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The coal mining industry makes a key contribution to the Queensland economy, and is the underlying driver of employment and economic conditions in many local and regional communities. This article aims to focus on how the social and economic impacts of mining should be assessed and negotiated with local and regional communities.

The following assessment tools were trialed to ascertain the impacts on communities of changes in the mining industry: extended stakeholder analysis of key community representatives; economic modeling of changes in the level of mining activity; a random survey of householders involving choice experiments to assess tradeoffs; and experimental workshops to assess how residents were prepared to prioritise different community development options.

The results showed that impact assessment should be addressed using different economic and social science tools to ensure regulatory approval as well as community acceptance.

This article suggests alternative social and economic impact assessment mechanisms that can be applied to any industry and any situation (e.g. growth, decline, new development, simultaneous changes).

The purpose of this paper is to critically review methods of impact assessment and economic analyses.

Reviews the literature on impact assessment, and examines some case studies of impact assessment in health libraries. Relates satisfaction and dissatisfaction assessment to impact assessment. Identifies recent impact assessment approaches in public and academic libraries, and explores different uses of terminology for impact and outcome. Reviews literature on economic analysis of value, including cost analyses, cost-effectiveness analysis and return on investment (ROI) studies.

Terms for library assessment (outcome, output, impact, value and benefit) vary among different sectors. Impact evaluation should examine initial assumptions of value carefully, and examine possible gaps in the line of argument linking inputs of library services to presumed impacts (positive and negative). More attention to sampling and response rates is required, to avoid problems such as the “warm glow” effect. Qualitative and quantitative evidence should be carefully integrated to tell the impact story. Economic impact can be estimated, but methodology depends on the service aims and sector.

Demonstrates that some of the requirements for traditional impact assessment also affect economic analyses and ROI studies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how sustainability can become a source of competitive advantage for mature manufacturing sectors where technologies are standardized, and innovation is mainly generated across the value chain and not by individual companies.

From the methodological point of view, this research estimates the sustainability status of ceramic production in the Sassuolo district (Italy), using the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) model, and changing the observation point for the analysis, from the enterprise (micro level) to the entire sector (meso level).

This paper provides an analysis of the environmental, economic and social impacts of the four main types of ceramic tiles manufactured in Italy, both in aggregate terms for the entire sector and per square meter of product.

The methodological approach used in this research is easy to replicate both for companies when designing their sustainability strategies and for public decision makers when assessing the sustainability performance of a sector or supply chain.

For the first time, a socio-economic impact assessment is proposed for the ceramic sector, conducted in parallel with the environmental impact assessment through stakeholder mapping and prioritization.

This paper conceptualizes the theme of relations and interdependencies between ceramic producers organized in industrial districts and the territories in which they operate in order to determine empirically the sustainability performance of Italian ceramic sector, using the LCSA model with a territorial extension that presupposes an innovative contribution to current literature and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the severity of social and economic impact of floods on the communities and industries with respect to their reliance on the flood impacted critical infrastructure. This paper illustrates a severity assessment tool to determine the reduced serviceability level of critical infrastructure after a disaster, how the change in serviceability impacts activities of associated communities and industries, and the resulting social and economic impact.

The results presented in this paper are a part of a larger research designed to develop a decision support system for disaster impact mitigation. This research evaluated the impact of floods as a natural hazard on infrastructure and the related industries and communities in terms of criticality and vulnerability of infrastructure and the severity of social and economic impact if the critical infrastructure were to be affected. The overall research focused on the 2008 Midwest floods for the required data collection (including the cities of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Terre Haute, Indiana, St Louis, Missouri, Gulfport and Des Plaines, Illinois). Relevant data were collected through questionnaire surveys, personal interviews, and site visits.

The data collected through this research highlighted the importance of relationship between infrastructure, communities and industries with respect to technical, social and economic aspects. While the overall research resulted in a Decision Support System with three modules, to assess criticality, vulnerability and severity, this paper only elaborates the Severity Assessment Tool (SAT). Serviceability of an infrastructure plays an important role in post disaster recovery and response. Reduction in the serviceability of an infrastructure also affects the functionality of the activities that depend on the affected infrastructure resulting in social and economic impact. The tool presented in this paper determines the severity of social and economic impact by evaluating the reduction in the functionality of the affected activities.

The model (SAT) presented in this paper determines the social and economic impact on communities and industries due to natural disaster when the serviceability of disaster impacted critical infrastructure is impaired. This tool can be effectively used by city managers as well as emergency planners for industries and communities in developing mitigation strategies based on the severity of social and economic impact due to the affected critical infrastructure. The results would also help the decision makers in arriving at more effective investment decisions to repair/rehabilitate certain critical infrastructure.

The purpose of the paper is to report on a novel approach to assessing long‐term policy and technology impacts. This approach combines a qualitative forecast with a tri‐level quantitative projection to provide a broadly socio‐economic analysis. It is aimed at forecasting problems, such as impact assessment for future policy formulation in the light of socio‐economic, technological and market developments.

The paper is based on a variety of research methods including scenario planning, and techniques taken from analysis of stochastic processes to identify and correlate behaviour, combined with the concepts meso‐economics, in order to produce more robust tri‐level quantitative estimations, driven by qualitative analysis.

The paper finds that it is possible to join micro‐economic behaviour to macro‐economic, using meso‐economics to attack what was previously seen as a difficult gap between the two. It also finds that quantitative forecasting, based on socio‐economic behaviour using the qualitative assessment from a scenario – i.e. from stories about the future – can form a basis for quantitative forecasting. Different scenarios may be linked to corresponding quantitative economic estimations using key indicator parameters at each economic level, those which are the most relevant to the scenarios, and so exploit statistical techniques across the three levels in a balanced fashion.

This paper summarises a novel approach, taking a fresh look at forecasting economic impacts assessments by shaping the quantitative form with a qualitative tool, while introducing the linking powers of meso‐economics. General economic theories in widespread use today seem to be weak when dealing with the non‐deterministic nature of real markets and economies and especially in linking micro‐economic parameters to macro‐economic. The approach attempts to resolve this dilemma. An example is presented of its use in a recent study.

The purpose of this paper is to provide useful information for members of the weather community and policy makers, to help them understand the full scope of drought economic impacts and assessment methodologies, and to help determine the feasibility of future drought mitigation programs.

To accomplish the objective, the paper reviews the literature of drought economic impact studies in both agricultural and non‐agricultural sectors, summarizes the methods and data employed, compares the various results, and investigates the problems and limitations of previous studies.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the challenges and directions of future improvement on drought economic impact assessment.

This paper gives a comprehensive review of drought economic impacts and the associated quantitative assessment methodologies, which provides valuable information to rational decisions supporting drought mitigation policies and programs.

The expansion of online platforms for renting tourist accommodations has given rise to a great deal of controversy in society. Likewise, the arrival of tourists in residential settings has led to a wide range of positive and negative impacts, resulting in conflicts between different stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether there is variation in the perception of the impacts associated with peer-to-peer accommodation platforms among different stakeholders? Additionally, it also seeks to investigate what kind of impacts generate the highest level of conflict among stakeholders?

Given the relative novelty of the problem, this paper proposes an exploratory study that sheds light on some of the main issues with the purpose of supporting further research in the future. The aim is to analyze which impacts are perceived as more positive or negative by each group and to create indexes of conflict for these groups regarding their perception of the impacts. This study is based on fieldwork carried out in April 2020, which consists of 600 online surveys of local residents in the city of Granada. This city, one of Spain’s main tourist spots, suffers the highest tourist pressure in the country.

The exploratory study suggests that the greatest consensus is generated in the assessment of economic impacts, either negative or positive. The greatest conflicts are related to the assessment of the effect of this activity on housing preservation. The group comprising accommodation owners of tourist flats is the one that shows a more dissenting opinion from the rest, confronting especially the group formed by citizens whose income depends on tourism.

There is a lack of studies on the perception of tourism impacts associated with online tourism rental platforms. This is the first study to analyze both, how the main stakeholders associated with this activity assess the different impacts derived from this form of tourist accommodation as a whole and the conflicts derived from such an assessment. An additional innovation is that the analysis investigates the potential fear of disease transmission caused by tourists. It would be interesting to continue this research by applying the same questionnaire in different environments, such as rural areas or societies with different structures from the one analyzed here. Likewise, future in-depth analysis of some of the conflicts is recommended so as to ascertain their origin.

Microfinance impact evaluation studies help in discovering client needs which are diverse, special and different from the needs of the conventional bankable clients. Thus, such area of market research is becoming essential for microfinance institutions for designing better client-centred products. In this research, the authors discuss the specific model of household economic portfolio (HEP) for qualitative impact evaluation in microfinance. The paper aims to discuss the complexity limitations of the HEP. Solutions are provided for overcoming these limitations. The modified household economic portfolio (M-HEP) model is simplified and detailed, and two types of diaries are suggested for implementing it.

First, the authors briefly review the literature on impact assessment methods in microfinance and on the HEP model. In the second part of the paper, the M-HEP is suggested and discussed in detail. In the third part, the authors present a case study to illustrate the additional information that can be generated by using our suggested research tool and model. Finally, the authors wrap up with a summary of the findings.

Solutions are provided for overcoming the limitations of the HEP model. The suggested model (M-HEP) is simplified and detailed, and two types of diaries are suggested for implementing it. The case study shows that, certainly, time and money are related. While time may mean money for a rich person, for a poor person, if money is not forthcoming, she may spend time on non-income generating work that adds to her social esteem. She may also consume inexpensive assets because spending time at low cost is important. Finally, she spends time in conducting activities for which she cannot afford to pay.

The paper offers two novelties. First, it details the interactions between the elements of the HEP model of Chen and Dunn. This improvement to the original model is highly important for defining the measures that are required for redrawing the economic portfolio of an individual. The second novelty is in suggesting the collection of time-use and financial daily data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a combined diary is used in microfinance research. These two novelties allow the application of a modified version of the highly interesting HEP model in spite of its complexity.