Search results

This study investigates how enhancing slum dwellers' capabilities influences their entrepreneurship development and contributes to urban poverty reduction, providing insights for social policy design.

A quantitative research design is adopted applying structural equation modeling to survey data from 585 beneficiaries of social welfare schemes across Indian slums.

Educational, economic and sociocultural capabilities positively impact quantitative and qualitative dimensions of slum entrepreneurship development, which reduces urban poverty, supporting the hypothesized relationships grounded in the Capability Approach.

The cross-sectional data limits causal inference. Wider sampling can improve generalizability. Capability antecedents of entrepreneurship merit further investigation across contexts.

Integrated policy initiatives focused on education, skill building, access to finance and markets can leverage entrepreneurship for sustainable urban poverty alleviation.

Enhancing slum dweller capabilities fosters entrepreneurship and empowerment, enabling people to shape their own destinies and reduce deprivations.

The research provides timely empirical validation of the Capability Approach and evidence-based insights to inform social policy aiming to alleviate urban poverty via entrepreneurship in developing countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2023-0514.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which rural infrastructure resilience (RIR) impacted population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.

This study considered 213 administrative villages in Longxi County in the Longzhong loess hilly region as the evaluation unit. Based on the construction of a multidimensional RIR evaluation system, the spatial spillover effect of RIR on population loss was determined using the spatial Durbin model (SDM).

The average resilience of each subsystem of rural infrastructure in Longxi County was low, and there were large differences in the spatial distribution. The mean RIR index value was 0.2258, with obvious spatial directivity and agglomeration characteristics. The population loss index of Longxi County had a value of 0.1759, with 26.29 of villages having a high loss level. The population loss was relatively serious and was correlated with the spatial distribution of RIR. The villages with larger RIR index values had lower population loss. The RIR had a significant spatial spillover effect on population loss. Productive infrastructure resilience and living infrastructure resilience (LIR) had negative spillover effects on population loss, and social service infrastructure resilience (SSIR) had a positive spillover effect on population loss.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which RIR impacted on population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.

This study investigated the role of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, by concentrating on the obstacles that hinder effective governance of community infrastructure planning.

The qualitative approach via case study design was adopted in this study. The Song District, located in the State of Sarawak, Malaysia, was selected as the case study area. Semi-structured interview sessions were conducted with 21 respondents who belonged to the government agencies involved in rural community infrastructure planning and village community representatives to capture their views on community infrastructure development planning in the selected district. The gathered responses were analysed thematically and the outcomes are discussed.

The findings revealed that although the development of community infrastructure in Song District has progressed and has exerted transformative impacts on rural livelihood, several challenges were identified in the delivery of community infrastructure. The four main themes of challenges that emerged from the data were location factors, financial resources, cooperation and collaboration of stakeholders, as well as community involvement. The outcomes disclosed that, in terms of governance, the institutional roles of the community, stakeholders and government agencies must be integrated throughout the rural community infrastructure planning process to resolve the emerging challenges effectively so that the demands of the rural community are met meritoriously.

An effective and efficient community infrastructure planning approach ascertains that the community infrastructure development gaps in rural areas are bridged and brings fruition to the rural communities for their livelihood transformation.

This paper delineates a view on the governance aspect of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, that is largely untapped. The study outcomes may facilitate practitioners and academics to move forward and recommend improvements in the approach to rural community infrastructure planning.

The farm sector is crucial for rural poverty alleviation, alongside the non-farm sector, which contributes to mitigating risks associated with crop failures. This paper investigates the effects of public policies on productive employment within both the farm and non-farm sectors in sub-Saharan Africa.

A meta-analysis is conducted exclusively on the results of the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP)-funded studies under the Policy Analysis on Growth and Employment (PAGE II) initiative. Selected studies focused on the impact of public policies on productive employment in rural farm and non-farm sectors, encompassing a total of nine sub-Saharan Africa countries in: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa.

The results indicate that public investments in rural areas and public policies that facilitate access to productive resources are likely to enhance productive employment. The overall effect size is positive and significant, ranging from 2% to 10% increases in productive employment. Sources of variation include the sector of activity and the policy instrument. In addition, the policy effects are gender-sensitive and seem more consistent in the non-farm sector.

Although the selected working papers addressed several aspects of productive employment, other aspects warrant further investigation. Policies involving restrictions or regulations have received little attention in the impact analysis. Researches to fill this gap would be important. Another suggestion for further research is the analysis of the relative importance of non-farm employment in rural areas in developing countries. It is always assumed that rural households depend heavily on agriculture for their subsistence.

The contribution of the paper lies in the comparative analysis of numerous public policies implemented in nine distinct countries. By consolidating data from fourteen 14 different experiences into a single study, the paper offers valuable insights on factors that determine policy effectiveness and contribute to understanding what worked for whom and why.

Municipalities seek new opportunities for co-producing services in rural areas. One potential partner is community-based social enterprises (CBSEs). However, whilst service co-production through CBSEs obscures the traditional roles of actors, it may lead to a legitimation crisis in local service provision. In this paper, the ways CBSEs are legitimised as service providers in rural areas are addressed from the CBSE and municipality perspectives.

Empirical data combine interviews with CBSE representatives and open-ended national survey responses from municipality decision-makers. The data analysis is based on a qualitative content analysis to examine legitimation arguments.

Results show that unestablished legitimacy and un-institutionalised support structures for co-production models build mistrust between CBSEs and municipalities, which prevents the parties from seeing the benefits of cooperation in service production.

The research focusses on the legitimation of CBSEs in service co-production in rural areas. As legitimation seems to be a context-specific process, future research is needed regarding other contexts.

Municipalities interested in the co-production of services might benefit from establishing a collaborative and responsive (rural) service policy forum that would institutionalise new models of co-production and enable better design and governance of service provision.

Results will give new theoretical and practical insights into the importance of legitimacy in the development of service co-production relationships.

The Government’s investment in infrastructure projects is considerably high, especially in bridge construction projects. Government authorities must establish an initial forecasted budget to have transparency in transactions. Early cost estimating is challenging for Quantity Surveyors due to incomplete project details at the initial stage and the unavailability of standard cost estimating techniques for bridge projects. To mitigate the difficulties in the traditional preliminary cost estimating methods, there is a requirement to develop a new initial cost estimating model which is accurate, user friendly and straightforward. The research was carried out in Sri Lanka, and this paper aims to develop the artificial neural network (ANN) model for an early cost estimate of concrete bridge systems.

The construction cost data of 30 concrete bridge projects which are in Sri Lanka constructed within the past ten years were trained and tested to develop an ANN cost model. Backpropagation technique was used to identify the number of hidden layers, iteration and momentum for optimum neural network architectures.

An ANN cost model was developed, furnishing the best result since it succeeded with around 90% validation accuracy. It created a cost estimation model for the public sector as an accurate, heuristic, flexible and efficient technique.

The research contributes to the current body of knowledge by providing the most accurate early-stage cost estimate for the concrete bridge systems in Sri Lanka. In addition, the research findings would be helpful for stakeholders and policymakers to propose policy recommendations that positively influence the prediction of the most accurate cost estimate for concrete bridge construction projects in Sri Lanka and other developing countries.

The paper reviews existing literature on South Asian ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) and identifies how community participation can be used to plan and implement ecosystem-based DRR approaches.

The literature review methodology involved several stages. Firstly, the research objective was determined. Secondly keywords for the literature search were determined. Scopus, Google Scholar, JSTOR and AUT online library were utilized for the literature search. After the search, the literature was screened. The study design, methodology, results and limitations were identified and documented. After data extraction, the literature was analyzed. The patterns, trends and inconsistencies in the literature were identified based on the research question. Later the gaps, controversies and future research needs were identified. Then, a comprehensive and structured literature review that summarizes the relevant literature, synthesizes the findings and provides a critical evaluation of the literature was documented. After writing the document, it was reviewed and edited to ensure its clarity, accuracy and coherence.

The paper identifies four different themes recurrently emerging in literature on the importance of community participation in ecosystem-based DRR in South Asia. The themes are local community participation in ecosystem-based DRR governance, knowledge production, livelihood enhancement and increased public acceptance.

The paper also illustrates the challenges in integrating community participation with the dominant physical scientific approaches ecosystem-based DRR and proposes a five-element framework to facilitate the integration.

This paper aims to conduct a systematic literature review on the fintech services and financial inclusion of the developing nations that particularly focuses on lower middle-income group nations (LMIGN) and upper middle-income group nations (UMIGN) to highlight the research areas that have not received attention and present opportunities for future research.

This paper adopts a systematic approach to examine 65 research articles published from 2016 to 2021, adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

The study identifies research gaps in two key themes: backward and outward linkages. In backward linkages, the literature on UMIGN should pay attention to the behavioural patterns associated with lending, investment and market provision-related fintech services. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between fintech services on the usage and quality dimension of financial inclusion in both LMIGN and UMIGN. For outward linkages, future research work should explore the role of fintech and financial inclusion in the development of LMIGN. This study provides valuable insights and guides future research directions by comprehensively mapping the existing studies.

This study does not use quantitative tools, such as meta and bibliometric analysis, to validate the findings.

This research paper offers new perspectives that introduce a novel framework for analysing literature on fintech, financial inclusion and its impact on the overall development of UMIGN and LMIGN.

Rural regions in Canada are aging faster than urban centers, but access to health and social care is limited. Integrated health and social care (IHSC) through collaboration across different health and social care organizations can support enhanced care for older adults living in rural regions. However, IHSC is not well understood within a rural Canadian context.

A case study of a Canadian IHSC initiative, Geriatric Assessment Program Collaboratory (GAPC), in northern Alberta was undertaken to understand how successful IHSC can occur in an urban/rural region. The study used key informant interviews and a focus group of representatives from the GAPC organizations.

Nine factors were identified that support GAPC: communications, information sharing, shared vision and goals, inter-organizational culture, diffused leadership, team-based approaches, dedicated resources, role clarity, champions and pre-existing relationships. Eight external influence factors were identified as influencing partnership including geography, strong sense of community, inter-sectoral work, public policy, governance authorities and structures, funding models, aging communities and operating within a not-for-profit (NFP) setting.

The study reveals insights into how IHSC can occur within a rural Canadian context. This study demonstrates that IHSC occurs at the local level and that primary care providers can drive IHSC successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to create optimally located Facilitation Centers on this tourist circuit, evaluated through network analysis, thus creating an effective linkage between tourism and economic activities of the craftsmen who are the custodians of the cultural heritage of Puri.

The craft villages lying in and around this tourist circuit are surveyed to establish socio-economic condition of artisans, significance of the craft and spatial distribution of craft villages and the willingness of artisans to travel closer to the transport spine. Network analysis is used to assess the suitability of Facilitation Center location using travel time and distance as parameters. Finally, the sustainability of the Facilitation Centers is evaluated using a cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

The Facilitation Centers can be spatially developed at the strategic locations to expand tourist market. This will help in leveraging the economic benefits of tourism to a marginalized rural artisan community by creating a sustainable model.

The focus on festival can help to protect local cultural traditions, develop tourism and promote the economic, social and cultural developments of the destination. Dispersal strategies adopted aim to increase visitors' satisfaction with the product and thus entice them to stay longer in the destination.