Search results

This study aims to assess the household food insecurity in Malaysia during the initial phase of the movement control order (MCO) to provide insights into the prevalence and predictors of food insecurity in this context.

The research used an online cross-sectional survey between March 28 and April 28, 2020. The study collected data from the Radimer/Cornell Hunger Scale and a food insecurity instrument. Analytical tools included chi-square and logistic regression models.

Of the 411 participating households, 54.3% were food-secure, while 45.7% experienced varying food insecurity. Among these, 29.9% reported mild hunger-associated food insecurity, 8.5% experienced individual food insecurity and 7.3% reported child hunger. The study identified predictors for food insecurity, including household income, as those with total income of < RM 2,300 had 13 times greater odds (odds ratio [OR] 13.8; confidence interval [CI] 5.9–32.1; p < 0.001) than those with income of RM 5,600, marital status as divorced (OR 4.4; 95% CI 1.0–19.9; p-value = 0.05) or married (OR 1.04; 95% CI 0.52–2.1) compared to those who are single. Self-employed respondents had three times greater odds of living in a household experiencing food insecurity (OR 3.58; 95% CI 1.6–7.7; p-value = 0.001) than those in the private sector (OR 1.48; 95% CI 0.85–2.61) or experiencing job loss (OR 1.39; 95% CI 0.62–3.1) compared with those who reported being in full-time government employment.

This study acknowledged limitations, such as not considering various dimensions of food insecurity, such as coping strategies, nutritional support, diet quality and well-being, due to the complexity of the issue.

The study underscores the importance of targeted support for vulnerable groups and fostering collaborative efforts to address household food insecurity during crises like the MCOs.

The research offers insights into how to address household food insecurity and its impact on society.

It identifies predictors, quantifies increased odds and emphasizes the necessity of targeted policies and collaborative approaches for fostering resilient recovery and promoting well-being in vulnerable populations.

A promising solution to meet the challenge of sustainability and ensure the protection of the environment consists in acting considerably on the adoption and use of new information and communication technologies. The latter can act on the protection of the environment; completely change manufacturing processes into energy-efficient, eco-friendly techniques or influence institutions and governance. The article attempts to cover shortcomings in the literature by providing a couple of theoretical frameworks and grounded empirical proofs for the dissemination of green technologies and the interaction of the latter with institutional quality.

The sample is made up of 43 African countries covering the period 2000–2020 and a panel VAR modeling approach is employed.

Our results show that an attenuation of CO2 emissions amplifies the diffusion of digital technologies (mobile telephones and Internet). Efficiency in the institutional quality of African countries is mandatory for environmental preservation. Moreover, the provision of a favorable institutional framework in favor of renewable energy helps to stimulate environmental performance in African states.

This study complements the extant literature by assessing nexuses between green technology and CO2 emissions in environmental sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that will demonstrate how the integration of Salam (exclusive agricultural commodity trade) with Takaful (micro-Takaful – a subdivision of Islamic insurance) and value chain can address major challenges facing the agricultural sector in Kano State, Nigeria.

The study conducted a thorough and critical analysis of relevant literature and existing models of financing agriculture in Nigeria to come up with the proposed model.

The findings indicate that measures undertaken to address the major challenges fail. In view of this, this study proposed Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain model to solve a number of challenges such as poor access to financing, poor marketing and pricing, delay, collateral requirement and risk issues in order to avail farmers with easy access to finance and provide effective security to financial institutions.

The paper is limited to using secondary data. Therefore, empirical investigation can be carried out to strengthen the validation of the model.

The study outcome seeks to improve the productivity of the farmers through enhancing their access to finance. This will increase their level of production and provide more employment opportunities. In addition, it will boost financial inclusion, income generation, poverty alleviation, standard of living, food security and overall economic growth and development.

The novelty of this study lies in the integration of classical Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain and create a unique model structure which the researchers do not come across in any research that presented it in Nigeria.

Environmental protection and conservation of resources is a challenge for policymakers to attain sustainable growth and development. The current study uses the variable of inclusive growth instead of the traditional measure of growth.

The link between inclusive growth, renewable energy, industrial production, trade openness and the environment is explored by using panel data from 1995 to 2019 in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries. Before applying formal techniques, unit root tests were applied to check the stationarity of each variable. The long-run relationship among factors was found by the Kao cointegration test. The panel dynamic ordinary least squares (DLOS) was employed for regression estimation.

The results verified a decrease in ecological footprint (EF) in response to a potential rise in renewable energy consumption. An upsurge in EFs was explored due to a rise in gross domestic product (GDP) per person employed and trade openness. The EF significantly decreased by 0.671% in response to a 1% rise in renewable energy consumption.

It is highly suggested to enhance renewable energy usage. To achieve this, policymakers should implement and emphasize efficient energy technologies to ensure improving the environment. Efficient use of renewable energy resources will decrease global warming effects and ensure the sustainable use of scarce resources.

It first took into account the variable of inclusive growth instead of traditional growth measures. It explored the impact of GDP per person employed as an indicator of inclusive growth.

Environmental sanctions and pressure from governments and customers can play an essential role in driving the manufacturing industry to adopt more sustainable practices and reduce their environmental impact. Thus, this study explores how pressures from customers and governments influence sustainable firm performance and customer satisfaction through green production, green creativity, green brand innovativeness and green brand image in the Chinese manufacturing industry? Further, the moderating role of green knowledge was analyzed.

640 valid responses from the Chinese manufacturing industry were collected through web-based and physical surveys and later assessed through structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study validated the direct relationship between the proposed construct. Mediation analysis found the mediating role of green brand innovativeness, green brand image green and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the moderating impact of green knowledge was also proved.

The empirical findings of this research filled the literature gap on cleaner production and sustainable firm performance by focusing on green production, green creativity and green knowledge in the Chinese manufacturing industry context.

This study aims to examine customer preferences toward Sharia hospitals and to provide a new viewpoint by looking at consumers’ perspectives on choosing health-care services. Despite the growing demand for halal products, halal services, particularly hospital and Sharia-based health-care services, receive very little attention in the literature compared to other Sharia-type services such as Sharia banking, insurance or even hospitality. Previous research on health care discussed under the Sharia perspective mainly focused on service quality, directing discussions to the service providers’ perspectives.

This study uses choice-based conjoint analysis to examine customer preferences toward Sharia health-care service. There are five attributes with three levels each. To reduce respondent fatigue, the authors used SPSS Orthoplan to generate an orthogonal factorial design, which resulted in 21 choice cards. Cross-sectional data were collected from an online survey using a platform from Populix, an independent panel survey provider, to ensure no sample selection bias. A total of 270 responses were obtained to represent Muslim populations across Indonesia.

The results showed that the highest preference is highly rated to the familiarity and certification of the hospital brand that implies trust and guarantees to add value with the existence of halal certification for hospitals. In addition, this study revealed that Sharia services have higher positive signals over the physical infrastructure in determining preferences. On the other hand, add-on components that support the integration of other halal industries, such as halal culinary tourism, halal tourism and integration with transportation and halal accommodation, are still minor in the current preference.

Previous research on health care discussed under the Sharia perspective mainly focused on service quality, which directs the discussions to the service providers’ perspectives. This study provides a new point of view by looking at consumers’ perspectives about their preferences and decisions to choose a Sharia hospital.

This study aims to examine the effect of governance on the consumption of modern renewable energy in the East African Community (EAC), controlling for economic growth, trade openness and foreign direct investment (FDI).

The study relied on secondary data sourced from the World Development Indicators, World Governance Indicators and the International Energy Agency (IEA) for the EAC from 1996 to 2019. A panel Cross-Sectional Augmented Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) model and second-generation panel data models were employed in the analysis.

The findings indicate that poor governance and inadequate FDI are significantly responsible for the low level of modern renewable energy consumption (MREC) in the EAC. On the other hand, trade openness significantly enhances MREC, while GDP per capita has no significant effect on MREC.

The consumption of modern renewable energy sources (excluding the traditional use of biomass) and its determinants, as most studies focus on renewable energy consumption as a whole. The study also employed the panel CS-ARDL model and second-generation panel data models.

While sustainable growth extends the use of resources, it is crucial to explore green growth (GG) that ensures growth sustainability through the adoption of renewable energy. Thus, this study is motivated to investigate the influence of renewable energy on GG in 19 emerging countries spanning a decade and a half (2000–2020). This study aims to provide a quantitative examination of how renewable energy contributes to sustainable economic growth.

This study uses advanced dynamic common correlated effect techniques to assess the long-term effectiveness of renewable energy on GG. Additionally, it uses Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality tests to identify synchronicity between the respective variables.

The findings of this study reveal that the adoption and utilisation of renewable energy effectively promote GG in emerging economies. However, in contrast, the significantly greater negative influence of trade openness on GG compared to renewable energy highlights the inadequacy and limited impact of cleaner energy alone.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, existing literature predominantly focuses on investigating the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth, with only a limited number of studies exploring the impact on GG. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study would be the first to analyse this relationship in these emerging countries. Furthermore, previous estimation frameworks used in prior studies often overlook the crucial factor of cross-sectional dependence (CSD) among countries. Therefore, this study addresses this issue using a contemporary econometric approach that deals not only with CSD but other biases, like endogeneity, autocorrelation, small sample bias, etc.

This study aims to investigate the dynamic relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy sources on the economic growth of eight countries, the capital stock and labour force being used as control variables in each case. Questions that need to be asked include the following: Is there is an asymmetric and, hence, a non-linear relationship between variables? If yes, how does economic growth interact with both renewable and non-renewable energy consumption (EC)? How different are these relationships in the countries highly rated in the performance of renewable EC compared to those lowly rated?

This paper uses asymmetric quantile-based methods to extract possible asymmetric and, hence, non-linear relationships between the underlying variables.

A newly developed asymmetric panel quantile approach suggests that EC has a significant effect on economic growth in both directions of shocks as well as for the considered sample. The results further support the findings in recent literature on renewable energy deployment, given the importance of renewable EC for economic growth with the increased levels of renewable EC, although the initial investments may have a negative effect on economic growth for some countries.

This study contributes to the literature in twofold. Firstly, it aims to contribute to the ongoing debate in literature by incorporating both renewable and non-renewable energy resources in the production function with labour and capital to test their asymmetric impact on economic growth. Secondly, this paper uses asymmetric quantile-based methods to extract possible asymmetric and, hence, non-linear relationships between the underlying variables. Another point that should be emphasised in this study is the need for studies analysing economic growth and EC for a sample of G20 countries based on a comparative view for the renewable and non-renewable EC in literature.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a region that is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Renewable energy consumption could play a major role in mitigating the effects of climate change by improving environmental quality in the region. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of renewable energy consumption on environmental quality in sub-Saharan African countries.

The empirical investigation is based on the estimation of an augmented Green Solow model through the defactored instrumental variables approach on a sample of 34 countries over the period 1996 to 2018.

The results of two-stage defactored instrumental variables estimator show that renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality. Indeed, renewable energies have a significant negative influence on CO₂ emissions. This result is robust when using the ecological footprint as an indicator of environmental quality.

In terms of implications, governments in Sub-Saharan Africa need to pursue policies to encourage investment in the renewable energy sector. This will promote renewable energy consumption, change the structure of the energy mix in favour of renewable energy, improve environmental quality and effectively combat climate change.

The originality of this research in relation to the existing literature lies at several levels. Firstly, the analysis is carried out using a unified framework combining the environmental Kuznets curve and the environmental convergence hypotheses. Secondly, this research uses a very recent econometric method. Finally, environmental quality is measured using two indicators.