The Role of Green Sukuk for Sustainable Energy Production

Renewable energy sources are clean energy sources that meet the energy needs in a sustainable way. Therefore, it is necessary to invest in renewable energy sources. However, there are some difficulties in renewable energy investments. It has problems such as high initial installation cost, underdeveloped technological infrastructure, and insufficient financial support. Several financial products are being developed in order to overcome the mentioned difficulties. In this context, the purpose of this study is to explain the role of green sukuk in the financing of renewable energy investments. Depending on this purpose, the study has been examined with a literature review. The production of renewable energy sources can be encouraged with green sukuk. However, green sukuk is an advantage for Islamic companies that want to realize environmental projects. On the other hand, it offers the opportunity to the environmentally friendly Islamic investors to evaluate their savings.

What Drives Eco-Design Innovations in European SMEs?

Building on the natural-resource-based view, and using a sample of 7,165 European SMEs, this chapter investigates the drivers of eco-design innovations among SMEs under three categories: (1) sustainability-oriented firm capabilities, (2) technological capabilities, and (3) access to finance. The findings reveal that sustainability-oriented capabilities achieved through investments into circular economy are the strongest driver of SMEs' eco-design innovations. Firms' technological capabilities are also found to boost their ability to adopt eco-design innovations. While equity finance increases the possibilities for SMEs to devote resources to eco-design, grant finance is interestingly observed to decrease such possibilities. The more traditionally used form of debt finance remains detached from eco-design implementations. The study contributes to a better understanding of how eco-design practices can be broadened within SMEs and highlights policy recommendations in this regard.

Customer Perception and Awareness of Green Banking Practices

The governments, business firms, policymakers, advocacy groups, and even the public recently are hotly debating on the issues of environmentally friendly practices. In this context, being a part of 'going green', green banking, which plays an important role in environmental sustainability, has been a buzzword in the global baking industry. This study identifies how the customers perceive the emerging concept of green banking initiatives of banks and also analyzes the factors that influence such practices of the customers. Using a structured questionnaire, the primary data were collected from 403 commercial banks of Kathmandu valley, Nepal. The awareness index was prepared, and the binary logit model was applied for the econometric analysis. This study observed that the customers are positive towards the environmentally friendly practices of banks and ready to adopt the green banking practices. The research implies that in order to promote environmental sustainability, banks and financial institutions should be able to educate the customers about green banking practices and their benefits.

A Comprehensive Entrepreneurship Model for the Internationalization of Green Innovation Businesses

The objective of this chapter is to analyze the functioning of an integral model of entrepreneurship in green innovation business (GIB) that is currently emerging and in the process of internationalization. Therefore, this work aims to study the central perspectives of technology that are based on the phenomenon of entrepreneurship and thus develop a strategy that adapts to companies with an ecological basis to achieve internationalization. This chapter analyzes a particular company that specializes in ecological biomineral organic fertilizer, where no chemical product is used to produce the composition; everything that is marketed is made up of a base of organic minerals and other organic compounds.

Adoption of Wearable Technology Devices

With rapid change in technology worldwide, innovative products such as wearable technology devices tend to have an uprising trend. Consumers, however, are not necessarily adaptive in their nature and their perception is shaped by many factors. The aim of this research is to investigate the consumer acceptance of wearable technology devices, specifically smartwatches. The study extends the widely used technology acceptance model with the introduction of new variables. For the purpose of the study, survey data was collected from German and Turkish university students. The overall results provide validation to previous literature while introducing new factors for consumer acceptance of technology products, wearable technology devices, and smartwatches. Importance of this research comes from the innovative and promising nature of the wearable technology devices concept, the lack of work on smartwatches in literature, as well as the cross-cultural nature of the study. The study also has managerial implications for technology companies who chase after growth in their businesses.

Developments in Financial Technologies for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be seen as the critical goal for every country in the world. In this vein, a stable global financial system is needed these days to satisfy its duty to boost the private capital mobilisation to achieve sustainable development and steady economic growth. Nevertheless, several obstacles limiting such financial mobilisation have been identified by scholars, practitioners, and standard setters. Recently, digital transformation and advancement, specifically in the finance sector, include a wide range of technological developments, and applications such as blockchain, internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence are promised to enhance performance in the financial sector. The potential of digital applications in the finance sector to resolve critical obstacles in financing for inclusive and sustainable growth becomes evident. This chapter aims to provide a summary and a detailed discussion of the latest developments in financial technologies that both facilitate the SDGs and also contribute to future sustainable international business.

Eco-Innovation and IT Technologies for Sustainable Development of Health and Recreational Tourism of Serbia

The aim of the chapter is to point the importance of eco-innovation and IT technologies for the sustainable development of health and recreational tourism in Serbia. The subject of the research is the rehabilitation center in Eastern Serbia. The main idea of the chapter is to show how those hospital institutions use artificial intelligence-IT technologies for improving recovery services to patients in the post-COVID condition. The chapter will discuss the most common types of support and measures to facilitate the functioning of eco-tourism in Serbia with the aim to adopt good practices of developed countries (Hungary). Ecological tourism takes place in areas of pure and preserved nature. The contribution of the chapter is to point to new strategies in spa tourism, to shorten the time and reduce business costs. This would contribute to the sustainability of tourism.

Regional Competitiveness

The aim of the chapter was to model the impact of selected determinants (trade openness, human capital, entrepreneurship, and innovation) on regional competitiveness, as well as to propose future activities and measures required to be implemented to improve the competitive performance of the regions. The research was conducted on the sample of 18 regions in six European countries: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro, and Romania. The database was prepared, and the statistical processing was performed in SPSS. In this data analysis, the following methods were used: comparative analysis, correlation, and regression analysis. The results of the research showed that the impact of the determinants—import dependence, the number of pupils enrolled in secondary education, gross domestic expenditure on research and development, and the number of companies per 10,000 inhabitants on the competitiveness of the region—are (statistically) significant.

The Impact of Environmental Concern on Consumer Attitudes and Intentions Toward Electric Vehicles

This research aims to analyze the impact of environmental concerns on Turkish consumers' attitudes toward and intention to purchase EVs. It is also aimed to investigate the role of demographical characteristics—gender, age, income, and education—on those impacts. Given the purpose, a descriptive study was conducted through an online survey with a sample of 334 consumers. The research findings indicate that environmental concern plays a significantly influential role in the attitude toward and intention to purchase EVs. The study also confirms that environmental concern impacts on the attitude and intention toward EVs differs in terms of gender, age, and income. Only women show a positive influence of environmental concern on the attitude toward EVs. There is no difference in the direct or indirect link between EV purchase intention and environmental concern for age groups. Environmental concern's indirect influence on the intention to buy EVs is the highest and significantly different for the consumers with 7500-9999 TL income.

Financing Sustainable Development in an Emerging Economy

The purpose of this chapter is to review the Turkish private pension system as a key determinant of sustainable development of the country. The private pension system is of great significance in order to promote sustainable development. This is attributable to the fact that high level of total savings which are secured through individual savings are conducive to investments and in turn finances sustainable development and growth. Turkey, as an emerging economy, is considered to be one of those economies with low level of total savings. In an effort to deal with this issue, governments paid attention to an increasing level of savings of households. Individual retirement system (private pension system) is devised so as to increase savings and to fund investments with national sources. Therefore, it is safely argued that the very rationale behind the introduction of private pension system is associated directly with the aim of increasing total savings in the economy and ensuring sustainable development.