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In Egypt, the IUD is the most common contraceptive method since 1988 and has remained so despite a recent drop in its share from 59.9% in 2008 to 51.5% in 2014 in favour of hormonal methods, which increased from 19.7% for pills and 12.3% for injectables in 2008 to 27.4% and 14.5% in 2014 according to 2014 Egypt demographic and health survey (EDHS). The recent shift away from intrauterine contraceptive device (IUDs) to hormonal methods have contributed to increased discontinuation. This paper aims to answer three questions: To what extent does the method type influence the hazard of contraceptive discontinuation in Egypt? Is the interaction between method type and duration of use a predictor of the probability of discontinuation after controlling other variables? What are the other important background variables that affect the hazard of contraceptive discontinuation?

Using data from EDHS2014, separate multilevel discrete-time proportional hazard models for events of interest (abandoned use while in need, switched to another method in the month following discontinuation and method failure) were built.

Only IUD users are significantly less likely to abandon use while in need and to experience method failure and a reduced risk of switching. During the first 6–10 months of use, all types of discontinuation can be significantly reduced for all three methods. Demographic variables do not significantly affect abandonment but strongly affect switching and significantly affect failure. Socio-economic variables do not significantly affect abandonment and switching. Exposure to media has a significant effect on abandonment but not on switching. Community contraceptive prevalence rate strongly affects switching.

Results confirm that the counselling should be more intense during the first year of method use and should pay special attention to women who are 25 years old and above and those who have two or more children. Also, media campaigns are important and especially those addressing the issue of abandoning while in need.

New agricultural technologies are continuously generated and promoted for adoption by farmers with the expectation that they bring about higher benefits than older technologies. Yet, depending on the perceived benefits, the user of the technology may choose to stop using it. This paper aims to analyze what drives farmers to dis-adopt climate smart sorghum varieties in Tanzania.

The study uses cross-sectional farm household level data collected in Tanzania from a sample of 767 households. The determinants of dis-adoption are explored using a bivariate probit with sample selection model.

The authors find that while farmers switch between different sorghum varieties, most farmers actually quit sorghum production. Older farmers and those facing biotic stresses such attacks by birds are more likely to dis-adopt sorghum.

These findings suggest that there is scope for improving and sustaining the adoption of sorghum varieties in Tanzania once extension services are strengthened. The findings also point to a well-founded theory on the role of markets in enhancing the overall sustainability of food systems.

The study findings have broader implications for understanding the sustainability of improved technology adoption

Dis-adoption is also positively associated with the lack of access to markets underscoring the role of markets in enhancing the overall sustainability of technology adoption and food systems.

Given the growing number of immigrant entrepreneurs in the USA, the purpose of this paper is to better understand the behaviors of this subgroup of entrepreneurs. Specifically, the paper aims to understand the unique challenges faced by immigrant entrepreneurs and how environmental challenges affect decisions to grow or abandon their ventures.

To make the theoretical arguments in this conceptual paper, the authors draw on the theory of planned behavior developed by Ajzen (1985), which suggests that a person’s behavior is predicted by their intention, and intentions are predicted by one’s attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control.

The paper provides theoretical insights on the effect of demands of immigration on the intentions of immigrant entrepreneurs to engage in three specific entrepreneurial behaviors: new venture formation, growth and abandonment. The authors propose that immigrant entrepreneurs deal with increased stress yet continue to maintain higher intentions to found new ventures compared to non-immigrants. Contrastingly, the authors also propose that the stress and obstacles immigrant entrepreneurs face reduce their intentions to grow their firms and increase their intentions to abandon their firms. The authors also explore entrepreneurial resilience as a possible moderating factor between stress and entrepreneurial intentions of immigrant entrepreneurs.

First, the authors do not distinguish between immigrants from different nations or parts of the world or having different backgrounds. Second, the authors do not fully develop or incorporate the element of coping. Also, our paper is limited to behaviors of immigrant entrepreneurs with micro- and small-businesses.

Venture capitalists could benefit from empirical results of these propositions as funding decisions may need to include consideration of the proposed effects of stress and demands of immigration.

This paper meets an identified need to examine the effects of immigrant-specific issues such as the demands of immigration on the behaviors of this growing group of entrepreneurs.

This paper aims to explore the topic of adaptive reuse referring to urban open spaces into a more-than-human perspective. It underlines that dealing with heritage means being part of an inherent and ongoing process of transformation and so that reuse is inextricably an adaptive practice, constantly facing mutations, and that adaptation is a coral practice that involves different kinds of users and makers, inclusive of human and not human livings.

This paper looks at the lexicon of abandonment, in search of the more essential and intense meanings of words, and at some pioneering practices in Europe to comprehend the aesthetic and ethical implications of adaptive reuse of neglected landscapes.

Processes of reuse involve many different communities of users who in turn continuously redesign the site, into a comprehensive, coral and conflicting collaboration, whose results are never given once for all and are both uncanny and beautiful, scaring and marvellous, like a monster.

Accepting the idea that humans are not the only users and makers of urban sites can widen the range of tools, methods and values involved in heritage adaptive reuse.

This paper tries to widen the meanings of adaptation into a multispecies perspective. It intends to broaden the range of agents that can be involved as users and makers, assuming a more-than-human point of view that is not yet commonly applied.

The geographical range of agricultural crops is shifting because of climate change. Reducing the potential negative impact of this shift requires efficient crop switching at farm level. Yet there are scant studies that examine how crop switching is currently taking place and what factors facilitate the process. Even these few existing studies often based their analysis on inadequately established causal link between climate change and switching decisions. This study aims to identify the specific switching decisions that are primarily motivated by climate change, and their determinants.

The study used a household survey on 190 households in Semien Shewa Zone in Ethiopia. Subjective rating of farmers was used to identify the relative importance of climate change in motivating the different types of switching decisions. A logit model is used to identify determinants of crop switching decisions primarily motivated by climate change.

Farmers in the study area are currently abandoning certain crops as a response to climate change. The adoption of new crops is, however, mainly attributed to price changes. Most farmers who abandoned at least one crop adopted mung bean mainly due to its price advantages. As expected, crop switching as an adaptation strategy is more prevalent particularly in drier and hotter agroecologies. The logit model showed that crop switching is strongly correlated with land size and agroecology.

This paper provides an in-depth examination of crop switching as an adaptation strategy to climate change. Crop switching is an adaptation strategy that is expected to substantially reduce the damage from climate change in agriculture. The findings are particularly relevant for adaptation planning in the context of smallholder agriculture.

In this article, the authors analyse a complex social process affecting historic public paths in rural areas in southern Spain. Despite the fact that urban populations are demanding the enhancement of this type of natural heritage for tourism, sports and recreational use, some parts of the network have been abandoned or usurped.

The study is multidisciplinary, comprising three interlinked studies. The cartographic study comprises an inventory of public paths in rural areas based on administrative sources. The legal study analyses local, regional and national regulations governing agricultural, environmental, heritage, sports and tourism uses of the infrastructure. The sociological study analyses social discourses on the uses of public paths, and identifies conflicts between farmers, landowners, environmentalists, sportspeople and tourists.

The preliminary results identified an important public paths network in Andalusia, approximately 160,000 km. The legal study found that there are laws regulating use, although local authorities do not monitor compliance or provide solutions to enhance management. The sociological study determined the attribution of environmental, cultural and economic value to public paths, but also the existence of conflicts between rural and urban populations.

Given that this is ongoing research, only state of the art and some preliminary albeit sufficiently consistent results are presented.

The results could help to guide public policy and governance of public paths.

Public paths promote rural development and a green/sustainable economy.

The research results and conclusions are original.

The purpose of this article is to propose a detailed methodology to estimate, model and incorporate the non-constant volatility onto a numerical tree scheme, to evaluate a real option, using a quadrinomial multiplicative recombination.

This article uses the multiplicative quadrinomial tree numerical method with non-constant volatility, based on stochastic differential equations of the GARCH-diffusion type to value real options when the volatility is stochastic.

Findings showed that in the proposed method with volatility tends to zero, the multiplicative binomial traditional method is a particular case, and results are comparable between these methodologies, as well as to the exact solution offered by the Black–Scholes model.

The originality of this paper lies in try to model the implicit (conditional) market volatility to assess, based on that, a real option using a quadrinomial tree, including into this valuation the stochastic volatility of the underlying asset. The main contribution is the formal derivation of a risk-neutral valuation as well as the market risk premium associated with volatility, verifying this condition via numerical test on simulated and real data, showing that our proposal is consistent with Black and Scholes formula and multiplicative binomial trees method.

In this chapter, rephrasing Spivak's question into ‘can subaltern children speak?’, I reorient the research on China's gigantic population of children and youths in rural migrant families towards a critical interpretative approach. Based on life history and longitudinal ethnographic interview gathered with three cases, I unpack the multiple meanings migrants' children attach to mobility in their childhood experiences. First, despite emotional difficulties, children see their parents' out-migration more as a ‘mobility imperative’ than their abandonment of parental responsibilities, which should be contextualized in China's long-term urban-biased social policies and the resultant development gaps in rural and urban societies. Second, the seemingly ‘unstable’ and ‘flexible’ mobility patterns observed in migrant families should be understood in relation to a long-term family social mobility strategy to promote children's educational achievement and future attainment. The combination of absent class politics in an illiberal society with an enduring ideology of education-based meritocracy in Confucianism makes this strategy a culturally legitimate channel of social struggle for recognition and respect for the subaltern. Last, children in migrant families are active contributors to their families' everyday organization amidst mobilities through sharing care and household responsibilities, and developing temporal and mobility strategies to keep alive intergenerational exchanges and family togetherness. The study uncovers coexisting resilience and vulnerabilities of migrants' children in their ‘doing class’ in contemporary China. It also contributes insights into our understanding of the diversity of childhoods in Asian societies at the intersection of familyhood, class dynamics and cultural politics.

The need to change budgeting has been frequently debated. Drawing on the literature on management accounting and budgeting change, this study aims to explore changes in budgeting and whether experienced success of budgeting varied with time and budget type. Changes in the use of the following budget types were investigated: fixed, revised, rolling, flexible and hybrid budgets.

This study uses a mixed research methodology. Survey data was collected from the same business units of large Finnish manufacturing firms in 2004 (Time 1) and 2016/2017 (Time 2) (N = 28). In addition, some of the respondents of the latter survey were interviewed in 2023 (Time 3).

Almost all business units were found to have remained loyal to budgeting. However, changes in budget types were not uncommon and varied considerably. Overall, the use of fixed budgets continued strongly, the use of revised and hybrid budgets declined, and the use of rolling budgets increased over time. Moreover, the joint use of budgets declined. The perceived success of budgetary processes was, initially, weakened by the use of fixed budgets and, later, by the use of revised budgets. The interview data further illustrates some of the patterns of, and reasons behind, the changes.

Longitudinal analysis of change in the same business units was useful in revealing the patterns of change in budgeting and on relationships between the variables analysed over time. Further research could be carried out using more extensive case studies in companies or sector-focused surveys longitudinally.

This paper aims to examine the existing practices and pertinent issues affecting Islamic banks and their customers in abandoned housing projects (AHPs) to ensure compliance with Sharīʿah and statutory requirements.

This study employs the qualitative research method using the inductive approach to analyze both primary and secondary data and sources. Data collection involved a series of semi-structured interviews with five volunteering Islamic banks and a representative of Abandoned Property Owners Association Malaysia (Victims). Statutory acts, regulatory policies, guidelines, directives and standards were also analyzed.

The result indicates developer’s default, underlying contracts, regulatory arbitrage and bureaucracy, attitudinal disposition of customers and sell-then-build approach as major factors of AHP’s conundrum.

This study has suggested both short- and long-term solutions based on the principles of justice, public interests and removal of hardship to resolve and effectively manage financial hardship indebtedness arising from housing abandonment. Further, part of the proposed solutions would also reshape housing development policies and home financing transactions.

The quest for this research demonstrated Islamic banking industry’s initiatives to find lasting solutions to perennial issues of AHPs.