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Provides an overview of the article collection in this theme issue that explores the concept of “smart tourism” and in particular, developments and issues that are important for the Baltic States.

The article applies a thematic approach to exploring the factors affecting the development of smart tourism, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing the Baltic region. Overall, the collection reviews the literature, provides an analysis of data and a survey of experts, including tourism service providers. This combines with the practical solutions given in the articles.

The findings and conclusions of this theme issue focus on the factors affecting the development of smart tourism and smart villages, digitalization and innovation opportunities in the Baltic regions, and it provides an insight on the current situation in the smart tourism industry, the possibilities for using digital technologies, and the practical applications.

This theme issue explores the factors influencing and challenges facing smart tourism in the Baltic region, given that all the stakeholders actively want more sustainable and balanced tourism, as well as opportunities to develop innovative, technologically advanced solutions to the development of smart tourism.

This study aims to provide a summary of the key outcomes and reflections related to the theme issue question, “Smart tourism: what developments and issues are important to the Baltic states?”

This study utilizes a descriptive approach to summarize the key outcomes of the theme issue. The theme issue focuses on the problems, trends and developments of smart tourism in the Baltic states, namely, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

The papers in the theme issue explore the emerging concept of smart tourism and the challenges associated with its implementation at the destination level. They also provide updated data on the adoption of smart tourism and aim to engage academics and industry professionals to identify future developments.

This theme issue provides unique perspectives from a variety of stakeholders, including academics, practitioners, industry professionals and policymakers on the key issues, trends and developments shaping the emergence of smart tourism in the Baltic states.

This study aims to examine and analyse data relating to cultural heritage, smart tourism and smart tourism tools for preserving cultural heritage in the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The paper is based on a qualitative review of data from National tourism board web sites, the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, and the European Heritage Label sites. The paper analyses various sources in terms of cultural heritage and smart tourism and examines different ways of applying smart tourism tools to cultural heritage.

The findings show that smart tourism, and especially the preservation of cultural heritage in the Baltic states, is not a new thing, and it is rapidly progressing by inventing new technological tools for tourists to use and as well by digitising cultural heritage. Comprehensive examination of three countries shows that there is significant potential already and that there is a way to grow further for each of the countries by applying new technological tools for preservation of a cultural heritage.

The paper reviews data on cultural heritage and smart tourism tools in the Baltic states where it already plays a steady and significant role. Specifically, it contributes to recognition of each of the states on a global level in terms of variety of cultural heritage that is being preserved and digitalised. The originality of the paper is determined by the assessment of the smart tools used for cultural tourism.

This paper embarks on revealing the main factors behind the intentions of youth in Lithuania to get involved in bribery.

A questionnaire survey of 432 respondents served as a source of primary data. The structural equation modelling – partial least squares techniques was employed as a main research tool.

It was revealed that youth in Lithuania display a high value congruity with their counterparts in Western Europe and a relatively reluctant to offer bribes. It can be stated that youths’ positive attitude towards some shadow economy activities is a forced response to government failures, rather than an intrinsic motivation created by cultural legacy or psychological issues.

It is one of the first scientific attempt to investigate reasons behind the formation of the positive attitude towards bribery and intentions to get involved in bribery among the youth.

The COVID-19 pandemic deteriorated the economic situation and raised the issue of the quality of banks’ assets and, in particular, the growth of non-performing loans (NPLs). The study approaches a topical subject that is of interest to banks and society at large, as credit availability is likely to be reduced. Over the last 10 years, the Baltic countries’ banking sector has significantly improved its risk management policies and practices, increased capital ratios on its balance sheets, and created risk reserves. The current chapter examines the factors affecting NPLs in the Baltic States based on advanced econometric modelling applied to data extracted from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Eurostat. The study results show that credit risk management in the Baltic States has significantly improved compared to the period before the global financial crisis (GFC), the capitalisation of credit institutions is one of the highest in the European Union (EU), and banks are liquid and profitable. Lending recovered from the downturn in the first phase of the pandemic, and credit institutions have taken advantage of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) long-term funding programme ITRMO III to improve the liquidity outlook. Although the credit quality of commercial banks has not deteriorated, as the exposures of credit institutions in the most affected sectors are insignificant and governments have provided fiscal support to businesses and households, some challenges remain. The increase in credit risk is expected due to rising production prices as well as the rebuilding of disrupted supply chains. The findings allow conclusions to be drawn on the necessary actions to mitigate the credit risk of the banking sector.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of psychological barriers both in the main stock market indices of the Baltic states and the most actively traded individual stocks. A psychological barrier refers to a specific price point, often at round numbers (i.e. powers of 10), that investors believe is challenging to breach, influencing their behavior and trading decisions.

We conduct uniformity tests and barrier tests, such as barrier proximity tests and barrier hump tests, to evaluate the presence of psychological barriers. Additionally, we explore variations in means and variances near these potential barriers using regression and GARCH analysis.

The findings reveal that psychological barriers do exist in the Baltic stock markets, particularly within market indices. The Estonian market index stands out with the most pronounced indications of psychological barriers. Individual stocks also display significant changes in means and variances related to potential barriers, albeit with less uniformity.

Collectively, our findings challenge the traditional assumption of random returns within the Baltic stock markets. For practitioners, the finding that psychological barriers exist opens up opportunities for investment strategies that can capitalize on them.

This study is the first to comprehensively investigate psychological barriers in the Baltic stock markets. Our results provide a valuable contribution to understanding the impact of that phenomenon on pricing dynamics, which is particularly pertinent in less-researched frontier markets like the Baltic states.

All three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – share common features, similar history, and took similar steps to establish an external evaluation of their science base. Even though the three countries have similarities in terms of their geography, size, economic structure, development and demography, they demonstrate differences, for example Estonia is often considered to be ahead of Latvia and Lithuania in terms of the economy and development. So, do the Baltic countries share similarities or differences from the point of research management and administration?

Due to population ageing, the European Union (EU) has adopted active ageing as a guiding principle in labour and retirement policies. Among the strategies for active ageing, age-friendly workplaces play a crucial role. This study compares age-friendly human resource (HR) practices in the Baltic and Nordic countries. The latter are pioneers in active ageing, and as the employment rate of older employees in the Baltics is like that in the Nordic countries, we may assume equally age-friendly workplaces in both regions.

We used the latest CRANET survey data (2021–2022) from 1,452 large firms in seven countries and constructed the fuzzy logic model on age-friendliness at the workplace.

Despite a high employment rate of older individuals in the Baltics, HR practices in these countries fall short of being age-friendly compared to their Nordic counterparts. Larger firms in the Nordic countries excel in every studied aspect, but deficiencies in the Baltics are primarily attributed to the absence of employer-provided health and pension schemes. The usage of early retirement is more frequent in the Nordic countries; however, its conceptualisation as an age-friendly HR practice deserves closer examination. Our findings suggest that the success of active ageing in employment has translated into age-friendly HR practices in larger organisations in the Nordics, but not in the Baltics. It is likely that high employment of older individuals in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is a result of the relative income poverty rate.

Our model represents one of the few attempts to utilise fuzzy logic methodology for studying human resource practices and their quantitative evaluation, especially concerning age-friendly workplaces.