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We have come to a point where the common way to characterise what is taking place presently, or, better yet, for the past almost two years, is with the term ‘pandemic’. The task of this chapter is to bring to awareness certain critical reflections with the hope of disturbing the normalised discourse which excepts the authentic meaning of pandemic, a meaning which affects the totality of the human existence. Following the thoughts of Agamben, Baudrillard, and Heidegger, the hypothesis that this chapter is advancing revolves around the idea that the term ‘pandemic’ has been appropriated by biological thinking excepting its authentic meaning, that is, the ultimate reality of the human existence which is death.

The aim of the article was to compare the learning outcomes of the same content in the form of a traditional analogue lesson and in the form of a virtual reality (VR) lesson with the use of head-mounted display (HMD).

The study included one biology lesson conducted in 4 groups of a dozen people and one biology lesson in VR carried out individually on 75 people. The respondents completed the knowledge test, a questionnaire before and after the class regarding the attitude to new technologies, and feelings after the lesson. The researchers used detailed observation sheets (subjects' behaviour and the dynamics of the lesson). The obtained results were analysed statistically through lesson type (traditional/VR), respondent type (technology enthusiast/non-enthusiast) and question type. The Mann–Whitney U test, t-student and chi-squared (?²) test were used.

The average of the overall results in the knowledge test was similar in both groups (16 points; ±SD 2.13), slightly better for the analogue group and for the non-enthusiast group. It was found that VR hinders the acquisition of knowledge by tech enthusiasts, who perceive it primarily in the play paradigm. However, it encourages the learning of technology sceptics, who quickly discover a passion for exploring the virtual world. It was clearly indicated, quantitatively and qualitatively, how the technology modalities directly influenced the learning outcomes.

The article offers fresh insights into how students' perceptions of the educational process can be transformed through the integration of VR. The compelling findings and nuanced analysis provide a robust foundation for exploring new frontiers in educational technology.

This study looked at the potential applications of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) for inclusive community development and participation, sustainable tourism, and rural community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in sub-Saharan Africa and other rural areas worldwide.

To evaluate resource management systems for rural tourism and the environment in Africa and abroad. The study makes use of reviews of relevant literature and documents, and while linking applications for sustainable tourism and local community empowerment with CBNRM and GIS, vital content was manually analyzed.

The study shows a potential affinity between agricultural and tourism businesses that GIS in line with the CBNRM conception can strengthen. In many rural and underdeveloped regions of the continent, this highlights the need for a credible and varied tourism strategy to develop and empower the relevant communities.

Most agricultural communities in Africa are located in low-income regions. Such areas are rich in natural wildlife and have popular tourist destinations. A mix of regional community development initiatives can be built using GIS, sustainable tourism, CBNRM, and community-based tourism (CBT).

Most Asians are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, and most live in rural areas. Since Asia is primarily an agricultural economy, rural tourism and agrotourism are critical in enabling growth. Agrotourism is a term that refers to the fusion of tourism and agriculture. The freshwater turtles (Batagur sp.) are a group of six turtles that once roamed southern Asia's great rivers and estuaries from the Indian Subcontinent to the Indonesian islands. Therefore, this review is to investigate the current state of agrotourism in Batagur sp. conservation and assess the associated challenges and opportunities. This review paper recognized the impacts and benefits for the rural site as an agrotourism industry. Moreover, three initiatives in Batagur sp. conservation programs were also discussed. Agrotourism, with a focus on the conservation of Batagur sp., is a vital driver of economic growth in rural Asian regions. It diversifies rural communities' income sources, enhancing economic stability and resilience.

The paper aims at addressing the following research questions: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency? And which pillars of institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

By specifying a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method where GHG emissions are considered as the bad output and the GDP is referred as the desirable one, the work computes the environmental efficiency into the appraisal of a production function for the European countries over three decades.

According to the countries' performance, the findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries. In this environmental context, the role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries.

This article attempts to analyze the role of different dimensions of institutional quality in different European countries' performance – in terms of mitigating GHGs (undesirable output) – while trying to raise their economic performance through their GDP (desirable output).

1. The paper aims at addressing the following research question: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

2. We adopt a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method, considering 40 European economies over a 30-year time interval.

3. The findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries.

4. The role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries, while the performance decreases for the low middle-income countries.

The paper aims at addressing the following research question: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

We adopt a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method, considering 40 European economies over a 30-year time interval.

The findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries.

The role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries, while the performance decreases for the low middle-income countries.

Organizational sociology and organization studies have a long history together, while also sharing a proclivity to self-diagnose crises. Instead of taking these assessments at face value, this paper treats them as an object of study, asking what conditions have fueled them. In the case of organizational sociology, there are indications of a connection between rising levels of discontent and community building: self-identified organizational sociologists have progressively withdrawn from general debates in the discipline and turned their attention to organization studies, which, they suspect, has seen dramatic levels of growth at their expense. Organization studies, on the other hand, are still haunted by “a Faustian bargain”: leaning heavily on the authority of the social sciences, business school faculty were able to facilitate the emergence of a scholarly field of practice dedicated to the study of organizations, which they control. However, in doing so, they also set organization studies on a path of continued dependence on knowledge produced elsewhere: notably, by university disciplines such as sociology.

Service-learning (SL) shows potential to respond to the global policy agenda of education for sustainable development (ESD) by increasing pro-sustainability competences through direct involvement of students in projects that satisfy identified community needs. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies that attempt to measure the impact of SL on students’ sustainability competences, especially the action competence. This study aims to address this gap by examining the experiences of higher education students.

A pre-post survey design based on the Self-Perceived Action Competence for Sustainability Questionnaire was conducted on an interdisciplinary group of 219 students of two courses (Sustainable Development and Ecology) in Medellin, Colombia, half of which (109) participated in SL projects.

Sufficient empirical evidence was found to suggest that SL boosts the impact of academic courses regarding action competences in students (specially their willingness to act).

The statistical analysis shows some contradictions that should be addressed in further research.

These results can encourage more educators and universities to implement strategies such as SL to move forward with ESD and thus help overcome the current socioecological crisis.

This paper not only discusses the theoretical potential of SL but also contrasts theory with empirical observations of 13 SL projects assessed in terms of self-perceived action competence for sustainability.

The current study explores the role of social psychological factors on organizational commitment. It examined the relationships between organizational fairness, inclusion, diversity, sexism, psychological safety and affective commitment.

The study adopted a cross-sectional survey method where data were collected from staff across six higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. A total of 416 responses were collected and the data were analyzed by employing independent sample t-tests to explore gender differences regarding organizational diversity, inclusion, fairness, sexism, psychological safety and affective commitment. The mediating role of psychological safety in the effects of organizational diversity, fairness, inclusion and sexism on staff’s commitment to the organization was evaluated through a series of simple mediation models. Finally, the mediated effect of organizational social psychological factors on affective commitment through psychological safety, moderated by gender was tested.

As hypothesized, men had higher perceptions of organizational inclusion and diversity and viewed their organization as less sexist. Psychological safety mediated the positive effects of organizational diversity, fairness, inclusion and sexism on staff’s affective commitment to the organization. Organizational diversity and sexism played a bigger part in how women evaluate their organizational environment as safe to take risks and be themselves and consequently on how they commit to the organization. On the other hand, organizational fairness and inclusion seem more closely tied to men’s evaluation of their organization as safe to be themselves and consequently stronger commitment.

The findings shed light on the underlying mechanisms that shape affective commitment, that can lead to more inclusive work environments and contribute to systemic change in the Higher Education context.

In this paper, community identification has been considered as the most critical task of social network analysis. The purpose of this paper is to organize the nodes of a given network graph into distinct clusters or known communities. These clusters will therefore form the different communities available within the social network graph.

To date, numerous methods have been developed to detect communities in social networks through graph clustering techniques. The k-means algorithm stands out as one of the most well-known graph clustering algorithms, celebrated for its straightforward implementation and rapid processing. However, it has a serious drawback because it is insensitive to initial conditions and always settles on local optima rather than finding the global optimum. More recently, clustering algorithms that use a reciprocal KNN (k-nearest neighbors) graph have been used for data clustering. It skillfully overcomes many major shortcomings of k-means algorithms, especially about the selection of the initial centers of clusters. However, it does face its own challenge: sensitivity to the choice of the neighborhood size parameter k, which is crucial for selecting the nearest neighbors during the clustering process. In this design, the Jaya optimization method is used to select the K parameter in the KNN method.

The experiment on real-world network data results show that the proposed approach significantly improves the accuracy of methods in community detection in social networks. On the other hand, it seems to offer some potential for discovering a more refined hierarchy in social networks and thus becomes a useful tool in the analysis of social networks.

This paper introduces an enhancement to the KNN graph-based clustering method by proposing a local average vector method for selecting the optimal neighborhood size parameter k. Furthermore, it presents an improved Jaya algorithm with KNN graph-based clustering for more effective community detection in social network graphs.

Climate change has been universally recognized as a major threat to human well-being, necessitating a comprehensive transformation of people's activities. Various measures have been proposed to contain climate change among which the green transformation grabs special attention, thanks to its desirable properties. Within the green transformation process, green tourism comes to prominence with huge potential. As one of the largest carbon emitters, the transition towards green tourism may offer substantial benefits not only for tourism companies but also for the whole economy. Yet, most studies tend to focus on the adverse effects of tourism on climate change while overlooking the potential impact of climate change on tourism. This chapter clarifies the feedback relationship between climate change and tourism and makes some recommendations.