Purpose Population aging in Europe is reshaping housing demands and care systems, creating an urgent need for alternatives to traditional eldercare. In Spain, where demographic trends mirror those of other developed nations, senior cohousing offers a potential solution to isolation, affordability and autonomy challenges. This article aims to analyze older adults’ preferences regarding senior cohousing models and assess factors influencing their attractiveness. The research addresses three questions: (1) What housing formats do seniors prefer for retirement? (2) What factors facilitate or hinder the appeal of cohousing? (3) Which design attributes are most valued in senior communities? Design/methodology/approach Using Conjoint Analysis on survey data from 300 individuals aged 50+, the study evaluates four attributes: housing format, location, management model and payment system. Findings Results show a strong preference for detached houses or low-rise apartments in coastal areas, managed cooperatively and offering flexible pay-per-use schemes. While aging in place remains dominant, senior cohousing emerges as a promising model aligned with active aging strategies. Institutional support and participatory design are essential for scalability and adoption. Originality/value Its original contribution lies in applying a stated preference approach to a scarcely explored topic in Spain, focusing on consumer choice behavior rather than case studies.

This paper presents the SMALLDERS project, a European initiative aimed at transforming smallholders’ business models through an innovative technological platform. The platform functions as an e-marketplace that connects small farmers directly with consumers while simultaneously promoting environmental sustainability and collaboration across the agri-food value chain. The study evaluates the platform’s commercial viability and acceptance through a mixed-methods approach, incorporating qualitative and quantitative data. Research methods include focus group sessions, interviews with key stakeholders—such as transport companies, large distributors, and public administrations—and a consumer survey assessing intentions and attitudes toward the e-marketplace. Results indicate limited overall consumer readiness to adopt the platform; however, 48.6% of respondents expressed willingness to use it provided competitive prices and personal benefits are assured. Smallholders regard e-commerce as a promising opportunity, yet they face significant barriers, including limited resources, low digital literacy, and logistical constraints. Stakeholders generally view the platform positively, emphasizing that its success depends on achieving a critical mass of business volume. To foster adoption, SMALLDERS proposes three business models for smallholders: sustainable, cooperative, and technological. The platform includes a user-friendly feature to assist smallholders in transitioning among these models, complemented by training and support services designed to encourage more resilient and innovative agricultural practices.

One of the main strategies proposed to obtain fair prices and reduce dependence of smallholders on large food distribution companies is the development of direct sales channels by small farmers. Within the SMALLDERS project, belonging to a research call by the European Union, the aim is to develop a digital platform to sell on-line directly to the end consumer and thus improve the economic sustainability of the small farmer's business. This work includes the results of focus groups held with consumers to learn about their fresh food purchasing habits and under what conditions they would be willing to participate as buyers in a platform of this type. The results reveal that consumers are aware that farmers are not receiving fair prices for their production, and buying directly would allow them to earn a higher profit margin. However, the final willingness to participate in the platform is not high due to several factors, such as: the impossibility of seeing the purchased product directly, the large amount of product that make up the shopping baskets offered by these platforms, and the high final prices that are usually derived from the transport costs incurred.

Academic performance is the level of achievement that students reach in their educational activities. It is influenced by several factors that should be analysed and prioritised, especially in engineering courses, characterised by their difficulty and low success rates compared to other careers. This paper analyses the impact of these factors on academic performance during exams in a technical college in southwestern Spain, with a particular focus on environmental conditions, identified as a relevant and independent variable. The results show a significant connection between thermal comfort and academic performance. Temperatures within the comfort range (23–26 °C) improved students’ satisfaction with exams. In contrast, those who experienced thermal discomfort pointed to environmental conditions as the main obstacle to their performance, overcoming factors such as prior preparation and coincidence of exams. These findings underline the importance of optimising the classroom’s thermal environment through strategies that promote a more favourable learning space, improving both students’ well-being and their academic performance.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted all the weaknesses of manufacturing systems and supply chains. In this challenging context, smallholders have faced several crises mainly related to the difficulty of finding manpower for harvesting activities and the impossibility of distributing food, due to the forced closure of many distribution channels. The main consequences were lost sales and wasted food. With the aim of increasing the responsiveness of smallholders in the face of COVID-like crises, this paper provides an overview of methodologies and approaches currently available in the literature in terms of: ICT tools, blockchain-based solutions, business models, sustainability-oriented frameworks, simulation models. The analysis of the literature provides two main outputs: (1) a list of challenges to be faced in the coming years to improve the working conditions of smallholders, (2) the definition of future research developments, which mainly concern the design of an ICT platform, which integrates multiple technological aspects.

Purpose - The aim of this study is to identify the way in which research on new business models in agri-food sector has been developed, in order to identify the main lines of work followed and determine a future research agenda in this field. Design/methodology/approach - A systematic review of the literature is carried out, by applying the PRISMA method to identify and classify the main articles published on agri-food business models in journals included in the Web of Science Core Collection database. Findings - The systematic literature review has identified three main forms of business models in the agri-food sector: sustainable business models, technology-based business models and cooperative business models. The three types of new business models are complementary and can sometimes be adopted together. The identification of these types of business models and the variants included in each of them is a valid starting point for new developments in this field. Research limitations/implications - The limitations of this study are those typical of any literature review and derived from the methodology used. The establishment of criteria relating to time, language, type of publication or database chosen means that this review may have left out relevant studies in this field of research. It is therefore recommended that new reviews be carried out with different criteria in the coming years in order to supplement the results obtained in this study. Originality/value - Some research gaps were identified that should be further explored in the future. First, the relationship between digitisation and technological innovation in agri-food business models and the level of implementation of sustainable objectives in these business models has not been researched thoroughly. In addition, and despite the fact that the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted innovation in agrifood business models, the authors have detected a lack of papers focused on solving problems arising from the shortage of raw materials or labour, possible energy crises or external dependence on local markets when it comes to meeting demand. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated the limitations of international markets, mainly the European market, when it comes to dealing with problems arising from this type of crisis.

Purpose This work tries to shed light on what factors can influence, positively or negatively, the decision to license a patent from a university, in order to offer some recommendations that can contribute to increasing the number of patents licensed from universities. Design/methodology/approach Based on a sample of researchers at Spanish universities who have already registered patents, this work shows that the individual factors of the researcher outweigh the institutional factors in determining the decision to patent an invention. Likewise, the probability of patenting an invention is higher when the researcher's level of participation in the process is greater. Findings The results of our study allow us to affirm that, in the Spanish university setting, individual factors play a more important role in one's decision to license a patent than institutional factors. In this sense, the collaboration of companies or experts from outside of academia in the research from which the patent was granted is the most relevant factor. Originality/value This work, the first study of this type to be carried out in Europe, concludes with a recommendation for reinforcing the structure and functionality of technology transfer offices as a basic policy for the promotion and facilitation of commercial exploitation of innovation in the universities.

Supply chains (SC) aim to provide products to the final customer at a certain service level. However, unforeseen events occur that impede supply chain objectives. SC Risk has been studied in the literature, providing frameworks and methodologies to manage SC failures. Nevertheless, more efforts are needed to prevent hazardous and disruptive risks and their consequences. These risks must be considered during the process of designing a supply chain. Some methodological contributions concerning risk in the supply chain network design (SCND) are conceptual frameworks for mitigating SC disruptions, which suggest strategies and measures for designing robust and resilient SCs. Although such contributions are valuable, they do not indicate how to cope with risk when designing a SC. The main objective of this research is to describe a methodology aimed at including risk considerations into the SCND. Our proposal aims to be, on the one hand, a comprehensive approach that includes a risk identification and assessment procedure in each of the stages of the SCND process and, on the other hand, a tool for decision-making in SC design or redesign processes when SC risks need to be considered. The methodology proposed is an extension of a SCND methodology including risk considerations in order to improve the performance of the supply chains. A case study illustrates how the proposed methodological works, achieving the identification of SC risks already observed in previous works.

This work is aimed at analyzing potential links between reverse logistics and urban logistics and describing opportunities for collaboration between both areas of research. A description of the current state-of-the-art is provided in order to highlight the main challenges faced by both disciplines. For example, regarding reverse logistics, new recovery options, marketing strategies for recovered products, and legislation issues on the return of products in specific contexts; in regards to urban logistics, long-term planning, stakeholders’ engagement, information management, efficiency, reliability and safety, and new business models are some of such key challenges. Despite the growing interest shown in both logistics areas and their relevance for companies and consumers, reverse logistics and urban logistics are two concepts that are still somewhat unknown and, above all, treated as being relatively separated. However, there exist some aspects where the two disciplines converge and that may represent opportunities for collaboration, for example, the proper treatment and management of urban waste, and the efficient management of commercial refunds and returns. In addition, other key issues, such as land use, city typology, infrastructures, and stakeholders’ engagement should be further analyzed in order to keep advancing in the description of links between both areas.

Remanufacturing is an industrial process whereby used products are restored to useful life. This special issue seeks to address marketing issues for remanufactured products and provide an in-depth understanding of their barriers, together with mitigating practices and future opportunities. The articles present and analyse opportunities to improve marketing approaches for remanufactured products through exploring various marketing strategies, consumer behaviours, pricing and branding decisions, and optimized green transportation. This editorial note summarizes the outcomes of the papers published under this special issue, in addition to discussions on various influencing factors on marketing issues for remanufactured products including marketing attributes, customer willingness, pricing practices and performance evaluation methods. The final conclusion shows that there is sufficient scope to explore various perspectives connected with the issues of marketing remanufactured products through different fields of application.

Increasing urbanization and economic activities has intensified the need for logistical processes in cities. This leads to higher levels of urban freight transport, which is associated with negative social and environmental impacts. Advances in urban logistics can help to alleviate these problems; the recent literature suggests that the creation of appropriate lorry park facilities can represent one of the possible solutions to the social and environmental issues connected to freight transport in urban areas. However, in order to be effective, such facilities need to be properly designed; studies which identify critical success factors for lorry park operations are currently lacking. As such, the purpose of this research is to identify the main criteria which lorry drivers consider when selecting a lorry park facility. In order to achieve these aims, a questionnaire survey was designed; responses from 99 lorry drivers operating in the United Kingdom were collected. Through descriptive statistics, followed by the usage of a conjoint analysis, the main results show that attributes related to food, price, and security are the most important to lorry drivers and are likely to determine the success of such initiatives. These results can provide information to policy and decision-makers related to the design of lorry park facilities in order to achieve the desired results in urban areas.

In recent years, universities have focused more on the creation of spin-off companies as a means of transferring the knowledge generated by their research activities. At the same time, this has generated an increase in academic research on this business structure in order to identify the best strategies for their management and the most efficient university policies, amongst other things. In this study, we have identified and evaluated the literature on university spin-offs published in journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index of the Web of Science in order to identify what, by whom, where and how it has been researched. The number of studies was marginal until 2000 but has grown exponentially since 2010. Our systematic review classifies research findings into three levels-individual, firm, and institutional context-each with respect to characteristics, antecedents, and outcomes of entrepreneurial activities. Reviewing the content of these articles allows some gaps in the research to be identified and conclusions to be reached about possible future research in this field to supplement, update and extend the results obtained to date.

The social networks have increased the ways in which public administrations can actively interact with the public. However, these new means of communication are not always used efficiently to create an open and two-way relationship. The purpose of this study is to analyse the presence on and use of the social network Facebook by the large councils in the USA, UK and Spain. This research adapts Facebook assessment index (FAI) to the field of local authorities. This index assesses three dimensions: popularity, content and interactivity. The results show that there is no relationship between the population of the municipality and the degree of use of Facebook by the council, but there are notable differences depending on the country. By creating this ranking, we are helping those responsible for this management to carry out benchmarking activities in order to improve their communication strategy on the social networks.

European countries are attempting to promote sustainable development by transitioning from a linear to a circular economy, where waste is to be prevented and recycling activities are promoted. This paper studies the implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policies for the packaging waste in two later European adopter countries of waste management policies: Portugal and Spain. The main goal is to evaluate whether EPR policies in both countries have achieved their basic two goals: 1) reduction of waste, and 2) increase recycling activities. Two case-studies were built based on interviews made to main waste management stakeholders. The analysis shows that the implementation of the EPR policies have had a positive impact throughout the years in both countries. Regarding the waste reduction goal, the systems have still not been completely able to detach packaging waste production from economic growth, but they have been able to promote material usage reduction directly through the Green dot fee model adopted. Regarding the increasing of recycling activities, both countries have been able to increase such rates throughout the years, in the direction of the EU targets.

With the growth in the popularity of the concept of an entrepreneurial university, over recent decades the commitment from European universities to commercialising research findings through the creation of spin-offs has also grown. In this way, academics become potential entrepreneurs or, as they are called in the business literature, intrapreneurs. Taking into account that the theories regarding planned behaviour consider intention as the main antecedent of behaviour, the aim of this paper is to test the influence that certain variables - demographic, psychological and those relating to the environment - have on the intention of academics in Spanish universities to create a spin-off. After conducting a survey of 1,178 academics from all fields of knowledge, the results show that the variables influencing this intention to be an entrepreneur are entrepreneurial personality, gender, academic experience and the entrepreneurial abilities of the individual, as well as the perceived utility of being an entrepreneur, the assessment of the economic environment and the productivity of their research group in terms of patents and articles published. Identifying the profile of the academics with the greatest entrepreneurial intention can help to guide university policy in matters of transferring knowledge and promoting spin-offs as an alternative way of commercialising research findings.

Linear production is a familiar cycle. Resources are extracted and transformed into goods and services, sold and used, after which they are scrapped. This model has underpinned the expansion of the global economy since the industrial revolution.It has linked material prosperity to the extraction of resources, yet has often overlooked the undue pressures placed on the environment and has rarely considered the cost of handling, scrapping and disposing of used materials, some of which are hazardous to human health. As the global population increases, incomes rise and nations strive to eradicate poverty, demand for goods and services will necessarily grow. The aim of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12 on responsible consumption and production requires changing the linear production model. The concept of a circular economy and practice therefore merits close attention, as it can open new opportunities for trade and job creation, contribute to climate change mitigation and help reduce the costs of cleaning and scrapping in both developed and developing countries.

Reverse logistics is a research area focused on the management of the recovery of products once they are no longer desired or can no longer be used by consumers, in order to obtain an economic return through reuse, remanufacturing or recycling. In recent years, reverse logistics has become a matter of strategic importance in the context of the Supply Chain Management. In this chapter, an introduction to the concept and evolution of reverse logistics is provided; from a very basic approach related to the recycling channels to the current concept of closed-loop supply chain. Then, we describe some of the challenges for reverse logistics in the next years, especially those related with the marketing of the recovered products, namely competition issues in remanufacturing, the cannibalization problem, the purchase intention of consumers of remanufactured products, and their perceptions and willingness to pay for this sort of products. Research in reverse logistics from a demand/market perspective is nascent and there exist challenging opportunities to keep developing this topic.