Employee work status,mental health,substance use,and career turnover intentions: An examination of restaurant employees during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the restaurant industry and employees in the worst possible way. This empirical study aims to examine the relationships between employees’ work status (working, furloughed, or laid-off), mental health (psychological well-being and psychological distress), substance use (drug and alcohol use), and career turnover intentions during the pandemic. Analyzing the responses of 585 restaurant employees using structural equation modelling (SEM), findings revealed that working employees experienced higher levels of psychological distress, drug and alcohol use than furloughed employees. Moreover, psychological distress increased drug and alcohol use, as well as career turnover intentions. Lastly, all employees, regardless of their mental health, increased their substance use and indicated a desire to seek future employment in alternate industries during the pandemic. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed in detail.     

How does off-farm work affect chemical fertilizer application? Evidence from China’s mountainous and plain areas

There is a rising concern that the ongoing wave of off-farm employment will have profound effects on agriculture-based environment problems-measured by the intensity of chemical fertilizer (CF) usage. Yet, our understanding of the regional heterogeneities of this effect remains scant. This research gap is addressed by using panel data of selected cities in Sichuan and Henan provinces in China, which are representative mountainous and plain regions respectively, to empirically examine the impact of off-farm employment on CF use. Our findings indicated that there exists an inverted “U” shaped relationship between off-farm employment and CF use in the mountainous region, whereas CF use is positively correlated with off-farm employment in the plain area. The increased CF inputs, which resulted from the substitution effect and remittance effect, can compensate for the negative effect of labor loss, while land marginalization is the main reason for the decrease in CF consumption at the later stage of urbanization in the mountainous region. Meanwhile, the deagriculturalization of farmers’ employment patterns decreases the intensity of CF usage, which resulted from the scale effect produced by land transfer and large-scale management in the plain region. Besides, the evolution pattern of this effect may present a similar trend in these provinces, but the turning point of plain regions would appear later than that of mountainous areas due to the inherently unique physical conditions and socio-ecological contexts. Based on the empirical results of this paper, some policy recommendations are provided.     

Urban expansion,the politics of land,and occupation as infrastructure in Kinshasa

This article demonstrates how the future of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo is partly to be found in its past. It looks at the complex and often ambivalent role many autochthonous land chiefs continue to play in the processes of urban expansion currently taking place in Kinshasa.     

Towards an understanding of proactive upzoning globally and in South Africa

Upzoning typically occurs as a passive process whereby landowners approach the municipality for a change of rights. Proactive upzoning, where a municipality takes the initiative to increase the rights assigned to land in its jurisdiction, can be a powerful tool to encourage development to occur in line with municipal policies. This paper firstly describes the various approaches used to achieve proactive upzoning. The focus then shifts to understanding examples of proactive upzoning in South(ern) Africa, which provide examples of policy transfer of ideas, primarily from the Northern into a Southern context. Four key lessons are identified from this discussion. Firstly, proactive upzoning can affect the poor negatively or positively, depending on the design of the initiative. Secondly, from South African experience, it is clear that there is a danger of proactive upzoning examples from the North being copied almost verbatim and applied in a Southern context, despite the considerable differences in context. Thirdly, there is a need to ensure that initiatives are in line with market dynamics, to avoid ‘wasted’ infrastructure investment. Fourthly, proactive upzoning often just considers zoning schemes’ rights, whereas the land development process can face a slew of regulatory constraints beyond the zoning scheme.     

Industrial mining land use and poverty in regions of Burkina Faso

Industrial mining generally develops in rural areas where agriculture is the main subsistence activity of the population. However, there seems to be an incompatible coexistence between agricultural and mining activities, as both require a large amount of land. Given the extensive agricultural system in Burkina Faso and the expansion of mining since 2007, this study analyzed the effect of industrial mining land use on poverty in the 13 regions of Burkina Faso. The study examined the effect of mining land use intensity on cereal production/yield before exploring its impact on poverty by using several econometric methods and various data from the National Statistics Institute. The results indicate that mining land use intensity had no direct effect on poverty; instead, the effect is indirect. Indeed, mining land use intensity negatively affects cereal yield, and that reinforces the incidence of poverty in mining regions. Moreover, the results show that cereal production increases with cropped land. As cereal yield decreases with industrial mining land use intensity, this suggests that the expansion of mining would contribute to the jeopardizing of the food supply as well as the exacerbation of poverty in mining regions. Therefore, policies are needed to encourage the sustainable management of land and mining revenue redistribution in the mining regions of Burkina Faso.     

Spatial-temporal characteristics and influencing factors of agricultural eco-efficiency in China in recent 40 years

Chinese agricultural output has been multiple under the intensive input of production factors since the reform and opening-up. Such a growth pattern that realizes high output through high input results in increasingly prominent environmental pollution problems. Considering the provincial panel data in China during 1978–2017 as the research units and taking agriculture in broad sense as the study object, the agricultural eco-efficiency (AEE) was measured by the Super-SBM Model, and the influencing factors were screened out from agricultural basic condition, agricultural industrial structure, agricultural development potential and agricultural input strength. The findings indicated that agricultural expected output and unexpected output were synchronously increased, while the change of input factors was totally different and gradually transferred to materiality from resources. In 1978–2017, AEE was increased to 0.713 from 0.405, with an increase of about 76%. And it approximately underwent four stages, including free development, reform promotion, market regulation and policy incentives. Under the resource restraint and policy incentives, AEE showed that Northeast, East and South China were higher than the national average level. North and Central China basically fitted for the national average level, and Southwest and Northwest China were lower than the national average level. Also, it was successively present in some spatial characteristics including polarization, differentiation, agglomeration and reconstruction on the provincial scale. The magnitude and direction of influencing factors indicated that the introduction of subsidy policies for compound fertilizers, an increase of farmers’ incomes, optimization of agricultural plantation structure, and maintenance of stable agricultural product prices could effectively improve AEE.     

How perceived trust mediates merchant's intention to use a mobile wallet technology

As mobile wallets are in constant demand and growing over the past few years, there is a need to identify views of different stakeholders involved in the process. Several studies have been done to investigate consumers' perspective intensively. On the other hand, review of perception and adoption of wallet services by other participants, in particular merchants, is often neglected. The present study aims to fill this gap. This study used an empirical model to measure merchant's intention to use a mobile wallet technology. The study includes the variables, perceived compatibility, perceived usefulness, awareness, perceived cost, perceived customer value addition and perceived trust, and aims to determine their influence on intention to use. Our study also tested the mediating effect of perceived trust on the influence of perceived usefulness to predict merchant's intention. The study includes results of the survey of 315 Indian merchants by an online survey method. We find the highest effect of perceived customer value addition on merchant's intention, followed by perceived usefulness of technology. The proposed mediation effect of perceived trust was small but significant on perceived usefulness. The results of the study can help mobile payment companies to understand factors that are relevant to increase adoption of technology in the context of merchants.     

Environmental degradation,energy consumption and sustainable development: Accounting for the role of economic complexities with evidence from World Bank income clusters

The anthropogenic consequences of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth, and air transport have been assessed enormously in the literature. However, given the complexities in many economies of the world today, it is important to reassess the ecological concerns of these factors in light of the Environmental Kuznets Curve framework. Therefore, this current study investigates the global assessment using data from World Bank Development database from 1995 to 2016. Evidence from the method employed, sys-GMM, revealed that the economic complexities index increases the carbon emission in low-income groups while it significantly decreases the carbon emission for upper-middle and high-income groups. For the combined group, the EKC hypothesis holds, and ECI significantly hampers carbon emissions. For the other variables, it is worthy of note that (1) economic growth contributes to the high carbon contents across the income group especially for low-income, upper-middle-income and high-income group; (2) the effects of air transport on carbon emission is positive for lower-middle-income and high-income group and negative for the upper-middle-income group; (3) the use of coal rents and energy use leads to high release of carbon contents across all the income groups; and (4) a significant increase in the utilization of energy leads to increase in carbon contents except for lower-income group, it leads to a decrease. From this empirical assessment, vital energy policy directions are suggested.