Stakeholders’ satisfaction as a key determinant of critical success factors in renewable energy projects

Renewable energy projects (REPs) are critical to providing a clean and sustainable environmental perspective alongside the economic prosperity of any country. Unfortunately, recent trends in renewable energy projects (REPs) are not positive enough regarding their successful completion within the budgeted cost, planned time, proposed quality, and other necessary constraints. Although the pertinent literature has discussed the critical success factors (CSFs) for such projects, their influencing mechanism with respect to the role of key stakeholders is still overlooked. This study recognizes several critical success factors (CSFs) and their influencing mechanisms onto renewable energy projects (REPs) in order to evaluate direct influences onto project success as well as indirect influences through stakeholders’ satisfaction (SS) as mediation on the project success of small and medium-sized renewable energy projects (REPs) in Pakistan’s energy sector. A sample of about 272 respondents working with renewable energy projects (REPs), including key stakeholders, has been collected to perform data analysis and draw inferences. A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was used for data analysis and inference drawing. The results show that though there is a positive and direct association between critical success factors (CSFs) and project success, a partial mediating role of stakeholders’ satisfaction (SS) between CSFs and project success was still determined. Hence, it was found that CSFs significantly contribute to renewable energy projects (REPs) through mediating influences of stakeholders’ satisfaction (SS). The findings confirmed that stakeholders’ satisfaction (SS) is a key determinant for critical success factors (CSFs) in renewable energy projects (REPs). Moreover, stakeholders’ satisfaction (SS) emerged to be a crucial element for the completion of such projects. The empirical findings of this study might have a useful effect on academicians and the practitioners engaged with renewable energy projects (REPs)

Insurance Crisis, Legal Environment, and the Sustainability of Professional Liability Insurance Market in the Construction Industry: Based on the US Market

PLI (professional liability insurance) is currently the main method used to control construction practice risk and is an important economic measure of construction industry governance. Few literatures have analyzed the sustainability of the liability insurance market. In particular, the research on the sustainability of the PLI market in the construction industry is still blank. The sustainability of the market can be identified with the equilibrium of the system over a certain period of time. From the perspective of cooperation benefits, this paper adopts evolutionary game theory (EGT) to analyze the evolutionary trends of stakeholders’ behaviors and their evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) in the PLI market of the construction industry. A case study from the history of the US PLI market evolution over nearly 100 years is taken to illustrate the stakeholder game and interpret the market evolution path, and several typical stages of the development of the US PLI market are explored. Some factors that can cause a shift in equilibrium are found. The results show that the change in the legal environment will directly affect the payoffs of the stakeholders, cause market imbalance, and trigger crisis. These findings will help out the government to regulate the market in a timely manner by improving external factors, such as by building a sound credit system and ensuring the stability of the legal system. In an equilibrium state, competitive markets can eliminate individuals with high accident rates and companies with high operating costs. Moreover, these findings will also set a base for future researches to investigate the role of insurance market and legal environment in depth while providing the intensive critical factors towards sustainable construction industry

4-[Bis(1H-indol-3-yl)meth­yl]benzonitrile

In the title mol­ecule, C24H17N3, the didhedral angles formed by the mean planes of the indole ring systems and the benzene ring are 86.44 (7) and 86.96 (7)°. The dihedral angle between the two indole ring systems is 72.08 (6)°. In the crystal, inter­molecular bifurcated (N—H)2⋯N hydrogen bonds link mol­ecules into sheets lying parallel to (010)

Feed types driven differentiation of microbial community and functionality in marine integrated multitrophic aquaculture system

Integrated multi trophic aquaculture (IMTA) improves the production of aquatic animals by promoting nutrient utilization through different tropical levels. Microorganisms play an important role in elements cycling, energy flow and farmed-species health. The aim of this study was to evaluate how feed types, fresh frozen fish diet (FFD) or formulated diet (FD), influence the microbial community diversity and functionality in both water and sediment in a marine IMTA system. Preferable water quality, higher animal yields and higher cost efficiency were achieved in the FD pond. Feed types changed the pond bacterial community distribution, especially in the rearing water. The FFD pond was dominated with Cyanobacteria in the water, which played an important role in nitrogen fixation through photosynthesis due to the high nitrogen input of the frozen fish diet. The high carbohydrate composition in the formulated diet triggered higher metabolic pathways related to carbon and lipid metabolism in the water of the FD pond. Sediment had significantly higher microbial diversity than the rearing water. In sediment, the dominating genus, Sulfurovum and Desulfobulbus, were found to be positively correlated by network analysis, which had similar functionality in sulfur transformation. The relatively higher rates of antibiotic biosynthesis in the FFD sediment might be related to the pathogenic bacteria introduced by the trash fish diet. The difference in microbial community composition and metabolic pathways may be associated with the different pathways for nutrient cycling and animal growth performance. The formulated diet was determined to be more ecologically and economically sustainable than the frozen fish diet for marine IMTA pond systems.</p

Default Behaviors of Contractors under Surety Bond in Construction Industry Based on Evolutionary Game Model

In construction projects, some contractors will take default actions against the contracts to obtain maximum profits and damage the owners’ benefits as a result. In the construction markets where effective supervision is not performed well, contractors have more opportunities to default. Surety bonds were designed to solve the default problems and promote the sustainable development of the construction markets. This paper was proposed to explore the interactions between owners and contractors and investigate the influence of surety bonds (high penalty and low penalty) on the default behavior of contractors based on a static and dynamic evolutionary game analysis model. The results showed that applying the surety bond strategy is effective at decreasing the probability of the contractors’ default behavior when the credit system based on a surety bond system is well developed in the construction industry and the cost of the surety bond is low enough. Therefore, government strategies such as a better development of the credit system driven by surety bonds and the subsidies on surety bonds to reduce the cost can mitigate the contractors’ default behavior and keep the sustainability of the construction markets