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Financial inclusion in Peru has been addressed through coverage, quality of financial services, movement of transactions, and service points. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate for the department of Ancash, Peru, the link between financial inclusion and its socioeconomic factors. Socioeconomic variables and financial inclusion of the Ancash department of the National Household Survey are taken as indicators, later contrasted through the logit model, with the financial inclusion variable being the explained variable.

There is evidence of positive and negative relationships between financial inclusion and socioeconomic variables; these are important components for planning financial inclusion. Raising the levels of formal employment, the educational level and considering the area of residence would be a strategy to generate a dynamic of inclusion in the department of Ancash.

This study aims to investigate the factors contributing to the low adoption rate of mobile money services (MMS) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region compared to other regions. The study focussed on socio-demographic factors and macro-level determinants in several selected MENA and Sub-Saharan African (SSA) regions where MMS have been successful.

This study analysed 23 countries across MENA and SSA to establish the correlation between socio and macroeconomic factors and MMS adoption using a quantitative approach. The analysis used the generalized least square (GLS) method.

The study revealed that gender and income are factors that positively influence the adoption of MMS in MENA and SSA regions. Additionally, the study found that the affordability index, which measures macroeconomic indicators, correlates with MMS adoption in both regions but in an inversed way. On the other hand, political stability appears to have a positive correlation with MMS adoption in the MENA region. The correlation between the regulatory index and MMS adoption positively impacts the entire study group, although it is insignificant in the SSA region.

Future studies should assess market competition among MMS providers and the psychological aspect of user adoption behaviour. Additionally, conducting a focus group discussion with stakeholders in the MMS industry can assist in uncovering potential factors contributing to low MMS adoption in the MENA region.

This study contributes to understanding the role of the socio-demographic and macroeconomic determinants in promoting digital transformation through adopting MMS.

On the one hand, this paper is to further understand the residents' differentiated power consumption behaviors and tap the residential family characteristics labels from the perspective of electricity stability. On the other hand, this paper is to address the problem of lack of causal relationship in the existing research on the association analysis of residential electricity consumption behavior and basic information data.

First, the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise method is used to extract the typical daily load curve of residents. Second, the degree of electricity consumption stability is described from three perspectives: daily minimum load rate, daily load rate and daily load fluctuation rate, and is evaluated comprehensively using the entropy weight method. Finally, residential customer labels are constructed from sociological characteristics, residential characteristics and energy use attitudes, and the enhanced FP-growth algorithm is employed to investigate any potential links between each factor and the stability of electricity consumption.

Compared with the original FP-growth algorithm, the improved algorithm can realize the excavation of rules containing specific attribute labels, which improves the excavation efficiency. In terms of factors influencing electricity stability, characteristics such as a large number of family members, being well employed, having children in the household and newer dwelling labels may all lead to poorer electricity stability, but residents' attitudes toward energy use and dwelling type are not significantly associated with electricity stability.

This paper aims to uncover household socioeconomic traits that influence the stability of home electricity use and to shed light on the intricate connections between them. Firstly, in this article, from the perspective of electricity stability, the characteristics of the power consumption of residents' users are refined. And the authors use the entropy weight method to comprehensively evaluate the stability of electricity usage. Secondly, the labels of residential users' household characteristics are screened and organized. Finally, the improved FP-growth algorithm is used to mine the residential household characteristic labels that are strongly associated with electricity consumption stability.

1. The stability of electricity consumption is important to the stable operation of the grid.

2. An improved FP-growth algorithm is employed to explore the influencing factors.

3. The improved algorithm enables the mining of rules containing specific attribute labels.

4. Residents' attitudes toward energy use are largely unrelated to the stability of electricity use.

The stability of electricity consumption is important to the stable operation of the grid.

An improved FP-growth algorithm is employed to explore the influencing factors.

The improved algorithm enables the mining of rules containing specific attribute labels.

Residents' attitudes toward energy use are largely unrelated to the stability of electricity use.

Despite an enormous growth of the literature and research on inclusive education during the last two and a half decades, theory and practice on inclusive education are still inconsistent across the education systems worldwide. It is defined, conceptualised and practised differently across diverse socioeconomic contexts and groups of scholars and practitioners. While some promote educating all students in a mainstream classroom setting irrespective of their abilities and physical, emotional and behavioural challenges, others emphasise improving the overall quality of education for all children from diverse backgrounds. Given that education is a multidimensional social enterprise, promoting a single perspective at the cost of others or merely emphasising the role of schools and teachers may hardly result in improved education outcomes and guarantee equal learning opportunities for all. This chapter will critically review the relevant theory and discuss the different approaches to inclusive education. Then it will discuss the potential challenges to inclusive education across the education systems. Finally, the chapter will offer an inclusive way forward for improving the quality of education for all children, irrespective of their backgrounds, in mainstream schools in multicultural contexts.

Existing literature argues that the expression of delinquency is common during childhood and especially adolescence. Here, the practice of delinquent behaviours increases the risk of disrupting one’s trajectories of educational and labour market attainment. Delinquent youths, particularly those behaving delinquently severely, are prone to be undereducated, under- or unemployed, earning less, enjoying fewer employment welfare benefits and entitled to fewer job promotion opportunities. Given their sociological background, the author is interested in understanding how juvenile delinquency is socially constructed and reproduced. There are a variety of major key risk factors of the social construction of juvenile delinquency, including familial, or parental in particular, issues, the experience of any form of violence, the act of imitation, and psychological and emotional distress. In this book, the author will examine the socioeconomic, sociocultural and psychosocial factors that lead to the entrenched problems of youth delinquency. Per the United Nations, youth is defined as individuals aged from 15 to 24 years old. There are ample practical problems in adopting a legal definition to understand delinquency, because, for example, what is regarded as legal or not is often poorly defined and rather subjective. Also, legal definitions vary over time, barring a clear, standardised understanding of the word ‘delinquency’. In scholarly discourse, juvenile delinquency covers a multitude of sins, such as robbery, vandalism, violence, drug or alternative psychoactive substance use and the performance of some kinds of heterosexual or homosexual acts. While youth is widely interpreted as comprising individuals aged 24 years or below, the upper age limit for juvenile delinquency adopted by the English and American laws is much lower – under the age of 18 years. Given such contexts, in this book, the author primarily addresses youth/juvenile delinquent behaviours as relevant acts performed by individuals aged below 18 years. However, occasionally, the author presents survey data indicating youths’ expression of delinquency among respondents aged 24 years or below.

In this book, the author will provide reasoning on how Southeast Asian (SEA) governments, individually and collectively, have not taken an adequately aggressive, strict approach to regulating their policies against youth delinquency, prompting adolescents’ involvement in delinquent behaviours to be growing rampantly. The lack of appropriate legislative and law enforcement efforts results in significant individual and societal costs, jeopardising SEA’s pursuit of sustainable futures. Therefore, it is necessary to develop this book in order to analyse the causes and consequences of a variety of youth delinquent behaviours and its associated unequal power of relations, alongside expanding the insights of sociological inquiry into a current, ongoing phenomenon of inequalities. Policy recommendations are presented at the end of Chapters 3–5, allowing local policy-makers to evaluate the current policy development and seek possible policy amendments to efficiently and effectively cope with the notable, entrenched and multifaceted problems of youth delinquency. Outputs of this book, additionally, enable (under-)graduate students and relevant scholars and specialists focusing on SEA studies to understand the causes, effects, costs, and policy development and gaps with respect to the youth smoking epidemic, the youth drinking epidemic and youth delinquency of sexual misconduct.

One of the key highlights of this book is that the outputs suggest ways to attain more sustainable, equitable, liveable and inclusive futures in SEA other than the assessments of youth delinquency per se. In doing so, the author hopes to contribute scholarly to the understanding of how regional economic competitiveness, social cohesion and habitability can be sharpened when youth delinquency is addressed thoroughly and aptly. Moreover, when the author addresses youth delinquency, they identify how digitalisation and informationisation diversify the means for the SEA youths to gain access to tobacco products, alcohol goods, commercial sex clients and casual sex partners. Recommended policies in response to youth delinquency regionally, in part, target tightening the imposition of e-regulations by SEA governments to narrow any regulatory loopholes that relevant parties can instrumentalise on to earn lucrative profits at the expense of raising the rates of youth delinquency. In-depth analyses of both conventional and digitalised youth delinquency add further value to this book to readers’ understanding of the corresponding timely issues and recommended policy-making.

The author will, therefore, primarily explores the contexts of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Here Thailand and Malaysia are, currently, the only two regional upper-middle-income countries that share the same prospect of becoming high-income countries in the future. Indonesia, alternatively, has overtaken the Philippines as the biggest economic market and political powerhouse within the region. Therefore, compared to their less or least developed neighbouring counterparts, these countries are more prepared to develop sustainable, habitable and equitable futures while maintaining their Asian and global standings by raising economic and social competitiveness. Indonesia and Malaysia are among the two largest Muslim-majority countries in the globe. In the next chapters, the author will theorise how religious conformity deters local youths from expressing delinquency. Per Islamic laws, smoking, drinking and premature sex are prohibited. It will be interesting to explore whether religious deterrence helps prevent Indonesian and Malaysian youths from expressing delinquency. If not, the author will investigate what factors prompt local youths to behave delinquently, despite religious deterrence. Although these three countries are prioritised in the sociological discussion, the author will present some arguments and data with respect to the contexts of other SEA countries, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, to support their evaluation of youth delinquency regionwide.

This chapter embarks on a cross-Asian comparison to glean valuable insights from various regions and religious contexts. By examining family planning practices and challenges in different parts of Asia, valuable lessons are uncovered that can inform policies, programs, and initiatives aimed at achieving family planning-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). The complexities and nuances of family planning across diverse cultural, social, and religious landscapes are delved into, shedding light on both common threads and unique challenges faced by marginalized communities. Through this comparative analysis, the aim is to contribute to a holistic understanding of family planning in Asia and provide actionable recommendations to enhance access, equity, and outcomes in pursuit of family planning-related SDGs.

This study aims to investigate the interrelationships and elasticities between the production of renewable energy (RE) and three key variables: oil prices, gross domestic product (GDP) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

The research uses panel data and time-series analyses for 10 developed and 16 emerging countries for the period 1976–2018, to identify panel and country-specific elasticity of RE production and dynamic causal relationships between these variables. The study uses an autoregressive distributed lag model to determine the long- and short-run dynamics between RE production and the three variables in each country.

Results show a long-run elasticity between RE and GDP, and short-run dynamics between RE and oil prices and CO₂ emissions in the developed countries. Whereas in the emerging countries category, there were long-run relationships between RE and GDP, CO₂ emissions and oil prices.

Results of this study are in fact crucial and can be applied in the drafting of resilience policies to tackle energy vulnerability as well as sustainable growth. The study results will inform and guide governments on the right policies to stimulate RE production in their own countries in the interests of both their national security and sustainable development globally.

This paper attempts to contribute to the literature in at least two ways. First, research on identifying common determining factors, including socioeconomic factors, in both emerging and advanced economies is considerably scarce. Most of the previous research in this field has focused only on the absolute value of RE production in a particular geographical area. Second, many studies have focused on RE consumption. This research differs from them by focusing on the production of RE. Thus, the main contribution of this study is to fill these gaps. The study also presents novel empirical evidence to determine RE production elasticity from 26 countries.

Considering food waste as a global problem resulting from the wastage of valuable resources that could fulfil the requirements of malnourished people, the current research focusses on understanding consumerism’s impact on this phenomenon. Additionally, the circular economy (CE) approach can be critical in reducing food waste and promoting sustainability.

A systematic literature review was conducted using bibliometrics and network analysis. The study reviewed 326 articles within 10 years, from 2013 to 2023.

The findings reveal four prominent factors – behavioural, environmental, socioeconomic and technological – in managing food waste (FW). Reducing FW at a holistic level can benefit individuals and the environment in several ways.

Consumers are encouraged to be more responsible for their food consumption by reducing food waste, as it affects societies and businesses both economically and environmentally. This can help promote a responsible consumption culture that values quality over quantity and encourages people to make more informed choices about what they eat and how they dispose of it post-consumption. All stakeholders, including firms, the government and consumers, must examine the motives behind inculcating pro-environmental behaviour.

Addressing consumerism and the ability to decrease FW behaviour are complex issues that require a multidimensional approach. This study seeks to fill the gap in understanding consumerism and the capacity to reduce FW using the CE approach and understand the research gaps and future research trends.

Although the integration of sustainability into business strategies and operations has received considerable scholarly attention, little is known about how sustainability initiatives across the extended value chain affect this integration. This study aims to analyze the impact of multinational corporations’ supply chain sustainability initiatives on their environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) performance and the moderating role of the key country-level factors of the multinational’s headquarters.

This study analyzes data published by the top 201 multinationals among Fortune Global 500 companies over the period 2011–2021 on their attempts to integrate sustainability measures in extended supply chains and the resultant impact on their ESG scores. A fixed-effect model is used in the primary empirical study.

Results indicate that managerial interventions through a more robust supply chain policy framework, monitoring mechanisms, corrective actions and training initiatives lead to better ESG-environment pillar performance for multinationals. Additionally, the ESG-environment pillar performance is influenced by the socioeconomic model and country-level ESG risks of the nation where the multinational is headquartered.

The implications of this study are vital for understanding the criticality of sustainability initiatives in the supply chain for a firm’s overall ESG performance. To attain better levels of sustainable performance, multinationals must assume a stewardship position and deploy sustainability initiatives in their extended supply chain.