Polish Annals of Medicine

<p>This study examined the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance of 117 companies across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar from 2021 to 2022 (totaling 234 observations) from the institutional theory perspective using a mixed methods approach. The research is structured in two stages: First, we analyzed ESG scores from ESG Refinitiv data to measure ESG performance based on 186 comparable metrics across 10 categories; second, we conducted a directed content analysis of sustainability reports that utilized 27 ESG disclosure indicators from the GCC Exchanges Committee's unified guidance. Integrating quantitative ESG scores with qualitative content analysis enables a deeper understanding of how companies in these Gulf countries respond to institutional pressures within their unique socio-political contexts. Our findings revealed that while ESG performance has generally improved across the three countries, the extent and nature of these improvements vary significantly. The UAE demonstrates the most substantial progress, particularly in environmental performance, driven by robust institutional frameworks and alignment with global sustainability standards. Saudi Arabia shows moderate improvements, reflecting the influence of Vision 2030 and ongoing reforms. In contrast, Qatar lags, especially in governance and social performance, due to weaker regulatory frameworks and slower internalization of sustainability norms. We found that the effectiveness of ESG improvements are closely tied to the strength of institutional frameworks, the intensity of external pressures, and the degree of internalization of sustainability norms in each country. It underscores the role of coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures in driving corporate disclosure practices. It highlights the complexities of sustainability reporting across sectors and national contexts in the GCC region. The research contributes to understanding how institutional pressures shape corporate sustainability practices in the Gulf region, offering valuable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars interested in the dynamics of ESG and sustainability in emerging markets.</p>

<p>As an emerging country preoccupied with preserving its resources for the future, Brazil aims to find the right balance between economic advancement and sustainability goals. In this context, we tackled the link between sustainable economic development and macroeconomic indicators related to domestic credit granted to the private sector, CO<sub>2</sub> emissions from industries, and annual inflation rate. By means of time series data analysis run for the period 1996‒2022 via three estimation methods (i.e., least squares, fully modified least squares, dynamic least squares), we found that annual GDP growth rate, control of corruption, and rule of law (as proxies for sustainable economic development) are significantly impacted by GDP growth rate and emissions. Therefore, access to financial resources and intensive industrial activities yielding emissions trigger economic growth, tend to strengthen control of corruption and the rule of law. Additionally, policy implications and future research directions are addressed.</p>

<p>St. Martin's Island was declared an ecologically critical area of Bangladesh in 1999, but this has had limited effect on the conservation of the island's natural coral resources, on which a thriving tourism industry and the local inhabitants depend. The introduction of a tourism entrance fee can benefit conservation management on the island, but research on the amount that tourists are willing to pay is absent. The objective of this paper is to determine an appropriate entrance fee amount tourists would be willing to pay (WTP) for visiting St. Martin's Island using contingent valuation method questionnaire surveys and interviews of tourists on the island (n = 327) and the factors that influence their decision. Significance testing and regression analysis were used to assess survey data. A large majority of respondents suggested that they would be willing to pay between 0.78 and 7.8 USD; however, 24.5% said that they would pay nothing and indicated that such reluctance to pay was based on a belief that the responsibility should not fall on themselves as individuals, rather than a lack of financial capacity. Evidence suggests that even greater tourism entrance fees would still be accepted and amenable to tourists. If a fee of 4.29 USD was introduced, between 350,000 and 3.51 million USD, or 1.93 million USD, could be generated annually. The level of education, income, and a general concern for the environment significantly influenced WTP amounts. This study is aimed at assisting policy decision-makers and conservation managers of St. Martin's Island; required policy actions are briefly discussed.</p>

<abstract> <p>The integration of renewable generation sources into wholesale electricity markets is expected to reduce day-ahead marginal prices. This effect has been widely evidenced by previous literature and is commonly referred to as the merit order effect. However, the factors influencing the components of final prices, other than the day-ahead market price, have not been subjected to as much study. Nevertheless, they may prove crucial in understanding the dynamics between the interrelated trading segments in the wholesale electricity market. Furthermore, in the context of the energy transition process, the penetration of intermittent renewable energy sources (mainly wind and solar photovoltaic) and the non-storability of electricity at a large scale may result in increased market balancing needs and costs. The objective of this study was to identify the primary drivers of final wholesale electricity prices in the Iberian electricity market, apart from the day-ahead market price, using machine learning techniques. The results indicate that the share of renewable generation in the day-ahead market is a significant factor influencing both the cost of managing technical constraints, which aims to address network capacity issues, and the cost of managing balancing processes and resolving adjustment issues by the TSO. However, both of these costs can be readily accommodated by the market, as they represent a minimal percentage of the final price. These findings are of interest to both practitioners and regulators, as they provide a better understanding of the functioning of the market and have implications for the restructuring of the market towards a more sustainable and competitive electricity system.</p> </abstract>

<abstract> <p>This paper reviews the existing corporate social responsibility (CSR) content in the field of international corporate governance (ICG) and suggests specific lines of potential integration of existing theory and research on topics such as green finance, sustainability, and bottom-of-the-pyramid studies. The approach began with an extensive review of the literature in ICG culminating in a review by <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b1">Aguilera et al. (2019)</xref> in which three streams of ICG research were identified. Examples of existing elements of CSR were subsumed in these dimensions, and an argument was made for more integration. CSR was not an important part of international business theory and research in the early days of the field. However, sufficient research exists now in CSR and of CSR topics in the field of international business to justify that CSR should be recognized as an important stream in ICG. This integration would be beneficial since calling attention to the development of theory and research and data availability in CSR can inform international business (IB) and ICG researchers and enable them to tackle previously under-researched issues from other disciplines and areas of the world.</p> </abstract>

<abstract><p>This study reviews the literature focused on nation brands and brand culture through the innovative combination of latent Dirichlet allocation with a multinomial and unordered discrete choice analysis. Unlike a narrow perspective of bibliometric work, which confines itself to reviewing existing literature within a specific research domain, a broader viewpoint leverages bibliometric analysis to pinpoint potential research opportunities indicative of emerging trends in related fields. Adopting this comprehensive paradigm, the current study scrutinizes 60 articles spanning the timeframe from 1992 to 2021. The analysis discerns six prospective marketing strategies instrumental in propelling a country to global brand prominence: the synergistic integration of country-of-origin and city brands, consumption branding, materialistic branding, green branding, ideological branding, and scientific branding. Notably, environmental branding has assumed a pivotal global role post–2015, while ideological branding represents a more recent trend centered on diligent efforts to invigorate national identity systems. Empirical insights underscore the need of a multidisciplinary approach in the creation of nation brands, suggesting that distinct strategies need not be mutually exclusive. Quantitatively, it is found evidence that covering one additional environmental topic in a study increases (decreases) its likelihood of belonging to the consumption (ideology) cluster by 50.8 (50.6) percentage points, respectively. Strategic recommendations for future national endeavors emphasize the significance of becoming a Stackelberg leader in the race to generate added value. Collectively, these findings underscore that the bibliometric analysis employed to elucidate the evolution of nation brands and brand culture, typically associated with international marketing, unveils two promising niche areas for future research in green finance: <italic>green nation brands</italic> and <italic>green brand culture</italic>. The former pertains to asset allocations within green enterprises and environmental sectors, enhancing a country's symbolic commitment to the burgeoning green paradigm. Meanwhile, the later delves into the internalization of fintech development's growth and intermediary effects, fostering green innovation, energy efficiency, and green supply chains. This bottom-up approach is geared towards meeting community-based needs and presents valuable avenues for future exploration in the field of green finance.</p></abstract>

<abstract> <p>The ESG literature suggests that the relationship between a firm's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and a firm's financial performance is positive, but the causal link between these two variables is ambiguous. The results in this study mirrored that sentiment of the ESG literature; thus, the purpose of this article is to frame the causal ambiguity in ESG research that accounts for ambiguous conclusions in ESG literature. This study found that firms with complete Bloomberg ESG ratings had higher abnormal returns than firms without complete ESG ratings, but the actual rating did not correlate with abnormal returns. Similarly, this study found that firms with higher ESG disclosure scores (regardless of whether the disclosures were good or bad) were associated with higher abnormal returns, which further illustrates the ambiguity and suggests transparency as a clarifying factor. While much of the literature notes challenges in ESG research, this study is one of the first that frames the confusing causal link between ESG performance and financial performance as the key conclusion of the study.</p> </abstract>

<abstract> <p>In recent years, the tools of green finance have evolved to foster green economic growth like renewable energy and climate change mitigation. Taking a case study of Taiwan not yet reviewed in the literature, the present study aimed to conduct a preliminary analysis for exploring the amazing growth in renewable energy over the past fifteen years (2010–2023) in connection with the achievements of green finance promotion over the past five years (2018–2022). The updated database was accessed on the websites of Taiwan's competent authorities. This work was divided into the following main parts: Taiwan's carbon neutrality policy and sustainable development goals (SDGs) relevant to green finance, the regulatory promotion for green finance action plans in Taiwan, and the status of green finance measures and achievements in Taiwan. The findings supported the idea that the implications of green policies for unlocking green finance and green investment significantly enhanced a positive influence on green energy industry development in Taiwan. In this regard, it showed the amazing growth of renewable energy generation, particularly in solar photovoltaics (PV) power and offshore wind power, since 2010. These findings were similar to those in Asian countries like China and Japan. Responding to Taiwan's SDGs policy by 2030 and the net-zero emissions in 2050, aspects relevant to climate change mitigation and adaptation were investigated in order to focus on the use of green finance tools.</p> </abstract>

<abstract><p>In today's economic world, due to the growth of the capital market, the importance for people to invest has increased. The most important concern for investors is choosing the best portfolio for investment. For complex decisions in which the decision maker is ambiguous, such as portfolio selection, using the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique to prioritize options and decide on the optimal choice is the best solution. In this research, a generalization of this method utilizing the intuitionistic fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (IFAHP) was discussed. Considering the importance of this topic in today's economy, the purpose of this research was to describe and apply the new integrated technique of IFAHP for ranking the portfolio of companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange. For this purpose, using the statistics published by the Tehran Stock Exchange, six companies including Jabra Ben Hayyan, Kaghazsazi Kaveh, Laabiran, Daro Luqman, Pashme Shishe Iran, and Bourse Kala Iran were examined. These companies were the best options for investment according to the charts and indices of the stock exchange at the time of our research. Finally, using the technique mentioned above, we described the evaluation and ranking of portfolios for confident and efficient decision -making.</p></abstract>

<abstract> <p>A more precise and rigorous assessment of the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance in business necessitates evaluating various firm characteristics. This study, focused on the ESG impact on enterprise credit risk, employed logistic models that incorporated the ESG rating index alongside other financial-related factors, including organizational structure, risk, and performance. The data were selected from all related listing companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The results affirmed that (1) the risk of default decreased with improved ESG performance; (2) the return on assets, asset turnover ratio, leverage ratio, and operating income growth rate were the main financial factors affecting the default probability of enterprises; and (3) including ESG variables in the prediction model significantly improved the prediction accuracy of the model. The potential policy implications are presented in three perspectives. Businesses should prioritize developing good governance, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting the environment. Second, investors should integrate ESG ratings when making investment strategies. Third, the regulatory authorities are recommended to rapidly harmonize the ESG rating criteria and gradually develop the enterprise ESG information disclosure framework.</p> </abstract>

<abstract> <p>It is becoming increasingly apparent that businesses must consider the impact they have on the environment and society while pursuing profit maximization. As a result, there is a growing need to incorporate sustainable frameworks into business decision-making. By focusing on sustainable performance at the firm level, we addressed a significant gap in understanding how environmental and social Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) impact bottom-line performance and the crucial role that effective country governance plays in implementing sustainability at the organization level. In 2015, the United Nations established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), where firms are encouraged to practice in the strategic operation of their businesses. In addition, country governance can play a significant role in adopting sustainable practices and policies that can impact bottom-line performance. In this study, we examined the relationship between environmental and social Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) practices, country governance, and firms' financial performance from 2017 to 2021. The sample data set consisted of top-listed firms in the finance, manufacturing, and technology industries of 100 companies from 17 countries in developed and developing and emerging economies. We utilized content analysis to account for the qualitative aspects of how firms implement social and environmental SDGs. Ten environmental SDGs and eight social SDGs were incorporated in this study as a means of measuring sustainable development goals' impact on a firm's financial performance. We adopted return on assets (ROA) to measure the firm's financial performance. We adopted government effectiveness and regulatory quality to moderate the relationship between social and environmental sustainability practices and firm performance. The panel regression method was exercised to find out the relationship between environmental and social SDGs' impact on financial performance. In addition, we measured the interaction effect between environmental and social SDGs and country governance on firms' performance. We also deployed two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression estimation to mitigate endogeneity concerns. We found that environmental SDGs had a positive and significant impact on firms' financial performance. The coefficient of social SDGs on firm performance was negative and statistically significant. We observed that the coefficient of interaction terms between environmental SDGs and country governance was positive and statistically significant. Moreover, the coefficient interaction terms between social SDGs and country governance were positive and statistically significant, lessening the negative impact of social SDGs on firm financial performance. Finally, we also performed a robustness test on our analysis based on the firm's average capital and average assets. The findings almost held the same.</p> </abstract>

<abstract><p>Nowadays, product recycling has become an effective strategy for manufacturing industries to achieve sustainable development due to the scarcity of natural resources, waste management, and greenhouse gas emissions. This study considered an imperfect production-based competitive supply chain model for product recycling in an emission-reduction environment under a cap-and-trade scheme. The manufacturer invests in green technology to restrict carbon emissions during production. The recycler collects used items at a recovery rate depending on the buy-back price and environmental awareness effort. The rival retailers compete against each other for the retail price and promotional effort. The linear type of market demand depends on the retail price, promotional effort, and green level of the product. The proposed model was analyzed analytically and numerically under one centralized system, five decentralized systems, three Stackelberg, and two Nash game structures. Numerical examples and sensitivity analysis of the key parameters were studied to justify the feasibility of the proposed model. The present study revealed that the centralized scenario is mostly preferable for supply chain profit. The manufacturer-Stackelberg 1 scenario is most profitable for the manufacturer, whereas the two retailers collect maximum individual profit in the vertical Nash 2 model, where they jointly play the game. Moreover, retail price plays a crucial role in optimizing individual retailers' profits in the competitive market. In connection with the environmental aspects, the government should offer lower carbon caps to curtail excessive emissions and restrict the selling of excess carbon quotas.</p></abstract>

<abstract> <p>Academic interest in understanding the role of financial technology (FinTech) in sustainable development has grown exponentially in recent years. Many studies have highlighted the context, yet no reviews have explored the integration of FinTech and sustainability through the lens of the banking aspect. Therefore, this study sheds light on the literature trends associated with FinTech and sustainable banking using an integrated bibliometric and systematic literature review (SLR). The bibliometric analysis explored publication trends, keyword analysis, top publisher, and author analysis. With the SLR approach, we pondered the theory-context-characteristics-methods (TCCM) framework with 44 articles published from 2002 to 2023. The findings presented a substantial nexus between FinTech and sustainable banking, showing an incremental interest among global scholars. We also provided a comprehensive finding regarding the dominant theories (i.e., technology acceptance model and autoregressive distributed lag model), specific contexts (i.e., industries and countries), characteristics (i.e., independent, dependent, moderating, and mediating variables), and methods (i.e., research approaches and tools). This review is the first to identify the less explored tie between FinTech and sustainable banking. The findings may help policymakers, banking service providers, and academicians understand the necessity of FinTech in sustainable banking. The future research agenda of this review will also facilitate future researchers to explore the research domain to find new insights.</p> </abstract>

<abstract> <p>Green bonds are relatively new in the financial market compared to other financial securities but are useful in financing environmentally friendly projects. Just like other financial securities, green bonds are affected by various factors, such as economic policy uncertainty. Our aim of this paper was to conduct a systematic literature review of the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds. We sought to do a thorough analysis of the existing literature on the assessment of the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds and the techniques used in assessing the impact. Our findings showed that economic policy uncertainty had a strong impact on the green bond, with its intensity varying by location. This impact tended to be more pronounced in periods of heightened uncertainty. Also, our findings highlighted that the assessment of the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds gained popularity in 2019, with China emerging as a prominent contributor. However, other countries, such as Finland, even though they had few published papers, their citations signified the production of quality papers in this field. Additionally, we found that the application of the quantile analysis method was utilized by many recent studies, which signified its importance in this field. Our findings highlighted the importance of considering appropriate techniques in assessing the impact of economic policy uncertainty on green bonds while taking into account the paper quality.</p> </abstract>

<abstract> <p>Entrepreneurship is a process that transpires over time. Every entrepreneurial journey is a unique process that is difficult to replicate in the exact way it happened. Entrepreneurial activities in an existing organization can, over time, form a specific staged process that allows a more structured way from generation to implementation of new ideas. Through its supporting structure, corporate entrepreneurship channels ideas through a process that helps people stay focused, systematic, and efficient in value creation. Entrepreneurship and innovation activities in this process are undeniably linked; however, the two disciplines do not address them uniformly. Therefore, the research describing the corporate entrepreneurial and innovation processes is not aligned. In this study, we aimed to analyze entrepreneurship and innovation process approaches comparatively in an existing business context and to propose the triple-bottom-line corporate entrepreneurial (conceptual) process model for innovation and business sustainability. We provided insight into the dynamics of the entrepreneurial process in the existing business over time: A roadmap to evaluate the enablers and the critical elements for the innovation to transform and sustain. We proposed a harmonized stage model of the corporate entrepreneurial innovation process, where stage output artifacts mark the progression of the process, making it measurable. We provided conclusions from the literature review, a generalized model, and propositions on critical aspects of the entrepreneurial innovation process to happen, transform, and sustain.</p> </abstract>