Due to the positive effect it has on the environment, while also creating social and economic value, recycling represents a key factor in the realization of a circular economy and of sustainable development. For the implementation of efficient programs, the recycling rate has become a relevant subject to public institutions, but also for the academia, companies and non-profit associations. The objective of this article is to determine the influence of the population's level of education on the recycling rate of waste. The article has a contribution to the scientific literature, by analyzing the correlation between education and the recycling rate in Europe, with living conditions and internet access as control variables. Results of a panel data analysis show that a high percentage of the population with only primary or lower secondary education, influence negatively the recycling rate of waste in an economy, while tertiary education has a positive influence on the level of recycled waste. Therefore, different policies which aim to increase the education level of the population will have an effect on the recycling rate. AE Vol. 20 • No. 48 • May 2018 341 environment, as they also create economic and social value (Chen and Tung, 2010; Malinauskaite et al., 2017), recycling represents one of the central measures proposed for the realization of a sustainable development. Waste management is part of the European Union's program for the development of a circular economy (European Union, 2017), including measures such as recycling, using recycled materials and the generation of energy (European Environment Agency, 2016).Although recycling rates have grown in the last 10 years according to Eurostat data, the recycling rate of municipal waste didn't reach 10% in some countries in 2016 (7.1% in Malta and 0.3% in Serbia) (Eurostat, 2017). Recycling rates for packaging waste are higher than recycling rates of municipal waste, although also in this case, a discrepancy between the performance of different countries in Europe can be observed. Thus, while Belgium, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Sweden have a recycling rate for packaging waste of over 70%, countries such as Island and Hungary show values of 50.6%, respectively 50.1% for 2015 (Eurostat, 2017). In this context, identifying the causes that lead to differences of performance regarding waste management and recycling has become an important subject.Analyzing this aspect has two components: defining the performance of recycling activities and identifying the factors that influence performance. Suttibak and Nitivattananon (2008) mention ways of evaluating recycling performance such as participation rate, quantity recovered, diversion rate and utilization rate.
The relation between the personality of consumers and their buying behavior has been a very much debated topic in the field of marketing researches. Several studies have shown that personality has a significant influence on the way consumer behave in their social and economic environment, in the way they approach and accept innovations and new developed products or even in their shopping behavior. This paper presents the influence of the Myers-Briggs personality dichotomies on the impulsive consumer behavior and the openness to buy newly launched products. Discriminant analysis was used to evaluate primary collected data and the core results show that extroverted, feeling-based decision-makers and perception oriented persons have more frequently an impulsive buying behavior at shopping sessions. Extroverts and intuition based consumers are more open to new products. The temptation to buy attractive unplanned products is higher for extroverts, feeling based decision makers and perceiving persons. Despite of this, none of the personality dichotomies influences the amount and care for spending in stores, this being influenced by other independent factors, mainly economic ones.
In the past decades the preoccupation of decision-makers towards innovation and sustainable development has gained a major importance in the policy of most countries in Europe. On one hand, efficient innovation can differentiate a country or a region from another and make a difference in the intense increasing economic, technological and social competition. On the other hand, the orientation towards sustainable development assures a clean and unpolluted, social oriented and healthy environment as a framework for the growth of a country or a region. In many cases, innovation and sustainable development go hand in hand, as innovations contribute to the development of clean technologies, while sustainable societies assure the proper environment and background for stimulating the innovation research. The objective of this research is to determine the cluster of countries in Europe which are rather oriented to innovation or to sustainable development or both and to forecast their future developments and tendencies. In order to achieve this objective, the multivariate cluster analysis was applied with the help of the SPSS program, for data provided by the Eurostat for several innovation, sustainable development and contextual indicators. In a first step, for each of the analyzed countries, the values of the indicators have been collected for the same period and the correlations among them have been determined. In the second phase the number of clusters and the cluster membership of each country was determined, by running the Ward cluster analysis. Based on the results, the characteristics of each cluster of countries was defined.
When talking about the future of Europe we also think about alternative energy sources. It is up to national governments to decide how to encourage investments in this field in order to contribute to the 20-20-20 EU-objective. Until the network delivery cost for electricity produced from renewable sources will be comparable to the cost for energy from traditional sources ("grid parity"), the development of businesses and markets for electricity from renewable sources is going to be driven by support schemes. The state of the grids and the facility of grid-access constitute another two key factors influencing the development of this sector. Last but not least, the question of policy consistency is raised within the business community. Over the past years some support schemes have proved to be more effective than others, and grid conditions have also evolved. Policies supporting the development of renewables also changed at EU-level and at national levels. Based on statistics, scientific literature and the feedback of the business community, this study aims to analyse the development of renewable energy sectors in the European Union by comparing Germany’s and Romania’s experience. Also this study describes the current and expected future market situation in these countries relying on data gained from questionnaires and interviews with specialists in the renewable field.
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