Considering the critical amount of power consumption in public buildings, sustainable energy use in the workplace can present an opportunity to tackle the worldwide problem of climate change. A systematic literature review revealed that, though the majority of scientific papers emphasize the importance of appliances and new technologies, human behavior in this area is not less significant. It can contribute to the reduction of energy use and CO2 emissions and address a number of environmental issues. The main purpose of this work is to analyze and compare the research performed on the topic of the determinants of sustainable energy consumption and investigate their impacts on the behavior of employees in three public buildings in Greece. The questionnaire survey discloses that, despite the organizations paying the bill, the employees believe that saving energy at work is important. The results also show that female employees feel more responsible for energy problems, such as the exhaustion of energy sources or global warming. Finally, a regression analysis affirms that the willingness to save a substantial amount of energy at the workplace is greater when employees have higher personal norms, that is, they feel morally obliged to consider the environment and nature in their daily behavior.

A remarkable increase in the attention devoted to national innovative capacity (NIC) has been noticed over the last decades. There is a strong debate whether a country’s national innovative capacity is entirely determined by local effects or it is also influenced by global network position and international economic activities. Furthermore, despite its’ importance, there is a lack of studies which take the variables of non-technological innovation into account. This paper aims to fill the empirical research gap by focusing on inward foreign direct investment as an input of NIC and engaging non–technological innovation as an output in NIC models. An investigation of 28 European Union (EU) Member States in the period of 2013-2016 shows that EU has a great intellectual capacity of human capital which drives both technological and non-technological innovation. The regression analysis revealed that the international transmission of knowledge through inward FDI and import boost the employment in knowledge-intensive sectors and has a positive effect on trademark and design applications. The findings thus help to better understand the role of international economic activities in enhancing national innovative capacity and facilitate EU efforts to catch up with the strongest innovators in the World.

Research background: Seeking to ensure competitiveness in the global market, the EU is constantly improving its innovation policy. Compared to other EU initiatives, the Framework Programs for Research and Innovation (FPs) act as the main instrument with the longest history and the largest budget to boost member states' innovation performance. Despite the initial presumptions that these financial inflows should bring positive and constructive effects, the results significantly diverge across the countries with highly uneven and incoherent progress. Therefore, complex and reliable tools must be adopted to evaluate the long-term influence of EU investment and the reasons which distort the innovation performance in separate member states. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this article is to evaluate the influence of EU investment on its member states? innovation performance by using a redeveloped national innovative capacity framework and including technological, non-technological and commercial innovative output. Methods: Panel unit root tests were used to assess the time series stationarity. Autoregressive distributed lag models helped in calculating the long-term influence of EU investment on member states? innovation performance. Finally, by employing dummies, it was analysed how this influence varied over time and across different countries. Findings & value added: The findings provide evidence that EU investment exerts positive long-term influence on the technological innovative output proxied as total, business and higher education institutions? patent applications, as well as product and process innovations. The effects were also positive on trademarks and marketing, and organisational innovations. However, small but negative influence was found in the case of patent applications by the government sector and the exports of hi-tech products and knowledge-intensive services. These insights may serve in the designing process of the specific instruments and the future innovation policies, which would bring the maximum benefit for the society and economy.

For this paper, the authors theoretically analyzed the determinants of energy saving and sustainable energy consumption in schools. Much research exists on energy-saving behavior in residential buildings. However, there is a lack of focus on public buildings and schools. A systematic literature review was conducted in order to construct the theoretical background for the research of school buildings, which are substantially less investigated. The determinants of sustainable energy use in schools were grouped together into three groups: (i) psychological and social, (ii) sociodemographic and economic, and (iii) contextual. The influence of these determinants on energy consumption was investigated empirically by conducting a questionnaire survey in a vocational school in Greece. The results reveal that the intention to save a substantial amount of energy in a vocational school in Greece is greater when students feel morally obliged to consider the environment and nature, believe that it is in their power to avoid unnecessary power consumption, and are positively influenced by teachers, classmates, and other important people in their lives.

This paper aims to redevelop the national innovative capacity framework and specify the influence of its’ elements on shaping the innovation performance of the EU nations. The objects of the empirical research are the EU member states for the period of 2000–2018. The collected data is employed in a multivariate Granger causality analysis that illustrates the causal links between the analyzed indicators and considers their dynamics. The results demonstrate that countries seeking to increase the levels of innovative outputs should mostly focus on scientific excellence and international economic activities. A redevelopment of the framework also helped discover that gender equality and corruption have causal links with all forms of the investigated innovation indicators—technological, non-technological, and commercial ones. The outcomes of this study highlight the most critical areas where EU member states could focus to improve their national innovation performance and may assist policymakers in the designing process of future innovation policies.

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Though much attention is dedicated to the development of its research and innovation policy, the European Union constantly struggles to match the level of the strongest innovators in the world. Therefore, there is a necessity to analyze the individual efforts and conditions of the 27 member states that might determine their final innovative performance. The results of a scientific literature review showed that there is a growing interest in the usage of artificial intelligence when seeking to improve decision-making processes. Data envelopment analysis, as a branch of computational intelligence methods, has proved to be a reliable tool for innovation efficiency evaluation. Therefore, this paper aimed to apply DEA for the assessment of the European Union’s innovation efficiency from 2000 to 2020, when innovation was measured by patent, trademark, and design applications. The findings showed that the general EU innovation efficiency situation has improved over time, meaning that each programming period was more successful than the previous one. On the other hand, visible disparities were found across the member states, showing that Luxembourg is an absolute innovation efficiency leader, while Greece and Portugal achieved the lowest average efficiency scores. Both the application of the DEA method and the gathered results may act as viable guidelines on how to improve R&I policies and select future investment directions.