Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences

Nenavani, Jitendra; Prasuna, Asha; Siva Kumar, S.N.V.; Kasturi, Alivelu

doi: 10.1007/s12076-023-00358-4pmid: N/A

Logistics industry has become critical for each country to fully reap benefits of globalization through product, process and technology, cross-border movement of goods and services. Trade among countries, both in goods and services, has increased during the past five decades. Globalization was based on the two pillars of free trade and opening up economies for human, capital, and technology migration with minimal or no obstacles. The very fact that the integrated supply chain, which is the backbone of globalization, got disrupted with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unexpected lockdowns and stringent travel restrictions led to a fall in production and a lag in the supply chain to meet the delivery expectations of the customers. Secondly, fast economic growth with growing competition led to huge challenges to the environment, carbon emissions, climate change, as well as social and governance risks. Efforts by the relevant global institutions to focus on Sustainable Development Goals have become questionable with increased challenges to the Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) risks faced by companies, industries, and countries. It is in this context; the present research study attempts to study the relationship between financial performance and ESG compliance empirically. The logistics industry comprises transport, shipping, warehouses, and freight forwarding activities that lead to CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, and increased use of fossil fuels, which pose a reasonable challenge to the Sustainable Development Goals and commitments made by each country to reduce the carbon footprint. However, the logistics sector companies, both global and domestic, are trying to reduce the carbon footprint with the help of innovation, technology, and sustainable development approaches. Our research question is to test whether the companies that are conscious and spending on ESG compliance have been able to achieve higher financial performance or not. Select literature review suggests mixed results leading to research gaps. Panel data models are specified and estimated. Results, conclusions, and managerial implications are discussed.

Patsoulis, Patroklos; Demetriou, Demetra

doi: 10.1007/s12076-024-00383-xpmid: N/A

Do environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) metrics convergence at the country level? Is there a common mechanism influencing the key attributes of this transitional process? This paper delves into the convergence patterns of firm-specific ESG factors, aggregated at a country level, aiming to identify the drivers of convergence. Specifically, we investigate whether ESG metrics have reached a singular or multiple steady states. To address this critical issue, we employ the Phillips and Sul (Econometrica 75(6):1771–1855, 2007; J Appl Econom 24(7):1153–1185, 2009) (hereafter PS) methodology. The findings reject the hypothesis of full convergence and suggest the formation of four distinct clubs. To further scrutinize our results, we conduct statistical tests to determine whether previously identified transition paths (specifically, factors related to economic freedom) corroborate our story.

Oinam, Robert; Chanu, Bidyarani N.; Singh, Loitongbam Bishwanjit; Singh, M. Bobo

doi: 10.1007/s12076-024-00394-8pmid: N/A

Manipur is undergoing rapid socio-economic transformation with ecotourism being a major contributor. The state displays a high potential for the development of ecotourism. It is crucial for the state to identify potential ecotourism sites to maximize benefits for local residents while minimizing associated costs. This paper examines potential ecotourism sites in four districts of the valley using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies. AHP was utilized to assign weights to eleven criteria in the assessment of potential ecotourism sites. These criteria include elevation, slope, proximity to rivers, land use and land cover (LULC), precipitation, temperature, drainage, tourist attractions, road access, population density, and habitat. The results show that Bishnupur district is the most suitable area, followed by Imphal West. This area is primarily located in and around the protected lake called Loktak. To maximize the benefits, the state government should conduct an awareness campaign among local residents to emphasize the significance of ecotourism development in these areas.

Wong, Pui-Hang; Kourtit, Karima; Nijkamp, Peter

doi: 10.1007/s12076-023-00368-2pmid: N/A

The special issue has two objectives. First, it aims to improve our understanding of the impacts of pandemics and public policy responses, especially their economic impact across different sectors and geographical space. Second, it showcases how various spatial analysis tools and modelling techniques can be employed for an evidence-based impact assessment. This special issue features sixteen contributions, each of which addresses a specific type of economic and social impact of the pandemic in a country, a region, or a city.

O’Leary, Daragh

doi: 10.1007/s12076-024-00380-0pmid: N/A

This paper put’s forward a working conceptualisation for how the size of firms which die influences firm interrelationships where firm deaths influence future firm births. Two conceptual arguments are developed to explain the role of firm size in influencing future firm births; the resource argument and the consumer demand argument. This relationship is also empirically tested using a multilevel model to examine the relationship between the death of differently-sized firms and future firm births in European NUTS 3 regions. Findings suggest that only the deaths of larger firms appears to increase future firm births. The resource-based argument is used to explain this finding whereas the consumer demand-based argument is used to explain why the death of smaller firms seems to reduce future firm births. The dataset used in this paper’s estimation captures a large amount of activity across 14 countries and 502 NUTS 3 regions from 2008 to 2019.

Marwal, Aviral; Silva, Elisabete A.

doi: 10.1007/s12076-024-00392-wpmid: N/A

The expansion of built-up areas is a complex phenomenon shaped by a range of spatial and aspatial factors that vary across space and time. Most of the previous studies have simulated land use patterns without considering the impact of futuristic development policies on land use. To address this gap, the study proposes a neural network coupled agent based prioritised growth model applied to the West region of Delhi. The model incorporates micro agents representing private developers who make land development decisions based on a cell’s transition potential from non-built-up to built-up state, calculated by the neural network model. Macro agents, representing government planning agencies, enforce development constraints and provide incentives for development on a non-built-up cell through planned interventions. Simulations for 2021 demonstrate improved accuracy (kappa 0.85) with planned interventions compared to without any planned interventions (kappa 0.83), referred to as a business-as-usual scenario. The model also simulates land use for 2041 under these two scenarios. The resulting change in spatial growth under these two scenarios is visualised through a change map, which identifies areas of gain and loss in the built-up area as growth patterns shift from a business-as-usual scenario to a planned growth scenario. This model offers a useful tool for planners to understand where future growth is expected and how to channelise the growth through strategic planning interventions.

Chen, Yilin; Ursavaş, Uğur; Mendez, Carlos

doi: 10.1007/s12076-024-00375-xpmid: N/A

Limited access to regional and sectoral economic data hinders effective policy design in various countries. To address this issue, this study explores the potential of higher-quality nighttime light (NTL) data to predict economic activity across various sectors within regions. We analyze the relationship between NTL intensity and sectoral GDP in 81 Turkish provinces from 2004 to 2020. Our findings reveal that urban NTL data is most strongly correlated with non-agricultural GDP, particularly in the industrial sector. This suggests that NTL data, especially its urban component, can be a valuable tool for policymakers to identify economically disadvantaged regions and sectors, monitor the impact of economic development policies at a granular level, and allocate resources efficiently. However, this study also acknowledges limitations in capturing annual GDP changes, highlighting the need to combine NTL data with other economic indicators for a comprehensive understanding.

Bruna, Fernando

doi: 10.1007/s12076-024-00378-8pmid: N/A

Influenced by the concept of the strength of a force in physics, access to markets has since the 1940s been evaluated by indicators of ‘potential’, measured as a sum of a distance-weighted of population or market size of foreign or external territories. Later development of the New Economic Geography (NEG) by Paul Krugman did not solve the problem of calculating internal market size in a way that can be used to add it to calculations for external market potential. This paper analyzes the consequences of geometrical justifications in measuring internal market potential. For a sample of European regions, the paper concludes that the literature should be more explicit about historical processes of agglomeration and methods of calculating internal market size.

Kharin, Sergei; Kapustova, Zuzana; Lichner, Ivan

doi: 10.1007/s12076-024-00393-9pmid: N/A

Recent swift comovements of local food and global crude oil prices have attracted the attention of policymakers and researchers. To evaluate this relationship, many studies have used time series models to explore global crude oil and local food prices. However, robust research based on advanced nonlinear time series models that incorporate control variables for their formation is lacking. In this paper, nonlinear techniques are applied to assess the asymmetric nexus between Brent oil prices and local retail food prices in Slovakia. To estimate this value, we extend the single-threshold NARDL approach to the MTNARDL model. The nominal exchange rate and industrial production index are used as the control variables. Compared with conventional NARDL models, the MTNARDL model provides a more detailed representation of global oil‒local food price linkages and detects the asymmetric effect of global oil prices on food prices from both long- and short-term perspectives. Interestingly, with respect to long- and short-term food price volatility, changes in response to oil price fluctuations are greatest under a regime with rather a small number of positive and moderate changes.

Kumar, Chinmaya Ranjan; Nayak, Chittaranjan; Pradhan, Ashis Kumar

doi: 10.1007/s12076-023-00366-4pmid: N/A

Crop diversification is indispensable for the development of Indian agriculture. The present paper examines the cropping pattern and status of crop diversification across 28 Indian states. It uses a balanced panel for the period 2000-01 to 2015-16 for all the states and deploys a Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag model to identify the determinants of crop diversification. The paper observes that diversification is higher in the southern and western parts of India than in the northern and eastern parts. The analysis finds that cropping intensity, gross state domestic product, rural road density, and operational holding have led to crop diversification. In contrast, credit, fertilizer, irrigation intensity, and electricity have led to crop concentration. Overall findings endorse crop diversification promotion to improve the livelihood and farm-level output at the macro level.