Search results

Carbon reduction in the construction supply chain can critically affect the construction industry’s transition to an environmentally sustainable one. However, implementing carbon reduction in all parties is restricted because of the poor understanding of the drivers influencing the low-carbon construction supply chain (LCCSC). The purpose of this paper is to systematically identify the drivers of LCCSC, analyze their causality, and prioritize the importance of their management.

A decision-making analysis process was developed using an integrated decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL)–analytical network process (ANP). First, the hierarchical drivers of the LCCSC were identified through a literature review. The DEMATEL method was subsequently applied to analyze the interactions between the drivers, including the direction and strength of impact. Finally, the ANP analysis was used to obtain the drivers’ weights; consequently, their priorities were established.

Various factors with complex interactions drive LCCSC. With respect to their influence relationships, incentive policy, regulatory policy, consumers’ low-carbon preference, market competition, supply chain performance, and managers’ low-carbon awareness have more significant center degrees and are cause drivers. Their strong correlations and influence on other drivers should be noticed. In terms of weights in the driver system, regulatory policy, consumers’ low-carbon preference, supply chain performance, and incentive policy are the key drivers of LCCSC and require primary attention. Other drivers, such as supply chain collaboration, employee motivation, and public participation, play a minor driving role with less management priority.

Despite some contributing studies with localized perspectives, the systematic analysis of LCCSC drivers is limited, especially considering their intricate interactions. This paper establishes the LCCSC driver system, explores the influence relationships among the drivers, and determines the key drivers. Hence, it contributes to the sustainable construction supply chain domain by enabling decision-makers and practitioners to systematically understand the drivers of LCCSC and gain management implications on priority issues with limited resources.

This paper replicates four highly cited, classic lab experimental studies in the provision of public goods. The studies consider the impact of marginal per capita return and group size; framing (as donating to or taking from the public good); the role of confusion in the public goods game; and the effectiveness of peer punishment. Considerable attention has focused recently on the problem of publication bias, selective reporting, and the importance of research transparency in social sciences. Replication is at the core of any scientific process and replication studies offer an opportunity to reevaluate, confirm or falsify previous findings. This paper illustrates the value of replication in experimental economics. The experiments were conducted as class projects for a PhD course in experimental economics, and follow exact instructions from the original studies and current standard protocols for lab experiments in economics. Most results show the same pattern as the original studies, but in all cases with smaller treatment effects and lower statistical significance, sometimes falling below accepted levels of significance. In addition, we document a “Texas effect,” with subjects consistently exhibiting higher levels of contributions and lower free-riding than in the original studies. This research offers new evidence on the attenuation effect in replications, well documented in other disciplines and from which experimental economics is not immune. It also opens the discussion over the influence of unobserved heterogeneity in institutional environments and subject pools that can affect lab results.

There is extensive literature on the determinants of job tenure insecurity. However, very little is known about the individual drivers of labour market insecurity. Additionally, while a piece of literature shows that volunteering improves workers' income, no study considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of labour market insecurity if they lost or resigned their jobs. Therefore, purpose of this paper is to study whether workers who volunteer are less likely to perceive labour market insecurity.

The paper employs data from the sixth European working conditions survey which provides a great deal of information on working conditions. For the empirical investigation, probit model as well as robustness analysis have been implemented.

Results show that employees who do voluntary activities have a greater likelihood of declaring perceived labour market insecurity, which is nearly 3 percentage points lower, than employees who do not volunteer. Findings suggest that governments need to improve the relationship between for-profit and non-profit sectors to encourage volunteering.

This is the first study which considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of “labour market insecurity”. Most of the studies on “labour market insecurity” do not focus on the workers individual characteristics but mainly on the labour markets institutional characteristics and welfare regimes differences.

This paper replicates and refines the finding that subsidies for charitable contributions of a rebate type are less effective than matching subsidies. A survey based field experiment with health charities was conducted among a national sample representative of the Dutch population on key demographic characteristics. The greater effectiveness of matching subsidies found in laboratory experiments is replicated. Also some evidence is provided on why matches are more effective than rebates. Matches attract a larger pool of donors, in part because donors expect more people to make donations and “join in.” Matches also increase the amount contributed among the higher educated, higher income households and larger donors. Subsidies of either type do not decrease subsequent giving in a campaign for tsunami relief. The experiment could not test whether the greater effectiveness of a matching subsidy is due to a change in the donor’s attention to the benefits of a donation to the cause. This explanation should be tested in future research. The findings imply that a given budget available to subsidize charitable contributions can be used more effectively if the subsidy is framed in the form of a match than in the form of a rebate. Nonprofit organizations can use this insight in the design of fundraising campaigns. For governments the finding suggests that the effectiveness of current subsidies for charitable contributions can be enhanced by matching them rather than providing a deduction in the income tax, which works as a rebate.

Shang and Croson (2009) found that providing information about the donation decisions of others can have a positive impact on individual donations to public radio. In this study, we attempted to replicate their results, but found no evidence that social information affected donation decisions. However, most of our donors were renewing members, a group which Shang and Croson also found was not influenced by social information.

This paper aims to assess the fiscal sustainability in Egypt during the period 1990–2018 using deficit accounts (DA) approach. It also tries to investigate the possibility of applying generational accounts (GA) in Egypt as a new approach to assess fiscal sustainability.

This paper tries to assess fiscal sustainability in Egypt during 1990–2018 using DA and GA approaches. DA approach includes primary deficit indicator, tax gap indicator, augmented Dickey-Fuller stationarity test for debt/GDP ratio and Johansen co-integration test between government revenues and expenditures. However, concerning the possibility of applying GA in Egypt, field study form was designed including specific questions to academic and executive economic experts to investigate if it is possible to apply GA in Egypt.

The empirical findings of the field study indicate that Egypt witnessed fiscal sustainability during the period 1990–2018 using DA. On the other hand, there are various obstacles, including administrative, technical, legal and political obstacles which hinder Egypt from applying GA to assess fiscal sustainability.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper assesses fiscal sustainability in Egypt using DA for a longer and updated time series within 1990–2018. In addition, it is the first paper to examine the possibility of assessing fiscal sustainability using GA approach in Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between religious involvement and attitudinal (importance of helping others and of being socially active) and behavioral components of prosociality (volunteering, charitable giving, and blood donations) in Germany.

The empirical analyses are based on representative, longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which allows avoiding issues of reverse causality.

The results suggest for a moderate, positive link between individuals’ religious involvement as measured by church affiliation and church attendance and the prosociality aspects addressed. Despite the historic divide in religion, the results in West and East Germany do not differ substantially in terms of the underlying mechanisms.

The paper complements the growing literature from experimental economics on the relationship between individuals’ religiosity and their prosociality. Based on representative longitudinal data, it contributes by providing evidence for Germany for which there is barely any insight yet and by addressing a wider range of attitudinal and (self-reported) behavioral components of prosociality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether people who engage in religious activities are more generous in terms of both religious and secular giving.

Bivariate probit (BVP) and bivariate tobit (BVT) analyses show that religious people have a greater propensity to give and higher levels of giving to both religious and secular charitable organizations. The bivariate systems permit a test of the correlation across the different giving decisions, and the correlation between religious and secular giving is found to be highly significant.

Religiosity positively influences both religious and secular donations. After controlling for this correlation, the impacts of religiosity on religious and secular giving are more efficient estimates but smaller than expected.

As a result of these methodological shortcomings, the causal relationship between religiosity and charitable giving is far from clear. To overcome those problems, this study uses BVP and BVT models to control for the potential correlation between religious giving and secular giving by the same individual and then draws appropriate interpretations. This study adds a firmer theoretical foundation to the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether altruism justifies ad hoc legislation with reference to three different contexts. One is defined by the libertarian notion of liberty; a second framework corresponds to the egalitarian vision; and a third one originates from social-contract theory.

The authors review two stylized visions of liberty, and consider to what extent the current legal systems comply with one of these visions. Moreover, the authors analyse the implications of the contractarian approach.

It is shown that current legislation is rather ambiguous and sometimes even contradictory. By and large, the common-law view tends to favour the libertarian approach, while the civil-law visions are closer to what one might expect from social-contract theory. In these cases, however, it seems that the letter of the law is often questioned by the academic community as well as by the judiciary, and decisions eventually follow the judges’ discretionary power.

This analysis of altruism combines the economic and legal perspectives. Although altruism is always considered an important part of social capital and worthy of privileged treatment, it is shown that policymaking is frequently inconsistent and sometimes contradictory.

Small farmers are considered one of the most affected communities worldwide due to poverty. Hence, this paper aims to study how the proposed waqf crowdfunding models are intended to provide alternative sources of funds for the waqf institutions and farmers.

The present study employed a qualitative method by analysing the relevant literature on crowdfunding, waqf cash, waqf and agriculture, together with the primary sources of the Ḥadīth.

This paper provides the conceptual framework of two waqf crowdfunding model (WCM) and the required parameters for their application. It is found that crowdfunding can bring immense benefits to the agriculture sector and farmers if it is integrated with waqf. This system will enable underprivileged farmers to meet their necessities and participate in their country's economic development.

Future research may consider a waqf crowdfunding integrated model targeting other businesses.

This study provides the required parameters for the application of the proposed models. Four areas were analysed and discussed: the regulatory compliance parameters, the shariah compliance parameters, the risk management parameters and, finally, waqf governance parameters. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first proposed waqf and crowdfunding integrated model for agricultural financing.