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This paper investigates the (a)symmetric effects of financial development in the presence of economic growth, energy consumption, urbanization and foreign direct investment on environmental quality of South Africa between 1980 and 2017.

A robust measure of financial development is generated using banking institutions and non-banking institutions market-based financial development indicators, while environmental quality is measured using carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint. The objectives of the study are captured using linear and non-linear autoregressive distributed lag.

The result from the symmetric analysis suggests that financial development stimulates carbon footprint and ecological footprint in the short run; however, financial development abates non-carbon footprint. In the long run, financial development has a significant negative effect on carbon footprint and ecological footprint. However, the asymmetric analysis established strong asymmetric effect in the short run, while no asymmetric effect is found in the long run. The short run asymmetric analysis reveals that positive shock in financial development increases carbon footprint and ecological footprint; however, positive changes in financial development reduce non-carbon footprint. Negative shocks in financial development, on the other hand, have a positive impact carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint.

The study's outcome implies that the concept of “more finance, more growth” could also be applied to “more finance, better environment” in South Africa. The study offers vital policy suggestions for the realization of sustainable development in South Africa.

This empiric adds to the body of knowledge on the influence of financial development on various components of environmental quality (carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint) in South Africa.

The purpose of this study is to explore the COVID-19 information-seeking behavior of the students in a developing country. This study also explores how the use of information sources changes over time by the students of a public university in Bangladesh.

An e-mail was sent along with an online questionnaire to 350 students in a public university in Bangladesh. After sending a couple of follow-up e-mails in May and June 2022, we got limited responses. Later in July, we distributed the same questionnaire in the printed form to the students in the seminar library, computer laboratory and in the classroom. Finally, we got back 270 responses, and the response rate was 77.14%. Pearson’s correlation coefficient (effect size) and nonparametric test (Mann–Whitney U test) were used to see the differences in using information sources over times and overall understanding of choosing the COVID-19 information sources by the demographic variables.

This study found that the COVID-19 pandemic has made an increased demand for a variety of information, and the sources of information changes over time before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of the students faced challenges while seeking COVID-19 information which mostly falls under the availability of mis–disinformation. Students used more social media tools during the COVID-19 than the pre-COVID-19 time, and there are some significant relationships found between the students’ demographic variables and students’ understanding of choosing the COVID-19 information sources.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to analyze changes in information behavior patterns of students in a developing country and understand the challenges faced by the students during the pandemic.

Urban flooding in developing countries of the Global South is growing due to extreme rainfall and sea-level rise induced by climate change, as well as the proliferation of impervious, built-up areas resulting from unplanned urbanisation and development. Continuous loss of traditional knowledge related to local water management practices, and the de-valuing of such knowledge that goes hand-in-hand with globalised aspirations, is inhibiting flood resilience efforts. This paper aims to address the need to include traditional water knowledge (TWK) in urban living and development processes in the Global South.

This paper commences with a review of existing frameworks that focus on natural resource management, critically assessing two existing frameworks of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). The assessment of the existing approaches contributes to this paper’s development of a novel framework to promote TWK with regard to resilience and risk reduction, specifically for developing flood adaptive strategies, which is the second stage of this paper. Finally, the paper explains how the framework can contribute to the field of urban design and planning using examples from the literature to demonstrate challenges and opportunities related to the adaptation of such a framework.

The framework developed in this paper reveals three proposed vertices of TWK, named as place-based landscape knowledge, water use and management and water values. This framework has the potential to produce context-specific knowledge that can contribute to flood-resilient built-environment through urban design and practices.

The framework developed in this paper reveals three proposed vertices of TWK, named place-based landscape knowledge, water use and management and water values. This framework has the potential to produce context-specific knowledge that can contribute to flood-resilient built-environment through urban design and practices.

Within the field of TEK research, very few researchers have explored the field of developing flood resilience in an urban context. The proposed TWK framework presented in this paper will help to fill that gap.

The paper assesses the moderating function of institutions in the financial development and environmental nexus covering India for the time period 1980–2019.

Deviating from extant literature which has mostly used emissions of major greenhouse gasses as a measure of environmental quality, the present study uses a broad measure of environmental quality called ecological footprint (EFP). Financial development is measured using a robust proxy recently introduced by International Monetary Fund (IMF). This index is multifaceted and covers three broad dimensions of financial sector in terms of depth, efficiency and access of both financial institutions and markets, thus outperforming the exclusively bank-based measures used in the past literature. Further institutional quality index is generated using the data from international country risk guide. Finally, autoregressive distributed lag model is used for the empirical estimation of short-run and long-run results.

The empirical estimates reveal that financial development and institutional quality are good for long-run environmental sustainability of India, whereas economic growth degrades the environment in the long- run. The results also attest to the existence of pollution heaven hypothesis in India for long run. Furthermore, regarding the moderating role of institutions, the study reveals that institutional quality complements financial development in affecting environment in the short run. While as, in the long run, they play a substitutive role whereby sound institutions cover-up the inefficiencies in financial system.

First, the paper uses the index of financial development developed by the IMF in order to quantify the level of financial development in India overtime. The index is based on three key dimensions of financial development such as the depth, efficiency and access of both financial institutions and markets. However, the index completely neglects the role of financial stability in determining financial development. Thus, future studies that are based on this IMF introduced index of financial development should incorporate the stability dimension to it. Second, this empirical study focused exclusively on India and employed aggregate EFP to measure environmental quality. Further studies can complement the content of this research by conducting similar studies to capture country-specific characteristics of other emerging economies and also scrutinize the impact on the six sub-indices of EFP.

The results of the study reveal that the effect of financial development, and institutions on ecological footprint is sensitive to time dynamics. Moreover, the findings offer important policy implications to government and policy makers in India on how to curb the menace of environmental degradation.

The paper addresses the gap in the literature by examining the moderating role of institutional quality in the financial development and ecological footprint nexus in India. Furthermore, the authors employ a robust proxy for both financial development and environmental quality unlike extant studies on India.

The paper aims to investigate the most influential social media information sources to trust in healthcare facilities. The article shows a valuable point of reference for understanding how social media becomes the casting of social capital.

This paper has taken 660 responses from the people who used social media for healthcare information in the mid of 2020 during the pandemic. The people were approached through different social media groups. The paper conducted structural equation modelling (SEM). The result has shown that with the instigating power of social capital where people put trust in social media information during pandemics.

The findings demonstrated that personal sources, government organisations and healthcare professionals are the most influential sources of social media. In order to effectively ensure the encompassing provision of COVID-19 health services, this article argues that social capital considerations establish trust between healthcare facilities seeking community to healthcare information providers.

This research has signified that social cohesion and concern for community welfare instigated people to engage in social media communication. The inherent social capital belongings influence people to trust the sources of health information from selected sources that appear on social media.

Healthcare policymakers may utilise this intense feeling of belongingness and cohesion of social capital and use social media platforms to spread health-related information.

The study shows social capital has the strength to entice people into healthcare-seeking behaviour. In this era, social capital is reformulated to digital social capital through social media and strongly affects people's trust.

The adoption of solar energy by households is an important avenue of protecting the environment and enabling energy access in rural areas, especially in developing countries like Uganda, where energy access is low. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the factors that influence the households’ willingness to adopt solar photovoltaic (PV) energy and how soon the households are willing to adopt solar PV energy for business use in Uganda.

Heckman’s two-step selection model was used to determine the willingness and urgency of adopting solar PV energy for business use in selected districts in Eastern Uganda. The respondents were selected purposively at the household level at a given point in time.

Results show that sex, household head estimated income, mode of acquisition and repayment terms of solar technology positively influence both willingness and urgency to adopt solar energy for business use in households. However, financial disclosure only influences willingness to adopt solar. Then, age and energy need only significantly influence how soon the household is willing to adopt solar PV energy for business use.

This study’s findings essentially apply to the individual factors that determine the willingness and urgency to adopt solar PV energy for business use by households. Hence, further research is needed to understand the external and industrial factors which could strengthen the predictive potential of the elements in this study.

This study underscores the need for regulatory enforcement on the supply and usage of quality, reliable and affordable solar equipment which are suitable for business use. Also, the need to promote and finance the usage of solar PV as a green energy source for household businesses has been emphasized.

The study simultaneously examines the willingness and urgency to adopt solar PV energy for household business purposes using Heckman’s two-step selection model. This has hitherto remained unknown empirically.

Even though social media (SM) has been explored in-depth, its role remains unclear regarding short- and long-term preventive attitudes in global health emergencies. To fill this gap, the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework aims to clarify the social media exposure mission in acknowledging risk perception and triggering preventive attitudes and behaviors toward COVID-19 and general vaccination.

The authors conducted an explanatory-predictive study on 480 Romanian students, using partial least squares structural equation modeling, and performed model evaluation, multi-group, model selection, and importance-performance map analyses.

The study provides insights in understanding significant relationships and drivers explaining and predicting attitudes towards vaccines. The main relationships are between fear and risk perception; risk and preventive attitudes and behaviors; and vaccination degree and attitudes to vaccines. The most important factor is the vaccination degree and media exposure is the most performant.

Developing and applying regulations and communication strategies for quality mass information may positively increase attitudes toward vaccines by indirectly enforcing the main drivers.

Organizations, authorities, and opinion leaders must have a coherent supportive presence in media.

This study filled the literature gap by building a generic theoretical and empirical proven framework that investigates the mediated effect towards vaccines of all media types by COVID-19 experience and vaccination degree.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2021-0621

Canada has a globally recognized universal health-care system. However, immigrants experience a number of obstacles in obtaining primary health care (PHC) that may differ within various communities due to the intersection of culture, gender and other identities. To date, no research has been done on the difficulties Nepalese immigrant women in Canada may face accessing PHC. The purpose of this study was to learn about their perceptions of barriers to PHC access and to share the findings with a wide range of stakeholders, including health-care providers and policymakers.

The authors conducted a community-engaged qualitative study in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A total of six focus group discussions (FGD) among 34 participants (each FGD consisted of 5–7 participants) were conducted. The authors collected demographic information before each focus group. The FGDs were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcriptions were coded and analysed thematically.

The focus groups identified long wait times as a major barrier to receiving PHC services. Long wait times in emergency rooms, unable to see family doctors when they were sick, tedious referral procedures, long waits at the clinic even after scheduling an appointment, family responsibilities and work all impacted their access to PHC. Further, a lack of proficiency in English was another significant barrier that impeded effective communication between physicians and immigrant women patients, thus compromising the quality of care. Other barriers mentioned included lack of access to medical records for walk-in doctors, insufficient lab/diagnostic services, a lack of urgent care services and unfamiliarity with the Canadian health-care system.

Accessible PHC is essential for the health of immigrant populations in Canada. This study recognizes the extent of the barriers among a relatively less studied immigrant population group, Nepalese immigrant women, which will help effectively shape public policy and improve access to PHC for the versatile immigrant population fabric in Canada.

This study examined 46 articles in total, which yielded 5 recurring themes: perceived discrimination, language barriers, socioeconomic barriers, cultural barriers and educational/knowledge barriers. The two most dominant themes found were the inability to speak the country's primary language and belonging to a culture with different practices and values from the host country. The review provides vital insights into the numerous challenges that immigrants and refugees encounter as they navigate through the primary care systems of English-speaking (E-S) countries and potential solutions to overcome these barriers.

Access to adequate healthcare plays a central part in ensuring the physical and mental wellbeing of society. However, vulnerable groups such as immigrants and refugees, face numerous challenges when utilizing these healthcare services. To shed further light on the barriers impacting healthcare quality, the authors’ team performed a scoping thematic review of the available literature on immigrant and refugees' experiences in primary healthcare systems across E-S countries. Articles were systematically reviewed while focusing on healthcare perceptions by immigrants, potential barriers and suggestions to improve the quality of primary care.

This work looked at qualitative and quantitative information, attempting to combine both paradigms to give a rich and robust platform with which to devise a further study through focus groups. Qualitative inquiry accounted for 28/46, or 61%, of studies, and quantitative inquiry made up 9/46, or 20%, while 9/46 or 20% combined both qualitative and qualitative. Emerging themes are -perceived ethnic discrimination faced by immigrants accessing primary care, language barriers, socioeconomic barriers, cultural barriers and educational barriers.

Most medical journals rely on quantitative data to relate “results” and cases. The authors set out to change ways in which medical reports can be done. Most of the authors were solely trained in quantitative research; consequently, they had to learn to isolate themes and to use a narrative approach in the article.

Research implications clearly indicated that using a qualitative (phenomenological) approach with quantitative data created a human and reachable discourse around patient comfort and the realities of immigrants and refugees to E-S countries. The use of this research opens medical practitioners (and patients) to a richer understanding within a usually difficult arena.

By understanding the qualitative nature of medical research, practitioners, students and mentors are able to bridge medical quantitivity to the human, widening doors to social science and medical collaboratory research.

As stated above, this work is important as it understands the human/patient element and de-emphasizes the medical obsession with quantifying the lives of patients through hard data. This is a unique collaboration that relies on the qualitative to pinpoint and define the difficulties of newcomers to E-S countries.

While there is literature that examines factors associated with low participation in cancer screening among Canadian ethnic groups, there is limited understanding of black visible minorities, particularly Somalis. Thus, the purpose of this study is to synthesize knowledge pertaining to the perceptions, beliefs and barriers of Somali women and men toward screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancers in countries such as Canada.

The scoping review methodology was used to search for peer-reviewed articles that explicitly examined perceptions, beliefs and barriers among Somalis toward screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancers in developed countries. The following electronic databases were searched without time frame restrictions, namely, OVID Medline, Embase, CINHAL, PubMed, Scopes and ProQuest. A total of 402 peer-reviewed articles were identified and screened. Three articles were identified through reference list screening (one eligible) and consultation with experts in the networks (two eligible). In total, 12 studies met the inclusion criteria for synthesis. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the selected articles for key themes and the synthesis was informed by the socio-ecological model.

The majority of studies originated from the USA and focused primarily on Somali women and cervical cancer screening. Themes that emerged from the literature include individual-level negative experiences and socio-cultural perceptions/beliefs; community-level barriers in cancer screening; and systemic challenges in navigating the health-care system. Many of the studies focused on individual and community-level determinants of cancer screening, with little attention to systemic level determinants. Other gaps identified include factors influencing Somali men’s low participation in cancer screening; limited studies on colorectal cancer and Somali women; and specific cancer-screening barriers faced by Somalis within the Canadian context.

The findings of the review reveal multiple cancer screening challenges for Somali communities and the gained insights should inform both health and social care practitioners and policymakers.