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The purpose of this study is to verify all factors that promote renewable energy (RE) consumption. Past studies have shown that financial development (FD) and economic growth (EG) are the major drivers toward RE development, while oil prices had mixed outcomes in different regions by different studies.

Global warming effects have been the major reason of the transition by nations from fossil fuel use to RE sources that are considered as friendly to the environment. This research uses the fixed effects and random effects techniques, to ascertain the factors which impact RE development. The generalized linear model is also used to check the robustness of the Fixed Effects and Random Effects models’ results, while the Kao, Pedroni and Westerlund tests are used to check cointegration in the specified model.

The major findings of this study show the importance of EG and FD in promoting RE development. Oil prices, inflation rate and public sector credit present a negative effect on RE development, while foreign direct investment does not significantly impact RE development.

This research recommends the use of FD in promoting RE sources, as well as the stabilization of oil prices and consumer prices.

This research is important because it specifies the three proxies of FD, together with foreign direct investment inflation rate, EG and oil prices, in modeling RE. By investigating the impact of oil prices on RE in the emerging seven economies, this research becomes one of the few studies done in this region, as per the authors’ knowhow.

This study aims to develop a theoretical framework that marketing practitioners and scholars can adopt to enhance their understanding of how firms can effectively deploy and use digital human avatars as part of their global digital marketing strategy. By doing so, we inform investors of ongoing digital transformations of marketing practices that will equip marketeers to provide scalable, tailored, reliable and relevant digital self-service interactions to users, consequently improving the user/customer experience.

Thematic analysis was used to discover factors to enable the successful implementation of digital human avatars, drawing on in-depth interviews with fourteen executives of digital human avatars developer companies worldwide and analysis of ten podcasts and webinars with artificial intelligence (AI) experts.

Digital human avatars revitalise the international dynamic marketing capabilities (IDMCs) of firms by integrating advanced technologies that transform user interactions, improve engagement and facilitate knowledge acquisition, dissemination and usage across various sectors and business units globally. This integration promotes a dynamic approach to international brands, customer relationships and marketing knowledge management capabilities, offering profound value to users and firms.

Our first limitation is a lack of diversity in data sources. As digital human avatars are an emerging field, we had to limit our study to 14 experts in AI and 10 podcasts. While this method provides deep insights into the perspectives of those directly involved in the development and implementation of digital human avatars, it may not capture the views of end-users or consumers who interact with these avatars, which can be an avenue for further research. Our second limitation is the potential bias in the interpretation of our interview data and podcasts. This study’s approach to data analysis, where themes are derived from the data itself, carries a risk of subjective interpretation by the researchers. Future studies are encouraged to investigate the impact of digital human avatars across different organisational contexts and ecosystems, especially focusing on how these technologies are integrated and perceived in various international markets.

The novel framework has direct implications for innovators and marketing practitioners who aim to adopt digital human avatars in their marketing practices to enhance the effectiveness of international marketing strategies.

The adoption of digital human avatars can alleviate loneliest elderly and vulnerable people by being a companion. The human-like characteristics can impact sense of presence and attachment.

The novelty of our study lies in exploring the characteristics of technologies and practical factors that maximise the successful adoption of digital human avatars. We advance and contribute to the emerging theory of avatar marketing, IDMCs and absorptive capacity by demonstrating how digital human avatars could be adopted as part of a firm’s global digital marketing strategy. We focus specifically on six dimensions: outcomes and benefits, enhancements and capabilities, applications and domains, future implications, foundational elements and challenges and considerations. This framework has direct implications for innovators and marketing practitioners who aim to adopt digital human avatars in their marketing practices to enhance the effectiveness of international marketing strategies.

The contemporary business environment is characterised by an increasing reliance on artificial intelligence, automation, optimisation, efficient communication and data-driven decision making. Based on the limited academic literature that examines the managerial perspective on enterprise chatbots, the paper aims to explore organisational needs and expectations for enterprise chatbots from a managerial perspective, assesses the relationship between managerial knowledge and managerial opinion regarding enterprise chatbots, and delivers a framework for integrating chatbots into the digital workforce.

The paper presents a quantitative design. An online, self-administered survey yielded 111 valid responses from managers in service and manufacturing organisations based on convenience and snowball sampling strategies. Given the nature of the data and the research questions, the research was conducted using principal component analysis, parallel analysis, correlation, internal consistency and difference in means tests.

This research explores the managerial perspective on enterprise chatbots from multiple perspectives (i.e., adoption, suitability, development requirements, benefits, barriers, performance and implications), presents a heat map of the average level of chatbot need across industries and business units, highlights the urgent need for education and training initiatives targeted at decision makers, and provides a strategic framework for successful chatbot implementation.

This study equips managers and practitioners dealing with enterprise chatbots with knowledge to effectively leverage the expected benefits of investing in this technology for their organisations. It offers direction for developers in designing chatbots that align with organisational expectations, capabilities and skills.

Insights for managers, researchers and chatbot developers are provided. The work complements the few academic studies that examine enterprise chatbots from a managerial perspective and enriches related commercial studies with more rigourous statistical analysis. The paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on decision-making in the context of technology development, integration and education.

The underdevelopment of the financial sector could be one of the barriers to the deployment of renewable energies in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is therefore to analyse the effect of financial development in the deployment of renewable energies in sub-Saharan African countries.

The empirical analysis is based on a production approach and a cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributive lag error correction model estimate for 25 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1990–2018. The augmented mean group (AMG) and common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) estimators were used for the robustness analysis.

Two results emerge: financial development contributes positively to renewable energy deployment in sub-Saharan African countries in the short and long run; and fossil fuel dependence impedes significantly renewable energy deployment in the short and long run. The robustness analyses using the AMG and CCEMG methods confirm these results.

These results suggest the need for policies to support and strengthen the development of the financial sector to improve its ability to effectively finance investments in renewable energy technologies.

The originality of this paper lies in the fact that the analysis is based on a renewable energy production approach. Indeed, the level of renewable energy deployment is measured by the production and not the consumption of renewable energy, unlike other previous work. In addition, this research uses recent econometric estimation techniques that overcome the problems of cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity.

This study tests convergence in energy diversification, per-capita income and financial development and explores their interrelationships.

Club convergence tests, Granger tests and panel regressions are employed on 134 countries from 1995 to 2019.

While overall convergence is absent across the entire sample, countries have converged within specific clubs. Low- and lower-middle-income countries show convergence in energy diversification and per-capita income. Positive bidirectional relationships are found between energy diversification and per-capita income, and between financial development and per-capita income. A U-shaped relationship between oil prices and energy diversification is identified.

The findings suggest that achieving a shared equilibrium in energy diversification, economic prosperity and financial development is feasible through technological progress within convergence clubs. Investments in human capital and technology are crucial prerequisites for sustainable development.

This study pioneers testing energy diversification, per-capita income and financial development convergence, investigating the tri-directional relationship between them, and exploring the U-shaped relationship between oil prices and energy diversification.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of environmental dynamism on different EO dimensions in family firms. The authors also examine the moderating role of national culture (uncertainty avoidance and in-group collectivism) and the level of family control and influence in fostering/hindering this relationship.

A survey was conducted among 1,143 family firms from twenty-eight countries. The authors developed and tested hypotheses through a fixed-effects regression analysis.

The findings suggest that environmental dynamism has a positive effect on all three EO dimensions. Analysis reveals a positive moderating role of family control and influence and negative moderating roles of in-group collectivism and uncertainty avoidance.

The findings imply that family firm managers should carefully interpret the influence of their national culture on family firm behavior. More specifically, family firms in dynamic environments should consider the importance of the national culture in which they are embedded. Those operating in high uncertainty avoidant and highly collectivist cultures should take proactive steps to cultivate a corporate entrepreneurial culture. On the other hand, the family should not undermine the effect of its control and influence. In dynamic environments, family control and influence may be a competitive advantage in reinforcing entrepreneurial orientation.

The study contributes to the literature on EO in family firms by expanding the previous research on the antecedents of EO and examining moderation effects of culture and family control and influence across a broad multi-country sample. In contrast with the common findings regarding the effect of family logic on EO, the study shows the strengthening role of family control and influence in the relationship between environmental dynamism and EO. The authors show that culture as an informal institution may also play a critical role in hindering/strengthening the relationship between environmental dynamism and EO.

This study aims to compare the physical fitness test results of Japanese children in 2008 and 2018 to narrow the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy and extend healthy life expectancy. In addition, this paper sought to explore the potential of implementing health education programs as a new social context to promote race equality and human rights in health and social care.

This study was conducted in 2008 and 2018 in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Physical fitness tests related to growth and development were administered to participants aged 6–17 years.

Physical fitness measurements in 2018, specifically those for walking ability and endurance, were significantly inferior to those in 2008. In a gender-specific analysis, boys outperformed girls in muscle strength, muscle endurance, walking ability and endurance tests, while girls outperformed boys in the balance test.

Most of the junior and senior high school students who participated in the EO test exceeded the upper limit of 120 s, suggesting that the load of the measurement method is low and improvement is necessary. In 2018, a large variation in 6M results was observed among participants, possibly due to the differences in the level of seriousness during the 6M test. Therefore, to ensure that junior and senior high school students properly perform the EO and 6M tests, it is necessary to devise an effective method of implementation, such as changing the physical fitness test load.

Mere health education is ineffective to address health inequalities. Addressing structural factors is essential to avoid unintended consequences such as increasing the gap between groups of people. However, one way to extend healthy life expectancy is to improve overall health, including differences in the health status of groups due to differences in region and socioeconomic status.

The aim of this paper is twofold: to explore the significance and implications of the rise of AI technology for the field of tertiary education in general and, in particular, to answer the question of whether teachers can be replaced by intelligent AI systems such as androids, what that requires in terms of human capabilities and what that might mean for teaching and learning in higher education.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of this conceptual paper, a literature review serves as a methodological tool to access data pertaining to the research question posed in the paper.

This exploratory paper gathers a range of evidence from the philosophy of mind (the mind-body problem), Kahneman’s (2011) System 1 and System 2 models of the mind, Gödel’s (1951) Two Incompleteness Theorems, Polanyi’s (1958, 1966) theory of tacit knowing and Searle’s (1980) Chinese Room thought experiment to the effect that no AI system can ever fully replace a human being because no machine can replicate the human mind and its capacity for intelligence, consciousness and highly developed social skills such as empathy and cooperation.

AI is rising, but there are inherent limits to what machines can achieve when compared to human capabilities. An android can at most attain “weak AI”, that is, it can be smart but lack awareness or empathy. Therefore, an analysis of good teaching at the tertiary level shows that learning, knowledge and understanding go far beyond any quantitative processing that an AI machine does so well, helping us to appreciate the qualitative dimension of education and knowledge acquisition. ChatGPT is robotic, being AI-generated, but human beings thrive on the human-to-human interface – that is, human relationships and meaningful connections – and that is where the true qualitative value of educational attainment will be gauged.

This paper has provided evidence that human beings are irreplaceable due to our unique strengths as meaning-makers and relationship-builders, our capacity for morality and empathy, our creativity, our expertise and adaptability and our capacity to build unity and cooperate in building social structures and civilization for the benefit of all. Furthermore, as society is radically automated, the purpose of human life and its reevaluation will also come into question. For instance, as more and more occupations are replaced by ChatGPT services, more and more people will be freed up to do other things with their time, such as caring for relatives, undertaking creative projects, studying further and having children.

The investigation of the scope and limitations of AI is significant for two reasons. First, the question of the nature and functions of a mind becomes critical to the possibility of replication because if the human mind is like a super-sophisticated computer, then the relationship between a brain and mind is similar (if not identical) to the relationship between a computer as machine hardware and its programme or software (Dreyfus, 1979). [ ] If so, it should be theoretically possible to understand its mechanism and reproduce it, and then it is just a matter of time before AI research and development can replicate the human mind and eventually replace a human teacher, especially if an AI machine can teach just as intelligently yet more efficiently and economically. But if AI has inherent limitations that preclude the possibility of ever having a human-like mind and thought processes, then our investigation can at least clarify in what ways AI/AGI – such as ChatGPT – could support teaching and learning at universities.

The primary aim of this study is to analyze the evolution and future trajectories of renewable energy research from 2000–2023. By examining publication volumes, citation patterns, geographical and institutional landscapes, and identifying key authors and publications, the study seeks to provide a detailed overview of the developmental trajectory of renewable energy research. It aims to serve as a crucial reference for researchers, policymakers and stakeholders in the energy sector, offering insights that can guide future research directions and policy decisions.

This study uses a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of renewable energy literature spanning from 2000 to 2023, using the Scopus database. Advanced tools such as the visualization of similarities viewer were used for in-depth exploration of influential papers, authors, keyword clusters and thematic connections through hierarchical cluster analysis. The study targeted various publications specifically mentioning “renewable energy” and “renewable energies” in their titles, examining publication trends, research areas, geographic origins, institutional affiliations, funding patterns, journal contributions and citation impacts.

The analysis reveals robust growth in renewable energy research, with a significant increase in publications over the last two decades. Key contributing countries include the USA, China, the UK, Germany and Spain, demonstrating strong international collaboration. High citation counts and influential journals such as Energy Policy and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews underscore the significance of the research. However, a notable gap in the literature concerning the branding and marketing of alternative fuels was identified, highlighting the need for future research in strategic marketing and consumer engagement aspects of renewable energies.

The study is limited by its reliance on the Scopus database, which may not capture all relevant publications, and the predominance of English-language documents, potentially introducing language bias. The quantitative focus of bibliometric methods may overlook qualitative aspects of research contributions. Future studies should incorporate diverse databases, languages and qualitative analyses to fully capture the global and multifaceted nature of renewable energy research, addressing these limitations and providing a more comprehensive understanding.

The insights from this study can inform policymakers and stakeholders about the key trends, influential entities and emerging directions within renewable energy research. Understanding the predominant research themes and influential journals can aid in strategic decision-making and resource allocation. The identification of gaps in the literature, such as the branding and marketing of alternative fuels, can guide future research and policy efforts to enhance public acceptance and broader adoption of renewable energy technologies.

The study highlights global collaboration and communication in renewable energy research, facilitated by the predominance of English as a lingua franca. This international cooperation is crucial for the integration of innovative ideas and solutions across different regions. Addressing the identified gap in consumer engagement and strategic marketing can improve public perception and acceptance of renewable energy technologies, ultimately contributing to the global transition to sustainable energy sources and mitigating climate change impacts.

This study offers a unique and comprehensive bibliometric analysis of renewable energy research, providing valuable insights into publication trends, key contributors and thematic connections over the past two decades. By identifying gaps in the literature and suggesting directions for future research, the study adds significant value to the field. It serves as a crucial reference point for researchers, policymakers and stakeholders, enhancing their understanding of the evolution and future trajectories of renewable energy research.

This study aims to examine the impact of ESG performance on financial risk (FR) in energy firms from developing countries. It also explores the moderating roles of ESG controversies and board gender diversity (BGD) on this relationship.

The research uses a panel data set of 218 energy firms from 20 developing countries from 2019 to 2024, using two-stage least squares regression to address potential endogeneity. Robustness checks are conducted using fixed-effects estimation and pooled ordinary least squares.

The results indicate that superior ESG performance significantly reduces both total and systemic risk. ESG controversies positively moderate the relationship between ESG performance and FR, suggesting that controversies may weaken the risk-reducing benefits of strong ESG practices. Additionally, BGD significantly strengthens the negative relationship between ESG performance and FR. Robustness checks confirm the consistency of these findings across different estimation methods.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature by examining the role of ESG performance in FR mitigation, specifically within the energy sector in developing countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to explore these dynamics in this specific context. This study uniquely illustrates how ESG controversies and BGD significantly moderate the ESG–risk relationship, offering fresh insights that extend stakeholder, risk management and legitimacy theories. The findings highlight the importance of integrating ESG factors into corporate governance and risk management, particularly for firms operating in high-risk, high-impact industries such as energy.