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The authors have carried out a research project on artisanal salt activity in the Gulf of Cadiz, providing a new vision of the theories of intangible cultural heritage. The main objective has been to characterise artisanal salt activity in terms of its cultural and sustainable values, a perspective that had not been addressed until now. Moreover, the replacement of this activity by a more industrialised one has contributed to problems in the preservation of this heritage and a transformation of its places.

The research has combined qualitative methodology, based on observation and fieldwork, with a statistical review of the phenomenon under study. Finally, the data has been triangulated to understand the heritage and sustainable value, as well as its historical evolution.

All this contributes to understanding the importance of artisanal salt activity as an element of the intangible cultural heritage of the region, for the conservation of biodiversity and sustainable ways of life in the marshes of the Gulf of Cadiz, and the possibility of preserving it in the face of the problems of globalisation.

To date, there has been no research that combines sustainability and heritage in the field of salt activity. Likewise, until this study was carried out, there had been no research on salt activity from the perspective of intangible cultural heritage.

The social acceptance of wind energy is increasingly conditioning the Italian Government and regions to authorize the construction of these plants. The proposal of offshore wind farm in the south-west of Sardinia has raised many perplexities both from the marine environmental point of view and from concern about increasing the electricity production in a region that already exports electricity to the peninsula. The purpose of this study is to evaluate what are the factors that most affect the coastal residents’ acceptability of an offshore wind farm.

The data is based on a Sardinia-wide in-person survey with about 512 participants in the period between May and June 2023. Respondents were selected randomly from five different locations in Carloforte region. Multiple regression analysis investigates the factors that influenced acceptability to construction and development of offshore wind power plant. Four independent variables were selected in the regression models such as (i) interest towards wind energy, (ii) attitude towards renewable energy production, (iii) perceived regional energy policy and (iv) attitude towards offshore wind farm. The dependent variables are the rates of coastal local residents’ acceptance of offshore wind farm for respondents in five coastal towns.

Fishermen and summer tourism operators’ respondents expressed significant reluctance to accept the new project because they perceive a strong risk of environmental impact on both tuna fishing and marine recreational activities in the vicinity. The distance between the turbines at sea and local residents along the coast and surrounding small islands does not have an influence to accept wind energy. The energy policy of the Region of Sardinia, which is perceived by respondents as an expansive energy policy in the production of electricity that exceeds their needs, not being accompanied by a scenario of reducing that from fossil fuels, is the variable that led about 70% of respondents to express a negative opinion towards this project.

A potential problem associated with the survey is that local response produced sample selection bias. The proportion of respondents with secondary education and no school certificate is quite high. It is possible that respondents who provided valid questionnaires were more low-educated and therefore, the sample may be biased towards lower-educated people. While this does not invalidate the results of this study, it is important to note that the sample was on average less educated than the overall population in Italy. In addition, people with lower incomes were more likely to complete the questionnaires; the results are more representative of a portion of the population with incomes below the national average.

Results showed how coastal communities are in favour of wind energy within their island, but not within a marine protected area that is considered unique for its beauty and marine ecosystem. Wind energy developers should, before submitting a proposal for an offshore wind farm project, consider among other things the long approval time and understand the activities carried out by local communities and their attachment to those places. Politicians and developers should develop a coherent energy transition policy based on a long-term vision of zero emissions, because according to the findings of this study, it was the regional energy policy that is the most controversial reason for residents to reject the project.

The contribution of this study is to fill a part of the research gap linking to ongoing energy transitions. In particular, this study analysed for the first time in Italy the acceptability level of an offshore renewable energy project considering the environmental implications and risks in the fragile marine ecosystem of Carloforte waters. This study also made it possible to analyse the impact of the regional energy policy on the acceptability of residents towards the development of offshore wind farms, which is scarcely discussed in the literature.

This study aims to investigate the level of reporting compliance in terms of content elements, measure to what extent each content element of the integrated reporting (IR) framework is linked to value creation and demonstrate the relationship between the level of compliance and value creation linkages.

The sample for this study consists of 12 companies, 11 of which are public and 1 is non-public. The data is obtained from the Integrated Reporting Turkey Network founded in 2015 in Turkey. This study applies a holistic approach integrating two different content analysis methods. First, a multi-weighted scoring system is constructed by using the IR content elements and the previously developed indexes in the literature. Second, in-depth, sentence-by-sentence content analysis is used to determine the relation between the content elements and value creation.

The results of the multi-weighted scoring system indicate a high level of compliance in the banking sector. On the other hand, the scores of the content analysis demonstrate higher scores in the disclosures of “basis of preparation and presentation”, “organizational overview and external environment”, “strategy and resource allocation”, “performance” and “business model” elements, while lower scores in the elements of “risk and opportunities” and “outlook.” The lowest compliance level associated with lower content analysis scores may indicate a low level of value creation potential. Consequently, this two-stage scoring is critical, as it clarifies the relation between compliance level and the explanatory power of each content element from a value creation perspective.

This study aims to support the policymakers and regulators in highlighting the importance of measuring and reporting value. Furthermore, it intends to encourage companies to produce reports that increase the value relevance of accounting information to contribute to the development of capital markets. The current literature includes research that mainly concentrates only on the quality or extent of IR disclosure practices. This study offers a combined analysis that helps to determine at what level a company has accomplished the expectations of the International Integrated Reporting Council in terms of both the content and the value creation potential.

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, this study characterises the current state of the bio-packaging market's development. Second, it identifies key factors influencing and possible scenarios of the bio-packaging market transition to increase the market share of compostable packaging.

The results of 29 in-depth interviews (IDIs) with representatives of the key groups of bio-packaging supply chains' (SCs') stakeholders were the input for the consideration of the research problem.

The main economic, legal, social and technological enablers and barriers to the bio-packaging regime transition are recognised, and their impact at the market level is explained. The authors recognised the hybrid transition scenario towards an increase in the market share of compostable packaging related to the three traditional pathways of transformation, reconfiguration and technological substitution.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the socio-technical system theory by examining interdependencies between landscape (external environment), market regime (bio-packaging market) and niche innovations (compostable packaging) as well as system transition pathways. The findings and conclusions on bio-packaging market developments can be important lessons learnt to be applied in different countries due to the same current development stage of the compostable packaging lifecycle worldwide.

The internal (farmer-controlled) and external (non-farmer-controlled) factors affect crop yield. However, not a single study has identified and analyzed yield predictors in India using effective predictive models. Thus, this study aims to investigate how internal and external predictors impact pearl millet yield and Stover yield.

Descriptive analytics and artificial neural network are used to investigate the impact of predictors on pearl millet yield and Stover yield. From descriptive analytics, 473 valid responses were collected from semi-arid zone, and the predictors were categorized into internal and external factors. Multi-layer perceptron-neural network (MLP-NN) model was used in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 25 to model them.

The MLP-NN model reveals that rainfall has the highest normalized importance, followed by irrigation frequency, crop rotation frequency, fertilizers type and temperature. The model has an acceptable goodness of fit because the training and testing methods have average root mean square errors of 0.25 and 0.28, respectively. Also, the model has R² values of 0.863 and 0.704, respectively, for both pearl millet and Stover yield.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is first of its kind related to impact of predictors of both internal and external factors on pearl millet yield and Stover yield.

The literature reveals that most studies have estimated crop yield using limited parameters and forecasting approaches. However, this research will examine the impact of various predictors such as internal and external of both yields. The outcomes of the study will help policymakers in developing strategies for stakeholders. The current work will improve pearl millet yield literature.