Search Results (879)

Tourism is a complex economic activity all over the world shaped by distinct local resources: culture, nature, industrial heritage, urban ambiance, place-based uniqueness, and geographical accessibility. The simultaneous governance and management of economic growth motives, preservation of the cultural heritage base, and respect for nature and ecological quality calls for an evidence-based and multi-faceted policy analysis that seeks to achieve sustainable development among conflicting policy objectives in tourist areas. The present paper seeks to explore the feasibility of a sustainable balance for various heterogeneous cultural heritage areas in Europe (‘urban pilot regions’), with particular attention to sustainable local development characterized by circular economic objectives and an ecological balance strategy based on the principle of stakeholders’ co-creation. The paper addresses the knowledge gap between generic policy aims and site-specific views of actors or visitors. To that end, an extensive survey experiment was administered in the urban regions concerned, in which a wide range of relevant management issues/questions related to environmental preferences and perceptions were posed to stakeholders and visitors. The data were analyzed by means of a novel respondent-oriented multivariate statistical tool, viz. Generalized Q-Analysis, which is suitable for handling big databases with many respondents. The paper shows that the application of Generalized Q-Analysis to common survey data enriches the results from the application of a conventional Q-Analysis. Furthermore, the study also highlights that, based on the views expressed by the surveyed visitors, the tourist areas concerned are quite different from each other in attracting specific classes of visitors. Therefore, functional specialization in the tourist sector seems to be an important anchor point for effective governance of urban tourism, not only in Europe, but also elsewhere in the world. Full article

This study investigated the dynamic volatility connectedness among financial technology (FinTech), green indices, and global uncertainty metrics between June 2018 and May 2025. The research was conducted to understand how technological innovation and sustainability indices interact with systemic risk during periods of extreme global stress, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and the market disruptions of early 2025. The analysis employed a time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) framework to capture time-varying interdependencies and risk spillovers across multiple market regimes. Key findings indicated that total dynamic connectedness intensified significantly during crisis events, with major spikes occurring during the 2020 pandemic onset and the 2025 shocks possibly related to the “DeepSeek” AI disruption and the US tariff announcements. FinTech indices and green assets consistently functioned as net transmitters of shocks, while uncertainty indices, particularly the VIX, served as net recipients. Notably, the Alternative Finance Index (AFI) exhibited regime-dependent behaviour, transitioning from a transmitter to a recipient during the COVID-19 pandemic. These results imply that innovative and sustainable sectors have evolved into systemic drivers of global market sentiment rather than mere recipients of external shocks. The findings provide critical insights for stakeholders in financial markets, helping them to rethink their current approaches and prevent financial losses amid market upheaval. Full article

The growing volume of tourism in European mountain national parks has resulted in numerous conflicts between nature conservation and the expectations of various stakeholder groups. Exceeding ecological and social carrying capacities has led to an ongoing debate on implementing visitor limits and further restrictions, the effectiveness of which strongly depends on public understanding and acceptance. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to assess the level of knowledge regarding the general system of nature conservation, attitudes toward potential regulations, and their impact on conservation and tourism development across three stakeholder groups. A non-probability, purposive-convenience sampling strategy was utilized due to the specific characteristics of the surveyed stakeholder groups. The research was conducted using an online questionnaire distributed to tourists, mountain guides, and employees of the Babia Góra, Gorce, Pieniny, and Tatra National Parks, resulting in a total sample of 106 respondents. Statistical differences among the national parks employees (n = 24), mountain guides (n = 42) and tourists (n = 40) were analyzed using the Fisher–Freeman–Halton exact test due to violated Chi-square assumptions, supplemented by Cramér’s V for effect size. The study demonstrated that national park employees and mountain guides possessed significantly higher factual knowledge regarding biodiversity threats and zoning regulations compared to tourists. Significant differences among stakeholder groups were confirmed across multiple dimensions (p = 0.005 to 0.05), with Cramér’s V values indicating moderate relationships (V = 0.21 to 0.26). Conversely, national park employees and tourists expressed stronger support for expanding protected areas, whereas mountain guides more frequently associated new national parks with tourism restrictions. Moreover, the majority of respondents across all stakeholder groups agreed that: (i) nature protection is the main goal of national park establishment; (ii) educational activities are the most effective methods of protecting nature from tourism-related threats; (iii) leaving trails should be banned in all national parks, and (iv) seasonal limits on tourist entry should be obligatory in the most frequently visited parks. The lack of significant differences was confirmed by statistical test (p = 0.08–0.93). Considering the findings of this preliminary investigation, it is suggested that future research directions should include additional stakeholder groups and encompass a wider geographical area. Full article

Cultural heritage sites are affected by environmental and anthropogenic pressures that require decision-analysis methods capable of combining heterogeneous datasets while accounting for uncertainty. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), particularly when integrated with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Earth Observation (EO) data, is widely used in geospatial analysis involving multiple, often conflicting criteria. This review examines the evolution, application domains, and methodological challenges of MCDA in cultural heritage risk assessment. The literature indicates a predominant reliance on weighting-based methods, especially the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined with GIS-based weighted overlay techniques, while uncertainty treatment, temporal monitoring, validation, and multi-threat applications remain limited. Three illustrative applications show that asset-level, regional susceptibility, and historic-urban frameworks address complementary decision needs but differ in their data, expertise, and institutional requirements. Recent developments show a trend to combine MCDA with fuzzy logic, machine learning, and uncertainty modeling, although methodological consistency across these approaches remains uneven. The findings suggest that multi-criteria risk assessment for cultural heritage may depend less on introducing new analytical techniques and more on improving the integration of existing methods. Incorporating repeatable environmental observations, sensitivity analyses, multi-threat assessment, and stakeholder participation may support a more coherent and reproducible approach to heritage-risk assessment. Full article

There is a large and rapidly growing stock of retired power batteries from new energy vehicles in China. Unregulated informal recycling and improper disposal of these waste batteries trigger serious environmental hazards. Though a batch of regulatory policies on battery recycling have been released in recent years, the power battery recycling sector still faces prominent governance bottlenecks, especially ambiguous responsibility division and poor implementability under the entrusted recycling mode. To fill the existing research gap regarding tripartite interest conflicts and pricing mechanisms in entrusted recycling, this paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game model covering power battery producers, recyclers and government regulators. Two pricing models are further developed to distinguish producer self-operated recycling and third-party entrusted recycling channels. Numerical simulation is adopted to investigate multi-stakeholder interest contradictions, dynamic evolutionary trajectories and equilibrium stability of the recycling system, and the influences of subsidy intensity, supervision intensity and recycling cost on participants’ strategic choices are quantitatively analyzed. The research results demonstrate that inadequate government supervision and insufficient economic returns for formal recyclers serve as the primary obstacles hindering the effective deployment of entrusted recycling. An inherent and reasonable price gap exists between self-operated and entrusted recycling modes. Essentially, the price differential of standardized entrusted recycling represents the profit margin conceded by producers to recyclers instead of direct financial subsidies. To solve existing industry problems, this study proposes targeted recommendations for tripartite collaboration. The government should refine the regulatory framework of Extended Producer Responsibility and adopt differentiated reward and penalty mechanisms. Producers are expected to standardize entrusted recycling management and formulate a scientific pricing range for retired batteries. Recyclers ought to advance recycling technologies and maintain standardized operations. Collective efforts from all stakeholders can facilitate the long-term sustainability of the closed-loop recycling system for retired power batteries. Full article

Background: Maritime container shipping carries over 80% of global trade, yet compliance verification creates a confidentiality–verifiability conflict: carriers treat telemetry as commercially sensitive, while regulators, insurers, and port authorities require verifiable proof that cargo remained within specification. The EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) mandates Digital Product Passports (DPPs), but no standardised DPP architecture exists for the multi-stakeholder maritime domain. Methods: We present Ocean DPP, a blockchain-anchored platform combining GS1 EPCIS 2.0, oneM2M, IOTA, and Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), letting stakeholders verify compliance predicates without revealing raw sensor values; Merkle-tree batching reduces anchoring costs. We evaluate it in 16 experiments on a single-host testbed using synthetic workloads and a local IOTA network. Results: The platform achieved 95th-percentile latency of 48 ms without ZKP and 500 ms with proof generation, throughput of 7 events/s per host, 304 ms mean proof generation and 9.8 ms verification, 100% EPCIS 2.0 compliance, and zero permanent message loss across four failure-injection scenarios; horizontal scaling reduced the median latency by 37%. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, Ocean DPP is the first implemented, quantitatively evaluated platform integrating EPCIS 2.0, oneM2M, IOTA, and Groth16 ZKPs for privacy-preserving maritime DPPs; broader multi-host and public-network validation remains for future work. Full article

Forest-product certification now operates at the intersection of private sustainability governance, market access, and mandatory due diligence. This structured narrative review asks how Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) certification, together with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), affect competitiveness and the distribution of compliance costs in Polish business-to-business and export-oriented wood-product supply chains. A documented revision-stage search and screening procedure produced an evidence base of 55 peer-reviewed, regulatory, statistical, and sectoral sources. The analytical framework combines private-governance theory, stakeholder conflict analysis, and relationship marketing to examine information asymmetry, bargaining power, cost allocation, and market access. The Polish case is characterised by a large publicly owned forest resource, extensive but overlapping FSC and PEFC coverage, and strongly export-oriented downstream industries. Certification can reduce buyer verification costs, support supplier qualification, improve traceability, and protect access to demanding markets. However, fixed audit, documentation, digitalisation, and certified-material costs are borne disproportionately by small and medium-sized enterprises, especially where lead buyers do not share adaptation costs. EUDR strengthens these asymmetries because certified status can support, but does not replace, legal due diligence. The review contributes a governance-based explanation of why the same sustainability requirements can generate resilience and market access for digitally mature exporters while creating entry barriers, supplier exclusion, and concentration risks for smaller firms. Policy support should therefore combine clear demand signals, group certification, shared traceability infrastructure, advisory services, and buyer–supplier cost-sharing arrangements. Full article

Oil extraction and agricultural production are central to North Dakota’s economy, yet their spatial interactions remain poorly understood. This study conducts a statewide geospatial analysis integrating OpenStreetMap data, GIS processing, DBSCAN clustering, and spatial statistics to examine the colocation of 7102 oil well and 4277 grain silo sites. Hotspot and spatial heterogeneity tests using the Getis–Ord Gi* statistic and local Moran’s I reveal a pronounced spatial divide: oil activity is tightly clustered in the western Bakken region, whereas grain storage facilities concentrate across central and eastern counties. The limited geographic overlap suggests minimal systemic land-use conflict, though localized high-intensity interactions emerge in McKenzie, Dunn, and Mountrail counties. These patterns provide stakeholders with insight into potential shared logistics pressures and localized land-use tensions. More broadly, the study demonstrates the value of spatial data mining techniques applied to free, publicly available data for identifying intersectoral industrial patterns that inform policy and infrastructure planning across North Dakota. Full article

Bioeconomy has become an increasingly important concept for sustainable development. However, given its inherently complex nature across sectors, its governance remains complex. Currently, bioeconomy governance literature is fragmented across sectors and policy domains. The study aims to analyse bioeconomy governance solutions across the literature. The study employs a systematic literature review, following the PRISMA guidelines and configurative meta-synthesis, analysing 114 studies. The study descriptively determines trends and evolution of the bioeconomy, while for good governance criteria, accountability, transparency, participation, effectiveness/efficiency, equity/fairness, and conflict management are applied as the analytical tool for the meta-synthesis. The descriptive findings show that Europe is predominantly studied, and a persistent disciplinary concentration is in forest-related bioeconomy research. Hybrid and multi-level governance approaches were suggested as the best governance approach across the domain. The meta-synthesis identifies collaboration, policy coherence, political support, stakeholder engagement, transparent information, innovation support, and fair benefit distribution as key solutions for bioeconomy governance. However, these governance solutions in themselves require careful organisation to minimise conflicts, align sectoral objectives, and ensure inclusive decision-making. The study concludes that bioeconomy governance solutions are highly interdependent and that no single good-governance criterion can operate effectively in isolation. Full article

Resilient and sustainable industrial site reclamation is a critical challenge in post-disaster recovery, particularly in contexts marked by institutional uncertainty, limited resources, and competing stakeholder priorities. Decisions on industrial relocation and redevelopment are essential for achieving balanced urban growth and efficient land use but are often constrained by conflicting socio-economic, environmental, and governance objectives. This study develops a scalable decision-support framework based on the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) to evaluate alternative industrial site reclamation strategies under uncertainty. The framework integrates economic, environmental, social and land use criteria within a hierarchical decision structure and employs triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs) together with Buckley’s geometric mean aggregation to derive priority weights from expert judgements. The framework is demonstrated using the Al-Qaboun industrial area in post-disaster Damascus. Results indicate that relocation to Adra Industrial City represents the preferred reclamation strategy. A sensitivity analysis demonstrates the stability of the prioritisation under alternative weighting scenarios, confirming the robustness of the proposed framework. The framework is transferable because its hierarchical structure can be adapted to different industrial sites by modifying evaluation criteria and stakeholder inputs while retaining the same FAHP methodology. The study provides a transparent decision-support approach for resilient industrial redevelopment and contributes to Sustainable Development Goal 11. Full article

Background/Objectives: Healthcare systems increasingly operate through dense networks of clinicians, managers, public health authorities, institutions, and communities. Disagreement is no longer confined to bedside decisions; it also affects coordination, legitimacy, and implementation at system level. Bioethics, administrative governance, and consultation processes address important parts of this problem, but they do not by themselves provide a dedicated process for handling persistent disagreement, mistrust, and competing values across actors and institutions. This paper proposes medical–bioethical mediation as a potential governance innovation for sustainable, efficient, and resilient healthcare systems. Methods: This is a conceptual framework paper based on an integrative synthesis of selected literature in clinical bioethics mediation, medical mediation, public health ethics, deliberative and participatory governance, trust, inter-organizational coordination, health governance, and health system resilience. It does not report empirical research or a systematic review. Results: The proposed population-level framework is organized around seven linked components: conflict identification, stakeholder mapping, ethical issue clarification, mediation, negotiated solutions, implementation, and feedback and learning. These components form three broader moments: diagnosis, mediated deliberation, and implementation with learning. The framework identifies mechanisms through which mediation may affect health system governance, including conflict transformation, structured ethical deliberation, participation, trust-building, coordination, and adaptive learning. Illustrative scenarios include resource allocation, inter-organizational coordination, public health restrictions, vaccine mistrust, and system reform. The framework is proposed as a hypothesis-generating governance model rather than as a tested intervention. Conclusions: Medical–bioethical mediation should be considered beyond the bedside as a possible system-level governance approach. Its potential value lies in helping health systems manage recurring ethical and institutional conflict more constructively and may strengthen the conditions for legitimacy, coordination, implementation, and learning. Its potential contribution should be understood as plausible but unproven at population level and should be evaluated through pilot implementation, economic analysis, and comparative case research. Full article

Innovation districts have emerged as a prominent urban strategy to catalyse knowledge-based development and economic growth. Yet their contribution to sustainability and an understanding of what they entail beyond economic growth remains underexplored. This paper proposes a conceptual framework rooted in urban monitoring to identify and synthesise the contributions of innovation districts (or similar development strategies) into the city’s sustainable development. Specifically, it targets the initial processes of intention and objective setting, where different and conflicting policies overlap to define definite city-level objectives. Using Oslo as a single embedded case study, the paper further proposes a methodology for identifying and localising urban sustainability indicators (USIs) based on the city’s three innovation districts: Oslo Science City, Hovinbyen Circular Oslo, and Punkt Oslo. This methodology integrates global frameworks, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Urban Monitoring Framework, with local priorities and stakeholder perspectives through a combined top-down and bottom-up approach. The process resulted in a set of 40 indicators across five sustainability domains—social, environmental, economic, cultural, and governance—revealing governance as a critical enabler for sustainable implementation. While most indicators stem from theoretical conceptions of innovation districts, governance indicators rather reflect local experiences and institutional dynamics. Full article

The 15 min city offers a framework for sustainable urban environments. However, its application in historic centres faces challenges such as tourist pressure and heritage fragility. This paper explores cultural heritage as a strategic resource for urban resilience within the European ENACT-15 mC project. The methodology applies four lines of research—socio-economic diagnosis, educational innovation, participatory action research, and digital tool implementation—to the historic centre of Valencia. The study involved 42 students from architecture, commerce and tourism programmes in documenting a selected sample of historic commercial establishments protected by the Special Protection Plan of Ciutat Vella (PEP 2020), while community workshops recruited 30 stakeholders representing local associations, businesses and heritage-related actors to analyse urban conflicts and functional transformation. Results show that integrating educational and participatory approaches facilitates the generation of situated knowledge and social co-responsibility. The technical documentation and diagnostic reports produced serve as empirical evidence of how heritage can be monitored and protected in urban settings under tension. The study concludes that cultural heritage provides a vital social infrastructure for building resilient communities. By bridging the gap between academic research and local agency through digital and participatory mapping, this integrated model provides adaptive intervention strategies that balance tourism demands with the preservation of everyday local life and the proximity economy in heritage-rich environments. Full article

Both domestic and wild animals are frequently affected by accidental, intentional, or illegal poisoning globally, but data from some regions, including Italy, remain scarce. This study aimed to characterize animal poisoning events in a central Italian region over the period 2011–2020. A total of 2722 suspected cases were analyzed, of which 51.3% were confirmed positive for at least one poison. Among the 1397 confirmed cases, 863 animal carcasses and 534 poisoned baits were recorded, corresponding to 762 distinct poisoning events. The most frequently involved toxicants were metaldehyde, carbamates, and organophosphorus pesticides, followed by anticoagulant rodenticides and other compounds. Spatial analysis revealed distinct patterns in the use of toxicants. Sub-regional areas encompassing national and regional parks were primarily associated with agricultural pesticides, whereas urban areas were dominated by metaldehyde and anticoagulant rodenticides. These differences suggest that, in addition to their illegal nature, poisoning events may reflect underlying socio-environmental conflicts between humans and animals. The results highlight the value of an interdisciplinary approach to mitigate poisoning, involving coordinated efforts among scientific, veterinary, enforcement, and public stakeholders. Such strategies could reduce both the frequency and ecological impact of this illegal practice. Full article

As a city rich in historical and cultural heritage, Guangzhou has made substantial efforts to protect and revitalise its historic districts. This study examines Yongqing Fang, a well-known commercialised historic district in Guangzhou, to understand how tourism-driven development reshapes everyday life and the interactions among its diverse users. Using comparative analysis, interviews, and NVivo 12 coding, the research explores how longstanding residents and newer occupants adjust to the rapidly evolving environment. The findings reveal that urban renewal and commercialisation have undermined local culture and social networks, altering how spaces are used. While lifestyle differences are evident among different user groups, the study also highlights instances of alienation and conflict, as well as moments of positive interaction and mutual support. The research emphasises the importance of inclusive strategies in heritage renewal and raises the question, drawing attention to the challenges faced by marginalised users in commercialised historic districts. It offers recommendations for policymakers, urban planners, and other stakeholders to balance heritage preservation with the social and economic needs of communities, fostering sustainable integration of tourism and local life in historic districts. Full article