Mokslo publikacijos

This article analyses interest groups in the agricultural sector in Lithuania, and compares them with the rest of the population of interest groups across other sectors at the national level. The analysis is based on data from the International Comparative Interest Group Survey (CIGS). A survey of organizations representing various interests was carried out from September to November 2016, and covered all Lithuanian interest organizations operating at the national level.

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of a firm as one of the critical factors to improve the competitiveness of the firm in today’s aggressive market environment. The influence of corporate social responsibility on brand loyalty and brand image, which distinguishes the firm from other competitors, was evaluated in the study. Data from 364 consumers were collected through adapted and structured questionnaires for the period from August 2018 to December 2018.

The contemporary paradigm for sustainable development assumes single-vector economic and social progress and focuses on human-centrism and social quality. In a human-centered model, people become not only a resource component of sustainable economic growth, but also the main value of society. Human ability to participate in different areas of society, which will enhance well-being and clarify his/her personal potential, is the quintessence of the social quality concept. Under this concept, priority is given to decent work, which outlines an action strategy in implementing social and labor reform to ensure sustainable social and labor development.

Weights of criteria are playing a significant role in the wide range of MCDM (multiple criteria decision making) evaluation models. Results of evaluation significantly depend on magnitudes of weights as they proportionally transmit importance of each criterion to the final result of evaluation along with values of criteria placed in the decision matrix. There are two broad categories of methods for eliciting weights of criteria, subjective and objective. The former methods are based on opinions of experts, while the latter group of methods reflects the structure of data. The entropy method can be found within the most popular group of objective methods; it reflects the degree of diversification among values of criteria.

This paper deals with the pressing challenge of raising the level of environmental responsibility of agricultural enterprises in order to ensure their sustainable development. It has long been established that agricultural activity is accompanied by a significant negative anthropogenic impact on the environment. Therefore, globally, the trend is towards the development and implementation of the principles of environmental responsibility of businesses, which contributes to increasing the competitiveness of businesses, and improving product quality and living conditions of the people.

The development of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative is formed by several cultural, economic, social, political and institutional factors which have an impact on setting the priorities and advancement of CSR practices. The aim of this study is to assess CSR performance at the country level. In order to achieve this aim, the main drivers and barriers of CSR initiatives were identified and systematized based on literature review.

The paper deals with the problems linked to the energy renovation of multi-apartment buildings and developed a case study in Lithuania with the aim to assess the household’s willingness to pay for energy renovation and to define the main barriers preventing the households from making decisions to renovate their apartments in residential buildings. Energy renovation provides huge energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions reduction potential and though policies and measures exist to promote large scale energy renovation, there are still many barriers and the pace of energy renovation is still very slow, especially in new EU member states and former Soviet Union members.

Though there are areas of climate change mitigation linked to household’s energy consumption having huge greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction potential as energy renovation or installation of micro generation technologies using renewable energy sources, these GHG emission reduction potentials are not realized so far. The main input of the paper is to overcome this gap and to provide a systematic review of the main barriers of climate change mitigation behavior linked to energy consumption in households and to develop policies to overcome these barriers.

Adopting a new paradigm for social development implies a transition to a circular economy. The above requires the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the utilization of wastes, and the use of renewable energy sources. The most promising way is the use of methanol for industrial and transport applications. China is experiencing a boom in methanol production and its use in almost every sector of the economy. The purpose of this study was to reveal economic benefits, carbon dioxide emissions and the potential production of green methanol.

The average farm size is an important indicator of agricultural sustainability. Over the last decades, farmers in the European Union (EU) Member States faced multiple changes of business environment that fuelled shifts in agricultural land use and farm structure. The aim of this paper is to develop and employ a novel index decomposition analysis framework that allows decomposing the changes in the average farm size into pure farm size change and structural effects (specialization and spatial distribution).