For the Dam tot damloop, a running event with 36,757 participants and 115,000 visitors, both an economic impact analysis (IEA) and a social cost benefit analysis (SCBA) are made to study the (broader) economic effects. Three overlapping geographical regions are studied and two new estimates of non-market goods are used. For the hosting cities the net social gain from the SCBA is at least three times the EIA’s economic impact. The larger the geographical area studied, the larger the differences between EIA and SCBA, because the EIA outcome falls and the SCBA outcome increases. A lower multiplier than 1 lowers the EIA much more than it lowers the SCBA. This study shows that an EIA is not suited for evaluating the welfare effects of public support for a sport event. The difference in outcome between EIA and SCBA is substantial. Valuing non-market effects is done infrequently but is crucial for understanding the welfare effects of policies supporting sport events. Organizing an event for social and city marketing benefits can be a better reason than organizing for the direct economic gains.
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Digitalization is the core component of future development in the 4.0 industrial era. It represents a powerful mechanism for enhancing the sustainable competitiveness of economies worldwide. Diverse triggering effects shape future digitalization trends. Thus, the main research goal in this study is to use sustainable competitiveness pillars (such as social, economic, environmental and energy) to evaluate international digitalization development. The proposed empirical model generates comprehensive knowledge of the sustainable competitiveness-digitalization nexus. For that purpose, a nonlinear regression has been applied on gathered annual data that consist of 33 European countries, ranging from 2010 to 2016. The dataset has been deployed using Bernoulli’s binominal distribution to derive training and testing samples and the entire analysis has been adjusted in that context. The empirical findings of artificial neural networks (ANN) suggest strong effects of the economic and energy use indicators on the digitalization progress. Nonlinear regression and ANN model summary report valuable results with a high degree of coefficient of determination (R2>0.9 for all models). Research findings state that the digitalization process is multidimensional and cannot be evaluated as an isolated phenomenon without incorporating other relevant factors that emerge in the environment. Indicators report the consumption of electrical energy in industry and households and GDP per capita to achieve the strongest effect.
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Field of study decisions are important for children’s future life chances, as significant differences exist in terms of financial and status benefits across fields of study. We examine whether the economic or the cultural status of the parents is more influential in shaping their children’s expectations about their future field of study. We also test whether children’s expectations about field of study choices are mediated by the child-rearing values that parents hold. Results show that parental economic status increased the likelihood of adolescents expecting to opt for extrinsic rewarding fields of study. Adolescent girls, not boys, with high cultural status parents were more likely to expect to opt for intrinsically rewarding fields of study. An upbringing that is characterized by conformity increased the expectations of boys to choose an extrinsically rewarding study, while self-direction increased the expectations of girls to opt for an extrinsic field of study
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Manual labour is an important cornerstone in manufacturing and considering human factors and ergonomics is a crucial field of action from both social and economic perspective. Diverse approaches are available in research and practice, ranging from guidelines, ergonomic assessment sheets over to digitally supported workplace design or hardware oriented support technologies like exoskeletons. However, in the end those technologies, methods and tools put the working task in focus and just aim to make manufacturing “less bad” with reducing ergonomic loads as much as possible. The proposed project “Human Centered Smart Factories: design for wellbeing for future manufacturing” wants to overcome this conventional paradigm and considers a more proactive and future oriented perspective. The underlying vision of the project is a workplace design for wellbeing that makes labor intensive manufacturing not just less bad but aims to provide positive contributions to physiological and mental health of workers. This shall be achieved through a human centered technology approach and utilizing advanced opportunities of smart industry technologies and methods within a cyber physical system setup. Finally, the goal is to develop smart, shape-changing workstations that self-adapt to the unique and personal, physical and cognitive needs of a worker. The workstations are responsive, they interact in real time, and promote dynamic activities and varying physical exertion through understanding the context of work. Consequently, the project follows a clear interdisciplinary approach and brings together disciplines like production engineering, human interaction design, creative design techniques and social impact assessment. Developments take place in an industrial scale test bed at the University of Twente but also within an industrial manufacturing factory. Through the human centered design of adaptive workplaces, the project contributes to a more inclusive and healthier society. This has also positive effects from both national (e.g. relieve of health system) as well as individual company perspective (e.g. less costs due to worker illness, higher motivation and productivity). Even more, the proposal offers new business opportunities through selling products and/or services related to the developed approach. To tap those potentials, an appropriate utilization of the results is a key concern . The involved manufacturing company van Raam will be the prototypical implementation partner and serve as critical proof of concept partner. Given their openness, connections and broad range of processes they are also an ideal role model for further manufacturing companies. ErgoS and Ergo Design are involved as methodological/technological partners that deal with industrial engineering and ergonomic design of workplace on a daily base. Thus, they are crucial to critically reflect wider applicability and innovativeness of the developed solutions. Both companies also serve as multiplicator while utilizing promising technologies and methods in their work. Universities and universities of applied sciences utilize results through scientific publications and as base for further research. They also ensure the transfer to education as an important leverage to inspire and train future engineers towards wellbeing design of workplaces.
How can European migration, between countries and within countries between regions, contribute to the development of vulnerable regions in Europe? This is the central question of project Premium_EU (Policy REcommendations to Maximise the beneficial Impact of Unexplored Mobilities in and beyond the European Union), which is financed by Horizon Europe.The key goal of Premium_EU is the development of a Regional Policy Dashboard for national and regional policy makers to help them in the formulation of new policies aimed at the potential of migration to enhance the development of vulnerable regions. The Dashboard combines all available knowledge of three domains in three modules: the Mobility Module, the Regional Development Effects Module, and the Policy Module.The Mobility Module includes both past trends and projections and scenarios, in addition to new mobility estimates based on data from social media usage, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. The module also includes qualitative information from case studies on specific types of mobility groups, such as Polish seasonal workers, or Turkish migrants to EU countries. These trends, projections and case studies will be summarized in a regional typology on the basis of the mobility profile of the region.In the Regional Development Effects Module all available data on regional development is summarized in a regional development typology, where regional development is interpreted much broader than economic development. Using causal models the role of regional mobility in regional development will be established.In the Policy Module all possible forms of regional policies will be collected and linked to the mobility- and regional development characteristics of the region.The Dashboard integrates these modules so that a policy maker, on the basis of the unique mobility and regional development profile of his or her region is able to make an evidence based choice out of a relevant set of policy options. Users of the Dashboard will also be able to add their experiences to the Dashboard, so that other users can benefit from their knowledge.
How the availability of residential parking facilities affects travel behaviour has received little attention. Some studies show that longer distances between home and the residential parking facility reduce the car’s modal share. However, no insight exists in the question whether a change in residential parking facilities would lead to a change in attitudes and transport mode choice of residents. Therefore, the research question the proposed research aims to answer is: to what extent do travel mode attitudes, travel behaviours (walking, cycling, bus, train, car use) and car ownership of residents change after the removal of parking spaces in residential areas? In 2020, parking spots will be removed in several areas in the city centre of Utrecht. Residents of these areas will have to park their car further away from home after the removal. We apply a mixed-methods design in order to: 1) gain insight in impacts of the removal of residential parking spots (effect evaluation), and 2) gain insight in the underlying mechanisms that may explain these changes (qualitative interviews). The results of our project are highly relevant for the municipality of Utrecht, as for other cities in the Netherlands. Having parking spaces nearby (home and/or destination) is often seen as having positive effects (for economic competitiveness). Our research can show that parking further away can also have important positive effects, namely all the beneficial effects of a modal shift from car to walking, cycling or public transport use, in terms of health, environment, use of space, and social aspects.
