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The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of climate change and water salinity on farmer’s income risk with future outlook mitigation. Salinity and climate change are a threat to agricultural productivity worldwide. However, the combined effects of climate change and salinity impacts on farmers' income are not well understood, particularly in developing countries.

The response-yield function and general maximum entropy methods were used to predict the impact of temperature, precipitation and salinity on crop yield. The target minimization of total absolute deviations (MOTAD)-positive mathematical programming model was used to simulate the impact of climate change and salinity on socioeconomic and environmental indicators. In the end, a multicriteria decision-making model was used, aiming at the selection of suitable climate scenarios.

The results revealed that precipitation shows a significantly decreasing trend, while temperature and groundwater salinity (EC) illustrate a significantly increasing trend. Climate change and EC negatively impact the farmer's income and water shadow prices. Maximum reduction in income and water shadow prices was observed for A2 scenario (−12.4% and 19.4%) during 2050. The environmental index was the most important, with priority of 43.4% compared to socioeconomic indicators. Subindex amount of water used was also significant in study area, with 28.1% priority. The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution ranking system found that B1 was the best climatic scenario for adopting climate change adaptation in the research region.

In this study, farmers' income threats were assessed with the aspects of different climate scenario (A1, A1B and B1) over the horizons of 2030, 2040 and 2050 and three different indicators (economic, social and environmental) in Northwestern region of Pakistan. Only in arid and semiarid regions has climate change raised temperature and reduced rainfall, which are preliminary symptoms of growing salinity.

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has been a good example of a Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) world. Higher educational institutions (HEIs) have faced a massive hit because the jobs in this industry have become unexpected. Considering the most valuable assets ‘Teachers’ crunched in the VUCA crisis, the study intends to determine if personal harmony (PH) and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) would enhance teachers’ job satisfaction (JS).

Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected from the teachers of Indian HEIs and teachers who have experienced the impact of the COVID-19 catastrophe (VUCA). Considering the pandemic restrictions, data have been collected through an online survey (N = 364).

Practical Implications: PH is an individual’s internal quality and attribute that cannot be developed on force or situational need. Even in an uncertain situation, teachers have tried their best to contribute through professional service. Hence, people who possess PH contribute their best even though unsatisfied with their jobs.

Originality/value: This study has focused on finding the relationship between two different variables, PH and OCB (which has not been explored in Asian countries, majorly in India, where it has a vast cultural diversity and structure influencing the educational policies) that hinders the factors influencing JS, where these two variables are highly influenced by hygiene factors such as values, culture, ethical standards, personal belief, leadership styles, and fair treatment showcased by the organisations/institutions.

This paper aims to analyze the adoption of social media platforms by tourists in Pakistan. Based on an adaptation of the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study assesses the factors that lead users to adopt these platforms.

A survey was administered to a convenience sample of 399 travelers who use social media in Pakistan. A Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using AMOS to evaluate convergent and discriminant validity as well as composite reliability. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the causal relationship among all proposed constructs.

The findings reveal that the perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEoU) of a social media platform positively impact the behavioral intention of its users. The proposed constructs of compatibility, enjoyment, user expertise and e-trust all demonstrated their crucial roles in the adoption of a social media platform for tourism-related activities by enhancing the platform's PEoU and usefulness.

This research validates the relationship between PEoU and PU of a social media platform in the hospitality industry. Interestingly, this study has expanded TAM by validating the addition of four more constructs, (1) compatibility, (2) enjoyment, (3) e-trust, and (4) expertise, to add worth to this model regarding the understanding of social media usage in this specific industry. The findings are valuable both for managers and policymakers in the tourism sector in Pakistan, as the latter can utilize the results to entice a larger segment of social media users to the tourism industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of zakat (the Islamic tax) in alleviating poverty and inequality in Pakistan using a newly developed index, namely, the Basic Needs Deficiency Index (BNDI).

The study formulates an index (BNDI) to measure the deficiency and effectiveness of zakat as one of the different items of government expenditure/spending to alleviate poverty. In this paper, Pakistan is chosen as a case study for two reasons: the availability and accessibility of data required for computing BNDI; and, in the past, no index such as this had been used to measure poverty in Pakistan.

The results obtained from the computation of the BNDI have been able to explain the effectiveness of zakat in alleviating poverty and inequality in Pakistan.

The findings of the study can be used by policymakers to measure and improve the effectiveness of zakat in reducing poverty and inequality.

As the ultimate beneficiaries of zakat are the poor people, the outcome of this study may help improve their quality of life.

The paper develops a new methodology to measure poverty alleviation in Pakistan, focusing on the poor households’ consumption/expenditure on basic needs, government spending in terms of zakat and the number of zakat recipients as the three main determinants. The index developed in the present study can be applied to measure the performance of all Muslim countries whose provision of zakat is embedded in the national agenda to alleviate poverty.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between exports, financial development and economic growth in case of Pakistan.

The autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration and error correction model are applied to test the long-run and short-run relationships, respectively. The direction of causality between the variables is investigated by the vector error correction model Granger causality test and robustness of causality analysis is tested by applying innovative accounting approach.

The analysis confirms cointegration for the long-run relation between exports, economic growth and financial development in case of Pakistan. The results indicate that economic growth and financial development spur exports growth in Pakistan. The causality analysis reveals feedback hypothesis that exists between financial development and economic growth, financial development and exports, and, exports and economic growth.

This study provides new insights for policy makers to sustain exports growth by stimulating economic growth and developing financial sector in Pakistan.

This study aims to determine the direct and mediating effects of time pressure, work–family conflict, role ambiguity, work stress and audit quality reduction behavior.

The sample selection in this research is done by purposive sampling method based on the criteria specified by the researcher. In addition, random sample selection does not necessarily produce a sample that can represent auditors at all levels and types of Kantor Akuntan Publik (KAP). This research uses quantitative analysis with approach of structural equation modeling (SEM) method to analyze direct and indirect effect. The main method for data analysis is SEM.

Based on the results of the research note that time pressure, work–family conflict and role ambiguity each have a significant effect on work stress. In testing the direct effect on audit quality reduction behavior, only time pressure influential significant, while work–family conflict and role ambiguity not significant. However, in the test of indirect influence/influence of mediation, there is a significant influence on all tests that time pressure, work–family conflict and role ambiguity each have a significant effect on audit quality reduction behavior through work stress.

The originality of this paper is in SEM used by involving new variable which is work–family conflict. The research location is public accounting offices (KAP) in Indonesia.

Job competency frameworks are based on the listing skills required for a job. The assumption is that if a candidate is presumed to have the skills, then the candidate should be able to do the job. Thus, employers hope to identify prospective employees having the required skills. However, this may differ from knowing whether the employee is ready to be trusted to do the job activities with minimal or no supervision. The authors pose the question how employers might know about the capability of prospective employees to perform the job activities for which the employees are being hired.

In health professions education, a job activity-based framework has been developed called “entrustable professional activities” (EPAs, activities to be entrusted). This paper reviews the job activity framework and EPAs used in medical education, considering how this might support preparation for work in other sectors of the labor market.

The authors describe the EPA framework, some implementation issues and how EPAs lead to a type of microcredential being awarded to individuals as the individuals demonstrate that the individuals can be entrusted with specific job activities.

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate that a medical education model could potentially be adopted by other industries to provide employers with information regarding the ability of a prospective employee in performing the job activities required. Such an approach would address employer's concerns about the job readiness of potential employees.

Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) have a major effect in various areas such as civil projects and smart cities. The facilities of installation and low cost of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have created a new challenge for researchers. Cluster head (CH) selection and load balancing between the CH are the most critical issues in the FANETs. For CH selection and load balancing in FANETs, this study used efficient clustering to address both problems and overcome these challenges. This paper aims to propose a novel CH selection and load balancing scheme to solve the low energy consumption and low latency in the FANET system.

This paper tried to select the CH and load balancing with the help of low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) algorithm and bat algorithm (BA). Load balancing and CH selection are NP-hard problems, so the metaheuristic algorithms can be the best answer for these issues. In the LEACH algorithm, UAVs randomly generate numerical, and these numbers are sorted according to those values. To use the load balancing, the threshold of CH has to be considered; if the threshold is less than 0.7, the BA starts working and begins to find new CH according to the emitted pulses.

The proposed method compares with three algorithms, called bio-inspired clustering scheme FANETs, Grey wolf optimization and ant colony optimization in the NS3 simulator. The proposed algorithm has a good efficiency with respect to the network lifetime, energy consumption and cluster building time.

This study aims to extend the UAV group control concepts to include CH selection and load balancing to improve UAV energy consumption and low latency.

This paper aims to analyse economic growth in Africa focussing on the role of digitalization and financial sector development.

The authors employ country-level data from 36 African countries over the period 2000–2020 and used fixed effect, random effect and the Hausman–Taylor estimation techniques.

The study, first finds that, digitalization propels financial sector development in Africa. Building on this, the study further finds that, digitalization conditioned on financial sector development at best does not promote economic growth in Africa. However, results of the net effects suggest that digitalization, overall, improve economic growth in Africa.

In the current environment of a sluggish global economy, digitalization can play an important role in assisting policymakers to spur economic growth. This has attracted the attention of many researchers in the developed world. However, little is done about the subject matter in Africa.

The findings of this paper are novel in the African sub-region with important policy implications.