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This study aims to determine whether consumers are willing to pay a premium for locally produced hard apple cider and examine the factors influencing this premium. This study examines the influence of hard apple cider attributes and consumer characteristics on consumer preferences for local hard apple cider.

Data from a 2019 survey of 875 Tennessee consumers regarding their preferences for a local hard apple cider were obtained. Probit estimates were used to calculate the premium consumers were willing to pay for a locally made hard apple cider and factors influencing this premium. A multivariate probit was used to ascertain factors influencing the importance of attributes (e.g. heirloom apples, sweetness/dryness, sparking/still and no preservatives added) on local hard apple cider preference.

Consumers would pay a $3.22 premium for local hard apple cider compared with a $6.99 reference product. Local foods preferences, urbanization, weekly purchases of other alcoholic beverages and shopping venues influenced premium amounts. Other important attributes were sweetness/dryness and no preservatives. Influence of consumer demographics suggests targeted marketing of local ciders could be successful.

Few studies examine consumer preferences for hard apple ciders. This study represents a cross-sectional analysis of the premium consumers would pay for local hard apple ciders and the importance of other hard apple cider attributes.

There is a gap in knowledge about the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) because most studies are undertaken in countries outside the Gulf region – such as China, India, the US and Taiwan. The stock market contains rich, valuable and considerable data, and these data need careful analysis for good decisions to be made that can lead to increases in the efficiency of a business. Data mining techniques offer data processing tools and applications used to enhance decision-maker decisions. This study aims to predict the Kuwait stock market by applying big data mining.

The methodology used is quantitative techniques, which are mathematical and statistical models that describe a various array of the relationships of variables. Quantitative methods used to predict the direction of the stock market returns by using four techniques were implemented: logistic regression, decision trees, support vector machine and random forest.

The results are all variables statistically significant at the 5% level except gold price and oil price. Also, the variables that do not have an influence on the direction of the rate of return of Boursa Kuwait are money supply and gold price, unlike the Kuwait index, which has the highest coefficient. Furthermore, the height score of the variable that affects the direction of the rate of return is the firms, and the accuracy of the overall performance of the four models is nearly 50%.

Some of the limitations identified for this study are as follows: (1) location limitation: Kuwait Stock Exchange; (2) time limitation: the amount of time available to accomplish the study, where the period was completed within the academic year 2019-2020 and the academic year 2020-2021. During 2020, the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), which was a major obstacle, occurred during data collection and analysis; (3) data limitation: The Kuwait Stock Exchange data were collected from May 2019 to March 2020, while the factors affecting the stock exchange data were collected in July 2020 due to the corona pandemic.

The study used new titles, variables and techniques such as using data mining to predict the Kuwait stock market. There are no adequate studies that predict the stock market by data mining in the GCC, especially in Kuwait. There is a gap in knowledge in the GCC as most studies are in foreign countries, such as China, India, the US and Taiwan.

This paper explores the survival strategies and coping mechanisms of ethnic minority entrepreneurs operating in the hospitality sector in northern Finland during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper utilizes qualitative research approach based on six exploratory case studies. The in-depth interviews in two phases were conducted with owners/mangers of ethnic minority entrepreneurial restaurants.

The findings reveal that all studied case firms undertook quick adjustments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, staff working hours were reduced through mutual consultation, and readjustments to the supply chain were made so that critical ingredients remain available despite the forced lockdown and supply chain bottlenecks. However, the readjustment of the supply chain was not visible in all case firms. Some of the owner-managers who were interviewed decided to keep doing business with the ethnic minority suppliers, despite some transportation problems due to lockdowns, especially in the early phases of COVID-19. Findings also suggest that the support grants announced by the state appeared not to be particularly useful for these restaurants due to restrictive eligibility criteria that many microbusinesses potentially fail to meet. Finally, the sample microbusinesses (restaurants) entrepreneurs recognize the importance of home delivery for their business survival, although they were critical of online food delivery service providers (apps) due to their high charges. Some of the case restaurants gave customers incentives for directly ordering from them, as an alternative strategy.

This paper is one of the first studies to specifically highlight the peculiarities of ethnic minority entrepreneurship and survival dynamics in northern Finland, where running the restaurant operations, including ensuring the supply chain management, is more complex than in the case of ethnic minority restaurants in more well-connected European countries and cities with an established history of immigrant businesses. This study is also novel in terms of specifying the strategies adopted by ethnic minority businesses in adjusting to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and surviving through it. At the same time, it has shown limitations and some problems associated with accessing state support announced for the hospitality industry in response to COVID-19. Finally, it offers a new angle by explicitly highlighting the power dynamics between restaurants and food ordering platforms (apps) and the potential alternatives in this specific context.

The aim of this paper is to explore whether and how external, political, financial and governance factors influence capital expenditure deviations in the Swedish municipal water and sewerage sector and to capture the consequences of municipal organisational fragmentation.

Panel data analysis of 238 municipalities and 1,190 observations of capital expenditure deviations over five years (2013–2017).

Apart from a low overall on average execution rate of 69%, the Swedish municipal water and sewerage sector seems generally sensitive to external stakeholder pressure for budget compliance, but not to the political power situation. Further, political signalling incentives generally do not influence capital expenditure deviations in the contexts of municipal corporations and cooperations, which supports the idea that these governance forms insulate the organisation from general stakeholder pressure and political control.

The practical implication is that large and constant capital expenditure deviations call for change in regulation and governance of the municipal sector. However, in countries such as Sweden, where externalising services to municipal corporations and cooperations is significant, this discussion needs to address the consolidated level of the municipality. Otherwise, a large share of the investment budget will be unscrutinised. More closely related to the Swedish water and sewerage sector, the risks associated with a constantly low execution rate should be analysed and addressed.

First, this paper contributes to the knowledge of aggregated capital expenditure deviations in general and specifically within the municipal water and sewerage sector. Second, analysing the municipal governance landscape adds further insights and suggestions on why budget performance varies. The results especially highlight that the governance forms of corporations and cooperations change the relation to political signalling incentives.

This paper aims to examine the influence of procurement physiognomies on the creative accounting (CA) of listed health-care firms in Nigeria from 2016 to 2020.

This paper used positivist paradigm. Annual reports and accounts, questionnaire and e-mails were used to obtained and extract quantitative data. The data were analyzed using OLS regression.

The study found that, procurement planning, e-procurement and procurement legislation compliance possessed negative weighty consequence on CA of quoted Nigerian health-care corporations while outsourcing, procurement staff competency and strategic supplier partnership possess positive substantial impact on the firms’ CA. The article concluded that procurement physiognomies play an important role in managing CA of health-care firms.

This study findings are only applicable to listed health-care firms in Nigeria. It only used six procurement attributes. The research implication is that researchers are to use the findings in conducting further studies on procurement physiognomies and CA to help in coming up with ways of curbing irregularities in the organizations.

The health-care firms are to use the findings to come up with policies that ensure malpractices in procurement are curbed and CA is minimized to its barest level. Its societal implication is that the public is to use the findings in changing societal attitudes toward earnings manipulation.

Its societal implication is that the public is to use the findings in changing societal attitudes toward earnings manipulation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this article is the first to evaluate the influence of procurement physiognomies on CA in Nigerian-listed health-care companies. Many researchers neglect how procurement is used to carry out a lot of CA and this study focuses on a mechanism for curtailing corruption.

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of healthcare professionals’ practice, where learning is taking place when a digital artefact is implemented for identification of patients’ cognitive impairment. The use of digital artefacts is increasing in various workplaces, to include professionals in healthcare. This paper aims to explore the following research question: How is the professional learning unfolding in patient-based work when a digital artefact transforms the practice?

Various data collection methods are used for this study, consisting of dialogue meetings, interviews and a reference-group meeting. Thematic analysis is used to inductively bring forth the themes of the collected data.

Professionals’ knowledge and experience are of vital importance in learning and changing work practices. Together with their ability to reflect on changes, their knowledge and experience constitute the prefiguration when the introduction of a digital application brings about indeterminacy in the work practice.

This paper makes a contribution to practice-based research as it consolidates previous research and identifies professionals knowledge and learning in a healthcare context. This can be used to further explore and advance the field, as well as to establish the evidence-based importance of transforming practices based on implementation of digital artefacts.

Poor indoor air quality (IAQ) contributing to occupants’ health symptoms is a universal, typically ventilation-related, problem in schools. In cold climates, low-cost strategies to improve IAQ in a naturally ventilated school are rare since conventional methods, such as window opening, are often inappropriate. This paper aims to present an investigation of strategies to relieve health symptoms among school occupants in naturally ventilated school in Finland.

A case study approach is adopted to thoroughly investigate the process of generating the alternatives of ventilation redesign in a naturally ventilated school where there have been complaints of health symptoms. First, the potential sources of the occupants’ symptoms are identified. Then, the strategies aiming to reduce the symptoms are compared and evaluated.

In a naturally ventilated school, health symptoms that are significantly caused by insufficient ventilation can be potentially reduced by implementing a supply and exhaust ventilation system. Alternatively, it is possible to retain the natural ventilation with reduced number of occupants. The selected strategy would depend considerably on the desired number of users, the budget and the possibilities to combine the redesign of ventilation with other refurbishment actions. Furthermore, the risk of poorer indoor air caused by the refurbishment actions must also be addressed and considered.

This study may assist municipal authorities and school directors in decisions concerning improvement of classroom IAQ and elimination of building-related symptoms. This research provides economic aspects of alternative strategies and points out the risks related to major refurbishment actions.

Since this study presents a set of features related to indoor air that contribute to occupants’ health as well as matters to be considered when aiming to decrease occupants’ symptoms, it may be of assistance to municipal authorities and practitioners in providing a healthier indoor environment for pupils and teachers.

In this work, we estimated the different entropies like Shannon entropy, Rényi divergences, Csiszár divergence by using Jensen’s type functionals. The Zipf’s–Mandelbrot law and hybrid Zipf’s–Mandelbrot law are used to estimate the Shannon entropy. The Abel–Gontscharoff Green functions and Fink’s Identity are used to construct new inequalities and generalized them for m-convex function.

Poor indoor air quality in schools is a worldwide challenge that poses health risks to pupils and teachers. A possible response to this problem is to modify ventilation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to pilot a process of generating alternatives for ventilation redesign, in an early project phase, for a school to be refurbished. Here, severe problems in indoor air quality have been found in the school.

Ventilation redesign is investigated in a case study of a school, in which four alternative ventilation strategies are generated and evaluated. The analysis is mainly based on the data gathered from project meetings, site visits and the documents provided by ventilation and condition assessment consultants.

Four potential strategies to redesign ventilation in the case school are provided for decision-making in refurbishment in the early project phase. Moreover, the research presents several features to be considered when planning the ventilation strategy of an existing school, including the risk of alterations in air pressure through structures; the target number of pupils in classrooms; implementing and operating costs; and the size of the space that ventilation equipment requires.

As this study focusses on the early project phase, it provides viewpoints to assist decision-making, but the final decision requires still more accurate calculations and simulations.

This study demonstrates the decision-making process of ventilation redesign of a school with indoor air problems and provides a set of features to be considered. Hence, it may be beneficial for building owners and municipal authorities who are engaged in planning a refurbishment of an existing building.

Mental illness presents a huge individual, societal and economic challenges, currently accounting for 20% of the worldwide burden of disease. There is a gap between the need for and access to services. Digital technology has been proven effective in e-mental health for preventing and treating mental health problems. However, there is a need for cross-disciplinary efforts to increase the impact of e-mental health services. This paper aims to report key challenges and possible solutions for cross-disciplinary and cross-sectorial research teams within the domain of e-mental health.

The key challenges and possible solutions will be discussed in light of the literature on effective cross-disciplinary research teams.

Six topics have been key challenges in our cross-disciplinary and cross-sectorial research team: to develop a shared understanding of the domain; to establish a common understanding of key concepts among the project participants; to involve the end-users in the research and development process; to collaborate across sectors; to ensure privacy and security of health data; and to obtain the right timing of activities according to project dependencies.

This study focuses to increase knowledge and training in cross-disciplinary and cross-sectorial research, as this is often referred to as an important tool when developing sustainable solutions for major societal challenges.

This study needs to include theory and skills training in cross-disciplinary research in research training.

Cross-disciplinary teams have the potential to address major societal challenges, including more perspectives and more stakeholders than single disciplinary research teams.

Major societal challenges require complex and sustainable solutions. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how cross-disciplinary and cross-sectorial research teams may work productively to solve these challenges. This paper shares experiences regarding the challenges and possible solutions for productive collaboration in cross-disciplinary and cross-sectorial research teams within the domain of e-mental health services.