Search
Search Results
-
THE DECLINE OF TRADITIONAL LIVESTOCK FARMING IN SPAIN AND ITS IMPACT ON ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS THROUGH FOCUS GROUPS WITH SHEPHERDS
Views:228Traditional extensive livestock farming has emerged as a potential sustainable development strategy in Europe, particularly to address rural depopulation and provide multiple positive externalities. Despite new European policies emphasizing its importance, the sector continues to decline. This study employs focus group methodology to examine the underlying causes of this decline from the perspective of shepherds. Two discussion groups were held with farmers from the regions of Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, allowing us to contrast the testimonies of the practitioners with the existing literature. Our methodological approach emphasizes the value of focus groups in capturing complex socioeconomic dynamics within traditional livestock communities.
The findings reveal multiple interconnected challenges: low profitability derived from legal requirements and concentration of demand; increasingly complex access to pastures due to local and state regulations; significant barriers to entry, including economic requirements and bureaucracy; difficulties in work-life balance; bureaucratic obstacles to positive externalities; conflictive relations with the tourism sector; weak associationism; and limited technology adoption. This study contributes to the methodological literature by demonstrating how focus groups can effectively reveal hidden dynamics in declining traditional sectors.
-
Proposals for low-carbon agriculture production strategies between 2020 and 2030 in Hungary
5-15Views:508When viewed from the perspective of climate policy, agriculture as a separate sector is one of the most difficult development areas to assess. One of the reasons for this is the problem of the localization of greenhouse gas emitters, caused by the fact that production takes place in small or dispersed production units. The special circumstance that unit production takes place in complex interactive systems (food, feed, energy sources, main products, by-products, etc.) is yet another special factor, which in addition makes it significantly more difficult to measure and identify the GHGs they emit than if they were a uniform production plant. Additionally, there are few sectors outside agriculture where decision-makers encounter such strong opposition and lobby interests when developing limiting regulations. This stems from the fact that following World War II, European decision-makers and the Common Agricultural Policy elevated agriculture to a prominent role whose importance was indisputable. As a result, both climate policy and other measures that would result in any reduction of the priority of the sector are very difficult to implement, since the players involved always reason that limitations would restrict their competiveness and the security of their production. In addition, the uncertain nature of regulatory elements also poses a grave problem. As an example, the name of the sector itself – the LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) sector – shows that the strategy for reducing the greenhouse gasses emitted by the whole sector would be significantly different if these units were treated separately (agricultural land use, forest, not-cultivated areas). Taking the above into account, the present study aims to identify development directions that in turn allow those low-carbon development directions to be pinpointed within animal husbandry and plant production that have the greatest feasibility and can contribute to decreasing the GHG environmental load exerted by agriculture.
-
Relationships between coping strategies and psychoactive substance use
102-108Views:421The study examines the relationship between coping strategies and smoking and alcohol consumption among athletes, recreational athletes and non-athlete individuals.
The factors examined were measured by a validated questionnaire version of Folkman-Lazarus (1980) (Ways of coping) (16 items) and asked about the smoking and alcohol consumption patterns of the respondents. The total sample number was 813 people, of whom 341 were athletes, 292 were recreational and 180 were non-athletes. 54.4% of the sample is female and 45.6% is male. In my research, I focused on mapping intrapersonal coping strategies among athletes, recreational athletes, and the non-athlete individuals, and explored gender differences. Furthermore, how smoking and alcohol consumption appear as a negative coping strategy in the measured sample.
As a method besides descriptive statistics the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to verify normality, and the hypotheses were tested with non-parameterized test (Kruskal-Wallis, and Mann-Whitney).
For coping strategies I found a significant difference among the non-, recreational and competitive athletes, and there is a significant difference between genders as well.
In the case of cognitive restructurings, there was a significant difference in favor of sports and recreational athletes versus non-athletes, while in problem analysis and passive coping I found a significant difference in favor of women compared to men.
Significant differences were also found in the case of psychoactive substance use. Among the three groups, as the intensity of sport increases, the number of smokers decreases. In the case of smoking, a significant difference was found in the coping strategies referring to reduction of the stress in the whole sample. In the case of alcohol consumption, in coping strategies were found significant differences between stress reduction, problem analysis and passive coping.
JEL CODE: M21, O21
ARTICLE IN PRESS!
-
The role of social media in gastronomy industry
95-103Views:1897Considering the rapidly changing business environment, staying competitive is a key issue and challenge for companies in the 21st century. The criteria of a company’s success and competitiveness is the changing behavior of the different economic actors and its influence. Through the information society came to the fore, the use of diverse information technology tools and methods has become a significant influence factor in terms of the entrepreneurs or company management and also the customers or other partners. Due to the rapid expansion of new technology developments, the role and importance of social media is continuously increasing. Also statistics show that one of the most regularly used IT tool is the social media and the different web 2.0 applications. The current study is intended to provide a better understanding how social media can emphasize the competitiveness of companies and format the consumer behavior in a special sector – the rapidly developing gastronomy industry. This paper presents an empirical research about the role of social media in the above mentioned industry based on the primary data which are gathered through a survey performed in Hungary. Beyond the empirical results presented, the paper also aims to provide some recommendations for research methodology – based on the international literature review and the Authors’ own experiences – both in gastronomy industry’s and customers’ point of view. Through the analysis the research hypotheses were examined and the most important correlations were identified between the survey results and the Authors’ initial supposition.
JEL Code: D83, L83, M31, Z33
Keywords
