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This study aims to examine whether CEO duality affects the association between board gender composition, dividend policy and cost of debt (COD).

The S&P 1500 firms’ data for this study were collected from the Bloomberg professional service terminal for the period 2010-2015.

The results show that board gender composition positively impacts both a firm’s propensity to pay dividends and the level of payouts. However, this positive association is only present in firms with CEO duality. The authors find no significant association between board gender composition and COD, but when the authors split the sample into firms with and without CEO duality, the authors find a negative association in firms without CEO duality.

The empirical results highlight important issues for policymakers, managers and investors. The study provides positive feedback on corporate governance rejuvenation efforts that seek to engender and advocate the appointments of female directors to corporate boards. Market participants, such as financial analysts and lenders, could recognize the empirical specifics related to the influence of board gender composition on firms’ dividend policy and COD in the context of CEO duality.

This study fills an important gap in the literature on the relationship between board gender composition and its relation with dividend policy and COD.

The aims of this study were: to identify consumer segments in France, based on their use of and trust in information sources regarding the freshness of fish, to examine differences between the segments regarding use of and interest in information cues and objective and subjective knowledge, to compare the consumer segments regarding their fish consumption and fish storage behaviour and to discover how different consumer segments reacted to labels regarding the processing of cod fillet products.

This paper describes how French consumers (n=485) of fish were clustered in three segments based on their use of and trust in information sources regarding the freshness of fish and then compared by means of use of and interest in various information cues, knowledge, fish consumption behaviour, age and parenthood.

Information regarding thawed cod fillet products should be carefully communicated. Fresh fish remains at the top of consumers' aspirations, regarding fish. However, a short label indicating that fish was frozen directly after catch and thawed directly before they were put on the retailers' displays may lead to an improvement of the image of previously frozen cod fillet products.

This survey based study could be confirmed in a real-life experimental setting.

The results can be direct advice for the development of communication strategies for the successful launching of fresh and thawed cod fillet products in the market.

This manuscript expands the segmentation presented by Pieniak et al. to France. Using this segmentation as a starting point, this study demonstrates the benefits of its use in the development of directed communication strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between carbon emissions and a firm’s cost of debt (COD) in the Indian context.

The present study is based on the Indian firms who disclose their emissions data under the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) during the period 2011 to 2014. The selection model is being used to remove the problem of endogeneity and sample selection bias. Further, the testing model is being used to examine the impact of carbon emissions on the COD.

The present study found that the coefficient of carbon emissions is positively and significantly associated with the COD. Moreover, the outcomes of the robustness test further show that the COD will be higher for polluting firms than environmentally friendly firms in India.

The study has covered all the companies from India who are disclosing their emissions data under the CDP, London. The study will be most relevant for financial planning and capital structure design by the Indian companies. However, in designing the capital structure, the only COD is being covered in this study.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the present study is a first of its kind to investigate the relationship between firms’ carbon emissions level and COD in the Indian context.

During the past ten years, anaerobic process has become a popular technology for treating concentrated effluents. Research and development programmes led by both engineers and microbiologists have resulted in a better understanding of the microbiology of anaerobic reactions and reactor design for anaerobic processes. Considerable progress has been achieved in the development of high rate anaerobic reactors with several configurations for treating concentrated industrial effluents. In this review, attention is paid to highlighting the conceptual and full scale developments of anaerobic fluidized bed reactors, in respect of process performance, design concepts, start‐up of the reactor, stability of the system with respect to various operating parameters, reactor configurations, comparison with competing reactor designs for concentrated industrial effluents and kinetics and modelling of reactor systems.

Chemical treatability of dairy wastewater originating from a dairy and dairy products plant at Istanbul was investigated on the basis of chemical oxygen demand (COD) parameter as a pre‐treatment alternative. FeCl₃, FeSO₄ and alum were used as coagulants in the jar‐test experiments of four sets of daily composite wastewater samples taken once every month. The effect of acid cracking has also been searched through acid addition and pH adjustment. Characterisation studies demonstrated that wastewater characteristics varied within a wide range in spite of no significant production changes at the plant during the experimentation period. Optimum coagulant dosage has been determined as 200mg l^–1 for all the coagulants with the optimum pH values between 4 and 4.5 for FeCl₃ and FeSO₄, and 5‐6 for alum. Maximum overall COD removal efficiencies were obtained as 72 per cent, 59 per cent and 54 per cent for FeCl₃, FeSO₄ and alum, respectively. Nevertheless, COD removal efficiencies were found to be inadequate to meet the current discharge standards of Greater Metropolitan Istanbul to sewer systems indicating that chemical treatment is insufficient for discharging chemically pre‐treated dairy wastewater to a sewage system, which was actually the main objective of the study. The results showed that the wastewater composition greatly influences the maximum removal efficiencies and also the conditions for optimum coagulation. However, attention to such chemical treatment studies on dairy wastewater has started to accelerate within the last decade in various countries of the world, such as United Arabic Emirates and Scandinavian countries where the targets of applying chemical treatment varied. In Scandinavian countries, biodegradable coagulants have been applied to use the sludge arising from the system for livestock feeding, leading to reuse of sludge. In Arabic Emirates, chemically treated dairy effluents are utilised for irrigation purposes. These recent studies point out that application of chemical treatment to dairy wastewater with various coagulants lead to a variety of utilities apart from being a pre‐treatment alternative.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between the cost of debt (COD) and auditor industry expertise using Taiwanese data. Since previous studies (Li et al., 2010) have only examined the relation between industry specialization and COD at the audit firm level in western countries, the authors further examine the association between industry specialization and COD at the individual auditor level in an Asian context.

The authors use the interest rate on the firm’s debt as a proxy variable for the COD (Francis, Khurana and Pereira, 2005). The authors adopt three different methods to measure industry specialization, which consist of the auditors’ market share in terms of client sales and number of clients, and client assets.

The results indicate that the clients of industry specialists at individual auditor levels have a lower COD.

First, the authors extend the research of Li et al. (2010) and find that the clients of individual auditor industry specialists also have a lower COD. Second, the authors also believe the evidence on the effects of industry expertise at the individual auditor level may have policy implications for regulators and public investors. Finally, in contrast to works carried out in the US market, the authors provide empirical evidence for the relation between industry specialization and COD in an Asian market.

This study investigates the impact of insider-ownership of publicly traded firms on their performance, cost of debt (COD) and cost of equity. We use a sample of 104 non-finance listed companies of Pakistan for the period from 2006 to 2016. Our study is conducted in Pakistan as a developing country in which insider-ownership is dominant, and a weak external corporate governance mechanism increases the payoffs from insider-ownership. We use feasible generalized least square (FGLS) regression methods to examine these hypotheses. Based on agency theory, we find that insider-ownership enhances firm performance. Furthermore, our results show that insider-ownership reduced the COD and equity. Higher ownership decreases the opportunistic behavior of insiders. It also reduces the creditor’s perception of the likelihood of default on loan payments and reduces agency issues among shareholders. The insider will invest in positive NPV projects which will help maximize shareholders’ wealth and minimize the COD. Similarly, the relationship between insider-ownership and cost of equity is significant but negative. Supporting the convergence of interest increase in ownership helps in aligning the goals of managers and stakeholders whereby the insider will focus on value creation by minimizing equity cost.

This paper aims to study the application of high-tolerance and flexible indigenous bacteria and fungi, along with the co-metabolism in recycled paper and cardboard mill (RPCM) wastewater treatment (WWT).

The molecular characterization of isolated indigenous bacteria and fungi was performed by 16S rRNA and 18S rRNA gene sequencing, respectively. Glucose was used as a cometabolic substrate to enhance the bioremediation process.

The highest removal efficiency was achieved for both chemical oxygen demand (COD) and color [78% COD and 45% color removal by Pseudomonas aeruginosa RW-2 (MZ603673), as well as approximately 70% COD and 48% color removal by Geotrichum candidum RW-4 (ON024394)]. The corresponding percentages were higher in comparison with the efficiency obtained from the oxidation ditch unit in the full-scale RPCM WWT plant.

Indigenous P. aeruginosa RW-2 and G. candidum RW-4 demonstrated effective capability in RPCM WWT despite the highly toxic and low biodegradable nature, especially with the assistance of glucose.

This paper aims to investigate the association between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the cost of equity (COE) and cost of debt (COD).

The authors use the multivariate regression analysis approach to address the developed hypotheses.

Using a sample of 230 Australian listed firms from 2004 to 2016, the authors document that firms complying with higher CSR affect both COE and COD negatively, which means that CSR disclosure reduces financing cost.

These results support the risk mitigation perspective of CSR compliance, showing that both the investors and creditors may lower their expected returns because they find that CSR can mitigate potential business risk.

The authors extend the CSR research with both COE and COD.

This paper aims to select a type of mordant from aluminium salts, namely, aluminium sulphate, aluminium nitrate and polyaluminium chloride (PAC) with the lowest potential for contamination so that their use will minimise pollution from natural dye waste. It also aims to determine the pollution value of natural dye immersion waste from jackfruit wood extract, secang wood, mangsi fruit and several synthetic dyes, to identify potential environmental pollution.

Dyeing with natural dyes was performed by exhaust at room temperature by the pre-mordant method, while with synthetic dyes it was performed by exhaust according to the dyeing procedure (reactive, vat and naphthol). The groundwater, mordant solutions, natural dye extract and the waste-water from the natural and synthetic dyes were then tested to determine their biological oxygen demand (BOD₅), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), pH, Al and heavy metal contents such as chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co) and lead (Pb).

Aluminium sulphate had the lowest pollution load while PAC had the highest, as aluminium sulphate had a higher BOD₅/COD ratio (0.62–0.67) than aluminium nitrate (0.56–0.64) or PAC (0.44–0.54). The dyeing waste from the three natural dyes contained an acidic pH of 3.5–4.2, Al of 75.280–621.34 mg/L, Cr of 0.154–0.215 mg/L and Cu of 0.035–0.072 mg/L. The values of TSS, COD and BOD₅ are higher than the quality standards of the waste but are environmentally friendly because the ratio of the BOD₅/COD values from the waste ranges from 0.44–0.67.

The findings indicate that as a mordant, aluminium sulphate results in lower pollution loads than aluminium nitrate and PAC. However, all three mordants contain Cr and Cu, albeit in negligible concentrations. Therefore, it is recommended that future studies strive to identify a mordant that has lower pollution loads and does not contain metals but can increase dyeing results to satisfy consumer requirements. It is the hope that, with the discovery of a new mordant, natural dyes will be the solution for the heavy metal pollution caused by synthetic dyes.

The use of environmentally-friendly mordants and natural dyes in the Indonesian textile and batik industry will give rise to superior quality eco-textile and eco-batik products. Such environmentally-friendly and high-quality products will not only increase competition and consumer interest but increase product sales as well which will, in turn, increase incomes and the economy. Additionally, an increase in the use of natural dyes by the textile and batik industry will serve as additional income to the communities and farmers from which the raw materials for the natural dyes are sourced thereby creating jobs and increasing welfare.

As environmentally-friendly mordants and natural dyes replace the hazardous and toxic materials currently used in the textile and batik industry, it guarantees the health and safety of its consumers and workers. Furthermore, as the waste-water produced is biodegradable, it reduces river and groundwater pollution. It is, therefore, expected that this information will not only lead to a shift in attitude within the textile and batik industries but the adoption of environmentally-friendly materials, for the sake of the environment, as well as the development of eco-textile and eco-batik products.

Aluminium sulphate is a mordant type of aluminium salt with a lower potential for contamination than aluminium nitrate and PAC. However, PAC has been discovered to be a mordant for natural dyes, as has the fruit of the mangsi shrub, which has recently been discovered as a naturally occurring blue dye.