Scientific publications

Decarbonization of heating sector is an important part of the global low carbon energy transition, and an essential step towards implementing climate change mitigation commitments as this sector accounts for 40-50 % of global energy consumption and is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition, this sector is sensitive in terms of energy vulnerability and energy poverty. The aim of this paper is to develop a set of indicators and evaluation tool for assessing sustainability of the heating sector at national level and to apply developed methodology for comparative assessment in selected North European countries.

The objective of this research was to forecast the sectorial energy consumption of Pakistan for five fiscal years, i.e., from FY18 to FY23 using two different time series techniques and explore the causal relationship between total energy consumption and its sectorial components, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The study further analyzed the efficiency of two different time series models, such as the Autoregressive model (AR with seasonal dummies) and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model (ARIMA/ARMA). In any economy, forecasting energy consumption and its relationship with GDP is paramount to ensure the economic development and fiscal policies.

Bioenergy is a kind of renewable energy that can potentially contribute to a broad spectrum of economic, environmental, and societal objectives and aid sustainable development. The assessment, management, and monitoring of the diverse bioenergy production technology alternatives are complex in nature and deliver different benefits due to the lack of precise and comprehensive data. Selection of an optimal bioenergy production technology (BPT) alternative is considered a complex multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem that involves many incompatible tangible and intangible as well as qualitative and quantitative criteria. The procedure of defining and evaluating the weights of the criteria is an important concern for decision experts because the assessment and the final selection of the BPT alternative are carried out on the basis of the defined set of criteria. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) have received considerable attention due to their ability to handle the imprecision and vagueness that can arise in real-life situations.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) had been widely discussed in different scientific and practical discourses worldwide for more than half of a century. In its initial phase issuing the demand for social responsibilities from businessmen in general, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the number of evidence increases of how some trend of CSR had already drifted across the gender issues and agricultural discourse. This study aims to find out, whether gender matters in farmer’s understanding of the principles of agribusiness social responsibility.

Many of the EU measures were proposed to encourage early retirement from farming. Current age structure requires different approach aiming to use experiences of elderly people and involvement of them into social and economic activities. Key challenges for rural development policy aiming to increase quality of life of elder people are dealing not only with traditional help and support measures, but with involvement of elder generation into economic and social life also. The new EU agricultural policy measures should ensure that funding and institutional incentives support extending working and active social life of elder farmers. One of possible ways to change approach deals with servitization.

Lotteries are probably the most geographically widespread and one of the most profitable types of gambling in terms of revenue in the selected country. Players in Slovakia can place a bet in 9 lotteries, including additional games. The main goal of this paper is to present potential conditions for the development of lottery business in the Slovak Republic, including legal definitions of lottery types, legislative restrictions and state regulation.

The aim of this study is to discuss the issues relevant to the CSR evaluation and to develop a model of CSR assessment by taking into account SDGs. Based on a critical literature review, the advantages and limits of CSR assessment models were analyzed with the SDGs addressed, and the framework of a novel model of CSR assessment was proposed in this study.

This study presents an innovative approach to measuring economic resilience at a sectoral level. The notion of economic resilience is explored through the lens of levels of resilience of the main functions of a researched economic sector. The overall level of sectoral economic resilience is seen as a weighted sum of resilience indexes related to its main economic functions.

Rural financial development is deemed essential for eliminating poverty. In China, successive governments have initiated a series of financial development plans to reduce poverty since the launch of economic reform in the late 1970s. However, there is a rising concern about whether financial development can reduce poverty in China. This study uses a panel dataset of 30 provinces (out of 31) in mainland China from 1997 to 2015 to examine the effect of rural financial development on poverty reduction

This paper provides a systematic review and assessment of the existing (composite) indicators for measuring energy poverty (EP). A total of 71 (composite) indicators have been identified for evaluating EP. The systematic literature review integrates the Search, Appraisal, Synthesis and Analysis (SALSA) framework, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement under PSALSAR (Protocol, Search, Appraisal, Synthesis, Analysis and Report) framework. The framework of Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, and Context (PICOC) is also applied to set the scope of the research.