From 2010 to 2024, this research looks at how the Western Balkan countries' use of digital economy and information technologies affected their production and efficiency. Transition economies face challenges in navigating the pros and cons of technological adoption, institutional capacity, and digital inequality as digital transformation reshapes global economic structures. In order to fast-track convergence with the EU and encourage sustainable growth, it is crucial to comprehend how digitization affects economic performance. Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Albania are all part of the balanced panel dataset used in the study. We use both static and dynamic econometric methods, such as Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), Fixed Effects (FE), and Random Effects (RE), to make sure our results hold up. A favorable and statistically significant correlation between the digital economy and productivity is shown by the results. The GMM estimation yields a marginally higher coefficient of β = 0.47, which is somewhat higher than the FE model's reported β = 0.42, indicating that digitalization significantly impacts economic performance. Investing in information systems and information and communication technology (ICT) further boosts operational efficiency and productivity. The advantages of digital transformation are further enhanced by human capital and education, which are seen as crucial supplementary elements. Additionally, the results show that the region's digital advancement is not uniform, suggesting that the Western Balkan economies are experiencing a digital gap. To achieve both the short-term and long-term economic convergence with the EU, the research asserts that investments in digital infrastructure, adoption of information and communication technologies, and development of human capital are crucial.
Green packaging has emerged as a crucial factor in the consumption of takeaway fast food since packaging factors tend to play a role in how young people consider the issue of environmental responsibility when making daily purchases. The research was carried out using participants of Generation Z in Padang City, Indonesia, to explore the effect of attitude and purchase intention as parallel mediation variables and willingness to pay as a moderating variable in determining green purchase performance. The study surveyed 400 Generation Z participants in Padang City and used SEM-PLS to understand the direct, indirect, and moderating effects among the variables proposed. The results show that the package made of environmentally friendly materials enhances consumer attitude and purchase intention. The positive relationship between purchase intention and green purchase behavior is significant and purchase intention is a significant mediator of the effect of eco-friendly packaging on green purchasing behavior in takeaway fast-food consumption of Generation Z, but not the effect of attitude. Intention to pay also arises to be an influential economic factor, as it is a direct foundation of green purchase behavior and is the main support to the correlation between purchase intention and green purchase behavior. This data indicates that behavioral intention with the backing of economic preparedness is a stronger determinant of green purchasing actions by Generation Z as opposed to the positive attitude, which is solely a determinant in urban takeaway fast-food consumption in which purchasing judgments are usually driven by convenience and perceived economic feasibility.
Obesity-related social stigma is increasingly recognized as a structural psychosocial determinant of health, yet empirical evidence from Middle Eastern clinical settings remains limited. This study aimed to examine the associations between obesity-related social stigma and social, psychological, and health-related implications among Saudi women attending bariatric and obesity medicine clinics in Jeddah. A cross-sectional correlational design was employed. Data were collected from 220 Saudi women with overweight or obesity (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m²) attending obesity medicine clinics in two governmental hospitals in Jeddah between January and December 2025. Validated and researcher-developed scales were used to assess obesity-related stigma, negative social identity, selective social withdrawal, engagement in stigmatizing behaviors, psychological security, self-criticism, binge eating, and adoption of extreme weight-loss methods. Internal consistency reliability ranged from α = 0.766 to α = 0.945. Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple linear regression models with HC3 robust standard errors were estimated, controlling for BMI, age, education level, income, and employment status. Stigma was significantly and positively associated with adverse outcomes across all social, psychological, and health-related domains (all p < 0.001). Following adjustment for BMI and sociodemographic covariates, stigma remained a statistically significant independent predictor of all outcome dimensions, with standardized coefficients ranging from β = 0.733 to β = 0.799 and explained variance ranging from 59% to 72%. These findings indicate that obesity-related stigma functions as an independent psychosocial risk factor among Saudi women in clinical settings. Obesity-management programmes should integrate stigma-reduction strategies, psychological screening, and stigma-sensitive healthcare training alongside standard biomedical treatment.
The present study focuses on the major research questions: What kind of relationship exists between green innovation and green growth in India? And how far are the structural as well as the financial factors helpful in empowering this relationship? The study investigates the connection between green innovation and green growth in India using annual time series data from the period 1990 to 2022, collected from multiple sources that include World Development Indicators, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for environment-related technologies, and globalization (LKOF) from the KOF Swiss Economic Institute. The Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach has been utilized to analyze short-run and long-run impacts, complemented by FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR estimators. The major findings confirm that green innovation, financial development, and income growth have a significant impact on green growth, but energy consumption and capital formation have a negative impact on green growth. The results demonstrate that a 1 percent rise in technological innovations promotes nearly 0.8 percent green growth. Further, the analysis also supports the positive effect on financial development (0.906) and per-capita income (4.518), but ICT expansion exerts a negative impact of (-0.399), implying the transitional environmental cost connected with digital expansion. The results offer actionable policy insights for India. To promote green growth, it is required to encourage green finance, facilitate the ICT infrastructure and green R & D ecosystem, foster renewable energy investments, and promote innovation-led strategies to achieve long-term environmental and economic resilience.
The continuous improvement of education has become a topic of research within the academic world, as it highlights the use and application of teaching, learning, and assessment strategies. For this reason, it was decided to conduct a bibliometric study of the documents published on this topic to understand the evolution of research worldwide. The information was obtained from the Scopus database and covered the period between 2015 and 2025. Among the aspects considered in the analysis were the number of documents per year, the countries with the highest production, the most influential authors, the affiliated institutions, the type of document, and the most frequently used keywords. The data were processed using the Jamovi and VOSviewer programs, which allowed the generation of graphs and co-occurrence maps. The results showed that most of the documents were published in 2024. The United States and China were the leading countries in terms of productivity, while the most prominent authors were from India. Likewise, the United States and India were the countries with the highest institutional representation. The use of keywords focused on the use of technology as a means to strengthen teaching, learning, and assessment, and promote continuous improvement. This field of research is becoming increasingly relevant due to the incorporation of new technologies into educational processes.
