Search Results (12)

Sustainable food consumption is crucial for mitigating environmental degradation and promoting social and economic well-being. Despite growing interest in sustainability, significant challenges persist in consumer adoption and market integration. This study conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to explore the key drivers, obstacles, technological innovations, and corporate strategies shaping sustainable food consumption. The review synthesizes findings from peer-reviewed research published between 2015 and 2024, analyzing patterns across economic, geographic, and sociobehavioral contexts. Health concerns and environmental awareness are primary drivers, complemented by ethical values, taste perception, and social norms. However, economic constraints, limited product availability, lack of awareness, and behavioral inertia hinder its widespread adoption. Technological advancements, including digital platforms, AI-driven food safety solutions, blockchain for traceability, and alternative proteins, present opportunities to address these challenges. Corporate initiatives such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), fair-trade programs, and eco-labeling enhance consumer trust and accessibility. This study highlights key research gaps, particularly regarding cross-cultural variations in sustainable consumption patterns, long-term behavioral shifts, and the role of digital interventions in influencing consumer decision-making. A multi-stakeholder approach involving academia, businesses, and policymakers is crucial for developing strategies to facilitate the transition toward a sustainable and resilient food system. Full article

Consumers encounter significant psychological and social barriers that hinder their participation in ecological transitions. Green influencers (or Greenfluencers), through their communication style and perceived credibility, have the potential to increase consumer awareness and engagement with circular practices. Previous research has focused on green influencers’ role in eco-friendly purchases, but their impact on promoting circular economy behaviors is less studied. To address this gap, the present explorative study investigates how green influencers’ communication can shape consumers’ perceptions of the barriers to adopting circular economies. Using a single case study of the Italian Greenfluencer “@Eco.narratrice” (Elisa Nicoli), this paper examines how green content creators’ communication can address psychological and social obstacles that prevent consumers from embracing circular models in the Italian context. Our findings reveal a different impact of Greenfluencer communication effectiveness on consumer perceptions of circular economy adoption barriers. While Greenfluencer communication helps reduce barriers like knowledge gaps and psychological essentialism, it may also heighten concerns about switching costs, inertia, and cynicism. The findings contribute to the growing literature on green influencers, offering new insights into the broader effects of their communication on consumer engagement with circular economies. This research provides insights for marketing managers on leveraging Greenfluencers to promote circular business models. It also provides feedback for Greenfluencers to refine their communication strategies, helping them better address consumer perceptions of CE barriers, particularly in areas where their efforts may fail to achieve the desired impact. Full article

Along with the trend of aircraft electrification, the penetration of power electronics converters in aircraft energy systems is gradually deepening. Due to the nonlinear behavior and low inertia of aircraft power grids, voltage overshooting and oscillation may occur. Therefore, a voltage surge monitor (VSM) is a safety-critical part in more-electric and electric propulsion aircrafts. VSMs often need a time delay response, so a stable delay time is important. Microprocessors and timer chips can realize accurate time delays but are relatively expensive. Having an extremely low cost and simple structure, RC filters with a discharge diode are popular in consumer electronics operating under narrow temperature ranges (0 °C~70 °C). However, it is unsuitable for aircrafts because of its severe temperature drift cause by the discharge diode. In this paper, a low-cost VSM with temperature compensation is proposed. A detailed mathematical model, simulation, and hardware experiments are conducted for demonstration and verification. Results have shown that the delay time of our VSM circuit has low temperature drift (<0.15%) and accuracy comparable to the typical timer chip LTC6994. Full article

With the continuous improvement in people’s living standards and the change in consumption concept, green food is favored by more and more consumers. Consumer repurchase behavior is a necessary condition to activate the market, expand the consumption scale and stabilize the continuous growth of the market. Repurchase intention is the most direct factor affecting consumers’ green food repurchase intention. Therefore, it is necessary to study consumers green food repurchase intentions. This study collects data from 303 consumer surveys on green food consumption to explore the impact of consumer satisfaction with consumption experience on green food repurchase intention and further explore the mechanisms and influence boundaries. The results show that (1) consumer experience satisfaction positively affects green food repurchase intention; (2) consumer experience satisfaction can improve consumers’ green food repurchase intention through consumer perceptions of social value, green self-efficacy and warm glow; (3) the higher the degree of consumer inertia, the stronger the influence of green self-efficacy and warm glow on consumers’ green food repurchase intention; and (4) the higher the degree of consumer subjective norms, the stronger the influence of consumer perceived social value, green self-efficacy and warm glow on the consumer’s green food repurchase intention. This study provides a new perspective and theoretical framework for promoting consumers’ green food repurchase intention, and it may have certain theoretical significance and practical impact on green food market growth, sustainable carrying of the ecological environment and high-quality development of agriculture. Full article

Corrosion directly affects the structural stiffness of a steel element, reducing the thickness, thus inertia, due to the gradual deterioration of the material. Quickly identifying corrosion damage to the stiffness of a steel structure is a challenge in coastal environments since corrosion progresses rapidly, and traditional methods of inspection and diagnosis are time-consuming and costly. This is an important issue; therefore, characterization of the corrosion level represents a key element in making decisions regarding maintenance or structural integrity. This work estimates the relationship between the corrosion level in steel structures and their dynamic parameters using ambient vibration records. It comprises the characterization of the dynamic behavior and corrosion state of three full-scale pedestrian bridges with similar geometry, material, and structural configuration characteristics but with significant differences in the degree of deterioration. The structures were instrumented with piezoelectric sensors connected to a portable data acquisition system; the recorded information was analyzed with optimization algorithms in Python based on the power spectral density (PSD) of the vibrations of each bridge. The parameters obtained related to the degree of corrosion determine the incidence of the level of deterioration in the structural behavior, thus involving changes in its stiffness and mass. Full article

Additive manufacturing technologies enable the production of components with lightweight cores, by means of infills with various patterns and densities. Together with reduced mass and material consumption, infill geometries must ensure that strength and stiffness conditions are fulfilled. For the proper correlation of the infill type with the loading case of the part, the mechanical behavior of the infill along all three principal axes of inertia has to be known. In this paper, the behavior in symmetric and asymmetric bending of three infill geometries, commonly used in 3D printing processes (honeycomb, grid and triangles) is analyzed. The variations of deflections as a function of force orientation are presented, showing that honeycomb and triangular structures exhibit similar behaviors along the Y and Z principal axes of inertia. Furthermore, the displacements obtained for the three types of structures are compared, in relation to the consumed volume of material. The larger displacements of the grid structure compared to the honeycomb and triangular structures are highlighted. Full article

Subscription decision in the telecom market is quite complex and cumbersome, invoking decision inertia in consumers and resulting in suboptimal choices. We implemented choice inertia and consumer interaction as an agent-based model to better understand the process. The model illustrates that with adequate peer interactions with active consumers, inactive consumers could overcome their inertia significantly and switch to a better alternative. Furthermore, the newly converted active consumers influenced their inert neighbors as a ripple effect. Active consumers contribute to firm profits and healthy market competition. Moreover, in environments with low neighborhood effects and a stronger inertia threshold, firms are able to maintain profits by retaining inert consumers. We show that apart from the attractiveness of market offerings, firms can benefit from understanding consumer inertia and devising means to reduce it. Full article

The thermal inertia properties of construction elements have gained a great deal of importance in building design over the last few years. Many investigations have shown that this is the key factor to improve energy efficiency and obtain optimal comfort conditions in buildings. However, experimental tests are expensive and time consuming and the development of new products requires shorter analysis times. In this sense, the goal of this research is to analyze the thermal behavior of a wall made up of lightweight concrete blocks covered with layers of insulating materials in steady- and transient-state conditions. For this, numerical and experimental studies were done, taking outdoor temperature and relative humidity as a function of time into account. Furthermore, multi-criteria optimization based on the design of the experimental methodology is used to minimize errors in thermal material properties and to understand the main parameters that influence the numerical simulation of thermal inertia. Numerical Finite Element Models (FEM) will take conduction, convection and radiation phenomena in the recesses of lightweight concrete blocks into account, as well as the film conditions established in the UNE-EN ISO 6946 standard. Finally, the numerical ISO-13786 standard and the experimental results are compared in terms of wall thermal transmittance, thermal flux, and temperature evolution, as well as the dynamic thermal inertia parameters, showing a good agreement in some cases, allowing builders, architects, and engineers to develop new construction elements in a short time with the new proposed methodology. Full article

An experimental and numerical study is presented in the current work for gas entrainment using an inverted vertical U-tube. Water flows vertically up in an inverted U-tube which creates a low-pressure region in the tube upper portion. This low-pressure region can be used to extract gases by connecting it to a branch pipe. The extracted gases considered in this work are a mixture of air and water vapor. The water vapor from the side branch pipe is mixed with the flowing water under the siphon effect. This results in a progressive water vapor condensation as the mixture proceeds towards the exit due to an increase in vapor partial pressure. The air is drawn by inertia to be released out at the tube lower exit of the inverted U-pipe. The current study deals with these complicated flow behaviors due to the mixing undergoing condensation. A test rig is designed for experimentally studying the behavior of water flow in an inverted U-tube where the air is mixed with the flowing water at the top region of this tube. The CFD computations are accomplished for a side gas mixture with volume fractions up to 0.7 with water vapor mass fractions in this mixture to be 0.1–0.5. The tested water mass flow rates in the main tube are 2, 4, 6, 8 kg/s to account for all possible flow mass ratios. The CFD computations are validated with water and air two phase flow with the measurements of both the experiments of the current research and the literature. The present results reveal that slightly raising the water mass flow rate at a constant side mixture mass ratio produces a reduced generated pressure in the upper tube part. This is attributed to extra water vapor condensation taking place rapidly by increasing the water flow rate in the tube upper part. Furthermore, the turbulence quantities begin to break down at a side mixture volume fraction of 0.55 with water and air mass flow rates of 2 kg/s and 0.002 kg/s, respectively. On the other side, raising the air mass flow rate at the higher values of water vapor and water mass flow rates breaks the generated vacuum pressure and turbulence due to entrainment. Moreover, this proposed framework can produce a lower static pressure, reaching 55.1 kPa, which makes it attractive for gas extraction. This new technique presents innovative usage with less consumable energy for extracting gases in engineering equipment. Full article

The increasing integration of renewable energies reduces the inertia of power systems and thus adds stiffness to grid dynamics. For this reason, methods to obtain virtual inertia have been proposed to imitate mechanical behavior of rotating generators, but, usually, these methods rely on extra power reserves. In this paper, a novel ancillary service is proposed to alleviate frequency transients by smoothing the electromagnetic torque of synchronous generators due to change of active power consumed by loads. Being implemented by grid-tied inverters of renewables, the ancillary service regulates the reactive power flow in response to frequency transients, thereby demanding no additional power reserves and having little impact on renewables’ active power generation. Differently from the active power compensation by virtual inertia methods, it aims to low-pass filter the transients of the active power required to synchronous generators. The proposed ancillary service is firstly verified in simulation in comparison with the virtual inertia method, and afterwards tested on processor by controller-hardware-in-the-loop simulation, analysing practical issues and providing indications for making the algorithm suitable in real implementation. The ancillary service proves effective in damping frequency transients and appropriate to be used in grid with distributed power generators. Full article

The carbon emission problem in China needs to be solved urgently. Industrial symbiosis, as an effective means to improve resource efficiency, can better alleviate the carbon emission problem. Under such a circumstance, this paper regards an industrial symbiosis system as a collection of producers, consumers and decomposers, and analyzes the strategic selections and behavioral characteristics of their carbon emission reduction activities through a tripartite evolutionary game model, and then the effects of related parameters on the evolutionary stable strategies of stakeholders are discussed. The results demonstrate that: (1) the regular return and the rate of return determine the ability of stakeholders to undertake carbon reduction activities; (2) the initial willingness of stakeholders to participate will affect the evolutionary speed of the strategies; (3) a high opportunity cost reduces the inertia of stakeholders to carry out carbon emission reductions; (4) producers, consumers and decomposers can avoid “free rides” by signing agreements or adopting punitive measures. Full article

Increasing the penetration levels of renewable energy sources (RESs) in microgrids (MGs) may lead to frequency instability issues due to intermittent nature of RESs and low inertia of MG generating units. On the other hand, presence of electric vehicles (EVs), as new high-electricity- consuming appliances, can be a good opportunity to contribute in mitigating the frequency deviations and help the system stability. This paper proposes an optimal charging/discharging scheduling of EVs with the goal of improving frequency stability of MG during autonomous operating condition. To this end, an efficient approach is applied to reschedule the generating units considering the EVs owners’ behaviors. An EV power controller (EVPC) is also designed to determine charge and discharge process of EVs based on the forecasted day-ahead load and renewable generation profiles. The performance of the proposed strategy is tested in different operating scenarios and compared to those from non-optimized methodologies. Numerical simulations indicate that the MG performance improves considerably in terms of economy and stability using the proposed strategy. Full article