Search Results (5)

This study presents an in-depth analysis of the selection process for primary sectors impacting the economic activity in Romania, employing an interval-valued fuzzy (IVF) approach combined with multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodologies. This research aims to identify eight key criteria influencing the selection of Romanian primary sectors, including technology adaptation, infrastructure development and investment, gross domestic product (GDP), sustainability, employment generation, market demand, risk management and government policies. The current analysis evaluates eight primary sector performances against these eight criteria through the application of three MCDM methods, namely, Simple Additive Weighting (SAW), Weighted Product Model (WPM), and Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS). Ten economic experts comprising a committee have been invited to provide their views on the criteria’s importance and the alternatives’ performance. Based on the decision-maker’s qualitative judgement, GDP acquires the highest weightage, followed by environmental impact and sustainability, thus indicating the most critical factors among the group. The IVF-MCDM hybrid model indicates the energy sector as Romanian primary sector with the most potential, followed by the agriculture and forestry sector among the list of eight alternatives. It also explores the robustness of results by considering sensitivity analysis and the potential impacts of political and international factors, such as pandemics or armed conflicts, on sector selection. The findings indicate consistency in sector rankings across the different methodologies employed, underscoring the importance of methodological choice and criteria weighting. Additionally, this study sheds light on the potential influence of political and international dynamics on sector prioritization, emphasizing the need for comprehensive decision-making frameworks in economic planning processes. Full article

Misinformation on sustainability has become a widespread phenomenon in many different contexts. However, relatively little is known about several important determinants of belief in misinformation, and even less is known about how to debias that belief. The present research proposes and investigates a new effect, the half-truth effect, to explain how message structure can influence belief in misinformation. Two survey-based experiments were conducted to show that people exhibit greater belief in a false claim when it is preceded by a true claim, even if the two claims are logically unrelated. Conversely, when a false claim is presented before the true claim, it reduces the belief in the entire statement. Experiment 1 shows the basic half-truth effect. Experiment 2 investigates an individual difference, propensity to believe meaningless statements are profound, which impacts the half-truth effect. Both experiments also investigate debiasing of the false information. The results of the experiments were analyzed using analysis of variance and regression-based mediation analysis. Results show that belief in misinformation is dependent on message structure, and show that the order in which true and false elements are presented has a strong influence on belief in sustainability misinformation. Finally, we present a discussion of how policy makers can use these findings to identify those people who are most likely to be swayed by the misinformation, and then design responses to debias sustainability misinformation. Full article

The International Energy Agency (2019) states 40% of CO₂ emissions in cities are linked to the buildings stock, in particular to heating and cooling systems, material types and users’ performance. According to Green New Deal, the energy transition of buildings is becoming a priority. This is via investments with low environmental impacts through renewable energy sources. The paper describes an integrated economic-energy-environmental framework (IE³F), i.e., an economic evaluation protocol for new constructions and/or existing renewal projects aimed at supporting the choice phase between alternative technological solutions based on biocompatible materials. The IE³F borrows the logical-operative flow of the life cycle assessment multi-criteria approach. The value aspects translated into monetary terms that characterize the project life cycle are taken into account. The protocol was tested on an emergency project in Italy, namely in Messina City. The results obtained provide evidence of the versatile use of IE³F and its practical utility to guide economic convenience judgements on building investments and choice problems between alternatives in sustainable perspective. The research deepening will be about keeping track of multiple performance levels of the construction, not only the energy performance, and attempting to estimate the corresponding economic value in terms of increase/decrease of construction cost value. Full article

Given the diverse socioecological consequences of rapid urban sprawl worldwide, the delineation and monitoring of urban boundaries have been widely used by local governments as a planning instrument for promoting sustainable development. This study demonstrates a fractal method to delineate urban boundaries based on raster land use maps. The basic logic is that the number of built-up land clusters and their size at each dilation step follows a power-law function. It is assumed that two spatial subsets with distinct fractal characteristics would be obtained when the deviation between the dilation curve and a straight line reaches the top point. The top point is regarded to be the optimum threshold for classifying the built-up land patches, because the fractality of built-up land would no longer exist beyond the threshold. After that, all the built-up land patches are buffered with the optimum threshold and the rank-size distribution of new clusters can be re-plotted. Instead of artificial judgement, hierarchical agglomerative clustering is utilized to automatically classify the urban and rural clusters. The approach was applied to the case of Shanghai, the most rapidly urbanizing megacity in China, and the dynamic changes of the urban boundaries from 1994 to 2016 were analyzed. On this basis, urban–rural differences were further explored through several fractal or nonfractal indices. The results show that the proposed fractal approach can accurately distinguish the urban boundary without subjective choice of thresholds. Extraordinarily different fractal dimensions, aggregation and density and similar average compactness were further identified between built-up land in urban and rural areas. The dynamic changes in the urban boundary indicated rapid urban sprawl within Shanghai during the study period. In view of the popularization and global availability of raster land use maps, this paper adds fuels to the cutting-edge topic of distinguishing the morphological criteria to universally describe urban boundaries. Full article

Symmetry is an important cue for the aesthetic judgment of beauty. Using a binary forced-choice format in a cued mixed design, Jacobsen and Höfel (2003) compared aesthetic judgments of beauty and symmetry judgments of novel graphic patterns. A late posterior sustained negativity elicited by symmetric patterns was observed in the symmetry judgment condition, but not in the beauty judgement condition. Therefore, this negativity appeared to be mainly driven by the task.In a series of studies, Bertamini, Makin, and colleagues observed a comparable sustained posterior negativity (SPN) to symmetric stimuli, mainly taken to reflect obligatory symmetry processing independent of task requirements. We reanalyzed the data by Jacobsen and Höfel (2003) using similar parameters for data analysis as Bertamini, Makin, and colleagues to examine these apparent differences. The reanalysis confirmed both a task-driven effect on the posterior sustained negativity/SPN to symmetric patterns in the symmetry judgment condition and a strong symmetry-driven SPN to symmetric patterns. Differences between the references used for analyses of the electroencephalogram (EEG) had an effect. Based on the reanalysis, the Jacobsen and Höfel (2003) data also fit well with Bertamini’s, Makin’s, and colleagues’ account of obligatory symmetry processing. Full article