Towards nexus-based governance: defining interactions between economic activities and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on solving the ‘nexus’ challenge: how can positive interactions between SDGs be optimised, and negative interactions minimised, in order to create co-benefits and reduce trade-offs? Due to their varying impacts on the SDGs, the economic activities undertaken by organisations present a key lever for operationalising this SDG-nexus. Yet the interactions between individual economic activities and the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development have not been systematically assessed, thus creating a vital operational bottleneck to achieving the SDGs. This paper conducts a systematic review of 876 articles published between 2005 and 2019 to study the nexus between individual economic activities, sustainable development in general, and the SDGs in specific. It finds that studies on agricultural, industrial, and manufacturing activities predominantly report negative impacts on environmental development, while literature on services activities highlight economic and social contributions. Overall, economic activities are expected to positively impact industrialisation, infrastructure, and innova

The value of lecture podcasting for distance and on-campus students

The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of podcasting the traditional classroom lecture to distance (external) and on-campus (internal) students. Download data are compared for distance and on-campus students enrolled in the same course. This exploratory research shows that for distance students at least, the lecture podcast appears to have some pedagogical merit. However, the format may have its limitations as shown by the marked decline in download activity of successive lectures in both of the courses examined.Rob van Zantenhttp://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/index.ht

Consumer complaints against alcohol advertisements: an evaluation

This paper investigates the complaints levelled at alcohol advertisements to determine the kinds of ads that attract complaints and to what extent Ready-to-Drink (RTD) advertising accounts for these. The research will have relevance to all countries where RTDs have developed market share. The results show that ads for beer, spirits and especially RTDs (when Share-of-Complaint versus Share-of-Market is considered) attract the greatest number of complaints. Wine ads played a negligible role. Over 96% of alcohol ads attracting complaints used either a humorous or a sexual advertising appeal, the results emphasising the risky nature of the humorous appeal. Rational, emotional, fear, and scarcity appeals made no impact on the findings

Drink choice: factors influencing the intention to drink wine

This paper explores the reasons why consumers choose wine over other alcoholic beverages, with a focus upon the beliefs held by consumers towards the behaviour of wine drinking. The research findings show that attitudes are somewhat more predictive of the intention to drink wine than perceived social pressure. Nevertheless, both attitudinal and normative elements are required to adequately explain wine consumption. Despite the fact that the issue of health figured prominently amongst the salient beliefs identified in the qualitative phase of the research, the subsequent quantitative research found that drinking wine because of its purported health benefits was not a significant attitudinal or behavioural factor. Drinking wine because it provides ‘a variety of tastes and flavours’ and because it ‘goes well with food’ was found to be significantly more important. The results suggest that efforts to actively promote awareness of the health benefits of wine drinking may have limited value

Enablers and inhibitors of internet wine purchase

This paper investigates the enabling and inhibiting factors of wine purchase on-line. The research described in this paper is qualitative in nature and based upon the Nominal Group Technique. The results show that convenience factors are the most important enablers, while credit card fraud and the inability to taste the wine the most important inhibitors of wine purchase over the Internet. Key findings provided by the research relate to product performance risk (the inability to taste the wine prior to purchase), and the experiential nature of wine and wine shopping