Sustainability and culinary traditions? Understand the role of historical markets in the development of agri-food and local gastronomy from the perspective of behavioral economics

Food and gastronomic products are an integral part of a community. In fact, their diffusion on the territory is the result of history, tradition, and culture and they undoubtedly represent a significant part of the identity of the companies as an expression of the presence of man in the territory. The offer of food products takes place in the markets which represent a place of aggregation and exchange of ideas, and cultures, a place where the consumer socializes. For traditional food products, the consumer attributes a particular value to the place of purchase and to the food itself. The aim of this work is to discover the relationship between food and place as a "status symbol" of the supply and demand of the food markets, from the point of view of behavioral economics. Based on a case study in the city of Palermo in Sicily, in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, 30 food stands and 520 consumers (between city residents and tourists) were analyzed. Drawing on the availability of food products during the summer season, this document shows the diversity and uniqueness of local food landscapes and provides examples of the foods that are symbols or images and which constitute the Sicilian food identity. Based on the interviews, the results show the diversity of the food and gastronomic products offered, and the sales methods constitute the "quid" of differentiation of the historical Sicilian markets. On the demand side, the consumer buys according to the convenience of the price, the freshness of the product, and above all the social relationships that are established in the markets. The tourist declared that he visits the market as a "culinary heritage" of the city of Palermo. In summary, if the offer of a food market constitutes the culinary heritage of a given place, the demand for consumption (expressed by residents and non-residents) represents the expression of a response to the history of this heritage which over the years has been handed down from generation to generation up to the present day. So the historical markets are a distinctive trait of the city that it is necessary to enhance in order to promote strategies for the development and growth of the urban environment. The results highlight aspects that refer to the civil economy, which preceded the current market economy approach

Optimal pareto solutions of a dynamic C chart: An application of statistical process control on a semiconductor devices manufacturing process

The present paper proposes a novel economic-statistical design procedure of a dynamic c control chart for the Statistical Process Control (SPC) of the manufacturing process of semiconductor devices. Particularly, a non-linear constrained mathematical programming model is formulated and solved by means of the \u3b5-constraint method. A numerical application is developed in order to describe the Pareto frontier, that is the set of optimal c charts and the related practical considerations are given. The obtained results highlight how the performance of the developed dynamic c chart overcome that of the related static one, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed procedure

Street food in Palermo: Traditions and market perspectives

Street food protects and promotes the history and tradition of a place. The origin of street foods largely relies on the cultural and natural landscapes that surround the environments where they are prepared and sold. Street food illustrates a culinary heritage that is embedded in the ways of life of people, both residents and visitors. Drawing on a qualitative study, the researchers conducted ten interviews with street food vendors in the city of Palermo (Sicily, Italy) in order to understand this growing phenomenon in urban environments of the Mediterranean, where the street food also brings the customers to ancient times. Results show the strategy of the entrepreneurs as street food vendors and sheds light into the practices and perceptions they have in relation to the street food past, present and future in the context of street food values

Company Competitiveness as a Variable Success Strategy for the Territory and the Environment

Supporting the fortunes of the Made in Italy agri-food brand are the best quality products which can be found throughout the Italian territory and which, in many cases, derive from Southern Italy, with a particularly interesting role assumed by Campania and Sicily.The Sicily Region boasts a varied and peculiar food and wine heritage, especially from a qualitative point of view, the Born in Sicily brand, made with excellent raw materials which constitute and support the development of important production lines within the agro-industrial sector.Among the most important food industries in Italy and on the island, there are some operating in the confectionery industry. Today the fast-growing confectionery industry contributes a great deal to the agri-food system.This study analyzes the agri-food system both in Italy and Sicily, highlighting the main sectors which contribute to make the Made in Italy brand competitive around the world and how companies have succeeded in starting up some interesting internationalization processes.This the reason why a specific case regarding a Sicilian confectionery industry is examined so as to understand how it was able to create such a successful innovative product, establishing itself on both the national and international market.The results show that entrepreneurial skills contribute a great deal to creating business competitiveness and territorial development

Universal design as resilient urban space plan strategy. New scenarios for environmental resources’ sustainable management

Nowadays, urban framework, stressed by the growing anthropic pressure and its constantly evolving use requests is split by uneven structures, contexts, users and patchy needs, which come out to be inefficient and ineffective in access and management. This fact is directly connected both with morph-functional structure of urban texture and its continuous changing trends. The most important consequences of this situation are some negative effects that produce entropy, mistaken anthropic space uses, ecological networks decrease and most of all a substantial urban life quality reduction connected with mobility problems and non-resilient spaces’ use at the different plan scales. These elements make it necessary to restart thinking about environmental resources’ sustainable use and management. Universal design comes out to be a useful tool related to urban space planning strategies in terms of resilient choices and actions. Design for all plan approach also represents a good solution for matching people needs to urban environmental quality improvement. This idea is supported by the experience of a certain case study, that considers universal design application positive effects on open public space plan strategy in Oslo, together with an example of an active use of water to plan a sustainable public space in Rotterdam

Marketing strategy, social responsibility, and value chain in the agri-food system

The agri-food sector has changed significantly over the years, moving from a simple production system to a more and more industrialized one. For agents/operators involved in this sector, ensuring product quality and environmental externalities has become the key point to gaining a competitive advantage. In this context, corporate social responsibility (CSR) fits perfectly. This study analyzes the influence of CSR practices on the economic performance of a random sample of 130 agri-food companies in Italy. The results of an analysis of multiple linear regression models show that the economic performance (measured through value added and income) of agri-food enterprises seems to be influenced statistically by workplace CSR practices. Analysis of another model, during which we studied the relationship between income and the CSR practices (independent variables), highlights that operating results (economic performance) can be improved by CSR practices regarding the workplace, environment, and local community. Thus, empirical evidence shows that some CSR practices have positive effects on economic performance, with several implications for theory and practice

An improved seismicity picture of the Southern Tyrrhenian area by the use of OBS and land-based networks: the TYDE experiment

The problem of large location uncertainties for seismicity occurring in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea have been partially exceeded during the implementation of the long-term scientific mission of the TYrrhenian Deep sea Experiment (TYDE), which allowed the installation of 14 wide-band Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS) and Hydrophones (OBH) in the period December 2000 – May 2001 on the sea-bottom floor around the Aeolian and Ustica Islands. Local events recorded at landstations have been observed also on the seismograms of the Ocean Bottom Seismic Network (OBSN). Moreover, some hundreds of low magnitude events, undetected from the land networks, have been recorded. We combined the readings of body wave arrival times from OBS-OBH with those from landstations to localise seismic events. We focused our study on three clusters of events representative of the seismic activity of the area: (i) “deep” events, (ii) Ustica (iii) NE-Sicily. The analysis of the integrated data set of the seismicity off-shore and on-shore, obtained from the combined land-OBS seismic network (Ustica sequence and Deep events), has improved locations in terms of RMS residuals, azimuthal gap, epicentral and hypocentral errors. Moreover, further classes of events have been analysed: the first one includes some local events that could be located only by integrating single trigger readings from the few available land-stations with the OBSN-data; the second one comprises local events that have been detected only by the OBS-OBH stations. In particular, the last cluster underlines the importance of an OBSN in the Tyrrhenian deep basin to reveal its unknown intense micro-seismicity, permitting to better understand both the tectonic and geodynamic picture of the area