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The purpose of this paper is to improve and facilitate the work of developers and usability evaluators by providing an adaptable and effective support. A well-defined set of criteria and a range of evaluation values for each criterion as well as a complete websites classification, will guide evaluators. A usability percentage and a list of prioritized criteria, adapted to the type of website by a new usability metric, will help developers to improve the website. This improvement will increase the degree of web user satisfaction.

Having established and validated a new usability evaluation framework, several usability tools have been analyzed. None of them totally fulfills the requirements of the evaluation framework. As a result of being unable to customize any of them, a new one has been developed. A study of 42 enterprise websites in an economically depressed region of Europe was performed using the new tool. This study involved 42 evaluators and 118 web users. Users have evaluated the websites before and after the redesign. A end-user computing satisfaction model-based questionary was used to collect data about end-user satisfaction. The results validate the proposal.

The study confirms that the proposed tool provides valuable information during the process of web development, evaluation and redesign. In adittion, it reveals that improving websites usability by ensuring criteria compliance has a positive effect on web users satisfaction.

Unlike previous purposes, the proposed tool allows to evaluate any type of website with a well-defined set of evaluation criteria and specific criteria values. As outcomes, the tool provides the website usability degree and a list of criteria ordered by priority repair. These results are adapted to the specific type of website. This makes easier and more effective the redesign of the evaluated website.

This paper aims to identify the effect of environmental management systems (EMSs), commitment to stakeholders and gender diversity on corporate environmental performance (CEP) and the extent to which an economic crisis moderates these relationships.

A regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 14,217 observations from 1,933 firms from 26 countries from 2002 to 2010. The estimator used is ordinary least squares with heteroscedastic panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs), which allows us to obtain consistent results in the presence of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation.

The results show that EMSs and stakeholder engagement are mechanisms that drive CEP but lose their effectiveness in times of crisis. However, the presence of women on boards has a positive effect on CEP that is not affected by an economic crisis.

The study has some limitations that could be addressed in the future. We present board gender diversity as a governance mechanism because its role is strongly related to non-financial performance. Future studies could focus on other corporate governance mechanisms, such as the presence of institutional or long-term investors. In addition, other mechanisms could be found that can counteract poor environmental performance in times of crisis. Finally, it might be useful to contrast these results with the crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The results obtained have important practical implications at the corporate and institutional levels. At the corporate level, they highlight, as essential contributions, that environmental management systems and stakeholder orientation are not effective in times of economic crisis, except for with the presence of women on the board.

Following the crisis, the European Commission has promoted gender diversity on boards as a mechanism to improve the governance of entities – improving, among other aspects, sustainability. In this sense, another one of the practical implications of the study is support for the policies that the European Union has implemented over the last two decades.

The paper analyses how a crisis affects the moral and cultural institutional mechanisms that promote CEP. Gender diversity on the board of directors not only promotes environmental performance but also appears to be a governance mechanism that ensures this performance in times of crisis when the other mechanisms lose their effectiveness. The study proposes specific policies that help maintain environmental performance in an economic crisis.

The use and abuse of alcohol is problematic for a person’s social and individual development. Maintenance of abstinence after detoxification programs is difficult for patients who experience a craving, and relapses during the course of the disorder are common. The purpose of this paper is to describe the socio-demographic and clinical features of alcohol-dependent patients by sex and alcohol use status and to analyze the percentage of patients who remained abstinent after 10 months of psychological treatment.

In total, 50 alcohol-dependent patients were enrolled (34 men and 16 women). The patients attended a psychological treatment program at a therapeutic community, Projecte Home Balears, Spain. This paper used the European Addiction Severity Index to collect socio-demographic data and data on alcohol and other drugs and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24 to measure emotional management.

Significant differences were observed in occupation (χ² = 9.9; p = 0.007) and duration of alcohol use (U = 137.000; p = 0.005) by sex and hospitalizations during the previous months (χ² = 15.477; p = 0.009) and type of chronic disorder (χ² = 7.6; p = 0.022) and duration (in months) of the longest period of abstinence after treatment in facilities (U = 219.500; p = 0.097) by alcohol use status. The survival analysis showed that 25% of relapses happened after 4.5 months of treatment; at 7.3 months, 50% of the sample remained abstinent.

Women had used alcohol for longer since age at onset than men. Furthermore, after 7.3 months of intensive therapy, 50% of alcohol-dependent patients were abstinent.

The objective of this study is to determine the efficiency of tourist accommodation companies located in the main tourist area of southern Europe as one of the three elements of the local sustainable development triangle.

The analysis, carried out using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology on 130 companies, has obtained that from the CCR perspective (results-oriented method when companies present constant returns on the input variables).

The companies involved are quite inefficient, while which from the BCC perspective (where the input and output variables used in the company respond to a variable and not constant scale) are quite efficient. The efficiency of these companies in the seven provinces of Andalusia has also been analysed to determine if there are patterns that differentiate them and thus be able to propose strategies that improve the sustainability of these territories. The conclusions of the study indicate the need to improve the operational efficiency of rural accommodation companies.

The analysis of efficiency in the hotel sector and even more so in the rural tourism sector is relatively scarce in the literature, especially in Spain. More specifically, Rubio and Román (2006) have demonstrated the existence of scale inefficiencies in hotels, but no evidence has been found in previous studies that this behaviour carries over to accommodation establishments located in the destinations under study.

The increase of life expectancy leads to the elderly living with one or more chronic illnesses. Communication between the elderly and the health-care professional is fundamental but can be difficult. For that reason, it is common to find the patient with an accompanying family member in the doctor’s surgery. The purpose of this paper is to analyze one of the possible actions of the companion during the provision of the medical service: the co-creation of value (through its two dimensions: coproduction and value-in-use) and its effects on the satisfaction of both the companion and the elderly patient.

A model has been tested through a system of structural equations using the statistical package EQS 6.2. The sample used is made up of 1,814 informants (907 companions and 907 patients).

The importance of coproduction between the accompanying person and the health-care professional is shown, to obtain greater levels of satisfaction (of the companion and the patient), whereas a negative role is conferred to the dimension value-in-use. This paper shows a positive impact of the satisfaction of the companion on that of the patient.

It is necessary to have health-care professionals who play a proactive role when facilitating the participation in the appointment with the doctor so as not to leave the initiative of participation in the hands of the companions.

Chronic illnesses are an important focal point of medical attention. Good management of the relations between those involved is fundamental for the diagnosis and adherence to treatment.

Appropriate management of service failures involves a complex organizational response that allows an effective internal and external recovery, learn from mistakes and introduce future service innovations. Empirical evidence on the organizational recovery practices more suitable to achieve these objectives, leading to superior performance, is limited. The present work seeks to extend the existing literature by identifying the potential dimensions that constitute an integrated service recovery system (ISRS), introducing a strategic, proactive and relational approach to service failure and recovery management, and by proposing a causal model linking the ISRS with performance.

The ISRS dimensions and their attributes are derived from an extensive literature review and suggestions from academics and business experts. Structural equations modeling is used to test a model linking the ISRS (conceptualized as a second order construct), with client, employee and business performance indicators, using data from a Spanish sample of 151 Knowledge‐Intensive Business Services (KIBS).

Results confirm that the firms' ability to approach service recovery from a strategic, proactive and relational perspective allows improving performance among clients and employees, that is, the external and internal recovery to occur, which leads to a superior competitive performance.

The ISRS scale can provide managers with a diagnostic tool to analyze their recovery practices and to further improve their competitiveness in the long term.

The need to assess the integrative nature of effective service recovery systems has been claimed theoretically. An empirical study showing the link between comprehensive service recovery practices and performance was lacking.

This study aims to analyze the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) on heritage conservation and preservation, and to identify relevant future research trends, by applying scientometrics.

A total of 1,646 articles, published between 1985 and 2021, concerning research on the application of ML and AI in cultural heritage were collected from the Scopus database and analyzed using bibliometric methodologies.

The findings of this study have shown that although there is a very important increase in academic literature in relation to AI and ML, publications that specifically deal with these issues in relation to cultural heritage and its conservation and preservation are significantly limited.

This study enriches the academic outline by highlighting the limited literature in this context and therefore the need to advance the study of AI and ML as key elements that support heritage researchers and practitioners in conservation and preservation work.

Using the same checklist as that in the previous chapter, this chapter evaluates the current status of policy initiative on incorporating climate disaster risk aspects in local development planning in Costa Rica. The chapter identifies opportunities and challenges of this local initiative for reducing climate disaster risk. In addition, the study discusses the influence of national policy on local development planning.

This study aims to appraise the historical evolution of tourism research focused on Spain. Firstly, an analysis was conducted to assess the production and impact of research within this domain. Secondly, scientific mapping, specifically through co-word analysis, was used to identify and explore the principal research themes and their evolution in the field.

A historical approach was adopted in this study, using 1,100 bibliographic records obtained from the Scopus database. Science mapping was then conducted through co-word analysis of bibliographic data.

The results of the performance analysis provide insights into the volume, evolution and impact of the scientific documents published within the research area under investigation. Moreover, by adopting a longitudinal approach, science mapping through co-word analysis enables the definition of the intellectual structure within this research domain. In this regard, the main research themes are identified, conceptually assessed, and their evolution is examined across three distinct window periods: an initial research period (1972–2002), a growing research period (2003–2012) and a consolidation period (2013–2022).

The study provides a state-of-the-art position on tourism research related to Spain thus guiding future studies in the area. Furthermore, this study provides a comprehensive “snapshot” of the historical progression of tourism research in Spain, capturing the emblematic aspects that have emerged within the area over the investigated time period.