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This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.

This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.

The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.

The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.

Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.

The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.

The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.

This paper aims to assess whether digital financial inclusion (DFI) supports Egypt's CO₂ reduction efforts. More specifically, this paper examines the dynamics between digital finance, traditional financial inclusion (TFI) and renewable energy on carbon emission in Egypt.

The study employed the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model for Egypt over the period 1990–2020 to estimate an extended STIRPAT model for long-run linkages of DFI, traditional bank-based financial inclusion and renewable energy on carbon emissions, along with other control variables.

The results showed that using digital financial services limits carbon emissions in the long run but not in the short run, indicating that Egypt is still in its early stage of digitalization (DFI < 0.5). Moreover, renewable energy proved to have a significant negative impact on carbon emissions in the long run, implying that more investments in renewable energy projects will improve environmental quality.

The findings from this study help policymakers incorporate DFI policies into climate change adaptation strategies and execute better green growth policies that integrate DFI with energy-efficient technologies investments for a better environment.

Foster economic growth and sustinabaility.

This study contributes to the literature by quantifying the DFI in Egypt using a two-stage principal component analysis and then examines its impact on carbon emission reduction efforts. In addition, this paper extends the research on the environment from the perspective of digital finance, making it possible to excavate more deeply into the relationship between financial inclusion and carbon emission and draw more explicit policy implications for sustainable economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel qualitative activity focus group (AFG) method for studying consumption practices. This participatory method, which is inspired by practice-theoretical thinking, combines focus group discussions with activities that represent the practices at the centre of the research.

The application of the AFG method is demonstrated with an empirical study of the transition to plant-based food consumption practices in Finland, involving four group sessions of 13 participants.

The findings from the empirical application of the AFG method illustrate that its key strength is the ability to foster fruitful and natural discussions on routine consumption practices that connect with discursive and practical dimensions and thus generate multidimensional data in resource-efficient ways.

The AFG method extends the methodological approaches in practice theory–oriented research, responding to the call for creative, real-life-reflecting methods that are able to grasp the discursive and embodied dimensions of practices. The method is proposed to be particularly suitable for research on mundane consumption practices.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive analysis of the carbon footprint of the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), including direct and indirect emissions from utilities, logistics and purchases, as well as a discussion about the commonly used method. Emissions are presented in three scopes (scope 1 reports direct process emissions, scope 2 reports emissions from purchased energy and scope 3 reports indirect emissions from the value chain) to identify carbon emission hotspots within the university’s operations.

The carbon footprint was calculated using physical and monetary activity data, applying a process and economic input-output analysis.

TU Delft’s total carbon footprint in 2018 is calculated at 106 ktCO₂eq. About 80% are indirect (scope 3) emissions, which is in line with other studies. Emissions from Real estate and construction, Natural gas, Equipment, ICT and Facility services accounted for about 64% of the total footprint, whereas Electricity, Water and waste-related carbon emissions were negligible. These findings highlight the need to reduce universities’ supply chain emissions.

A better understanding of carbon footprint hotspots can facilitate strategies to reduce emissions and finally achieve carbon neutrality. In contrast to other work, it is argued that using economic input-output models to calculate universities’ carbon footprints is a questionable practice, as they can provide only an initial estimation. Therefore, the development of better-suited methods is called for.

The pervasive impact of the COVID-19 virus on the food services sector in India has created conditions for fundamentally altering the structure of the industry. This paper offers a nuanced evaluation of the transfiguration of the market, explaining descriptive views supported by numerous secondary data sources.

This is a self-driven study grounded in secondary data. Qualitative and quantitative assessments are assimilated from credible market research reports of multiple agencies in the Indian context, as well as news developments during the pandemic period.

Digitally pivoted platforms such as cloud kitchens and delivery aggregators will eclipse all other formats due to the potential long-term prevalence of the COVID-19 virus. These formats would rise to a dominant position in the Indian food services sector in the coming decade.

This study is entirely driven by secondary data due to the inherent difficulties of collecting sizeable and good quality primary data as a result of the lengthy and stringent lockdowns imposed across India. Future studies should consider collecting consumer responses to get a better picture of changing dining habits in the post-pandemic scenario.

The dynamic and evolving food services in India, catalyzed by the Internet and digital technologies will help academicians study the long-term implications of this change, and how it would impact society at large. The paper provides a rich body of contemporary data and analysis in the food services sphere.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its long-term persistence would dramatically alter food service consumption across India. This will not only change how the industry is structured, but will reshape how food is consumed into the future.

The study is a holistic examination of the relationship between the coronavirus pandemic and the food services industry in India. The macro perspectives aided by news coverage and industry research would help generate potential research questions on its own merits.

African countries are endowed with both human and natural resources. These resources constitute integral components for any economic development due to the long-lasting relationship with all sectors in an economy, yet there is an obvious disagreement between growing economy and employment generation in Africa. Though there has been a growing pattern of economic size, particularly the gross domestic product (GDP) among African countries, most of these economies are low in human development. The disagreement between economic growth and employment generation in Africa despite abundant natural resources located on the continent calls for public discourse among scholars. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the peculiar drivers of unemployment intensity in a region characterized by endowed resources.

The paper adopts two approaches; the authors employed the pooled mean group (PMG) estimator and utilised stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to generate a government efficiency index between the period 1991 and 2017 among sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries.

The empirical results through the single output-multiple inputs framework indicate that on average, there is a low level of government efficiency towards increasing the objective of human development in Africa. However, in the long run, natural resource endowment has a positive and significant relationship with employment generation for SSA. Hence, the study established that a low level of government efficiency has a long-lasting effect on low human development experienced in Africa.

The need to improve the level of government efficiency towards economic development by making both human and physical capital more effective will spur the exploration of natural resources.

The paper provides an empirical study of the effectiveness and efficiency of government through PMG and SFA in establishing the relationship between government approaches and employment level in selected SSA countries.

This research paper aims to handle the effects of economic growth, corruption, energy consumption as well as trade openness on CO2 emissions for a sample of West African countries during the period 1980 and 2018.

The current work uses the pooled mean group (PMG)-autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) panel model to estimate the dynamics among the different variables used in the short and long terms.

The findings demonstrate that all variables have long-term effects. These results suggest that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita exhibits a positive and prominent effect on CO2 emissions. Corruption displays a negative and outstanding effect on long-term CO2 emissions. In contrast, energy consumption in West African countries and trade openness create environmental degradation. Contrarily to long-term results, short-term results demonstrate that economic growth, corruption and trade openness do not influence the environmental quality.

Empirical findings provide useful information to explore deeper and better the link between the used variables. They stand for a theoretical basis as well as an enlightening guideline for policymakers to set strategies founded on the analyzed links.

This study provides the critical masses (thresholds) at which the positive incidence of finance and economic growth will be dampened by the negative effects of income inequality and poverty on energy consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa for policy direction.

The study employed the two steps systems GMM estimator for 41 countries in Africa from 2005–2020.

The study found that for finance to maintain a positive effect on energy consumption per capita, the critical thresholds for the income inequality indicators (Atkinson coefficient, Gini index and the Palma ratio) should not exceed 0.681, 0.582 and 5.991, respectively. Similarly, for economic growth (GDP per capita growth) to maintain a positive effect on energy consumption per capita, the critical thresholds for the income inequality indicators (Atkinson coefficient, Gini index and the Palma ratio) should not exceed 0.669, 0.568 and 6.110, respectively. On the poverty level in Sub-Saharan Africa, the study reports that the poverty headcount ratios (hc$144ppp2011, hc$186ppp2011 and hc$250ppp2005) should not exceed 7.342, 28.278 and 129.332, respectively for financial development to maintain a positive effect on energy consumption per capita. The study also confirms the positive nexus between access to finance (financial development) and energy consumption per capita, with the attending adverse effect on CO₂ emissions inescapable. The findings of this study make it evidently clear, for policy recommendation that finance is at the micro-foundation of economic growth, income inequality and poverty alleviation. However, a maximum threshold of income inequality and poverty headcount ratios as indicated in this study must be maintained to attain the full positive ramifications of financial development and economic growth on energy consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The originality of this study is found in the computation of the threshold and net effects of poverty and income inequality in economic growth through the conditional and unconditional effects of finance.

This research's main objective is to investigate the relationship between consumption expenditure and consumer confidence in the USA and to study their effects on US economic revivalism during and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) shock.

The authors use Michigan's monthly Consumer Sentiment Index and its five components from January 1978 to April 2020. The study is unique in quantifying the potential variations in US consumer confidence due to COVID-19 under different scenarios, by providing a projection until December 2021. It also estimates the time needed for recovery and offers guidance to policymakers on ways to contain the negative impacts of COVID-19 on the economy by restoring consumer confidence.

All scenarios show a gradual recovery of consumer confidence and consumption expenditure. This study recommends expansionary policies to encourage consumption expenditure to generate additional demand and boost economic growth and job creation.

Though this study is limited to the US consumer confidence index, it offers significant implications for marketers, customers and policymakers of other developed economies. The authors recommend expansionary economic policies to boost consumer confidence, raise economic growth and result in job creation.

The study is unique in quantifying the potential variations in US consumer confidence due to COVID-19 under different scenarios; by providing a projection until December 2021. It also estimates the time needed for recovery and guidance for policymakers on ways to contain the COVID-19 shock negative impacts on the economy by restoring consumer confidence.

Despite the global resolves to curtail fossil fuel consumption (FFC) in favour of clean energies, several countries continue to rely on carbon-intensive sources in meeting their energy demands. Financial constraints and limited knowledge with regards to green energy sources constitute major setbacks to the energy transition process. This study therefore aims to examine the effects of financial development and human capital on energy consumption.

The empirical analysis is based on the system generalised method of moments (SGMM) for a panel of 134 countries from 1996 to 2019. The SGMM estimates conducted on the basis of three measures of energy consumption, notably fossil fuel, renewable energy as well as total energy consumption (TEC), provide divergent results.

While financial development significantly reduces FFC, its effect is positive though non-significant with regards to renewable energy consumption. Conversely, financial development has a positive and significant effect on TEC. Moreover, the results reveal that human capital development has an enhancing though non-significant effect on the energy transition process. In addition, the results reveal that resource rents have an enhancing effect on the energy transition process. However, when natural resources rents are disaggregated into various components (oil, coal, mineral, natural gas and forest rents), the effects on energy transition are divergent. Although our findings are consistent when the global panel is split into developed and developing economies, the results are divergent across geographical regions. Contingent on these findings, actionable policy implications are discussed.

The study complements extant literature by assessing nexuses between financial development, human capital and energy transition from a global perspective.