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Should the unemployed be viewed as an underclass at the bottom of the stratification heap in modern societies? In the 1930s, the answer given by social scientists was unambiguously negative. The unemployed could not be considered as a social class; they were “a mass numerically not socially” who showed no group or class consciousness (Zawadsky and Lazarsfeld, 1935, p.2). The people who were unemployed at any one point in time, the argument ran, were a mixed collection of individuals who did not necessarily share a common view of society. The attitudes of the unemployed varied according to previous experience at work (Bakke, 1933) and individual and family financial situation (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel, 1932: 45). Similar arguments have been presented more recently: the responses of the unemployed to their condition depend critically on their previous political socialisation, for example, argues Bergere (1990).

Protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indication (PGI) products form the core of the European Union (EU) quality food policy. Low and fragmented logo recognition perils the entire plan. This work aims to provide a “classification” of European consumers as regards logo awareness based on generic demographic and socio-economic characteristics and to test hypotheses relating PDO awareness with the purchasing behaviour of consumers.

The work utilises publicly available pan-European databases collected from Eurobarometer in four rolling surveys from 2012 to 2017. The statistical analysis exploits the spatially nested nature of the data.

The “logo aware” consumer is distinctively different from the average representative European consumer. A range of demographic, human capital and socio-economic characteristics and behavioural and attitudinal traits differentiate the consumers who are aware of the logo. Country and region effects are vital.

Benefits of large and representative samples accrue by utilising available Eurobarometer surveys. This comes at a cost. The individual researcher has no control over the questions included in the questionnaire.

Consumer classification forms the basis of awareness-raising strategies. It reveals the numerous segments of aware and non-aware consumers and opens a discussion about tools and methods to reach out to the European consumer.

This analysis holds an exact pan-European perspective and incorporates consumers' characteristics, behaviour, attitudes and country and region effects.

Until now, most scholars have used one of four competing theories to explain undeclared work. Political economy theories explain undeclared work as resulting from the exclusion of workers from formal work and welfare, neo-liberal theories explain such work as a voluntarily chosen rational economic decision and neo-institutionalist and post-structuralist theories explain those engaging as social actors who disagree with the formal rules or seek to help others out respectively. Recognising that each theory focuses upon different employment relationships, this paper evaluates the proposition that these different theories are more explanations of different types of undeclared work.

To evaluate this, data reported is collected in 2019 across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom) in special Eurobarometer survey 92.1 involving 27,565 interviews.

Of the 3.6% of citizens participating in undeclared work, 10% engage in undeclared waged employment, 42% in undeclared self-employment and 48% in undeclared paid favours. Reporting their rationales, 7% state purely political economy exclusion-driven reasons, 19% solely neo-liberal rational economic actor reasons, 20% purely social actor reasons and 54% mixed motives. A logistic regression analysis finds those engaging in undeclared waged employment significantly more likely to state purely exclusion-driven rationales, those engaging in undeclared self-employment significantly more likely to state neo-liberal rational economic actor and neo-institutionalist social actor rationales and those engaging in undeclared paid favours post-structuralist social actor motives.

This finding suggests that the policy initiatives required to tackle undeclared work will vary according to the type of undeclared work addressed. These are outlined.

Evidence is provided that a different weighting needs to be given to different theories when explaining each type of undeclared work.

Lockdowns and the forced closure of certain industries during the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted workers, particularly entrepreneurs, who were financially and emotionally involved in their businesses. Two studies have shown that entrepreneurs have a lower willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19 than employees. In this study, the authors try to replicate the vaccination gap between the two groups. Second, the authors study whether the difference persists when controlling for demographics, vaccination attitudes and the COVID-19 context, including the financial impact of the pandemic, its effect on the wellbeing of workers, and government attitudes. Third, the authors study whether there are differences in how the context of the pandemic relates to vaccination willingness for entrepreneurs and employees.

The authors conduct regression analyses using three large datasets. The authors study vaccination status (February 2022) in a 27-country Eurobarometer sample, vaccination intention (December 2020) in a Dutch sample from the LISS panel and vaccination status (July 2021) in a sample from the Understanding America Study (UAS).

All datasets confirm that entrepreneurs have lower vaccination intention and coverage than employees. Even when controlling for the variables described in the LISS and UAS datasets, this negative difference remains. The study results also indicate that demographics, especially vaccination attitudes, are much more important than contextual influences in the decision to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The authors are the first to dive further into the vaccination differences between entrepreneurs and employees. They advise further research into the drivers of this gap, specifically relating to the role of personality and social normative influences.

The temporary enforced closure of businesses in response to the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in governments in Europe and beyond offering short-term financial support to the businesses and workers affected. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a group of workers unable to benefit from the short-term job retention schemes and support to the self-employed made available by governments, namely, those whose paid work is comprised wholly of undeclared work, and how this could be addressed.

To identify those whose paid work is entirely undeclared, a Eurobarometer survey of undeclared work in Europe is reported conducted in September 2019, just prior to the pandemic, and involving 27,565 face-to-face interviews in 28 European countries.

The finding is that the paid work of one in every 132 European citizens is comprised wholly of undeclared work, and these workers are concentrated in non-essential businesses and activities severely affected by the lockdown. These workers whose paid work is comprised wholly of undeclared work are significantly more likely to be widowed or divorced/separated, living in households with three or more adults, without children and most of the time have financial difficulties in making ends meet.

Given that businesses and workers in the undeclared economy are largely unable to work under lockdown, it is argued that providing access to short-term financial support, through a regularisation initiative based on voluntary disclosure, would not only provide the income support these workers need but also bring them out of the shadows and put them on the radar of the state authorities, thus transforming undeclared work into declared work.

This paper shows how in the current or repeat lockdowns, the short-term financial support made available by governments can be used to transform undeclared work into declared work.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain public preferences for different public procurement practices. The paper looks into public support for cost-effectiveness, discriminatory procurement in favour of domestic suppliers and sustainable procurement.

This study uses Eurobarometer public opinion data on 26.836 EU citizens from 27 EU countries.

This paper shows that EU citizens want public authorities to evaluate multiple aspects of any procurement offer in their public procurement decisions. It also found that, although cost-effectiveness and domestic favouritism are still important to EU citizens, citizens are most supportive of the objectives of sustainable procurement. Some associations between citizens’ procurement preferences and their social characteristics and political attitudes were found, but these only explain citizen procurement preferences to a limited extent. Country of residence has the strongest association with citizens’ acceptance of the objectives of sustainable procurement.

Even though the data contain information on the procurement preferences of a large number of EU citizens, it is a topic of inquiry that is sensitive to social desirability bias.

This paper contributes to the empirical understanding of public attitudes towards public procurement. It is one of few studies on citizen attitudes towards different public procurement practices.

There is a significant body of work dealing with the topic of undeclared work and irregular immigrants. However, relatively little is understood about the British general public’s perception of irregular immigrants’ participation in undeclared work. The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic from a social trust angle and to compare its findings with the real extent and distribution of the different sub-populations’ participation in undeclared work.

The research is based on the 2007 Eurobarometer data set, drawing upon the results of logistic regression analyses.

The research reveals the extent that socio-demographic, occupational and spatial characteristics influence the perceptions of the general public towards the involvement of irregular immigrants in undeclared work in the UK. These findings are then analysed to show their impact on social trust.

A policy intervention addressing perceptions could be joined by or be part of initiatives aiming to increase social trust as their target audience overlaps with both racial and income differences playing a significant role in both matters. Equal treatment should be an essential feature of such new measures as it could have a significant effect on preventing discrimination as a result of negative perceptions. Also, new policies aiming to reduce undeclared work should consider a general scope targeting all ethnic groups at the same time. Focusing on just one minority community intensifies perceptions of the rest of the society and enhances its weakening effect on extra-community links at the same time impeding interpersonal trust and the emergence of social capital.

Perceptions of the general public towards irregular immigrants’ engagement in undeclared work has not been analysed in detail previously. The findings of the current paper are based on the 2007 Eurobarometer data set. This paper examines the preconceptions and their impact on social trust from the perspective of the general public.

This article examines the nature of service provision in the platform-based collaborative economy from the perspective of entrepreneurship theories. It departs from a knowledge gap about the individual and contextual determinants of service provision through digital platforms. By exploring these determinants for the service provision in two main sectors of the collaborative economy, transportation and accommodation, the study provides a first conceptual introduction of these activities and their nature for the existing entrepreneurship research.

The analysis is based upon Eurobarometer microdata (2018), covering 28 European countries with about 27,000 observations, and uses a seemingly unrelated Probit model.

The likelihood of service provision through platforms in the collaborative economy is highest for individuals aged 25–34 years but decreases continuously with age. Occupation, sex and population density of the place of residence are other relevant determinants. By contrast, the regulatory system and GDP per capita of the region are not relevant.

The findings illuminate the under-studied individual and contextual determinants related to individuals engaging with entrepreneurial activities in the collaborative economy. Future research should investigate the role of previous self-employment, skills and spatial context.

The collaborative economy is still a marginal sector in Europe that is likely to grow bigger. Particularly the young, highly educated entrepreneurial persons located in urban regions may spur this expected growth. Supporting policy measures aimed at this social stratum might foster digital entrepreneurship and contribute to growth in the digital economy.

By exploring the individual and contextual determinants for the service provision in the two main sectors of the platform-based collaborative economy, transportation and accommodation, the study provides a first conceptual introduction of these activities and their nature into existing entrepreneurship research.