement the current studies of risk assessment on water sources which seldom consider the distribution effects of multiple risk sources concentration, and improve the efficiency of water source supervision, this study establishes a method system for risk assessment of water sources and regulatory rating evaluation under the distribution effects of multiple risk sources concentration. The method system includes: (1) utilizing the single-risk source impact index to characterize the risk impact degree of the single-risk source on the water source, the index calculation method of single-risk source impact considers the risk degree and the distribution location of risk source; (2) using the multiple risk sources impact index to characterize the risk impact degree of the multiple risk sources on the water source, the index calculation method of multiple risk sources considers the impact index of single-risk source, the number of risk sources, and the distribution concentration of multiple risk sources; (3) the environmental risk assessment and regulatory rating evaluation method consider multiple risk sources impact index, anti-risk ability of water source, and the importance of water source. This method system has been applied to the environmental risk assessment and regulatory rating of eight water sources along the Nanjing Yangtze River, with excellent achievements. As the results reveal, eight water sources suffer 437 risk impacts from 175 risk sources, 69.04% of which are low-risk impacts and 13 are high-risk impacts. Longtan water source suffers the most risk impacts of 86, among which eight are high-risk impacts. The impacts of multiply-risk sources on the eight water sources are high-risk impacts. The impact index of multiple risk sources increases from the upstream water sources to the downstream water sources, reaching the maximum value of 5.267 at the most downstream Longtan water source. Though the environmental risk and supervision rating of Longtan water source is high, those of other water sources are rated as medium.

Description: Hospitality companies often face economic crises, which stress their financial structure. In 2008, Spanish hotels were jeopardized when the travelers’ flows became stagnated, in either domestic and foreign markets. Most of them overcame the crisis, but not all, in part depending on their capital structure at the moment the downturn loomed upon them. This study analyzes the financial ratios registered in 2008 by 3.341 Spanish lodging enterprises, to find out the most relevant ratios that were associated with an eventual breakdown. The analyzed ratios have been largely suggested by previous literature for anticipating financial distress; however, using survival tables and Kaplan–Meier estimates we could also find new insights about several promising variates for future research. In the end, by performing a Cox regression, we could isolate the return on capital employed (ROCE) ratio as a long-term predictor for small hotels’ bankruptcy after a market downturn. Moreover, the legal status seems to be a key predictor concerning medium-sized hotels.

Description: The construction industry has been criticized as being a non-sustainable industry that requires effective tools to monitor and improve its sustainability performance. The multiplicity of indicators of the three pillars of sustainability—economic, social, and environmental—complicates construction sustainability assessments for project managers. Therefore, prioritizing and selecting appropriate sustainability indicators (SIs) is essential prior to conducting a construction sustainability assessment. The main purpose of this research is to select the most appropriate set of SIs to address all three pillars of highway sustainability by a new group decision-making approach. The proposed approach accounts for risk attitudes of experts and entropy measures under a triangular intuitionistic fuzzy (TIF) environment, to handle the inherent uncertainty and vagueness that is present throughout the evaluation process. Furthermore, new separation measures and ranking scores are introduced to distinguish the preference order of SIs. Eventually, the approach is implemented in a case study of highway construction projects and the applicability of the approach is examined. To investigate the stability and validity of computational results, a sensitivity analysis is carried out and a comparison is made between the obtained ranking outcomes and the traditional decision-making methods.

Description: This study validated the robust performances of the recently proposed comprehensive landslide susceptibility index model (CLSI) for landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) by comparing it to the logistic regression (LR) and the analytical hierarchy process information value (AHPIV) model. Zhushan County in China, with 373 landslides identified, was used as the study area. Eight conditioning factors (lithology, slope structure, slope angle, altitude, distance to river, stream power index, slope length, distance to road) were acquired from digital elevation models (DEMs), field survey, remote sensing imagery, and government documentary data. Results indicate that the CLSI model has the highest accuracy and the best classification ability, although all three models can produce reasonable landslide susceptibility (LS) maps. The robust performance of the CLSI model is due to its weight determination by a back-propagation neural network (BPNN), which successfully captures the nonlinear relationship between landslide occurrence and the conditioning factors.

Description: Eco-innovation is the main driver of realizing the coordinated development of resource, environmental and economic systems. This paper measures regional eco-innovation efficiency (EIE) by using the Super-Slack Based Measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs and distinguishes different agglomeration patterns based on Chinese data of 21 manufacturing sub-industries of 30 provinces. In particular, from the perspective of the dynamic evolution of manufacturing agglomeration, the nonlinear effects of specialized and diversified agglomeration on EIE are investigated based on panel threshold regression models. The results indicate that China’s EIE shows a U-shaped changing trend. The impacts of specialized and diversified agglomeration on EIE are nonlinear and have significant three-threshold effects. There exist a U-shaped relationship between specialized agglomeration and EIE, and an S-shaped relationship between diversified agglomeration and EIE. In terms of eco-innovation, the development of diversified agglomeration is superior to that of specialized agglomeration. Overall, there is still much room for more than 70% of provinces in China to increase their EIE by optimizing the layout of manufacturing specialized and diversified agglomeration. To improve the EIE and achieve sustainable economic growth, differentiated agglomeration policies should be formulated in various stages and regions. In addition, the driving mechanism of eco-innovation should be strengthened.

Description: Sichuan, a hilly area in southwestern China, is recommended as a bioethanol production base because of its abundant crop residue resources. However, removing the crop straw for bioethanol may negatively affect soil fertility and productivity due to the local purple soil vulnerability. To explore the impact of crop residue removal on soil fertility and productivity and meet the needs of sustainable agriculture, we conducted a crop residue removal experiment by measuring the soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) contents, and crop yield in the purple soil region in southwest China. Soil erosion was also simulated by Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation version 2 (RUSLE 2). The results showed that soil erosion increased with the increase of the straw removal rate. Compared with 0% removal treatment, the SOC content reduced at other removal rate treatments, especially for long-term residue removal. The effect of residue removal on soil TN and TP was not consistent within one year. After two years, residue removal greater than 25% caused a decrease in TN by 1.6–3.7%, and straw removal greater than 50% caused a TP decrease by 8.5–9.3%. More than 25% of the residue removed reduced maize and canola yields, and TN and TP content. However, all crop residue removal treatments resulted in SOC content reduction and soil erosion deterioration. In conclusion, crop residue removal was not recommended due to agricultural sustainability in Sichuan, China.

Description: In the information era, information security monitoring tools would be helpful for enterprises/organizations to monitor employees’ computer usage behaviors and improve their information security protection. The Windows-based operating systems have the largest market share in the world. Therefore, the study target is the development of a Windows-based information security monitoring tool in this study. We proposed an assessment model for developing an information security tool in this study to explore the significances of functionalities in a Windows-based information security monitoring tool and the decision-makers’ decision opinions. We adopted four steps with four study methods: the literature study method, the Delphi method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, and the analysis methods related to data-driven decision-making in the proposed model. In Step 1, we studied some literature about information security monitoring, and we discovered 26 functionalities as the decision criteria in this study. In Step 2, using the Delphi method, we confirmed the decision criterion set with potential decision-makers and organized the decision criteria hierarchy. In Step 3, we designed an AHP questionnaire to get the criterion weight vectors from the 12 decision-makers. With the AHP method, this study received the weights of the decision criteria and found that the 16 functionalities among the 26 functionalities should receive their corresponding developing priority in a Windows-based information security monitoring tool. Finally, we used the Pearson correlation coefficient and cosine distance to explore the correlations and similarities among the decision-makers’ decision opinions. This study found the relevance among the decision-makers’ decision opinions in a Windows-based information security monitoring tool developed with the Pearson correlation coefficients/the cosine distances among all pairs of decision-makers’ decision opinions.

Description: Prior literature has largely addressed corporate social responsibility (CSR) from outcomes related to organizational themes. However, its importance for achieving consumer-related outcomes is something that has been largely ignored by contemporary researchers. Likewise, how CSR communication through social media can create positive emotions on the part of consumers has to date been under-explored. Hence, the present study aims to fill these gaps by investigating the impact of CSR communication of an organization through social media on consumer loyalty. The study also proposes electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) as a potential mediator between this relationship. The proposed model of the present study was tested in the banking sector of a developing country. The data were collected from a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed through the structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The results of the present study validated that CSR communication of a bank through social media directly and indirectly, through e-WOM, influences consumer loyalty in a positive manner. The results of the present study will be helpful for policymakers to better understand how well-planned CSR communication of an organization on social media can lead towards better consumer-related outcomes such as consumer loyalty and e-WOM.

Description: This paper explores the role of social media in tourist sentiment analysis. To do this, it describes previous studies that have carried out tourist sentiment analysis using social media data, before analyzing changes in tourists’ sentiments and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case study, which focuses on Andalusia, the changes experienced by the tourism sector in the southern Spanish region as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are assessed using the Andalusian Tourism Situation Survey (ECTA). This information is then compared with data obtained from a sentiment analysis based on the social network Twitter. On the basis of this comparative analysis, the paper concludes that it is possible to identify and classify tourists’ perceptions using sentiment analysis on a mass scale with the help of statistical software (RStudio and Knime). The sentiment analysis using Twitter data correlates with and is supplemented by information from the ECTA survey, with both analyses showing that tourists placed greater value on safety and preferred to travel individually to nearby, less crowded destinations since the pandemic began. Of the two analytical tools, sentiment analysis can be carried out on social media on a continuous basis and offers cost savings.

Description: The purpose of this study was to illustrate and understand how consumers of cooperative food products could be segmented in the region of Western Greece. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was undertaken involving almost 500 consumers in the selected region. Consumers were segmented on the basis of their consumption of cooperative products and in association with their attributes and beliefs regarding cooperatives’ products. Τhe performed cluster analysis grouped participants into four distinct groups with different characteristics and perceptions regarding cooperatives’ products. The consumer groups were called “skeptics”, “cooperative”, “passively sensitive”, and “indifferent”. According to the results, in general, participants considered cooperative food products as a safe choice with excellent value for money and contributing to the local society, economy, and sustainability. Segmentation could allow agricultural cooperatives to focus only on those segments of consumers that are willing to pay for cooperative products by allocating all available resources in serving them. The results of this research, even with its limitations, can help directors and marketing executives of agricultural cooperatives to better understand that operating in a specific market could be more effective when targeted at specific segments to help not only the viability of agricultural cooperatives but also their economic development and growth.

Description: Democritus University of Thrace (DUTh) has formed, under the European Project Renaissance (Renewable Integration & Sustainability in Energy Communities, HORIZON 2020, GA 824342), a virtual Renewable Energy Community (REC) in Greece located nearby Kimmeria at the northeast of the city of Xanthi, at the North-eastern Greece. The REC formed is the first energy community designed in a public housing settlement in Greece and its members are: (a) the Democritus University of Thrace, (b) the Municipality of Xanthi and (c) a local industry. DUTh’s main objective is to explore, leverage and mobilize stakeholders to apply schemes for a social group of end users (i.e., students from low-income families) in order to participate in the operation and management of a local renewable energy community, gaining also non-financial benefits. This paper presents the business case scenario and the market players evolving at an Energy Community which includes a public establishment of student residences in Greece.

Description: This research optimizes the environmental impact of a conventional building foundation in Northern Europe while considering the economic cost. The foundation is composed of piles and ground beams. Calculations are performed following relevant building Eurocodes and using life cycle assessment methodology. Concrete and steel accounted for the majority of the environmental impact of foundation alternatives; in particular, steel on piles has a significant influence. Selecting small sections of precast piles or low-reinforcement vibro-piles instead of continuous-flight auger piles can reduce the environmental impacts and economic costs of a foundation by 55% and 40%, respectively. However, using precast beams rather than building them on site can increase the global warming potential (GWP) by up to 10%. Increasing the concrete strength in vibro-piles can reduce the eco-costs, ReCiPe indicator, and cumulated energy demand (CED) by up to 30%; the GWP by 25%; and the economic costs by up to 15%. Designing three piles instead of four piles per beam reduces the eco-costs and ReCiPe by 20–30%, the GWP by 15–20%, the CED by 15–25%, and the costs by 12%. A Pareto analysis was used to select the best foundation alternatives in terms of the combination of costs and eco-burdens, which are those with vibro-piles with higher concrete strengths (low reinforcement), cast in situ or prefabricated beams and four piles per beam.

Description: Food management is an inefficient activity, and households are the major contributors responsible for food waste across the food supply chain. Ten years remain to halve household food waste, as recommended by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Up to now, Italian investigations into household food waste have been research activities with limitations in measurement and sampling. The need to establish a monitoring system led the Italian Observatory on Food Surplus, Recovery and Waste to apply a methodology that permits comparison with other European countries. In 2018, a survey involving a representative sample of 1142 Italian households was carried out. The majority of respondents (77%) reported that they had wasted 370 g of food during the last week, evidence in line with data from the Netherlands and progressively different from what was found in Germany, Hungary, and Spain. Perishable products, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, and nonalcoholic drinks, were mainly wasted. The most frequently disposed foods were unused (43.2%) or partly used (30.3%). As for possible causes, household food waste was significantly associated with preventive practices and ability. This study endeavored to segment household food waste based on possible drivers and barriers to preventive action, setting the stage for future monitoring, supporting policy action, and educational intervention.

Description: Floodplain restoration measures are among the most well-known nature-based solutions for flood risk reduction but practitioners see their limitations in comparison to technical measures when considering both their effectiveness and profitability. The aim of this study is to show the co-benefits (besides flood risk reduction) of floodplain restoration and handle them in terms of monetized ecosystem services (ES). Our work focused on six ES groups for three study areas in the Danube catchment along the Krka, Morava, and Danube rivers. ES mapping through stakeholder engagement is also considered. We applied the methodologies suggested in the Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-Based Assessment (TESSA) complemented with alternative methodologies (e.g., questionnaires on social media). Results show annual combined benefits of floodplain restoration in a range from 237,000 USD2019 at Krka to 3.1 million USD2019 at Morava, suggesting the utility of ES assessment. The combination of stakeholder workshops and the TESSA guidelines, as well as the newly developed methods, were all central tools to provide decision-makers with arguments to use nature-based solutions for an integrated and holistic riparian land use management.

Description: Significant risk factors that influence the occurrence of heavy vehicle accidents have been explored in numerous studies in order to lower injury severity in traffic accidents. It is imperative to explore road sections with a high risk of heavy vehicle accident occurrence by considering the significant consequences of such accidents for road users, despite the low number of heavy vehicles in traffic flow. To address this, this study proposes a method to predict clustering hotspots for heavy vehicle accidents on the basis of three different criteria, namely, heavy vehicle accident cases, the number of heavy vehicles involved, and accident severity index values. Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation was employed to identify the clustering for each criterion, and the Getis–Ord Gi* statistic was applied to estimate the likelihood of risk along the network. This study considers the features of hotspot points at significance levels from 0.10 to 0.01 with a 1355 m buffer radius to create segments for each criterion. The three criteria for hotspots were considered within the overlapped buffer zone. A total of 22 heavy vehicle risk segments (HVRSs) were identified and then ranked by crash rate. Overall, this study demonstrates the application of different criteria to identify accident hotspots involving a specific vehicle type, which could help in prioritizing segments with a high risk of heavy vehicle accidents, as well as providing information for HVRSs for the purpose of developing appropriate countermeasures for the identified accident hotspots.

Description: Fly ash, as a supplemental pozzolanic material, reduces concrete’s adverse environmental footprint by decreasing the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) during the cement manufacturing process. Fly ash, which is a waste material, can enhance both the mechanical characteristics and durability of concrete, and has the capability to play an important role in sustainable design. Considering the widespread interest in applying Fly ash, and despite research studies, the level of replacement is still unclear. In this paper, a novel method using artificial neural networks (ANN) is presented to predict concrete’s mechanical characteristics by adding Fly ash. In this regard, a host of available experimental data, such as the properties of Fly ash, along with concrete additives, was fed into an ANN model. Concrete samples’ tensile and compressive strengths, in addition to their modulus of elasticity, were defined as outputs. It was observed that the predicted outcomes agreed well with the experimental results. To further enhance the research outcomes, simple but practical equations are presented to assess the effect of using Fly ash on concrete’s mechanical characteristics.

Description: Economic development and ecological restoration guided by policies has had a profound impact on the relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption in the past few decades. Exploring the relationship in specific study areas is necessary to support regional planning for sustainability. In this study, we analyzed the equilibrium relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption driven by economic development and ecological restoration from 1995 to 2018 in Northeast China. We quantified the supply and consumption of three critical ecosystem services, food production, water yield and atmospheric regulation, and identified the main areas for supply and consumption of ecosystem services. We measured the quantity and spatial equilibrium relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption driven by economic development and ecological restoration at economic megaregion scale. We found the new industrial structure shaped by regional economic development policies formed the new ecosystem service consumer demand. The development of agricultural industry not only resulted in the increase of water consumption, but also the scope of water consumption was expanded in Northeast China. The development of tertiary industry causes the change of atmospheric regulation consumption in urban agglomeration. What’s more, economic development exacerbated imbalances in the supply and consumption of ecosystem services. The unbalanced areas where food supply was less than consumption were in the clusters of Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, and coastal cities. Since food products can circulate freely through the market, this imbalance will not fundamentally affect regional food security, but will improve the level of agricultural industrialization and scale. The implementation of the grain economic policy caused the rapid expansion of unbalanced areas where water supply was less than consumption. The incredible space mismatch between the supply and consumption of ecosystem services still exists for a long time. However, the implementation of the ecological restoration didn’t effectively solve the problem of insatiable ecosystem service consumption. The ecosystem service consumption brought by economic development need to be given the utmost attention when formulating ecological restoration policies and economic development policies. The results can provide insights for enhancing economic sustainability in northeast china, as well other economic megaregion with similar characteristics throughout the world.

Description: For reservoirs with combined storage capacity for flood control and beneficial purposes, there tends to be potential benefit loss when the flood control limited water level is used in medium and small floods. How to find the optimal water level scheme for profit-making and pursue the optimization of comprehensive benefits has always been a difficult problem in multi-objective reservoir optimal operation. Based on the principle of the maximum benefit obtained by the product conversion curve and the isorevenue line in microeconomics, taking flood control and power generation as two products of a reservoir, a multi-objective optimal operation scheme decision-making model is established to seek the highest water level scheme that can produce the maximum comprehensive benefits of flood control and power generation. A case study of the Three Gorges reservoir in the early flood season of a dry year shows that on the one hand, under the condition of deterministic inflow, the model can work out the optimal water level and the corresponding best equilibrium point for both flood control and power generation, and it can increase the total power output by 4.48% without reducing the flood control benefits; on the other hand, it can also obtain the dynamic control area of the maximum allowable water level for power generation considering inflow forecast error, which provides a theoretical reference for determining the starting water level in medium and small floods and utilizing flood resources.

Description: International literature acknowledges benefits of the legally recognised Producer Organisations (POs). Successful leveraging of these benefits depends on two forms of cooperation: horizontal integration among the producers for more effective functioning of the POs; and vertical integration of POs with other actors in the production chain to facilitate processes of co-creation and interactive innovation. In 2016 PO legislation was first introduced in Ireland, and in 2019 Ireland’s first two beef POs emerged at a time when primary producers in the beef sector mobilised en masse, protesting against poor prices and seeking changes in supply chain relationships. Throughout this period, significant and detailed media reporting of the beef sector surrounded the protests, which takes the focus of our analysis. Building on an existing but limited literature on institutional conditions in the Irish beef industry and international accounts of factors influencing the success of POs, we analyse media coverage in order to shed light on the nature of emerging new forms of horizontal and vertical cooperation. In this regard, we focus on horizontal integration of producers into PO and associations of POs (APOs); and vertical integration of POs into Inter Branch Organisations (IBOs) and value-based supply chains (VBSCs). Our analysis shows that the media representations of the Irish beef sector evidence significant challenges to the establishment and successful operation of POs, in any form. The analysis suggests that current constellation of relations in the Irish beef sector represents an environment that is partially resistant to horizontal co-operation and significantly hostile to vertical co-operation. Interactive innovation involving different chain actors seems not to be imminent, at least in the short term, unless there are strategic public and/or private interventions introduced to support it.

Description: The condition of joints in steel truss bridges is critical to railway operational safety. The available methods for the quantitative assessment of different types of joint damage are, however, very limited. This paper numerically investigates the feasibility of using a probabilistic neural network (PNN) and a finite element (FE) model updating technique to assess the condition of joints in steel truss bridges. A two-step identification procedure is developed to achieve damage localization and severity assessment. A series of FE models with single or multiple damages are simulated to generate the training and testing data samples and validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The influence of noise on the identification accuracy is also evaluated. The results show that the change rate of modal curvature (CRMC) can be used as a damage-sensitive input of the PNN and the accuracy of preliminary damage localization can exceed 90% when suitable training patterns are utilized. Damaged members can be localized in the correct substructure even with noise contamination. The FE model updating method used can effectively quantify the joint deterioration severity and is robust to noise.

Description: Artificial neural networks (ANN) are extremely powerful analytical, parallel processing elements that can successfully approximate any complex non-linear process, and which form a key piece in Artificial Intelligence models. Its field of application, being very wide, is especially suitable for the field of prediction. In this article, its application for the prediction of the overtopping rate is presented, as part of a strategy for the sustainable optimization of coastal or harbor defense structures and their conversion into Waves Energy Converters (WEC). This would allow, among others benefits, reducing their initial high capital expenditure. For the construction of the predictive model, classical multivariate statistical techniques such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA), or unsupervised clustering methods like Self Organized Maps (SOM), are used, demonstrating that this close alliance is always methodologically beneficial. The specific application carried out, based on the data provided by the CLASH and EurOtop 2018 databases, involves the creation of a useful application to predict overtopping rates in both sloping breakwaters and seawalls, with good results both in terms of prediction error, such as correlation of the estimated variable.

Description: Similar to much of the world, the Australian Government has a vision for society to be engaged in and enriched by science which has, as its prime focus, building skills and capabilities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Simultaneously, the Government’s policies and projects, including in education, ignore intergovernmental environmental initiatives, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). This article critically analyses the Australian Government’s STEM and climate change education policies and programs, including Citizen Science activities, through an ecological education lens and finds many, and growing, gaps and silences in these areas. It compares the Australian situation with STEM and ecological education-related developments in several other countries. In the context of significant global changes such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this article argues that it is time for the Australian education agenda to take the Government’s international responsibilities seriously, include meaningful engagement with climate change and biodiversity related topics through ecological education in the school curriculum, and discusses what a reimagined school science curriculum could look like.

Description: This study was conducted with the purpose of developing and validating multidimensional reputation criteria for evaluating online shopping malls, which have been growing explosively since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A Delphi study was conducted with a group of 31 professionals, and the initial items for online shopping mall reputation were derived from that study. Those items were used to devise a questionnaire that was administered to 531 consumers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in 17 items based on four factors: reliability, technical skills, customer service, and accessibility. Convergent and discriminant validity were verified between the factors. Finally, structural equation modeling was used to verify the nomological validity of the scale. This online shopping mall reputation scale is expected to provide a standard for companies to effectively manage the reputations of online shopping malls in the future and for consumers to choose online shopping malls they can trust.

Description: This study models the purchasing behavior of specialty coffee by 114 coffee shops across 15 cities in nine states in Mexico. Simple and multilevel mixed-effects logistic models are tested. Our models extend the framework used in prior research. We model the purchase of specialty coffee as a function of: (a) material attributes, (b) symbolic attributes, (c) coffee shop characteristics, (d) profile of the coffee shop’s owner, and (e) socio-economic variables of the cities where the coffee shops were located. Overall, our results are consistent with expectations developed from the coffee literature. That is, the likelihood of purchasing specialty coffee increases when: coffee’s aroma drives the purchase, coffee purchased is from the state of Oaxaca, the coffee shop has a value-added business model, the coffee shop is diversified selling both ground coffee and coffee drinks, the coffee shop owner’s knowledge on coffee supply chain activities is high, and the coffee shop is located in a city with a higher education index. In contrast, the likelihood of purchasing specialty coffee decreases when a coffee professional tastes the coffee before the purchase, when coffee shops are not given the opportunity to roast their own coffee, and in coffee shops located in larger cities. Overall, our research suggests that the specialty coffee niche in Mexico has some elements required for this segment to transition from a supply chain approach to a value-based supply chain approach. This might be particularly beneficial for smallholder coffee growers, who despite several constraints contribute to the sustainability of coffee supply chains.

Description: Understanding the changing patterns of extreme temperatures is important for taking measures to reduce their associated negative impacts. Based on daily temperature data derived from 2272 meteorological stations in China, the spatiotemporal variations in temperature extremes were examined with respect to covariates by means of the Mann–Kendall test and a spatiotemporal model during 1960–2018. The results indicated that the temporal changes in cold extremes showed decreasing trends and warm extremes experienced increasing trends across almost all of China, with mean change rates of −3.9 days, −1.8 days, 3.7 days and 2.3 days per decade for TN10p, TX10p, TN90p and TX90p, respectively. Nighttime warming/cooling was higher than daytime warming/cooling, which indicated that trends in minimum temperature extremes are more rapid than trends in maximum temperature extremes. In addition, the temporal effect on the temperature extremes varied throughout the year, with significant increasing trends in the temporal heterogeneity of warm extremes occurring during 1992–2018. The areas with strong spatial heterogeneity of cool nights mainly included northeastern and central China, and the spatial variation on cool days was more prominent in northern China. For warm nights, the areas showing high spatial heterogeneity were mainly located in the northwestern part of China, while areas for warm days were distributed in northern China. Our results provide meaningful information for a deeper understanding of the spatiotemporal variations in temperature extremes across mainland China.

Description: Although a growing number of consumers acknowledge the importance of firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, how companies can effectively communicate these initiatives to consumers is still a challenge. Although the rise of social media platforms has provided firms with opportunities for more immediate and interactive communication with consumers, recent academic studies related to social media have mostly focused on effective communication of promotional messages, and relatively little attention has been paid to prosocial messages. For better communication, social media branded messages have encouraged user participation (i.e., calls to action), but how diverse types of calls to action can generate consumer engagement remains unexplored. Using over 2000 branded posts from popular consumer product brands on Facebook and Twitter, this research explores diverse types of calls to action that drive consumers’ attitudinal (i.e., likes) and behavioral (i.e., shares) engagement with CSR-related messages on social media. The research findings suggest that the types of calls to action matter in the effectiveness of CSR messages. Specifically, CSR messages inviting consumers to brand-related programs or games generated a greater number of likes and shares. However, the overall engagement was lower when CSR messages encouraged further conversations, and rewarding consumers was also less effective. Finally, the results show that multiple calls to action within one message decrease engagement. Overall, this study contributes to the academic literature and management by providing new insights and actionable guidelines on how to encourage user participation when designing CSR messages to enhance consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral engagement within social media, thereby contributing to sustainable development while enhancing the effectiveness of marketing communications.

Description: This descriptive study intends to identify the satisfaction perception among the teachers of the Universidad del Valle de México (UVM) concerning the use of the Microsoft Teams platform in the transition from traditional model (face-to-face) to 100% online education [Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT)]. The proposal aims to determine the perspectives of teachers regarding the use of the Microsoft Teams platform during the crisis caused by COVID-19. UVM has 6938 full-time teachers and part-time teachers who collaborated in educational programs during January-June 2020 in the 33 campuses of UVM. And an instrument was developed and applied using finite population sampling, UVM perspective of teachers, which was distributed via Google Forms. The feasibility of the data collection instrument was determined by the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient, with a result of 0.926. The data collection period was aligned with the first isolation period: 23 March to 20 April. The results in the perception of teacher satisfaction in the different sections of the instrument established an agreement in the answers (very satisfied or satisfied) regarding values that were higher than 60% in terms of satisfaction using the equipment. The analysis of the data collected was performed to verify the proposed hypothesis with the R version 4.0 software. A G-test was performed with the Logverosimilitude coefficient to test whether the categorical variables were independent (qualitative variables that are not defined continuously). The Krammer coefficient of association was then calculated to measure the correlation.

Description: The emergence of Airbnb along with an increase in urban tourism has intensified the pressure on urban areas while adding a new dimension to the dynamics of housing distribution, especially in historic cities. These dynamics affect local economies and significantly alter the characteristics of urban spaces, hence the necessity to not only create policies that foster sustainable tourism development but also to advance urban models that explore the relation between Airbnb and the traditional rental and accommodation sector. Through the case of Venice, the present study sheds light on the potential evolution of Airbnb housing in comparison to the traditional rental and homeowner market. In particular, we sought to understand whether a potential equilibrium between these uses exists and if so, at which point in regard to this equilibrium the historic center of Venice is. To tackle this question, methods derived from the field of game theory and specifically evolutionary game theory were used. With the agents (players) being the housing units, the designed theoretical model explored the population dynamics of the housing units in Venice given the three options of homeownership or long-term renting (residential); short term renting or Airbnb (airbnb); and no use (vacant). The findings of our theoretical population game model were validated and discussed with a dataset describing the usage patterns in the city of Venice during the past 20 years. A verification of the outcome through further case studies could eventually provide insights into the future behavior of tourism’s pressure in historic urban areas.

Description: The conditions of declining gold grade in the ore, increasing depth of excavation, and de-creasing unallocated stock of deposits make it necessary to develop efficient solutions for the mine-to-mill process, which have to be adapted to each specific mining plant and will optimizes production costs. Current research focuses on a case study that demonstrates how indicators of mining losses and dilution influence the variation of costs chain in the production cycle. The article examines the topical issue of determining the effects at the mine-to-mill stages due to changes in losses and dilution. The author’s approach to the formation of a mine-to-mill cost chain is proposed by integrating several cost estimation methods into the general cost estimation methodology. The estimation methodology is a compilation of factor analysis and cost engineering methods that take into account the change in costs due to the variation of losses and dilution. It was proven that with variations in losses and dilution, cost savings arise due to changes in the volume of work on ore averaging, ore transportation, and beneficiation. For the case of the Kuranakh ore field, there are no effects at the mining stage. The use of internal reserves by means of managing ore quality parameters allows reducing the costs per ton of processed rock mass along the entire production chain.

Description: Serious concerns with accelerating global warming have been translated into urgent calls for increasing urban densities: higher densities are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions, especially those related to vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT). In order to densify meaningfully in the coming decades, cities need to make room within their existing footprints to accommodate more people. In the absence of adequate room within their existing footprints, cities create more room through outward expansion, typically resulting in lower overall densities. We introduce a quantitative dimension to this process, focusing on the population added to a global stratified sample of 200 cities between 1990 and 2014. In three-quarters of the cities we studied, the areas built before 1990 gained population and thus densified significantly. On average, however, only one-quarter of the total population added to the 200 cities in the sample in the 1990–2014 period were accommodated within their 1990 urban footprints, while three-quarters were accommodated within their newly built expansion areas. That resulted in an overall decline in average urban densities during the 1990–2014 period despite the near-global, decades-old and rarely questioned consensus that urban expansion must be contained.

Description: The aim of the study was to analyze the effect of social distancing on physical activity (PA) and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in active Spanish older adults according to their physical functionality. The study included 58 older adults aged 76.24 ± 6.00 years who were enrolled in a supervised physical exercise program before the COVID-19 outbreak. Anthropometric, physical function, physical activity and HRQoL were measured at baseline (October 2019). After the two-month lockdown due to the COVID-19, questionnaires were collected again during de-escalation (May 2020). Participants were divided into high- (n = 29) and low-functionality (n = 29) groups. Total PA, walking and cleaning significantly decreased (p 〈 0.001) whilst exercising or dancing increased (p 〈 0.001). General health, social and emotional role functioning dimensions and overall mental component scores worsened (p 〈 0.01–p 〈 0.05). Low-functionality participants had significantly lower physical functioning scores at baseline (p 〈 0.01) and lower bodily pain scores at de-escalation (p 〈 0.01). Emotional role functioning dimension and overall mental component significantly decreased only in low-functionality participants (p 〈 0.05). Although PA levels decreased significantly, older adults continued being active regardless of their functionality. While mental HRQoL in participants with higher physical functionality remained unchanged, participants with lower functional capacity had a higher risk of mental health concerns. Therefore, attention should focus on strategies to mitigate the negative effects of distancing measures on older people’s mental health, especially in those with lower functionality.

Description: With the increasing level of air pollution and fine dust, many countries are trying to prevent further environmental damage, with various government legislations, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. In the transportation field, a variety of environmental protection schemes are also being considered (e.g., banning old diesel vehicles, alternate no-driving systems, electric car subsidies, and environmental cost charging by tax). Imposing environmental constraints is a good approach to reflect various environmental protections. The objective of this research was to analyze the mode-choice and route-choice changes based on imposing environmental constraints. For the objective, a combined modal split and traffic assignment (CMA) model with an environmental constraint model was developed. For the environmental constraint, carbon monoxide (CO) was adopted, because most of the CO emissions in the air are emitted by motorized vehicles. After a detailed description of the model, the validity and some properties of the model and algorithm are demonstrated with two numerical examples (e.g., a small and a real network in the city of Winnipeg, Canada). From the numerical results, we can observe that imposing the small restriction (or strict) value has more efficiency in mode change and reducing network emission.

Description: In arid and semi-arid lands like Iran water is scarce, and not all the wastewater can be treated. Hence, groundwater remains the primary and the principal source of water supply for human consumption. Therefore, this study attempted to spatially assess the groundwater potential in an aquifer in a semi-arid region of Iran using geographic information systems (GIS)-based statistical modeling. To this end, 75 agricultural wells across the Marvdasht Plain were sampled, and the water samples’ electrical conductivity (EC) was measured. To model the groundwater quality, multiple linear regression (MLR) and principal component regression (PCR) coupled with elven environmental parameters (soil-topographical parameters) were employed. The results showed that that soil EC (SEC) with Beta = 0.78 was selected as the most influential factor affecting groundwater EC (GEC). CaCO3 of soil samples and length-steepness (LS factor) were the second and third effective parameters. SEC with r = 0.89 and CaCO3 with r = 0.79 and LS factor with r = 0.69 were also characterized for PC1. According to performance criteria, the MLR model with R2 = 0.94, root mean square error (RMSE) = 450 µScm−1 and mean error (ME) = 125 µScm−1 provided better results in predicting the GEC. The GEC map indicated that 16% of the Marvdasht groundwater was not suitable for agriculture. It was concluded that GIS, combined with statistical methods, could predict groundwater quality in the semi-arid regions.

Description: In this study, GMAW and CMT welding technologies were evaluated in terms of their technological lifecycles based on their patent datasets together with the S-curve concept, and the joints were evaluated in terms of their welding characteristics. To predict the future trends for both technologies, different models based on the time-series and growth-curve methods were tested. From a process point of view, the results showed better performance and stability for the CMT process based on the heat input to the base material and the frequency of the short circuits. The temperature distribution in the sample revealed that the GMAW process delivers higher values and, consequently, greater heat transfer. Regarding the technological lifecycle, the analyses revealed that the CMT welding process, despite being recent, is already in its mature phase. Moreover, the GMAW welding process is positioned in the growth phase on the S-curve, indicating a possibility of advancement. The main findings indicated that through mathematical modelling, it is possible to predict, in a precise way, the inflection points and the maturity phases of each technology and chart their trends with expert opinions. The new perspectives for analysing maturity levels and welding characteristics presented herein will be essential for a broaden decision-making market process.

Description: This article investigates the economic orientations of the members of the Millennial generation, so as to assess possible shifts towards their adoption of degrowth philosophy and practice. The text provides a general literature review oriented towards indicating the link between the Millennial generation’s economic standpoints and possible directions of evolution of the economic system in the Western world. An orientation towards the market and its economic system has become one of the distinctive features embedded in the portrait of the Millennials, who not only create the dominant social force of the Western world but also represent the first generation in which the majority question well-established market philosophies. The article considers the potential contribution of the Millennial generation to the further development of alternatives to traditional notions of growth. Until now, the evolution of the economic framework has been pushed forward mainly by policymakers and government representatives. System designers have shaped the desired outcomes via international agreements, internal policies, and the empowerment of different economic actors, driven by a belief in the long-term benefits of the capitalism–democracy nexus. However, this moment in history, in which such principles are being seriously questioned, creates a space for bottom-up processes and the reconfiguration of economic realities with a potentially transformative effect on the whole framework.

Description: Thispaper aims to investigate the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in fostering customer’s pro-environmental behavior (PEBs) through customer engagement (CE). Data collected from the hotel customers were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The present research findings reveal the significant role of CSR activities in positively influencing customer PEBs. Moreover, the results also suggest the mediation of CE in the relationship between CSR and customer PEBs. The current research findings offer significant implications that can be employed in developing a result-oriented marketing strategy in CSR activities that contribute to environmental protection and sustainability.

Description: Spatially explicit records of fishing activities’ distribution are fundamental for effective marine spatial planning (MSP) because they can help to identify principal fishing areas. However, in numerous case studies, MSP has ignored fishing activities due to data scarcity. The vessel monitoring system (VMS) and the automatic identification system (AIS) are two commonly known technologies used to observe fishing activities. However, both technologies generate data that have several limitations, making them ineffective when used in isolation. Here, we evaluate both datasets’ limitations and strengths, measure the drawbacks of using any single dataset and propose a method for combining both technologies for a more precise estimation of the distribution of fishing activities. Using the Baltic Sea and the North Sea–Celtic Sea regions as case studies, we compare the spatial distribution of fishing effort from International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) VMS data and global fishing watch AIS data. We show that using either dataset in isolation can lead to a significant underestimation of fishing effort. We also demonstrate that integrating both datasets in an ensemble approach can provide more accurate fisheries information for MSP. Given the rapid expansion of MSP activities globally, our approach can be utilised in data-limited regions to improve cross border spatial planning.

Description: In water and wastewater, phosphate anions are considered critical contaminants because they cause algae blooms and eutrophication. The present work aims at studying the removal of phosphate anions from aqueous solutions using silica particles functionalized with polyethylenimine. The parameters affecting the adsorption process such as pH, initial concentration, adsorbent dose, and the presence of competitive anions, such as carbonate, nitrate, sulfate and chromate ions, were studied. Equilibrium studies were carried out to determine their sorption capacity and the rate of phosphate ions uptake. The adsorption isotherm data fitted well with the Langmuir and Sips model. The maximum sorption capacity was 41.1 mg/g at pH 5, which decreased slightly at pH 7. The efficiency of phosphate removal adsorption increased at lower pH values and by increasing the adsorbent dose. The maximum phosphate removal was 80% for pH 5 and decreased to 75% for pH 6, to 73% for pH 7 and to 70% for pH 8, for initial phosphate concentration at about 1 mg/L and for a dose of adsorbent 100 mg/L. The removal rate was increased with the increase of the adsorbent dose. For example, for initial phosphate concentration of 4 mg/L the removal rate increased from 40% to 80% by increasing the dose from 0.1 to 2.0 g/L at pH 7. The competitive anions adversely affected phosphate removal. Though they were also found to be removed to a certain extent. Their co-removal provided an adsorbent which might be very useful for treating waters with low-level multiple contaminant occurrence in natural or engineered aquatic systems.

Description: Limited water resources coupled with the increase of the human population calls for more efficient use of water in irrigated agriculture. Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the most widely grown crops worldwide and is very sensitive to water stress due to its shallow rooting system. With the dilemma of potato sensitivity to drought and limited available water resources restricting crop production, researchers and crop growers have been investigating different approaches for optimizing potato yield and improving crop water use efficiency under different irrigation methods. While potato response to water is affected by other management practices such as fertilizer management, the present review is focused on the potato response to water under different environments and different irrigation methods and the impact on potato quality and potato diseases. Variable results obtained from research studies indicate the non-transferability of the results from one location to another as potato cultivars are not the same and potato breeders are still making effort to develop new high-yielding varieties to increase crop production and or develop new varieties for a specific trait to satisfy consumers exigence. This review is a valuable source of information for potato growers and scientists as it is not only focused on the impact of irrigation regimes on potato yield and water productivity as most reviews on water management, but it also presents the impact of irrigation regime on diseases in potatoes, tuber specific gravity, metabolite content of the tubers and the quality of the processed potato products.

Description: Maintaining diversity of small ruminant genetic resources is instrumental for sustainable agricultural production. Community-based livestock breeding programs (CBBPs) have emerged as a potential approach to implement breeding programs in smallholder farms. This study assesses the viability of CBBPs as a potential approach for conservation and improvement of indigenous small ruminants, using case studies of goat CBBPs in Malawi and Uganda. Data were collected using focus group discussions, personal interviews, and direct observations. The program promotes and empowers smallholders to have access to small ruminant feed resources through protection of existing communal pasturelands, capacity building in pasture production, and conservation of crop residues and crop by-products. Implementation of the CBBP enhances the contributions through improved animal growth performance, kids’ survival, and twinning rates leading to increased offtake rates and better prices. The existence of permanently established supporting organizations and other stakeholders provides sustainable institutional support instrumental for the establishment and growth of CBBPs. However, establishment of functional community-based institutions (producer cooperatives) and investments in institutional/policy reforms to safeguard fair trading, access to common resources by small ruminant keepers, and adoption of the CBBP model into national livestock development programs are some of the key milestones that can guarantee sustainability.

Description: The efficacy of traditional control measures for the management of plant pathogens is decreasing, and the resistance of these pathogens to pesticides is increasing, which poses a serious threat to global food security. The exploration of novel and efficient management measures to combat plant disease is an urgent need at this time. In this study, fungal metabolites from three Trichoderma spp. (T. harzianum, T. virens and T. koningii) were prepared on three different growth media (STP, MOF and supermalt (SuM)). The fungal metabolites were tested in vitro and in vivo from March–April 2020 under greenhouse conditions in a pot experiment utilizing completely randomized design to test their management of the bacterial wilt disease caused by R. solanacearum in tomato plants. The effect of the fungal metabolites on bacterial cell morphology was also investigated through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis. In vitro investigation showed that the fungal metabolites of T. harzianum obtained on the STP medium were the most effective in inhibiting in vitro bacterial growth and produced a 17.6 mm growth inhibition zone. SEM analysis confirms the rupture of the cell walls and cell membranes of the bacterium, along with the leakage of its cell contents. Generally, fungal metabolites obtained on an STP medium showed higher activity than those obtained on the other two media, and these metabolites were then evaluated in vivo according to three application times (0 days before transplantation (DBT), 4 DBT and 8 DBT) in a greenhouse trial to examine their ability to manage R. solanacearum in tomato plants. Consistent with in vitro results, the results from the greenhouse studies showed a level of higher anti-bacterial activity of T. harzianum metabolites than they did for the metabolites of other fungi, while among the three application times, the longest time (8 DBT) was more effective in controlling bacterial wilt disease in tomato plants. Metabolites of T. harzianum applied at 8 DBT caused the maximum decrease in soil bacterial population (1.526 log cfu/g), resulting in the lowest level of disease severity (area under disease progressive curve (AUDPC) value: 400), and maximum plant freshness (with a resulting biomass of 36.7 g, a root length of 18.3 cm and a plant height of 33.0 cm). It can be concluded that T. harzianum metabolites obtained on an STP medium, when applied after 8 DBT, can suppress soil bacterial population and enhance plant growth, and thus can be used as a safe, environmentally-conscious and consumer-friendly approach to managing bacterial wilt disease in tomato plants and possibly other crops.

Description: Most previous studies aim to predict ecosystem sustainability from the perspective of a sole human or natural system and have frequently failed to achieve their desired outcome. Based on the coupled human and natural system (CHANS) and its interaction with other systems, we attempted to analyze the effectiveness of the Grain to Green Program and predict future trends in the Hexi Corridor, the hub of the ancient silk road of China. At different scales, we applied a metacoupling framework to investigate the flows, effects, and causes of the complex CHANS. Three typical inner river watersheds within the corridor at three different geographic scales (local, regional and national) were estimated and compared. The Telecoupling Geo App, additional models, and software tools were employed to evaluate the CHANS series of the focal system (Hexi Corridor, local), adjacent system (Gansu Province, regional), and distant system (China, national). The results showed that most flows can be screened and quantitatively analyzed across focal, adjacent and distant systems. The social and economic transformations in adjacent and distant systems could affect the possibility and whereabouts of labor transfer in the focal system. Moreover, the labor migration increased the implementation efficiency of the Grain to Green Program as a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) strategy, thereby improving its ecological benefits. For the first time, we established a metacoupled model to quantitatively evaluate aspects of ecosystem sustainability in China, providing insight to the theory and application of sustainability science.

Description: The “projectification” of Western societies has been consolidated by a number of studies and now calls for various adaptations in the managerial framework of project management. Faster rates of change in complex environments antagonize the traditional risk assessment approach and demand a more dynamic approach. A framework commonly used for understanding the challenges of complexity in the modern business environment is VUCA. VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. In order to mitigate the impact of a VUCA environment on complex projects, organizations and project leaders need to know the type and severity of challenges they are dealing with in each unique project. This study explores the VUCA framework in the context of projects and suggests that the VUCA approach can enhance the conventional risk assessment procedure. The study also drafts an accessible diagnostic tool to assess the VUCA dimensions a project is facing, so that project managers can effectively isolate “fat tail” risk events. The tool is tested on five complex projects in the manufacturing industry and its effectiveness is discussed.

Description: The cement industry is highly energy-intensive, consuming approximately 7% of global industrial energy consumption each year. Improving production technology is a good strategy to reduce the energy needs of a cement plant. The market offers a wide variety of alternative solutions; besides, the literature already provides reviews of opportunities to improve energy efficiency in a cement plant. However, the technology is constantly developing, so the available alternatives may change within a few years. To keep the knowledge updated, investigating the current attractiveness of each solution is pivotal to analyze real companies. This article aims at describing the recent application in the Italian cement industry and the future perspectives of technologies. A sample of plant was investigated through the analysis of mandatory energy audit considering the type of interventions they have recently implemented, or they intend to implement. The outcome is a descriptive analysis, useful for companies willing to improve their sustainability. Results prove that solutions to reduce the energy consumption of auxiliary systems such as compressors, engines, and pumps are currently the most attractive opportunities. Moreover, the results prove that consulting sector experts enables the collection of updated ideas for improving technologies, thus giving valuable inputs to the scientific research.

Description: This paper presents research on a new type of fabricated steel–wood composite floor material in the style of a slab-embedded beam flange, using test methods and finite element numerical analysis to study the flexural load-bearing performance of the composite slabs. Through experimental phenomena, the failure process and mechanism of the composite floor are analyzed, and the deformation performance and ultimate bearing capacity of the composite floor material are assessed. Through numerical analysis of the finite element model, the influence of the connection mode of the floor and the composite beam, the type and number of connectors, and the width of the flange of the composite beam on the bending performance of the composite beam–slab system is studied. The research results show that the fabricated steel–wood composite floor slab has good load-bearing and deformation performance. The self-tapping screw connection of the floor slab is better than the ordinary steel nail connection, and the reasonable screw spacing is 100–150 mm. Increasing the flange width of the composite beam can significantly improve the load-bearing capacity of the steel–wood composite floor component.

Description: The ability of the ground penetrating radar (GPR) method as a rapid preliminary survey to detect the presence of illegally buried waste is presented in this paper. The test site is located in the countryside of “Sannicandro di Bari” (Southern Italy) and has a surface area of 1500 m2. A total of five parallel profiles were acquired in 2014 using a geophysical survey system instrument (GSSI) equipped with 400 and 200 MHz antennae in the monostatic configuration. Two of the five profiles were registered in a control area to compare a natural condition to a suspected waste buried zone. As a result of a processing and elaboration workflow, GPR investigations allowed us to interpret the signal qualitatively within a maximum depth of about 3 m, identifying many signal anomalies, whose characteristics can be considered typical of buried waste. The GPR response of the three profiles acquired in the suspected area showed substantial differences not found in the control’s profiles. Anomalies related to the presence of intense scattering, of dome structures not attributable to cavities, but rather to a flattening and compacting of different layers, therefore, less electrically conductive, were identified in the suspected area. The interpretation of the results obtained by the GPR profiles was confirmed by excavations carried out with bulldozers. Large quantities of solid waste illegally buried (e.g., waste deriving from construction and demolition activities, bituminous mixtures, discarded tires, glass, plastic, municipal waste) were revealed in all the sites where anomalies and non-conformities appeared compared to the control natural soil.

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic brought abrupt changes for international events that promote entrepreneurship and innovation. Usually, such events bring together thousands of participants to provide them with information about ongoing and emerging trends in their fields, to network with old and new colleagues and get ideas that can develop into innovations. In 2020, most such events were cancelled. Few events were organized virtually, that is without participants physically coming together. Compared with physical face-to-face events, virtual events reduce the travel-related emissions and consumption, thereby supporting sustainability. This article studies the SHIFT entrepreneurship and innovation event held virtually in October 2020 and organized in Finland. For this article, the author gathered data about user preferences from surveying participants, speakers, presenters and organizers, almost all of whom were first-time users of VirBELA’s 3D virtual platform. Furthermore, participant observation and interviews via avatars were conducted during the event. At the virtual event, 68% of respondents talked with former acquaintances, and 68% also talked with new acquaintances, and 53% opinioned that using the virtual platform can support the emergence of innovations. Virtual entrepreneurship and innovation events have potential to support networking, novel ideas and thus innovations, but issues of trust and confidentiality arose concerns among some participants.

Description: “Jefoure” refers to a traditional grass-covered road with households settled on both sides in the Gurage socio-ecological production landscape in Ethiopia. We assess Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) on Jefoure roads for sustainable management. Data were collected using survey tools and orthophoto images, and they were systematically analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. The Jefoure roads are beyond transport networks and enhance the people’s quality of life. We identified 12 contributions of Jefoure roads from the reporting categories of material, nonmaterial, and regulating NCP. Over time, the contributions of the roads at different localities decreased due to socio-economic, cultural, and religious changes. Recent trends in infrastructural provisions cause the degradation of Jefoure roads and lead to a decrease in their value. Therefore, sustainable landscape planning and management are essential to preserve and enhance the positive NCP. This study indicates that roads do not solely generate negative ecological impacts, and planners need to work on designing versatile roads, particularly in landscapes where traffic flows are low. Indigenous knowledge has a significant role in bridging the past and future and needs to be integrated into landscape planning and management.

Description: In this study, we explore the research published from 2015 to 2020 on the importance of family firms (FFs) to sustainability. Our results come from a content analysis of 28 studies on this topic. Further, they deal with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the construction industry in Italy and Spain. These studies mainly follow a quantitative approach with data from a survey. This study’s main contribution regards the identification of three sorts of aspects associated to sustainability in FFs which match the three pillars of the triple bottom line approach that supports sustainable business development: social inclusion, economic development, and environmental protection. Our findings show that the family’s religiosity, reputation, and image play relevant roles in the FFs’ adoption of sustainable practices. Moreover, the CEO and their successor’s choices also have consequences for sustainability. These studies demonstrate how the family’s control, its values, and the industry influence the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. FFs go green by adopting eco-innovation to adapt to the constantly changing environment and market pressures. We acknowledge the limitations of the study. We offer advice to colleagues when developing future futures studies to address the influence of cultural differences between FFs and non-FFs and suggest they perform comparative analyses. This research could lead to further investigation of the effects of other variables that may influence sustainability in the context of FFs.

Description: Biowaste materials could be considered a renewable source of fertilizer if methods for recovering P from waste can be developed. Over the last few decades, there has been a high level of interest in using biochar to remove contaminants from aqueous solutions. This study was conducted using a range of salts that are commonly found in biogas slurry (ZnCl2, FeCl3, FeCl2, CuCl2, Na2CO3, and NaHCO3). Experiments with a biogas digester and aqueous solution were conducted at pH nine integration with NH4+, Mg2+, and PO43− molar ratios of 1.0, 1.2, and 1.8, respectively. The chemical analysis was measured to find out the composition of the precipitate, and struvite was employed to remove the aqueous solutions. The study found that the most efficient removal of phosphate and ammonium occurred at pH nine in Tongan sludge urban biochar and rice biochar, respectively. Increasing the concentration of phosphate and ammonium increased the phosphate and ammonium content. Moreover, increasing the biochar temperature and increasing the concentration of phosphate and ammonium increased the efficiency of the removal of ammonium and phosphate. The removal efficiency of ammonium and phosphate increased from 15.0% to 71.0% and 18.0% to 99.0%, respectively, by increasing the dose of respective ions K+, Zn2+, Fe3+, Fe2+, Cu2+, and CO32.The elements were increased from 58.0 to 71.0 for HCO3− with the increasing concentration from 30 mg L−1 to 240 mg L−1.This study concluded that phosphate and ammonium can be recovered from mushroom soil biochar and rice biochar, and phosphate can be effectively recovered via the struvite precipitation method.

Description: Achieving consumer loyalty will remain a prime objective of every business in the current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment (VUCA), which demands some out-of-the-box thinking on the part of policymakers to sustain the competitive advantage. Sustainability has been emerging as a “new normal” for all industries of the present era, which forces all sectors to incorporate it into their business operations. There have been studies on the relationship between sustainability and consumer loyalty, but these studies are inconclusive, further establishing the importance of more research in this area. In this frame of reference, the present research objective is to test the dimensional impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities (economic, environmental, social) on banking consumers’ loyalty in the context of Pakistan. The data were collected from different bank account holders, which were then analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique in AMOS. The results revealed that all three dimensions of CSR positively relate to consumer loyalty. The banking industry policymakers can benefit from the findings of the present study to understand sustainability from the lens of marketing to drive a higher level of consumer loyalty.

Description: Considering that international projects with teams in the virtual environment (IPTVEs) contribute to the reduction in the carbon footprint and, at the same time, become life-saving solutions in extreme global situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations familiar with this type of project will have a substantial advantage in their ability to operate efficiently and to achieve their sustainable goals. An important aspect of project management is to identify the factors that influence the success of an international project, increasing its performance. Our first research hypothesis was that the decision to create a project team in the virtual environment is a factor with a major influence on international project success. Data collection was performed through an online survey conducted within international project team members and managers. The success factors were explained through factorial analysis which revealed two main factors and the neural network algorithm on a dataset through IBM SPSS Modeler software. The predictive model revealed that the most important field is setting up a virtual team, followed by organizational culture. These results support our hypothesis.

Description: In 2020, the whole world had to face a pandemic with inevitable profound changes in all aspects of life, from the social to the economic sphere. The profound economic crisis that followed the rise of the pandemic has pushed firms and researchers to question the necessary changes and new challenges for the survival of businesses. In this scenario, the aim of the paper is to analyze and classify the main contributions published on the topic of COVID-19 in managerial literature, seeking to discover the perspective and the gaps and outline future avenues of research. A systematic review of the literature has been performed. The results highlight the orientation of studies in this field and the various links between different aspects that emerged. Limitations and implications complete the research.

Description: This study contributes to the organizational sustainability literature by exploring a methodology for defining and making the notion of employee flourishing at work operational. It applies stochastic frontier methods on British longitudinal data to estimate the maximum job satisfaction that employees can achieve should they utilize their resources efficiently. It offers a new perspective on the notion of social comparisons and extends the literature by demonstrating the scope for organizational intervention in the context of commonly assumed, time invariant variables, which are often thought to be beyond interventionist possibilities. Findings suggest that many British employees fail to reach their job satisfaction potential, reporting satisfaction scores below those of their peers with similar resource endowments. This inefficiency correlates strongly with personality traits. Implications for organizational sustainability policy and practice are discussed.

Description: Mushrooms belonging to Pleurotus genus have been demonstrated to have important nutritional and medicinal value and their regular intake prevent many diseases, reduce the infection probability and increase immunity. In order to investigate the bioactive compounds produced by seven commercial (‘142 F’, ‘142 E’, ‘D+’, ‘V turbo’, ‘V 142’, ‘A 12’, ‘V 160’) and five wild-type (‘Albino 1107’, ‘Altamura 1603’, ‘Muro Lucano 139’, ‘Conversano 1250’, ‘Albino beige chiaro 1094’) P. eryngii isolates, the following qualitative analyses were performed: Total polyphenol content, antioxidant activity (EC50 of ABTS) and antiradical power (ARP) in fresh lyophilized and dry basidioma, and water content, β-glucans and phenolic compounds in fresh samples. Standard methods were employed for each of the above mentioned aims. Total polyphenol content was diverse among the P. eryngii isolates. In particular, an elevated polyphenolic content was found in fresh lyophilized P. eryngii samples of the commercial isolates ‘V 142’ followed by ‘A 12’. The highest antiradical activity (ARP) was obtained by ‘Muro Lucano 139’ isolate. Wild P. eryngii isolates were characterized by higher water and β-glucans contents compared to the commercial ones, and the highest values were registered for the ‘Albino beige chiaro 1094’ isolate. In conclusion, the present study allowed us to identify the commercial and wild-type P. eryngii isolates from the Basilicata region, with high nutritional and medicinal value based on their bioactive compounds.

Description: Family firms take a substantial fraction of economic activities and significantly influence a nation’s economic sustainability. Despite the considerable amount of research efforts to determine their performance implications, there is still a lack of consensus. This study aims to address this dissensus in two ways. Theory-wise, we introduce two interdependent contingencies that interactively determine the relative strength of positive and negative effects of family involvement: inside chief executive officers (CEOs) and business fluctuations. Method-wise, we employ an advanced econometric technique, the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator, to control for endogeneity. Using panel data of Korean family firms listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) stock market during the periods between 2013 and 2016, we find (1) that family firms underperform non-family firms, (2) that the negative effect of family involvement decreases under the management of inside CEOs, and (3) that this positive moderation effect of inside CEOs decreases in the face of business fluctuations. This study furthers our understanding of how the family influences firm performance and, eventually, economic sustainability.

Description: Sustainability is now fully integrated into the entire life cycle of the Olympic Games. The planning, preparation, and staging of the Winter Olympics have opportunities to create a sustainable legacy for the host cities for decades. The tangible and/or intangible impacts of the Winter Olympics on the host city are multidimensional, including economic, social, and environmental aspects. However, there are still few studies on the multidimensional impact of the Winter Olympics on the sustainable development of the host city. This paper aims to investigate the effects of the 2022 Winter Olympics on host city sustainability from public perspective. Using a survey of 806 host residents in Beijing and Zhangjiakou, the authors performed descriptive statistics and regression analysis to analyze the effects of the Winter Olympic Games on the city’s sustainable development. The Winter Olympic Games are divided into three stages, including the pre-game phase, in-game phase, and post-game phase, and the impacts cover three dimensions, including economic, social, and environmental aspects. The results show that the 2022 Winter Olympics integrate sustainability into the whole process of the Winter Olympics; the Winter Olympics have an important catalytic effect on the host city’s sustainable development.

Description: Previous studies investigated the effects of seed rates and seed recycling practices on the yield and yield-related variables. However, higher yield does not always guarantee cost-efficiency. This study aimed to investigate the yield effects of plot-level seed rate and the cost–benefit analysis of seed recycling practices. This study has introduced the dose–response model to the existing analytical methods used in analyzing the effect of different agrochemicals on crop yield. A multi-stage stratified sampling technique was used to select a total of 450 sample respondents. Data were gathered using a mix of data collection tools. Descriptive statistics along with the dose–response model were applied for data analysis. Farmers of the study were found to be dissimilar in terms of their seed rate application. A dose–response analysis indicated that the highest average wheat yield was associated with a seed rate of 50 kg ha−1 above what is recommended. The yield effect of seed recycling was also assessed, and a one-time seed recycling has caused a yield decline of 665 kg ha−1 compared to the non-recycled seeds. The cost reduced using recycled seed is by far lower than the economic gains associated with using unrecycled and fresh seeds. The cost–benefit analysis made clear that farmers can reduce their seed costs through seed recycling, but their yields and net income can be best improved by using unrecycled certified bread wheat seed (CBWS). Thus, farmers must be encouraged to use unrecycled seed by establishing agricultural credit schemes geared towards seed procurement and seed price subsidy as key strategies to reduce economically wasteful seed recycling practices.

Description: The rapid expansion of Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis L.) in China has drawn considerable attention as it may not only decrease vegetation diversity but also alter soil nutrient cycling in the affected ecosystems. Soil extracellular enzymes mediate nutrient cycling by catalyzing the organic matter decomposition; however, the mechanisms by which alien plant invasion may affect soil extracellular enzymes remain unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the responses of soil extracellular enzyme activities and ecoenzymatic stoichiometry to S. canadensis invasion. Several extracellular enzymatic activities related to carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling were measured using a fluorometric method. Ecoenzymatic stoichiometry was used as a proxy of soil microbial metabolic limitations. S. canadensis invasion appeared to be associated with decreased activities of enzymes and with substantial conversions of microbial metabolic carbon and nitrogen limitations. The changes in the activities of extracellular enzymes and the limitations of microbial metabolism were correlated with the alterations in the nutrient availability and resource stoichiometry in the soil. These findings reveal that the alterations in soil available nutrients associated with S. canadensis invasion may regulate extracellular enzymatic activities and cause microbial metabolic limitations, suggesting that S. canadensis invasion considerably affects biogeochemical cycling processes.

Description: With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, rural housing vacancy (RHV) has become an increasingly universal phenomenon in China, causing many economic and social problems. Despite many studies on RHV, relatively little attention has been paid to distinguishing the types of vacant rural houses as well as RHV in metropolitan suburbs. Drawing upon survey data from 23 sampled villages of the Nanjing metropolitan area in China, this paper differentiates RHV into permanent vacancy and temporary vacancy and analyzes the influences of location, government interventions, and the villages’ characteristics on the two types of RHV. The empirical results show that villages located in inner suburbs and with medium travel time to city centers have higher permanent RHV rates, while those located further away from city centers usually have higher temporary RHV rates. The local government’s restrictive plans and housing construction restrictions do not increase the permanent RHV rate nor temporary RHV rate, whereas supportive plans and financial investment reduce the permanent RHV rate and increase the temporary RHV rate. Permanent RHV rates are relatively lower in villages that are less reliant on agricultural development. Those villages usually have higher sublet rates of farmland, a lower proportion of agriculture laborers, and better development of manufacturing or tourism. However, temporary RHV rates do not differ significantly between agricultural villages and non-agricultural villages. The paper finds an unusual “middle bump” phenomenon of permanent RHV rate and explains it with the law of commuting circles. Some policy implications are put forward to promote the transformation and sustainable development of rural areas in China’s metropolitan suburbs.

Description: The sustainability of last-mile (LM) freight delivery is crucial to add value to the stakeholders in the distribution chain. However, its achievement is often hindered by a poor consideration of their needs by both literature and practice. The goal of this paper is to address the point of view of local retailers by exploring their needs about innovative LM delivery services and identifying sustainable value propositions (VP). A survey was submitted to retailers operating in the limited traffic zone of Torino (Italy). The survey data were analyzed by a factor analysis using a principal component analysis (PCA) to extract the factors. A correlation analysis was also conducted between the needs and selected contextual variables. The results show that retailers accept higher costs for more reliable deliveries and stock reduction. Retailers also correlate punctuality and flexibility because flexible and on-time deliveries allow for better inventory management, higher control, and, in turn, improved customer service level. This work is one of the first research attempts to quantify local retailers’ LM delivery needs and provides guidelines about how to design value-added logistics services. Moreover, from a practical point of view, the analysis shows the main VP that managers and practitioners should consider in the development of LM initiatives.

Description: How do people evaluate the transformation of a local music scene under tourism? Using Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage theory, Manuel Castells’ identity theory and Erik Cohen’s authentication theory, we build a framework to judge the authenticity of Naxi music in Lijiang, China, based on interviews, literature analysis and performance analysis. The conclusions are as follows. First, there are significant differences in authenticity among the three stages of Naxi music, as defined by Lacan’s theory. Second, we modify Erik Cohen’s authentication concept from the perspective of Lacan and read the spirit of persistence and innovation as “hot” authentication in the postmirror stage. Naxi musicians have clear project identity, as defined by Manuel Castells. Project identity means that they do not follow the mirror image of tourists blindly and pay attention to music and their own development. This research contributes to the sustainable development of intangible cultural heritage in tourism.