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Research on the living conditions of slum dwellers in the inner cities of developing countries has received much attention. Nevertheless, there is little empirical research on the influence of personal attributes on the poor environmental condition of the slum area. This study aims to examine the relationship between the socio-economic characteristics and the physical condition of the slum environment in the inner city of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Data was collected through the use of questionnaire administration from a household survey of 491 slum dwellers. Systematic random sampling was used in the selection of the respondents. The study used descriptive, factor and multiple regression to analyse the data collected.

The study used descriptive, factor and multiple regression to analyse the data collected. The study reveals an interplay between various socio-economic factors and environmental conditions. The results show that out of ten (10) socio economic variables that were submitted in the regression model, only eight (8) of these variables such as income, household size, occupation, level of education, age, marital status, year of residency and nativity were significant.

The study concluded that despite the fact that the condition of the slum environment is a product of multiple interrelated factors, personal attributes also contribute to the poor environmental condition of the slum area. The study recommended that improving the socio-economic conditions of slum dwellers would lead to improved environmental conditions.

This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the interdisciplinary literature on drones in last-mile delivery (LMD) to extrapolate pertinent insights from and into the logistics management field.

Rooting their analytical categories in the LMD literature, the authors performed a deductive, theory refinement SLR on 307 interdisciplinary journal articles published during 2015–2022 to integrate this emergent phenomenon into the field.

The authors derived the potentials, challenges and solutions of drone deliveries in relation to 12 LMD criteria dispersed across four stakeholder groups: senders, receivers, regulators and societies. Relationships between these criteria were also identified.

This review contributes to logistics management by offering a current, nuanced and multifaceted discussion of drones' potential to improve the LMD process together with the challenges and solutions involved.

The authors provide logistics managers with a holistic roadmap to help them make informed decisions about adopting drones in their delivery systems. Regulators and society members also gain insights into the prospects, requirements and repercussions of drone deliveries.

This is one of the first SLRs on drone applications in LMD from a logistics management perspective.

The construction industry is notorious for high risks and accident rates, prompting professionals to adopt emerging technologies for improved construction workers’ health and safety (CWHS). Despite the recognized benefits, the practical implementation of these technologies in safety management within the Construction 4.0 era remains nascent. This study aims to investigate the mechanisms influencing the implementation of Construction 4.0 technologies (C4.0TeIm) to enhance CWHS in construction organizations.

Drawing upon integrated institutional theory, the contingency resource-based view of firms and the theory of planned behavior, this study developed and tested an integrated C4.0TeIm-CWHS framework. The framework captures the interactions among key factors driving C4.0TeIm to enhance CWHS within construction organizations. Data were collected via a questionnaire survey among 91 construction organizations and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results reveal that: (1) key C4.0TeIm areas are integrative and centralized around four areas, such as artificial intelligence and 3D printing, Internet of Things and extended reality; and (2) external coercive and normative forces, internal resource and capability, business strategy, technology competency and management (BST), organizational culture and use intention (UI) of C4.0 technologies, collectively influence C4.0TeIm-CWHS. The findings confirm the pivotal roles of BST and UI as mediators fostering positive organizational behaviors related to C4.0TeIm-CWHS.

Practically, it offers actionable insights for policymakers to optimize technology integration in construction firms, promoting industrial advancement while enhancing workforce well-being.

The novel C4.0TeIm-CWHS framework contributes to the theoretical discourses on safety management within the C4.0 paradigm by offering insights into internal strategic deployment and compliance challenges in construction organizations.

Directors’ human capital has long been recognised as vital to ensuring effective corporate governance. While previous studies have sought to link director human capital with specific firm-level outcomes, there are persistent challenges facing researchers who seek to understand better what kind of human capital makes a difference to effective board role execution. This study aims to understand whether the way directors fulfil their roles and contribute to boardroom dynamics is shaped by any human capital they gain via senior executive experience.

We draw insights from 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Indian directors to capture their perceptions and experiences of how a specific kind of human capital, namely the C-suite experience, affects directors' boardroom dynamics and board role execution.

We highlight how directors with executive experience appear to have a more salient set of human capital to draw on. Specifically, they report navigating governance processes differently, displaying a more contextualised understanding of boardroom dynamics and having a broader understanding of the firm’s problems. Doing so enables them to foster constructive board-management relationships and improve their service role execution.

Our qualitative data are drawn from a purposively sampled group in a specific governance system (India). While this does not threaten the key theoretical insights, it does raise questions about their generalisability to other governance contexts.

Directors with executive experience build trust through their orientation towards and understanding of management without diminishing their capacity to scrutinise management decisions. The human capital of these directors appears to engender a more effective and contextualised boardroom dynamic that facilitates the execution of socialised accountability through balancing the control and service roles.

Our findings highlight the potential importance of a shared understanding of the communication and collaboration processes of corporate governance (i.e. a common transactional memory framework) between directors and management. Directors who share this understanding with management are more likely to effectively engage in the service role while not compromising the control role. This shared understanding appears to allow these directors and executives to encode, store and retrieve relevant information they need more effectively, engendering the trust between them that seems to foster socialised accountability.

In the era of rapid urbanization, fostering an inclusive housing market system for most low-income urban residents remains a challenge in Sub-Saharan African countries. This study aims to investigate the realities of housing markets in Hawassa City, Ethiopia, and interrogate whether these markets foster social inclusion for households at the lower end of the market in the post-1990s.

The study used a mixed research approach. Primary data was generated using household surveys and key-informant interviews administered to residents and officers. The study also reviewed the municipality’s policy documents and reports. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and theme-based qualitative interpretation.

Hawassa City exhibited formal and informal housing market patterns guided by national, regional and city-wide policy and regulatory frameworks. Nevertheless, trends in these markets do not seem to capture the realities of residents’ ability to pay for housing and demonstrate social exclusions. The yawning gaps between demand and supply of housing largely necessitated the black market and the subsequent commercialization of housing by visible and invisible actors.

The study suggests further research on ethnographic understanding of the visible and invisible actors operating in the housing markets and adverse impacts on peri-urban farmers. The present study did not address rental housing markets adequately, and this could be open for further research.

The study has implications for revisiting housing policy-making, especially for understanding the policy and practical gaps and thus promoting a socially inclusive housing market system targeting low-income people.

The study provides a comprehensive analysis of housing markets in Hawassa City through the lens of operational values of social inclusivity (Elsinga et al., 2020). The findings provide baseline data on policy and implementation gaps for promoting a socially inclusive housing market system, especially for low-income people. In this regard, the contribution is empirical. In addition, this manuscript renders a conceptual framework for analyzing housing markets in other similar contexts of sub-Saharan Africa.

The implementation of smart maintenance (SM) has greatly benefited facility managers, construction project managers and other stakeholders within the built environment. Unfortunately, its actualization for stakeholders in the built environment in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era remains a challenge. To reduce the challenge, this study aims at conducting a bibliometric analysis to unearth the critical success factors supporting SM implementation. The future direction and practice of SM in the construction industry were also explored.

A bibliometric approach was adopted for reviewing articles extracted from the Scopus database. Keywords such as (“smart maintenance“) OR (“intelligent maintenance”) OR (“technological maintenance”) OR (“automated maintenance”) OR (“computerized maintenance”) were used to extract articles from the Scopus database. The studies were restricted between 2006 and 2021 to capture the 4IR era. The initial extracted papers were 1,048; however, 288 papers were selected and analysed using VOSviewer software.

The findings revealed that the critical success factors supporting the implementation of SM in the 4IR era are collaboration, digital twin design, energy management system and decentralized data management system. Regarding the future practice of SM in the 4IR era, it was also revealed that SM is possible to evolve into maintenance 4.0. This will support the autonomous maintenance of infrastructures in the built environment.

The use of a single database contributed to the limitation of the findings from this study.

Despite the limitations, the findings of this study contributed to practice and research by providing stakeholders in the built environment with the direction of SM practice.

Stakeholders in the built environment have clamoured to implement SM in the 4IR era. This study provided the critical success factors for adopting SM, guaranteeing the 4IR era. It also provides the research trends and direction of SM practice.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the likely causes of failure of some sections of road pavements in Ajaokuta, Northcentral Nigeria. This was achieved through a geotechnical assessment of subgrade soils in affected areas.

The methods entailed field and laboratory methods and statistical analysis. Subgrade soil samples were retrieved from a depth of 1,000 mm beneath the failed portions using a hang auger. The soils were analyzed for natural moisture content (NMC), Atterberg limit (liquid limit, plastic limit and linear shrinkage), grain size distribution, compaction and California bearing ratio (CBR), respectively.

The results of the geotechnical tests ranged from NMC (12.5%–19.4%), sand (84%–98%), fines (2%–16%), LL (16.0%–32.2%), PL (17%–27.5%), LS (2.7%–6.4%), PI (2.5%–18.4%), maximum dry density (1756 kg/m2–1961 kg/m2), optimum moisture content (13.2%–20.2%), unsoaked CBR (15.5%–30.5%) and soaked CBR (8%–22%), respectively. Pearson’s correlation coefficient performed on the variables showed that some parameters exhibited a strong positive correlation with r2 > 0.5.

Funding was the main limitation.

Comparing the results with Nigerian standards for road construction, and the AASHTO classification scheme, the subgrade soils are competent and possess excellent to good properties. The soils also exhibited very low plasticity, a high percentage of sand, high CBR and low NMC, which implies that it has the strength required for road pavement subgrades. The likely causes of the failures are, therefore, due to the use of poor construction materials, technical incompetence and poor compaction of sub-base materials, respectively.

This paper posits the need for English language arts (ELA) teachers to foster students’ use of languaging about their relations with ecosystems and peers, leading to their engaging in collective action to critique and transform status-quo systems impacting the climate crisis.

This paper reviews the current theory of languaging theory and research that focuses on the use of languaging to enact relations with ecosystems and others and voice emotions for transforming communities and reducing emissions contributing to climate change.

This review of languaging theory/research leads to identifying examples of teachers having students critique the use of languaging constituting status quo energy and community/transportation systems, respond to examples of characters using languaging in literary texts, using languaging in discussing or writing about the need to address climate change, critiquing languaging in media promoting consumption, using media to interact with audiences and using languaging through engaging in role-play activities.

This focus on languaging in ELA classrooms is a unique perspective application of languaging theory, leading students to engage in collective, communal action to address the climate crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how COVID-19 lockdowns in the USA impacted traffic safety.

The authors explored the role of vehicle, user and built environment factors on traffic fatalities in the USA, comparing results during COVID-19 lockdowns (March 19th through April 30th, 2020) to results for the same time period during the five preceding years. The authors accomplished this through proportional comparisons and negative binomial regression models.

While traffic levels were 30%–50% below normal during the COVID-19 lockdowns, all traffic fatalities decreased by 18.3%, pedestrian fatalities decreased by 19.0% and bicyclist fatalities increased by 3.6%. Fatal COVID-19 crashes were more likely single-vehicle crashes involving fixed objects or rollovers. COVID-19 traffic fatalities were most common on arterial roadways and in lower density suburban built environments. Findings suggest the importance of vulnerable road users, speed management and holistic built environment policy when pursuing safety on the streets.

The findings have road safety implications not only for future pandemics and other similar events where we would expect decreases in motor vehicle volumes (such as natural disasters and economic downturns) but also for cities that are pursuing mode shift away from personal automobiles and toward alternative modes of transportation.

Health tourism is a relatively new branch of international tourism that has developed more rapidly than other tourism sectors in recent years. This study aimed to investigate the effect of government supports on health tourism development by considering the mediating role of internal and external infrastructures.

The study population consisted of all experts of two hospitals in Iran, which are frequently visited by foreign tourists (N = 151). A questionnaire, developed by combining standard and researcher-made questionnaires, was used to collect the data. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model was developed in SmartPLS 3 to test the hypotheses.

The main hypothesis test results indicated that government supports positively affect the development of health tourism. Internal and external infrastructures were also found to mediate the relationship between government supports and health tourism development. In addition, the sub-hypothesis test results showed that internal and external infrastructures are positively affected by government supports, which puts forth the development of health tourism. As the results explained, the most important aspects of internal infrastructures affected by government support were health service quality, cost of health services and applying advanced medical technologies, respectively. Also, different aspects of external infrastructures affected by government supports are as follows: economic, infrastructures and cultural factors.

This study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of both medical and non-medical factors on health tourism and signifies the crucial role of governments in the development of health tourism.