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The quality of voluntary sector-led community health programmes is an important concern for service users, providers and commissioners. Research on the fidelity of programme implementation offers a basis for assessing and further enhancing practice. The purpose of this paper is to report on the fidelity assessment of Living Well Taking Control (LWTC) – a voluntary sector-led, community-based education programme in England focussing on the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes.

This fidelity of implementation (FoI) study was conducted with the Devon-based LWTC programme. A fidelity checklist was developed to analyse audio records of group-based lifestyle education sessions – implementation was rated in terms of adherence to protocol and competence in delivery; the influence of wider contextual factors was also assessed. Kappa statistics (κ) were used to test for inter-rater agreement. Course satisfaction data were used as a supplementary indicator of facilitator competence.

Analysis of 28 sessions, from five diabetes prevention and two diabetes management groups (total participants, n=49), yielded an overall implementation fidelity score of 77.3 per cent for adherence (moderate inter-rater agreement, κ=0.60) and 95.1 per cent for competence (good inter-rater agreement, κ=0.71). The diabetes prevention groups consistently achieved higher adherence scores than the diabetes management groups. Facilitator competence was supported by high participant satisfaction ratings.

An appropriate level of implementation fidelity was delivered for the LWTC group-based education programme, which provides some confidence that outcomes from the programme reflected intervention effectiveness. This study demonstrates the viability of assessing the FoI in a voluntary sector-led public health initiative and the potential of this method for assuring quality and informing service development.

The provision of information about food to consumers is well recognized to be problematic and complex. Novel approaches tend to adopt app-based services as a way for consumers to get better food information. Potentially, these services could provide relevant information to consumers because they could address particular needs by leveraging on context-awareness, ubiquity and pervasiveness. Do current app-based services actualize these potentialities? The purpose of this paper is twofold: to propose a methodological approach that can be easily adapted to conduct reviews of app-based services and provide consumers with information about food and to answer this question on a specified food information domain (namely, olive oil).

A literature review was performed to investigate characteristics of food information services under a consumer’s value perspective. Then, a qualitative framework was built, which allowed a multidimensional analysis of the food information provided by a service through a mobile app. Moreover, an application of that framework on “olive oil” mobile apps was carried out, with the twofold objective of providing an example of application of the proposed framework in a real context and analyzing the role of mobile apps in reducing consumers’ information and knowledge gap in this particular domain. The review covers commercial applications on “olive oil,” available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

A framework of multidimensional analysis of the two-way information flow in the interaction between a consumer/user and a food app-based service is proposed. The framework represents a useful tool to analyze the offer of mobile-based services in a given sector. The framework is then applied to perform a situation analysis of app-based services in the olive oil market. The analysis highlights that olive oil information providers do not seem to fully exploit recent advances in “Internet of food” technologies. Hence, results from our survey suggest some direction to conceive and develop innovative mobile olive oil apps that better exploit mobiquitous technology features.

Consumers perceive a growing need of information about food. This need is mainly due to recent cases of adulterations, allegations of fraud and subterfuges that have invested food sector (in particular, olive oil sector). This research provides a useful framework to analyze some aspects of management of food information provision through mobile apps. Such a framework represents a practical tool that provides fruitful insights for the design of a new generation of food-app based services within the so-called “internet of food” domain.

Although there are countless mobile apps aimed to assist consumers with their everyday food practices, little research has been devoted to investigate the impact of mobiquitous technologies on the management of food information provision to consumers. The available research lacks in defining an approach capable to analyze the relevance of information provided to targeted audiences by mobile food apps. This paper tries to fill this knowledge gap by proposing a framework that is based on a characterization of food information flows in terms of categorization, source and service features.

The acquisition of and control over wealth is the motivation for most serious crimes involving premeditation. This is all the more so when the criminal activity resembles an enterprise which inevitably requires capital to operate and lubricate its aspirations. Money, or rather wealth, in its disposable form, is therefore not only the goal of criminal enterprises but the life blood of the enterprise. Therefore until the profits of crime are taken away from subversive and criminal factions, there is little chance of effectively discouraging criminal and abusive conduct which produces great wealth or, through its profits, allows power and prestige to be acquired. As soon as the state devises methods for the tracing and seizure of such funds, there is an obvious and compelling incentive for the criminal to hide the source of his ill‐gotten gains — in other words to engage in money laundering.

This paper aims to identify the barriers that are linked to the institutional, external and social environmental factors in the emerging economies of South-East Asia (SEA). Through a comparative analysis of China, India and Pakistan, this study attempts to understand the constraints that might inhibit small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in this region from becoming more successful.

This study proposes an empirical research framework to identify the constraints to determinants of SMEs’ growth (the CDSG model) in an important geographic and industrial cluster of SEA countries including China, India and Pakistan. Six propositions are tested, using data from 1,443 SMEs obtained from Enterprise Survey Data Repository database from the World Bank. Ordinary least-squares estimation is applied for statistical analyses and testing of the research propositions.

The results show the differential effects of the proposed CDSG model in China, India and Pakistan. Access to external finance is found to be irrelevant to the growth of SMEs in China, while it has a positive influence in India and Pakistan. Furthermore, in terms of the innovation process, partial mediation is traced. Using the tax rate factor, negative mediation is found between CDSG variables and SMEs’ growth. Both mediators play different roles in firm growth activities, while the level of significance of some variables is found to be more relevant to a specific region rather than to all.

The prudent management of the proposed CDSG variables could revolutionize the constraints facing SME growth, making them into success factors. This could invigorate the growth of SMEs’ in SEA countries. The paper concludes with practical implications for policymakers and investors.

This SMEs’ theoretical framework is the first to use innovation and tax rate mediators to highlight the determinants of business growth in three SEA regional economies (China, India and Pakistan).

This research focuses on analysing the effect of wine tourism on green product and process innovations developed by Spanish wineries. In addition, age, size and membership in a protected designation of origin (PDO) are introduced as control variables to increase the precision of the cause–effect relationship analysed.

The study proposes a conceptual model based on previous studies, which is tested using structural equations (partial least squares structural equation modelling [PLS-SEM]) with data collected from 202 Spanish wineries.

The research results show that wine tourism activity has a positive and significant influence on green product and process innovation.

The research contributes to the academic literature in several ways. First, the study advances knowledge and understanding of the benefits generated by wine tourism. Second, the research contributes to the literature that analyses the wine tourism–sustainability link, since it is predicted that this type of tourism can increase the capacity for green innovation. Third, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous research that has analysed wine tourism as a catalytic variable for green innovation. Fourth, the proposed theoretical model has not been previously addressed in the academic literature, so the study represents an important advance in scientific knowledge.

Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods.

The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September–December 2020).

The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose).

Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises.