Sustainable Development for Rural Areas: A Survey on the Agritourism Rural Networks

The topic of sustainable growth is becoming central in the debate over the rural development policies. Rural communities can completely fulfil the new challenges in the area of sustainability only with the implementation of innovative forms of collaborations among their business networks. In this work, we consider a particular form of business collaboration arising within rural communities, namely Agritourism Rural Network (ARN). In an ARN, a farm, providing agritourism activities, represents a touchpoint between a network of business and organizations in a rural area and tourists interested in enjoying the local territory. With the aim to deeper the extend of the agritourism phenomenon in a rural region and the potential of the related ARNs in being means of sustainable development, we report main results of an empirical survey carried out in 2016 on a sample of 105 agritourism farms all belonging to the same region (Calabria, Italy). Results confirm our intuitions about the importance at farm level of setting agritourism activities and their impact for the ARN related to the farm and for the sustainable development of a local community as a whole

Smart Tourism Destinations: Can the Destination Management Organizations Exploit Benefits of the ICTs? Evidences from a Multiple Case Study

Recent developments of ICTs enable new ways to experience tourism and conducted to the concept of smart tourism. The adoption of cutting-edge technologies and its combination with innovative organizational models fosters cooperation, knowledge sharing, and open innovation among service providers in tourism destination. Moreover, it offers innovative services to visitors. In few words, they become smart tourism destinations. In this paper, we report first results of the SMARTCAL project aimed at conceiving a digital platform assisting Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) in providing smart tourism services. A DMO is the organization charged with managing the tourism offer of a collaborative network, made up of service providers acting in a destination. In this paper, we adopted a multiple case studies approach to analyze five Italian DMOs. Our aims were to investigate (1) if, and how, successful DMOs were able to offer smart tourism services to visitors; (2) if the ICTs adoption level was related to the collaboration level among DMO partners. First results highlighted that use of smart technologies was still in an embryonic stage of development, and it did not depend from collaboration levels

Understanding interactions in face-to-face and remote undergraduate science laboratories

This paper reviews the ways in which interactions have been studied, and the findings of such studies, in science education in both face-to-face and remote laboratories. Guided by a systematic selection process, 27 directly relevant articles were analysed based on three categories: the instruments used for measuring interactions, the research findings on student interactions, and the theoretical frameworks used in the studies of student interactions. In face-to-face laboratories, instruments for measuring interactions and the characterisation of the nature of interactions were prominent. For remote laboratories, the analysis of direct interactions was found to be lacking. Instead, studies of remote laboratories were mainly concerned with their practical scope. In addition, it is found that only a limited number of theoretical frameworks have been developed and applied in the research design. Existent theories are summarised and possible theoretical frameworks that may be implemented in studies of interactions in undergraduate laboratories are proposed. Finally, future directions for research on the interrelationship between student interactions and laboratory learning are suggested

Research Investigation on Food Information User’s Behaviour

Part 6: Users and Organizations ProfilingInternational audienceRecent advances in smart food technologies have renewed the attractiveness of those studies on human information behaviour that take the food consumer as focus of interest. In this paper, we introduce a reference framework to model the food information usage process and the interrelation between the food consumer’s behaviour and the food information user’s behaviour. Basing on this framework, we present a literature review that classifies research works according to research approach types and stages of the food information usage process. The aim is to present a state of art of significance to food marketing and to the development of food intelligent services with higher satisfaction and value

Bank Branches as Smart Environments: Introducing a Cognitive Protection System to Manage Security and Safety

Part 3: Risk, Privacy and SecurityInternational audienceProtection of Bank Branches (BBs) represents an interesting setting where potential benefits deriving from the introduction of IoT technologies can give best results in terms of operational performances. In this paper we present main results of an ERFD funded project aimed to redesign BBs as smart environments. First, we summarize main results of a multiple case study among Italian banking groups aimed to characterize the problem. Second, we propose main characteristics of a cyber-physical-social space (CPSS) specifically designed to facilitate the rise of a smart BB. Third, we introduce the architecture of a cognitive protection system designed to manage a network of BB CPSSs belonging to a banking group in order to improve both the degree of security and safety inside the branch environment, and the operational performances of security management processes