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This paper investigates the causality among gold prices, crude oil prices, bitcoin and stock prices by using daily data from January 2014 to December 2021. The study also examines the data during the COVID-19 outbreak from January 2020 to December 2021.

To estimate the long- and short-run causality, this study considers the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) cointegration test.

The analysis found the existence of an asymmetric long-run cointegration among selected assets. Findings indicate that positive changes in bitcoin do not affect stock market in the long term. Changes in crude oil prices have a significant impact on stock prices. Moreover, it is observed that variations in the stock prices trigger a negative impact on gold prices. During the COVID-19 period, the study notices the presence of an asymmetric long-term cointegration between selected assets except bitcoin. Besides, findings revealed that negative price adjustments in gold lead to significant positive shocks in stock market.

These results provide critical information for policy performers and researchers to develop new strategies. Policy regulators can also consider the potential effects of the COVID-19 outbreak while developing strategies for investment decisions.

Pyrus Pyrifolia (Sand Pear) is one of the most underused pear variety despite its nutraceutical potential. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the Pyrus Pyrifolia in term of origin, distribution and classification, nutritional and bioactive potential, therapeutic potential and valorization along with future prospectus.

A wide variety of publications (88) were identified through electronic databases (Science direct, PubMed, SciELO, Google scholar, Link springer and Research gate) under the umbrella of different keywords such as bioactive compounds, health benefits, nutrition, sand pear, Pyrus and Pyrus pyrifolia.

Pyrus Pyrifolia (Sand Pear) is abundant in nutritional and bioactive compounds such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, terpenoids, vitamins and minerals. It exhibits therapeutic potential as being an antioxidant, anti-obesity, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agent. However, P. pyrifolia is not much explored by food researchers and industrialists, hence remaining underused. A few attempts have been made toward the use of P. pyrifolia for jam, jelly, candy and wine preparation. However, more research is required for the commercial processing of P. pyrifolia and to enhance its availability outside its growing area.

In this paper, nutritional and bioactive compounds of P. pyrifolia are discussed that provide knowledge to the researchers for its use as a functional ingredient.

The statistics show that older adults have been major fire victims in high-rise buildings. However, the fire safety building codes in most countries are not inclusive and do not reflect provisions for older adults. The research aims to develop a fire risk assessment index system for older adults living in high-rise residential buildings in India. The study further develops a fire rating system to improve fire safety provisions in high-rise buildings in India.

The paper employs Delphi, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive risk evaluation techniques. It considers 18 in-depth interviews and group discussions with builders, developers, architects, policymakers, and fire safety experts and consultants to develop a fire risk assessment system for older occupants living in high-rise residential buildings in India.

The fire protection systems and fire management systems are not as per the needs of older adults. The egress system components need improvisation considering the challenges of older adults.

The study is limited to older adults living in high-rise residential buildings in the capital city of Gujarat, Ahmedabad.

This study will assist policymakers in developing fire safety standards that are targeted to the needs of older persons living in high-rise residential buildings during a fire evacuation.

While several approaches for measuring fire risk in high-rise residential buildings exist, no such system has been developed specifically for older adults in India.

This paper aims to accurately estimate harmonics/interharmonics in modern power system. There are several high spectral resolution techniques that have been in use for several years like Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Technique (ESPRIT), Prony methods, etc. but these techniques require prior knowledge of number of modes present in the signal. Model Order (MO) estimation techniques have to make a trade-off between accuracy and their speed i.e., computational burden. Therefore, there is always a requirement of a technique that is fast as well as accurate.

The proposed standard deviation (SD) method eliminates the requirement of energy validation test and analyses the distribution pattern, i.e. standard deviation of eigenvalues to identify the number of modes present in the signal. Signal is reconstructed using estimated modes and reconstruction error is obtained to show accuracy of the proposed estimation.

Six test synthetic signals as well as one practical signal have been taken for validating the proposed method. The paper shows that proposed methodology has a better accuracy compared to modified exact model order (MEMO) method in high noise environment and takes very less computation time compared to the exact model order (EMO) method.

The proposed method has been practically implemented for harmonic/interharmonic analysis at a sewage treatment plant at GIFT City, Gujarat, India. Apart from this the proposed method is modeled in python-based tool and is run into low-cost Raspberry Pi like hardware to create an onsite as well as remote monitoring device.

SD-based approach for model order estimation is novel to this area. Further, the proposed method is compared with EMO and MEMO under varying noise conditions to check for accuracy and estimation time.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship among risk aversion, brand trust, brand affect, attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty for low involvement day-to-day use of personal care products.

To achieve the above-stated objective, a theoretical model was tested using structural equation modeling. Before undertaking the analysis, preliminary analysis techniques such as the common method bias social desirability bias reliability and validity analysis were also assessed.

The results indicate that, for low involvement products, risk adverse consumers do not purchase a brand based only on trust. Risk aversion is also positively associated with attitudinal loyalty. When it comes to the relationship between brand trust and brand affect, it has been concluded that brand trust has had an important impact on brand affect. In this study, it has been found that attitudinal loyalty has a positive and strong impact on behavioral loyalty. This paper explains that due to the lack of trust, certain risk adverse customers are sticking with a particular brand.

Most of the brand loyalty research has been performed on high involvement products, whereas very limited research is available on low involvement day-to-day use products (i.e. personal care products), in particular where the consumption period of the product is less than a month. This kind of research is very rare, and this study has been done to fill this gap using rigorous data analysis.

Traditionally, firms have been dependent on internal sources such as their own employees – and up to a certain extent, on some external sources, their customers – for innovation. However, in the current scenario of technological dynamism, firms are exploring multiple sources to generate ideas for innovation. Therefore, there is a need to understand the relative effect of various sources of innovations on a firm’s performance.

We offer a conceptual framework where we identify six distinct sources of innovations – firm, customers, external network, competition, macro-environment, and technology and how they create value for focal firms especially their brand equity. We introduce a taxonomy of various costs and benefits related to innovations. We then argue using our proposed taxonomy to understand the relative strengths of various sources of innovation affecting a firm’s brand equity.

We discuss and compare the relative effects of these sources of innovations on a firm’s brand equity by rank-ordering the sources. The customers and the technology as a source of innovation have the maximum impact on the firm’s brand equity followed by the marginal impact of macro-environment and external network of a firm. The firm itself has a moderate impact on its brand equity, while competition has the minimal impact. Further, we also discuss how the relationship is moderated by different innovation characteristics (nature and type of innovations).

The main practical implication is to create awareness among managers about various costs and benefits of the proposed six sources of innovations and their effects on brand equity. Managers would be able to prioritize their sources of innovation based on firms’ current needs, and whether to focus on lower costs or building higher brand equity in the scarce resource environment.

We offer a comprehensive list of six sources of innovation, build a conceptual framework wherein we discuss the relative strengths of these sources affecting brand equity.

Green labeling and green scapes are generally associated with environmental practices known as eco-labeling. In the hospitality industry, the concept of green scapes and green labeling has been associated through the attraction of customers toward hospitality organization's brand mark. Green practices make a customer conscious and more tangible for a brand or product. Somewhere, green practices have the instinct to throw as an open-up strategy for futurism growth and to build the brand mark at the next market step of the industry. The determination of green practices of a hospitality organization is performed by the environment working employees (Villemereuil & Gaggiotti, 2015). The organization is advantageous only when the in-house environment is attractive. Green scapes are performed only on the criteria of key certification. The viewpoint of this chapter is to fulfill the criteria of green practices (Warren et al., 2008), attracting brand marks in the hospitality organizations of UT regions. This chapter will investigate the perceptions of industrial employees attracting the brand mark of any hospitality organization in UT states. This chapter will highlight the impact of B2B and B2C businesses connecting to the working environment toward attracting the brand mark of hospitality organizations in the UT states region. This chapter will be paying heed to discuss the enhancing effect of B2B businesses in the UT states market of the tourism and hospitality sector. The sample collected for this chapter using closed ended questionnaire from hospitality organization or hotels in UT destination.

Tourism has been an important activity in the past. Today tourism is a high revenue generation industry in many countries. But recently, many destinations are suffering from overtourism. Overtourism is a real-life phenomenon experienced by destinations. Overtourism is defined as many tourists visiting a particular place simultaneously which has resulted in the falling or unacceptable quality of life. It is just the opposite of wellness tourism, a better place to live and a better place to visit. The term overtourism was first used on Twitter as #overtourism back in August 2012. In 2017 UNWTO ministers addressed overtourism at the World Travel Market. In the last few years, there have been anti-tourism movements in popular destinations such as Barcelona, Santorini and Copenhagen. These movements' main aim is the attention of press attraction and have led to different proposed actions by tourism decision-makers in making a policy to control overtourism. In recent years overtourism has become an important and discussed issue in media and academia. In this context, the term is still not widely defined and open to numerous discussions. This chapter aims to clarify the root causes of overtourism, the emergence of overtourism and how social media is responsible for and impacts overtourism. The methodology of this chapter is a general review literature of overtourism issues. The chapter states that the government poorly managed without a bigger political force and genuine knowledge of the government's difficulty and action are taking first in the tourism industry. This chapter identifies the social movement of overtourism raised by residents.

Waste generated from electrical and electronic equipment, collectively known as E-waste, remains a persistent environmental, economic and social problem. Sustainable E-waste management (EWM) has numerous benefits, such as preventing electronic waste from entering landfills, reducing the need for virgin materials by recovering valuable materials from recycling and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Circular economy (CE) practices are considered the initial steps toward sustainable EWM, but some hurdles have been reported in the adoption of these practices. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the common CE practices, sustainability of the EWM process and the challenges in EWM, and to develop a conceptual framework for effective EWM.

Very few studies have proposed frameworks that acknowledge the challenges and CE practices of EWM. To fill this gap, a systematic literature review (SLR) was performed, and 169 research articles were explored.

A total of seven challenges in the adoption of effective EWM were identified: rules and policy, infrastructure, consumer behaviour, informal sectors, community culture, technology and economy. Eight common CE practices were also found for effective EWM: reuse, recycle, remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair, reduce, recover and repurpose.

A conceptual framework guiding sustainable EWM was proposed, which includes solutions for the identified challenges, and CE practices with sustainable benefits.