Factors affecting environmental practice adoption at small European airports: An investigation

Airport business models and the COVID-19 pandemic: An exploration of the UK case study

The COVID-19 pandemic had been a major crisis for the air transport industry due to its global reach, duration, and continuing uncertainty. Demand for air travel fell globally by around 90% in the period immediately following the introduction of lockdown restrictions which induced significant revenue loss for the industry and led to widespread bankruptcies and job losses. Within this extremely challenging business environment, commercially operated airports have struggled. This paper investigates how airport management has been impacted by this sudden and prolonged fall in the demand for air travel. Specifically, the UK case was studied through the Business Model Canvas, with documentary evidence supplemented with 31 in-depth interviews from the Government, airports, airlines, and other aviation organisations and from a variety of stakeholder roles within airports across the country. Interviewees were asked about how airport business models responded to COVID-19 and how they were likely to change in the future as a consequence. The findings suggest that COVID-19 encouraged airports to restructure key components in their business models. Fundamentally, airports have significant fixed costs, and it has been especially challenging to run terminals and operations with little or no revenue from conventional channels. The study finds airports were introducing more flexibility into their cost base while diversifying their revenue streams into areas such as developing business parks and enhancing retail portfolios. This is leading to a restructuring of airport business models to improve resilience to future systemic shocks. Overall, 4 future airport business drivers and approaches have emerged: 1) Cost-effectiveness and minimisation, 2) Diversification of revenue streams and intensified commercial activities, 3) Enhanced digitalisation and operational efficiency, and 4) Sustainability focused approach.

Towards sustainable environment: why green energy technology diffusion is sluggish in South Africa?

Energy security, job development, and minimal environmental damage are just a few of the reasons why green energy technologies have gained popularity. Still, developing these technologies in underdeveloped countries is sluggish due to several bottlenecks. To find and prioritize the bottlenecks to development of green energy technologies (GETs), this study has used the case of South Africa. In this study, technical, financial, social, regulatory, geographical, and institutional bottlenecks are six headings under which 22 bottlenecks are further subdivided. For prioritizing these bottlenecks, a Multi-Objective Optimization based on Ratio Analysis (MOORA) strategy combined with an Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) method was used. The top three bottlenecks impacting the GETs' development involved social, institutional, and regulatory, whereas in sub-headings, corrupt political systems, knowledge of the public, and fixed investments were revealed to be the most significant hurdles. In addition to that, a framework is also developed for assessing how each bottleneck hinders the development of green energy technologies. The results of this study recommend that formulation of policy using the bottom-up approach is important. Notably, politicians at the highest levels should work together to bolster government agencies so that they can monitor and carry out the policies designed to advance GETs. Building the institutional capacity of government offices is crucial for eliminating corruption in political offices and progressing GETs in South Africa.

A systematic and critical review of waste management in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises: future directions for theory and practice

Waste management (WM) has received increasing attention in recent years in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). However, a comprehensive understanding of the WM research in MSMEs from different economic sectors is somehow absent in spite of its proliferation. The current review was conducted to indicate types of waste, hazards associated with waste, as well as strategies, antecedents (facilitators and barriers), and outcomes of WM in MSMEs from diverse economic sectors. The search was performed by using the Web of Science (WoS) database, which retrieves 420 articles. After excluding the papers that were not closely related to the topic, 84 articles were retained for an in-depth analysis, spanning a period of five years (from 2018 to June 2022). This review demonstrates that the types of waste generated from MSMEs include metals, plastics, chemicals, papers, wood, fabrics, stones, food, ceramics, glass, candles, and cooking oil, among others. It is also resulted that the hazards associated with waste include environmental pollution, CO2 emissions, human diseases, health disasters, and marine life destruction. Examples of the WM strategies in MSMEs research are recycling, separating, sorting, reusing, and composting waste. The findings revealed that a lack of financial resources, knowledge, experience, education, and training are some barriers encountered by MSMEs in WM. Enhancing financial performance, economic growth, competitive advantage, and sustainable development are important outcomes of WM in MSMEs. There has been a paucity of research on MSMEs WM, necessitating a thorough investigation of several issues. This research discusses implications and recommendations and presents avenues for future research. The current paper is one of the first studies to conduct a systematic review of WM in MSMEs from different economic sectors.

Examining the associations between perceived built environment and active travel, before and after the COVID-19 outbreak in Shiraz city, Iran

This study aims to evaluate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and policies to control the outbreak such as quarantine, jobs closures, and traffic restrictions on active travel of Central Businesses District (CBD) residents in comparison with the non-CBD residents of Shiraz, Iran; and examine the relationship between perceived built environment factors and active travel in the pre- and post-outbreak. The results indicate that the most effective individuals factors on active travel are bicycle and car ownership, and built environment characteristics are walkability, bikeability, security, aesthetics, traffic calming, intersections safety, land uses diversity and density, destination accessibility, street pattern, and bike-sharing infrastructures. Also, the average walking and cycling time of the CBD residents before and after the outbreak is more than that of the non-CBD residents, which is due to the quality of built environment factors in the CBD. A built environment with mixed, diverse, dense and accessible land uses, as well as safe and secure cycling and walking routes have major effects on active travel in the crisis. Hence, it is suggested that policymakers take action to make the environment more people-friendly to maintain citizens' mobility in the critical situation, when many travel modes have lost their efficiency.

Environmental Impact and External Costs Associated with Hub-and-Spoke Network in Air Transport

Under the background of economic globalization, the air transport industry developed rapidly. It turns out that the city-to-city network has not been able to adapt well to the development of the society, and the hub-and-spoke network came into being. The hub-and-spoke network demonstrates the advantages of reducing the operating costs of airlines to keep a competitive advantage, and by maintaining the interests of airlines in the rapidly developing context. However, during the operation of aircrafts, they consume fuel and spew a great deal of harmful pollutants into the air, which has an adverse impact on the living environment. This paper explores the impact and external costs associated with hub-and-spoke network in air transport from an environmental perspective. With some mathematical models, we construct a hub-and-spoke network and take a quantitative study on the environmental impact of air transport. For calculating pollutant emissions, meteorological conditions were considered to revise the pollutant emission factors of the Engine Emissions Data Base (EEDB) published by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The environmental external costs measurement model is employed to calculate the externality of toxic gas and greenhouse gas (GHG). In order to make the study more convincing, two alternative networks are computed: hub-and-spoke network and city-to-city network. It is found that the hub-and-spoke network is associated with poorer environmental impact and environmental external costs because of the different network characteristics and the scale of the fleets. Therefore, under the general trend of green aviation, the environmental impact and environmental external costs associated with hub-and-spoke network in air transport provides a certain reference for airlines’ strategic decision-making.