Science (Universidade Europeia)
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Exploring Positive and Negative Emotions Through Motivational Factors: Before, During, and After the Pandemic Crisis with a Sustainability Perspective
No full textThe tourism sector thrives on a comprehensive understanding of the factors that motivate individuals to explore new destinations. Identifying the push and pull factors that drive travel decisions is essential for analyzing tourist behavior and recognizing the external constraints that tourism enterprises and destinations must consider. Adopting a sustainable approach to these motivational forces underscores the need to balance tourism growth with the preservation of destinations, the well-being of local communities, and responsible travel practices. Push and pull factors in tourism are inherently linked to the emotional states that travelers experience throughout the decision-making process, from the initial intention to travel to the post-trip evaluation. The sector prospers by understanding the reasons that inspire individuals to discover new places. Determining these motivational factors is crucial for comprehending tourist behavior and addressing the external limitations that tourism businesses and destinations must navigate. A sustainability-focused approach highlights the significance of aligning tourism growth with destination preservation and community well-being, ensuring a responsible and enduring tourism model. This study aims to examine the impact of positive and negative emotions on push and pull motivational factors across different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, adopting a sustainability perspective. The research was structured into four empirical studies: (i) pre-pandemic phase, involving a sample of 508 tourists; (ii) pandemic phase, with data collected from 507 participants; (iii) post-pandemic phase, comprising 488 respondents; (iv) comparative analysis, assessing variations across the three periods. The results indicate that emotional states exert a significant influence on push and pull motivational factors, with variations observed depending on the period of data collection: before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while emotions exhibited fluctuations across the three phases, push and pull factors demonstrated relative stability over time. These findings emphasize the critical role of emotional experiences in shaping travel motivations, highlighting the interplay between psychological drivers and destination attributes. This understanding is essential for tourism businesses and policymakers to develop strategies that align with evolving traveler expectations while promoting sustainable and responsible tourism practices
Developing students’ digital literacy with digital storytelling projects in Design and Media Arts
No full textDigital media literacy is essential in today’s world, where media in the form of interfaces, images, words, and sounds is omnipresent. Within this context, educators are tasked with equipping students with the ability to critically analyse and effectively create digital content. This paper explores the role of digital storytelling projects in fostering digital literacy among students, particularly in design and media art disciplines. Grounded in designbased research, the study highlights key pedagogical strategies like project-based learning to support the development of students’ skills, like critical thinking, creative communication, collaboration, networking, and technological proficiency. We propose a digital storytelling project framework for professors and students to convey personal experiences, engage with complex issues, and develop a deeper understanding of the media they consume, share, and produce. The framework includes guidelines to set the learning environment and to support several phases of student’s projects, from initial ideation to online sharing. We present a literature review to scaffold the proposed framework and case studies of different kinds of personal stories created by students using diverse media formats like video, interactive video prototypes, and virtual and augmented reality projects. We highlight several positive outcomes of the framework including resilience and sustainability, as it has been used in several different classes and could be implemented within different modalities
Enhancing business higher education through simulation-based learning, problem-based learning, and challenge-based learning
No full textThe increasing adoption of student-centered learning environments by the institutions of higher education in business has led to new mechanisms and methodologies such as Simulation-Based Learning (SBL), Problem-Based Learning (PBL), and Challenge-Based Learning (CBL). Literature has shown evidence of raising interest in these methodologies towards a more experiential paradigm regarding upcoming events from the surrounding real-world context. This paper presents a Systematic Bibliographic Literature Review (SBLR) concerning integrating and applying these innovative and collaborative methodologies in higher education. It aimed to identify its relevant advantages, challenges, and consequences for the future of business education. Researchers searched bibliographic databases for documents published up to May 2024 to categorize critical topics discussed in the literature on SBL, PBL, and CBL. The review identified 89 empirical and non-empirical papers on SBL, PBL, and CBL, business-related paperwork resulting from the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) method. PRISMA is a framework with evidence-based data designed to help authors perform a systematic literature review. Data analysis revealed diverse subthemes for those methodologies used in business higher education institutions. The research questions "What are the advantages, challenges, and implications of SBL, PBL, and CBL altogether in the training of business students?" guided the study. The central output of the research is the discovery of the varying uses of SBL, PBL, and CBL to cope with diverse demands arising within an environmental context. The study suggests future research directions
FEPSAC position statement on safeguarding athletes in sport
No full textThrough the publication of this position statement, FEPSAC aims to continue with its commitment to quality and safe sport experiences through the promotion of safeguarding in sport, a responsibility collectively shared by both group and individual members of the organisation. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of the academic research on interpersonal violence (IV) and safeguarding in sport in a European context, focusing on safeguarding athletes. The position statement further includes recommendations and practical guidelines that will equip readers with knowledge and processes for recognising and responding to IV in sport. Through enhancing safeguarding literacy among FEPSAC members, we aim to inspire and empower both neophyte and more experienced practitioners in sport and exercise psychology toward fostering safer sporting relationships, spaces and practices
Does the Attentiveness of NEDs to ESG Issues Influence Corporate Sustainability?
No full textIn this paper, our core research question is: do NEDs' ESG attentiveness contribute to corporate sustainability? Being detached from daily management decisions, NEDs are well-positioned to supervise the effort for more sustainable business activities. Indeed, previous empirical research has confirmed that companies that share board directors exhibit superior ESG credentials. Based on individual board characteristics for all FTSE-350 companies listed from 2012 to 2022, our study makes an original contribution to this literature. We find an economically and statistically significant relationship between ESG corporate performance and the presence on a board of NEDs that serve on the boards of other companies that have a strong ESG performance. We make this contribution by proposing and calculating a measure of NED attentiveness. From a corporate governance perspective, our findings underscore the practical influence of specific board capital on corporate ESG performance
How AI influences marketing from the consumer perspective: Literature review
No full textThe systematic literature review investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on marketing, with a focus on client perspectives, using the PRISMA model. It examines how AI technology might improve customer service efficiency and increase the level of personalization in customer interactions while delving further into privacy and ethical problems. The report emphasizes how critical it is to strike a healthy balance between leveraging AI's benefits and preserving customer confidence. Moreover, it highlights customers' persistent desire for face-to-face contacts during service encounters, implying that in spite of technology breakthroughs, human connection and emotional intelligence are still essential. These revelations illustrate the intricate relationship that exists between technical progress and providing human- centered services, emphasizing the necessity for businesses to incorporate AI in ways that enhance, rather than replace human interaction
Human-centered design and maternity care: is this a possible interplay? - a systematic review
No full textThis paper argues that putting women at the center of care requires the right balance between adequate clinical care and human-centered design (HCD) approaches. Enhancing their experience during the maternity journey would make it possible to address societal challenges and effectively achieve the humanization of maternity care. Thus, the aim is to investigate the interplay between human-centered design and maternity care through a literature review. MEDLINE (Pubmed), CINAHL (EBSCO), Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched, and twenty-one papers were selected as primary studies according to predefined inclusion criteria and as per agreement of the authors, either from design/social sciences or clinical backgrounds. Studies from eight countries targeting prenatal, childbirth, and/or postnatal care were reviewed, including healthcare professionals and pregnant women as participants. A systematic approach was followed for the papers, and specific attention was paid to socioeconomic and racial issues. The last phase included prototype testing, which involved digital resources development. Creating solutions for the mainstay problems throughout HCD is a helpful tool in surpassing systems’ problems and disadvantages, allowing for identifying and accurately targeting healthcare system gaps and maternity care opportunities to achieve a positive and humanized journey
Teaching design in the Google age: Redesigning the assignment
No full textDesign education has long been grounded in a studio-based pedagogy, heavily dependent on design problems to which students must create formal and technical solutions. Such problems are usually defined by sets of constraints provided to stimulate thought and, often, to simulate (some kind of) reality. For a long time, this model seemed almost flawless: every year, students were faced with new challenges that, in the best cases, should exercise their abilities, promote their proficiency with processes and tools, and help them learn to think as designers. However, the recent shift from analogical to digital has drastically changed the way students behave in the face of a new design brief. Such changes, in both (im)material conditions and behaviours, must drive teachers to form new ways of presenting challenges to students. In this chapter, we reflect on some of these strategies, developed while teaching undergraduates. We present the case of a design challenge presented to first-year students: one without traceable existence online, defined through a prompt-generating-algorithm, that guarantees that each student has a unique, original, problem to solve
The integration of AI and IoT in marketing: A systematic literature review
No full textThis systematic literature review investigates the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) in marketing, with a focus on their application in enhancing consumer engagement, personalization, and strategic decision-making. Using the Scopus database and a refined keyword search strategy, the study identified 223,671 initial records, which were narrowed down to 121 peer-reviewed academic articles after applying strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Thematic analysis revealed that foundational technologies—such as machine learning, big data, and deep learning—dominate the field, while marketing strategy, decision systems, and customer experience emerge as central application areas. Co-citation and keyword network analyses indicate a technocentric and interdisciplinary knowledge structure, but also expose significant gaps in research related to ethics, regulation, consumer trust, and small business contexts. The review highlights opportunities for future research in underexplored areas such as sentiment analysis, sustainability, and human–AI interaction. For practitioners, the findings underscore the strategic importance of AI and IoT in driving personalized, data-driven marketing, while emphasizing the need for ethical transparency and regulatory alignment. Limitations include reliance on a single database, potential exclusion of relevant studies due to keyword constraints, and a focus on peer-reviewed journal articles only. This review addresses key gaps in the literature by offering a focused synthesis of current research and proposing directions for more balanced and responsible innovation in AI-enabled marketing
Do robots sound human enough? Exploring human gender and tone in shaping empathy towards social robots
No full textThis study examines the influence of voice tone and gender on empathetic responses toward robots, aiming to identify the auditory characteristics that are most conducive to positive human-robot interaction. Employing a mixed-method approach, the research engaged 60 university students in a controlled experiment to examine their reactions to robots expressing six of Eckman’s basic emotions with varied tonalities (Dramatic and Neutral) and voice genders (Male or Female). Participants were exposed to two video stimuli featuring a robot exhibiting different emotional states while moving alone within an apartment, using both neutral and dramatic tones across male and female voice types. Immediate empathetic responses were measured using the State Empathy Scale (SES), while baseline empathy levels were assessed with the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ). The findings indicate a strong preference for dramatic tones, which were consistently perceived as more empathetic, regardless of the robot’s voice gender. Furthermore, emotionally expressive voices were favored over neutral and monochordist voicings, suggesting that more naturalistic vocal characteristics could significantly enhance user engagement with robot