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In this paper, the authors investigate the inbound tourism demand elasticities of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. The authors emphasize the role of external and internal conflicts, world gross domestic product and relative prices over the period 1995–2017.

This study applies the heterogeneous panel data estimators based on the fully modified-OLS (FM-OLS), dynamic-OLS (DOLS) and the recently developed method of moments quantile regression (MMQR).

The empirical results indicate that the effect of external and internal conflicts on inbound tourism demand is negative and inelastic with external conflict having a stronger effect. The effect of both classifications of conflicts diminishes as the market share of the tourist destination increases. In addition, the role of the world GDP on tourism demand is positive and elastic, suggesting that tourism is a luxury good while an increase in relative prices diminishes inbound tourism demand.

The paper, therefore, concludes that if policy measures are not put in place to curtail incidences of conflicts, economic growth in these countries may suffer setbacks. This by implications could affect the attainment of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) targets.

The purpose of this study is to simultaneously examine the role of microfinance from the business and social lenses by using the creating shared value (CSV) framework by Porter and Kramer (2011) in the context of Indonesia.

A survey among more than 170,000 borrowers of two specific credit schemes by PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk., the largest microfinance provider in Indonesia, was conducted to understand the perceptions of borrowers on the benefits of microcredit under the CSV framework.

The result confirms that, overall, the debtors acknowledged the importance of the loans in various aspects of CSV. The highest levels of importance were recorded in the case of stimulating the increase of business revenue growth, business productivity and fulfilling the needs of consumers. Disaggregating the results based on respondents’ demographic characteristics, it is shown that the findings in both credit schemes have a relatively similar pattern in terms of origin, business sectors and the borrowing purpose from.

There have been limited studies that examine the impact of microfinance from both the business and social perspectives. Most studies only use one of these. Implementing the CSV framework allows the authors to fill in the gap and understand how microfinance provides business and social benefits.

Studies showed that construction consultants' ethical negligence is a contributing factor to the time and cost over-run of projects. There is limited research on the issues that may have hindered construction consultants' ethical responsiveness during contract administration. Studies regarding influencing factors in the context of Nigeria's quantity surveyors' (QS) ethical responsiveness are rare. Thus, the study aims to investigate the perceived issues and proffers initiatives to promote QSs' ethical responsiveness on construction projects in Nigeria.

To determine the perceptions of QS regarding ethical responsiveness, a phenomenologically driven perspective via face-to-face interviews was conducted with 12 senior professionals in Lagos and Abuja that showed interest in participating in the study and were interviewed. A thematic approach was adopted to analyse the collated data.

Economic, societal and professional issues emerged as the three groups of issues that hindered QS's ethical responsiveness on construction projects in a developing country setting such as Nigeria. Findings show that for ethical responsiveness to be expressed on projects, key stakeholders should be ethically responsible. This is currently missing, especially in public construction projects. Initiatives that can promote key stakeholders' ethical responsiveness on construction projects are examined in this paper.

The paper embraces an important practical implication because practices associated with QS's unethical responsiveness and behavioural impacts on construction projects were identified. This will stir both the regulatory professional bodies and policymakers to enforce and implement feasible initiatives that can promote key stakeholders' collaborative ethical responsiveness on construction projects.

This paper is amongst the few papers that attempted to uncover issues that hinder QS's ethical responsiveness on construction projects in a developing country setting via a qualitative approach. Since these issues are rampant in developing countries, findings from this paper can be used to promote QS's ethical responsiveness in other nations with similar unethical issues.

It has been argued that a mono product economy experiences epileptic growth because it is prone to global dynamics such as epidemic. Therefore, the need to diversify investments cannot be over-emphasized. Hence, the study examined port operation's efficiency and revenue generation in global maritime trade: implications for national growth and development in Nigeria. The objectives of the study are to identify the factors that improve efficiency in port operations, and to ascertain how efficiency of operations will affect revenue generation and national growth.

The study employed correlation and multiple regressions analyses to test the hypothesis which states that port operation's efficiency does not have positive and significant effect on revenue generation in Nigeria. A cross sectional research design and structured questionnaires were deployed in the study and simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample size of 200 respondents.

Results revealed that efficient port operations affect revenue generation and national development.

Port operations in Nigeria are bedeviled with daunting challenges that hamper smooth and efficient working port's system.

The study suggested that modern port's technologies (ICTs) be deployed to enhance operations in the ports and manpower should be trained on regular intervals to understand modern logistics management techniques in the ports. Third, government should provide port infrastructures being the backbone of efficient port system. Lastly, the private sector should be partnered with in several areas including port's concession to facilitate effective and efficient service delivery in the Nigerian ports.

Several studies have shown that the mechanism of labour-intensive construction (LIC) projects can mitigate high unemployment and create skilled development, especially in developing nations. The guidelines and practices for implementation may have faced some encumbrances in some countries. Whether the current guidelines and practices for municipal infrastructure support agent (MISA) to execute LIC projects face hindrances in South Africa has yet to receive in-depth studies. Thus, this study attempts to proffer policy solutions to improve the proposed revised guidelines and practices for MISA in LIC project execution in South Africa.

The study's objectives were accomplished via a combination of 16 virtual interviews of built environment professionals and government officials involved in LIC project execution in South Africa and supported by the analysed documents. A thematic approach was used to analyse the data and presented two main themes.

Findings show lax enforcement of discretionary funds, lax institutional capacity and inadequate individual skills, among others, as the gaps in existing South Africa's LIC guidelines and practices. Also, policy solutions to address the gaps were proffered.

The suggested feasible policies will improve the proposed revised guidelines and practices for MISA in LIC project execution in South Africa. This guide will promote the development of individual skills, institutional capacities and increase employment across South Africa.

This study promotes the use of LIC to create employment and contribute to proffering measures that will improve the proposed revised third edition of the guidelines and practices for MISA to execute LIC.

Over the past years, high waste and inefficiencies in the construction industry may have contributed to many projects failing to meet clients’ expectations. Among the new project delivery mechanisms to tackle this problem is integrated project delivery (IPD). IPD has been proved as a mechanism that increases stakeholders’ collaboration at the early stage and delivers the highest value-for-money projects. In Nigeria, research regarding practitioners in the application of IPD in construction delivery is scarce. Thus, this study aims to investigate the level of awareness, issues hindering the implementation of IPD and proffer solutions to promote the use of IPD in project delivery.

Qualitative research was adopted. Twenty virtual interviews via Zoom and Whatsapp Videos were used to collect data from the selected participants and analysed via a thematic method. This is because of the unexplored dimension of the issues.

Results show that practitioners are aware of IPD but lax in the application. The emerged issues hindering the adoption and implementation of IPD were grouped into technological, legal, financial and cultural in Nigeria’s context.

This study is restricted to the relevance and hindrances facing the usage of IPD in the Nigerian built environment. The study proffers solutions to promote the use of IPD in the built environment via a qualitative approach.

This paper will contribute towards stirring Nigeria’s stakeholders to create an enabling environment within the industry via IPD friendly policies and promote the use of IPD on construction projects.

This paper is one of the few papers that attempted to uncover issues that hinder the use of IPD on construction projects in Nigeria via a qualitative approach.

Though alternative building technologies (ABTs) have been encouraged to address accessible and affordable issues in low-cost housing (LCH) provision, their adoption is still overwhelmed with encumbrances. The encumbrances that hinder ABT adoption require an in-depth study, especially in developing countries like Nigeria. However, studies regarding ABT and its role in improving Nigeria's LCH to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 are scarce. This research investigates encumbrances to ABT adoption in Nigeria's LCH provision and suggests feasible measures to prevent or reduce the encumbrances, thereby improving achieving SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities).

This research utilised qualitative research and adopted a face-to-face interview as the primary data collection. The interviewees comprised ABT practitioners and end users in Nigeria who were chosen by a convenient sampling technique. The study's data were analysed manually through a thematic approach.

This study shows that stakeholders should embrace ABT in LCH provision to improve achieving SDG 11 in Nigeria. Also, it clustered the perceived 20 encumbrances to ABT adoption in LCH provision into government/policymaker, housing developers/building contractors, ABT users and ABT manufacturers-related issues in Nigeria's context. This study suggested mechanisms to mitigate encumbrances to ABT adoption in LCH provision, thereby improving achieving SDG 11.

This research adds to the limited literature by analysing ABT adoption encumbrances in Nigeria's LCH provision, which could assist policy formulation for the uptake of ABT in LCH provision and improve achieving Goal 11.

This essay engages with scholarship on history as a discipline, curriculum documents and academic and public commentary on the teaching of history in Australian, British and Canadian secondary contexts to better understand the influence of the tension between political pressure and disciplinary practice that drives the history wars in settler-colonial nations, how this plays out in secondary history classrooms and the ramifications this may have on students' democratic dispositions.

This article aims to compare secondary history curricula and pedagogies in Australia, Britain and Canada to better articulate and conceptualise the influence of the “history wars” over the teaching of national histories upon the intended and enacted curriculum and how this contributes to the formation of democratic dispositions within students. A conceptual model, drawing on the curriculum assessment of Porter (2006) and Gross and Terra's definition of “difficult pasts” has been developed and used as the basis for this comparison. This model highlights the competing influences of political pressure upon curriculum creation and disciplinary change shaping pedagogy, and the impact these forces may have upon students' experience.

The debate around what content students learn, and why, is fraught because it is a conversation about what each nation values and how they construct their own national identity(ies). This is particularly timely when the democratic self-identification of many nations is being challenged. The seditious conspiracy to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, Orban's “illiberal democracy” in Hungary and the neo-Nazis in Melbourne, Australia are examples of the rise of anti-democratic sentiment globally. Thus, new consideration of how we teach national histories and the impact this has on the formation of democratic dispositions and skills is pressing.

The new articulation of a conceptual model for the impact of the history wars on education is an innovative synthesis of wide-ranging research on: the impacts of neoliberalism and cultural restorationism upon the development of intended curriculum; discipline-informed inquiry pedagogies used to enact the curriculum; and the teaching of national narratives as a political act. This comprehensive comparison of the ways in which history education in settler-colonial nations has developed over time provides new insight into the common elements of national history education, and the role this education can play in developing democratic dispositions.

The article aims to identify the determinants of the urbanization process given the magnitude of this phenomenon and also its economic, social and environmental implications and pressure on public authorities to find viable solutions in the context of sustainable development.

The research is based on regression analysis with urbanization growth being the dependent variable and enrollment in higher education, GDP, value added by industry and female labor force as independent variables.

The main factors that favor urbanization are the increase in population, industry value-added and the female labor force. Urbanization is an objective that must be pursued differently by public authorities in developed and developing countries, given the different realities they face-population growth in developing countries, and population aging and international migration in developed countries.

The present research has limitations generated by the selection of independent variables, which is why in future directions, the research will consider the use of other indicators such as the number of graduates, exports as percent of GDP or migrations as a percentage of the total population. Given the complexity of the phenomenon of urbanization, future research will focus on groups of countries as they resulted from the clustering made by this article.

The impact of higher education on urbanization is low, which is why the intensification of partnerships between municipal authorities and universities could be a solution that ensures not only the transfer of knowledge from academia to the public sector but also from entrepreneurs increasingly aware of the importance of promoting SDGs for urban development in the context of the challenges posed by global warming. The involvement of women in the labor market is essential for the intensification of the urbanization process. The increasing presence of women in the labor market generates an increase in the income of families, an increase in the level of education and an intensification of national and international migration. The research findings can be used by policy and decision-makers to develop appropriate urbanization and education policies and strategies.

The existence of inhomogeneous clusters is noticeable, which demonstrates the complexity of the urbanization phenomenon that is present in all countries around the world, but under the influence of different factors such as the export of natural resources (mainly oil) or the intensification of industrial activity. Taking into account the variables used, this study stands out in the multitude of articles published in the international mainstream.

This paper aims to investigate empirically whether creative industries are boosting the economic performance of the ASEAN countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei Darussalam) during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

This paper applied a random effect and fixed effect estimation approach to investigate the impact of creative industries’ development (government expenditure on education, export of creative industries, trade openness, innovation index, sukuk issuances) on the economic performance spanning from 2010 to 2020.

The economic performance was proxied by two dependent variables, namely, the gross domestic product and the Misery Index. On top of containment and vaccination measures, the findings demonstrated that creative industries are enhancing economic growth in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, supported by the significant role of the sukuk market as a vital contributor to economic growth.

This study is unique because it provides novel and empirical results of the creative industries’ development on economic performance in the ASEAN countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.