The impact of the built environment, price level, and service quality on customer satisfaction under the effect of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way business is handled. Besides, people's purchasing habits have been impacted by new safety, social, and health restrictions. Thus, the purpose of this research was to analyze the COVID-19 pandemic impact in the relationships between the built environment, price level, and service quality on supermarket customers' satisfaction. For this purpose, a survey of 245 supermarket customers in southern Brazil was conducted at two different times: before and during the pandemic. The results point out that the price level, toilets, and location are essential to explain satisfaction at all times. Comfort presented importance before the pandemic, configuration, and service quality in pandemic times. These features are essential for supermarket management to prioritize efforts on attributes and dimensions relevant to customers.

Assessing the impact of architectural and behavioral interventions for controlling indoor COVID-19 infection risk: An agent-based approach

The COVID-19 pandemic changed our lives, forcing us to reconsider our built environment. In some buildings with high traffic flow, infected individuals release viral particles during movement. The complex interactions between humans, building, and viruses make it difficult to predict indoor infection risk by traditional computational fluid dynamics methods. The paper developed a spatially-explicit agent-based model to simulate indoor respiratory pathogen transmission for buildings with frequent movement of people. The social force model simulating pedestrian movement and a simple forcing method simulating indoor airflow were coupled in an agent-based modeling environment. The impact of architectural and behavioral interventions on the indoor infection risk was then compared by simulating a supermarket case. We found that wearing a mask was the most effective single intervention, with all people wearing masks reducing the percentage of infections to 0.08%. Among the combined interventions, the combination of customer control is the most effective and can reduce the percentage of infections to 0.04%. In addition, the extremely strict combination of all the interventions makes the supermarket free of new infections during its 8-hour operation. The approach can help architects, managers, or the government better understand the effect of nonpharmaceutical interventions to reduce the infection risk and improve the level of indoor safety.

How emotions from content social relevance mediate social media engagement: evidence from European supermarkets during the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of consumer engagement with supermarkets' social media accounts. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and social sharing of emotions theory, the authors test if the content posted on the social media brand pages of supermarkets dealing with a topic of high social relevance, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, stimulates social media consumer engagement and if and how the engagement is mediated by the arousal of positive and negative emotions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors retrieved data from the Facebook accounts of the top 20 European supermarkets identified in the Deloitte 2020 Global Powers of Retailing report during the first wave of the pandemic from 1 March to 30 June 2020, collecting a sample of 2,524 posts from 8 different countries. After a content analysis to classify COVID-19 content, the authors applied the Baron and Kenny (1986) methodology to verify the hypothesised relationships.FindingsThe findings highlight a positive direct relationship between the social relevance of a topic (COVID-19) and social media consumer engagement mediated by the arousal of positive and negative emotions.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the earliest empirical research using Facebook data to investigate the role of the social relevance of content as an antecedent of social media consumer engagement with a specific focus on supermarkets. The paper contributes to the stream of social media literature investigating the antecedents of social media engagement behaviour, exploring the role of topics' choice and aroused emotions, which to date are both under-investigated.

Analysing Muda under COVID-19 pandemic: a case study in a Spanish supermarket

Lean service aims at identifying and eliminating Muda or waste (non-value-added activities). The purpose of this paper is to answer the research questions: Which types of waste can be observed in supermarket stores during COVID-19 pandemic? How has it impacted the operational processes in stores? An exploratory case study based on structured direct observation has been conducted. A supermarket store in a Spanish mid-size city has been selected and observed for more than 30 weeks. Methods to gather data were document analysis, direct and participative observation and informal interviews with customers and employees. Seven types of Muda (defects, motion, over-processing, inventory, overproduction, transportation, and time) were identified and measured prior to COVID-19 pandemic and after the first weeks. The results show that all types of Muda increased significantly during the first four weeks after the pandemic outbreak, but they decrease afterwards when actions were implemented by the management. Copyright © 2023 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Thinking globally, acting locally: Supporting systems change within communities to enhance food security action

Food systems are complex, with a multitude of drivers including climate change, income markets, policy, social norms, and demography Within food systems, food supply chain activities influence food resources, and in turn, diets. More broadly, economic, social and environmental impacts dictate a person's dietary quantity, quality, diversity, safety, and adequacy.(1) Food security is a term describing a situation where everyone has physical, social, and economic access to nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences. Not only does food need to be available, accessible, utilised, stable, but also sustainable.(1) However, in a global context, food systems are fraught with issues threatening food security, including shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic,(2) and war Globally, 2020 food prices were higher than in the previous six years. Within Australia, we lack food system resiliency due to a casualised workforce, reliance on international workers, a concentration of supermarket power, and widening inequities, among others Evidence suggests that Australia will not meet global targets to achieve the 'Zero Hunger' 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda We face an incredible challenge;to feed an increasing population sustainably. Local food systems, also known as 'alternative food networks', are often sold for local or regional markets.(3) Australian research reported barriers to purchasing and consuming more locally grown food such as affordability, limited availability, and a lack of interest. While enablers included altruistic reasons such as financially supporting farmers, personal health perceptions or an environmental contribution.(4) Evidence suggests local food systems encourage seasonal eating and dietary diversity, connect consumers and producers, and increase food system resiliency.(5,6) This presentation asserts that communities must participate in shaping the food systems which impact their food security. Food Policy Groups (FPG) are a potential mechanism to involve community and food system stakeholders in driving such actions forward These inter-agency alliances focus on impact areas such as food access, equity, and food system resiliency. A scoping review was undertaken in August-November 2022, to synthesise the literature describing the impact of FPG on local food systems within highincome countries. A total of 355 peer-reviewed and grey literature sources were imported into Covidence for screening;31 duplicates were removed, 324 sources were screened, 146 full-text sources assessed for eligibility. Thirty-one sources with evaluation evidence demonstrating their impact were extracted. FPG focused on increasing food system equity, such as distributing culturally appropriate food;increased access to healthy food, such as successfully advocating for food objectives to be written into local food system plans;supporting food system resiliency, such as achieving local food procurement in schools. The international evidence suggests FPG are impactful across several food system aspects. Future research will examine whether FPG could be an effective mechanism for local food system change in Australia.

Smart Contract to Traceability of Food Social Selling

Traditionally, food sustainability has been considered solely in the stage of agricultural production. However, globalization, the expansion of the food production industry, and the emergence of supermarket chains that control the retail food market require specific significant changes in supply chains in the food sector and, therefore, we need to address the economic, social, and environmental impacts of these events. On the other hand, social selling has increased rapidly in recent years, with a further boom, following current events related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This explosion of social sales, where there are usually no control and regulation entities, can bring problems associated with mishandling items. In this paper, we expose how Blockchain technology supports the traceability of social sales by validating the data provided by the chain participants such as digital health passports, production and transport data in the sale process;the proposed solution generates recommendations on productmanagement considering the agreements previously made by the network actors. To evaluate the proposed smart contracts, we useHyperledger Caliper, obtaining an average throughput of 12.6 transactions per second and an average latency of 0.3 s for the asset update process. We also use a study case to evaluate the proposed project platform's selling-transport stage using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. © 2023 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.

A FIVE-YEAR SUMMARY OF THE MMM CAMPAIGN IN NEPAL

Objective: To share the implementing experience of the May Measure (MMM) campaign in Nepal. Design and Methods: Nepal has been a part of the MMM initiative since its inception. NeDS Nepal, a not-fort profit NGO was responsible for the overall coordination of the campaign. We trained and mobilized community health workers and health science students as volunteers. Although MMM was not executed globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it was conducted in Nepal by following safety measures. Results: The volunteers set up screening sites in supermarkets, temples, colleges, grocery stores, primary health care clinics, banks, government offices, and meeting halls. Some of the volunteers also did house-to-house visits. Between 2017-2021, we screened over 130,000 participants. We identified > 30,000 high blood pressure participants, provided lifestyle counseling, and referred them to the health facility for further diagnosis and treatment. Out of them, ∼18000 were newly identified hypertension. Conclusions: Opportunistic screening like MMM is feasible and needed in the context of Nepal. This could potentially be embedded in the national screening program. It is also important to have a strategy for linking the patients with the health system for further diagnosis and treatment.

Exploring customer concerns on service quality under the COVID-19 crisis: A social media analytics study from the retail industry

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a set of government policies and supermarket regulations, which affects customers' grocery shopping behaviours. However, the specific impact of COVID-19 on retailers at the customer end has not yet been addressed. Using text-mining techniques (i.e., sentiment analysis, topic modelling) and time series analysis, we analyse 161,921 tweets from leading UK supermarkets during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The results show the causes of sentiment change in each time series and how customer perception changes according to supermarkets' response actions. Drawing on the social media crisis communication framework and Situational Crisis Communication theory, this study investigates whether responding to a crisis helps retail managers better understand their customers. The results uncover that customers experiencing certain social media interactions may evaluate attributes differently, resulting in varying levels of customer information collection, and grocery companies could benefit from engaging in social media crisis communication with customers. As new variants of COVID-19 keep appearing, emerging managerial problems put businesses at risk for the next crisis. Based on the results of text-mining analysis of consumer perceptions, this study identifies emerging topics in the UK grocery sector in the context of COVID-19 crisis communication and develop the sub-dimensions of service quality assessment into four categories: physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, and policies. This study reveals how supermarkets could use social media data to better analyse customer behaviour during a pandemic and sustain competitiveness by upgrading their crisis strategies and service provision. It also sheds light on how future researchers can leverage the power of social media data with multiple text-mining methodologies. © 2022 The Authors

Presence of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces and materials in supermarket social areas in Türkiye

The aim of this study was to monitor the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that cause the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), particularly on certain foods and surfaces that come in contact with food in district supermarkets in Ankara, Türkiye, where the highest number of COVID-19 cases was reported based on data from the Ministry of Health. For this purpose, a total of 172 samples were taken from 5 supermarkets in 4 districts in Ankara. RNA was extracted from the samples and RdRp gene-targeting reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assays were used to determine the presence of SARS-CoV-2. The results showed that all the supermarket samples collected during the period when there was a high number of COVID-19 cases in the district did not have SARS-CoV-2 except for one sample that was taken from a supermarket where COVID-19 had been detected among the staff. In this supermarket, COVID-19 RNA was detected with a high number of copies of 5 000, using Real-Time RT-PCR assay in pooled swab samples taken from salt shakers, pepper shakers, red pepper shakers, and vinegar and oil bottles in the social area that the staff used for lunchbreaks and other breaks. This finding shows that it is of great importance for public health agencies to monitor COVID-19 cases in food businesses in regions with a high number of cases and to take samples from these businesses at certain intervals, as a form of "early warning system.”. © 2023, Ankara University. All rights reserved.

Presence of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces and materials in supermarket social areas in Turkiye

The aim of this study was to monitor the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that cause the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), particularly on certain foods and surfaces that come in contact with food in district supermarkets in Ankara, Turkiye, where the highest number of COVID-19 cases was reported based on data from the Ministry of Health. For this purpose, a total of 172 samples were taken from 5 supermarkets in 4 districts in Ankara. RNA was extracted from the samples and RdRp gene-targeting reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assays were used to determine the presence of SARS-CoV-2. The results showed that all the supermarket samples collected during the period when there was a high number of COVID-19 cases in the district did not have SARS-CoV-2 except for one sample that was taken from a supermarket where COVID-19 had been detected among the staff. In this supermarket, COVID-19 RNA was detected with a high number of copies of 5 000, using Real-Time RT-PCR assay in pooled swab samples taken from salt shakers, pepper shakers, red pepper shakers, and vinegar and oil bottles in the social area that the staff used for lunchbreaks and other breaks. This finding shows that it is of great importance for public health agencies to monitor COVID-19 cases in food businesses in regions with a high number of cases and to take samples from these businesses at certain intervals, as a form of "early warning system.". Copyright © 2023, Ankara University. All rights reserved.

Supply forecasting and profiling of urban supermarket chains based on tensor quantization exponential regression for social governance.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the accurate forecasting and profiling of the supply of fresh commodities in urban supermarket chains may help the city government make better economic decisions, support activities of daily living, and optimize transportation to support social governance. In urban supermarket chains, the large variety of fresh commodities and the short shelf life of fresh commodities lead to the poor performance of the traditional fresh commodity supply forecasting algorithm. Methods: Unlike the classic method of forecasting a single type of fresh commodity, we proposed a third-order exponential regression algorithm incorporating the block Hankle tensor. First, a multi-way delay embedding transform was used to fuse multiple fresh commodities sales to a Hankle tensor, for aggregating the correlation and mutual information of the whole category of fresh commodities. Second, high-order orthogonal iterations were performed for tensor decomposition, which effectively extracted the high-dimensional features of multiple related fresh commodities sales time series. Finally, a tensor quantization third-order exponential regression algorithm was employed to simultaneously predict the sales of multiple correlated fresh produce items. Results: The experiment result showed that the provided tensor quantization exponential regression method reduced the normalized root mean square error by 24% and the symmetric mean absolute percentage error by 22%, compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.

Retail sales forecasting for a Brazilian supermarket chain: An empirical assessment

Time series forecasting is a consolidated, broadly used approach in several fields, such as finance and industry. Retail can also benefit from forecasting in many areas such as stock demand, price optimization, and sales. This study addresses retail sales forecasting in Nordestão, a large Brazilian supermarket chain that respectively ranks 3rd and 27th in sales regionally and nationally. The data considered spans five years of daily transactions from eight different stores. Knowingly effective machine learning techniques for forecasting are adopted, namely linear regression, random forests, and XGBoost. We further improve their performance with features we engineer to address seasonal effects. The best algorithm varies per store, but for most stores at least one of the methods proves effective. Importantly, the models display effective performance across multiple testing weeks, and improve over the current approach of Nordestão by a significant margin. Besides the traditional relevance of sales forecasting, our work is a means for Nordestão to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemics on sales. © 2022 IEEE.

Supermarket top-up of Healthy Start vouchers effectively increases fruit and vegetable purchases in low-income households

This was presented as the Food Systems Theme highlight. Diet related inequalities in the UK food system have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with low-income families experiencing more food insecurity(1) and purchasing less fruit and vegetables(2). To improve access to affordable and nutritious foods, UK supermarkets voluntarily increased weekly 4.25 Healthy Start voucher (HSV) amounts. Notably, one supermarket provided an additional 2 top- up voucher, redeemable against fruit and vegetables (FV) from 15th February - 31st August 2021. Investigating supermarket loyalty card transaction records, this study aimed to assess how increased HSV value affected FV purchases. Loyalty card transaction and redemption records from 150 opted in regular shoppers living in the Yorkshire and the Humber region and engaging in the HSV scheme were analysed. 133 of these shoppers' records were assessed from two equivalent time periods to the scheme in 2019 and 2020 and were analysed using a pre-post study design. The vouchers could be used on four different FV categories, plain fresh and prepared fruit and vegetables, and plain frozen, canned and packaged fruit and vegetables, according to internal definitions. The purchasing patterns of other FV were also analysed. Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank tests were used to compare purchasing behaviour within the scheme period at a basket level, and against pre-scheme periods ata household level. A Spearman's Rho test was used to assess the association between behaviour and level of deprivation around stores. Examining 21,707 transactions from 133 households for 20 months before and during the scheme, showed that 0.8 more portions of FV per day per household were purchased during the scheme period compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic) baseline (2.6 in 2019 to 3.4 in 2021;P = 0.0017). The percentage of total FV weights within total food and drink baskets also increased by 1.6% (P = 0.0242), although the percentage of total FV spend did not change. Within the scheme period, 0.4% (P = 0.0012) and 1.6% (P = 0.0062) more FV was purchased according to price and weight respectively in top-up redeeming baskets compared to baskets with at least one FV item. This finding was associated with 5.5 more FV portions in top-up redeeming baskets during the scheme period (P < 0.0001). There was a higher proportion of top-up redeeming baskets in stores located in more deprived areas (r = -0.3288, P = 0.0373).In conclusion, this study provides novel data into how low-income households shop and how an increased HSV amount is associated with FV purchases. The data show that low-income families purchased more FV when supplied with an additional 2 to their HSV and provides evidence for a benefit to increasing support given to low-income families.

Knowledge and Practices of Parents Regarding Safe Handling and Disposal of Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizers and Surface Disinfectants in Urban Sri Lanka

Aims Hand sanitizers are increasingly used in most households since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, improper use and accidental and deliberate ingestion of sanitizer solutions have been associated with numerous health risks to children. This study aimed to assess knowledge and practices regarding safe handling and disposal of alcohol-based hand sanitizers and surface disinfectants among a cohort of parents in urban Sri Lanka. Methods This observational cross-sectional study was performed including parents of children admitted to North Colombo Teaching Hospital for a period of six months from August 2021. Data were collected regarding parental knowledge regarding safe handling and disposal of hand sanitizers, and their health hazards by paediatric post-graduate trainees. Data were collected using a pre-tested interviewer administered questionnaire. All data were analysed using SPSS 17.0. Results Out of 153 children recruited to the study, the mean age was 5.3 years (range: 1 month - 14 years) and male children (92, 60.1%) outnumbered female children (61, 39.9%). The majority of mothers (126, 82.4%) and fathers (133, 86.9%) had received education at least up to secondary school. 124 parents (81%) had been using hand sanitizers at home regularly. Only 113(73.9%) parents believed that preschool children were the most vulnerable for accidental ingestion of sanitizers and 40 parents (26.1%) were unaware that sanitizer solutions can be accidentally inhaled by toddlers. Knowledge was poor regarding occurrence of potential symptoms and side effects such as sore throat (56, 36.6%), irritation of eyes (30, 19.6%), breathing difficulties (40, 26.1%), high heart rate (72, 47%), aspiration (43, 28.1%) and low blood sugar (108, 70.5%). Only 132 parents (86.2%) knew how to clean and disinfect their home premises safely and 29 parents (18.9%) didn't know how to store cleaning products safely. Sixty-four parents (41.8%) were unaware regarding how to get information on safe cleaning practices. Forty-two parents (27.4%) kept sanitizer bottles within easy access to children whilst 85 parents (55.5%) had been storing sanitizers in unlabeled bottles. Ninety-eight parents (64%) were not keen to read the signage alerts in sanitizer storage bottles. Only 25 parents (16.3%) safely disposed sanitizer bottles. Thirty-three parents (21.6%) put sanitizer bottles together with food items in carriage bags from super markets. Conclusion The findings of this study inform that knowledge in parents regarding safe use of sanitizers can further be improved specially, in areas of local and systemic effects of sanitizer poisoning and information resources of safe cleaning practices. As a number of parents use and dispose hand sanitizers unsafely, the effectiveness of awareness programs to improve safety practices among parents should be evaluated.

Exploring customer concerns on service quality under the COVID-19 crisis: A social media analytics study from the retail industry

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a set of government policies and supermarket regulations, which affects customers' grocery shopping behaviours. However, the specific impact of COVID-19 on retailers at the customer end has not yet been addressed. Using text-mining techniques (i.e., sentiment analysis, topic modelling) and time series analysis, we analyse 161,921 tweets from leading UK supermarkets during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The results show the causes of sentiment change in each time series and how customer perception changes according to supermarkets’ response actions. Drawing on the social media crisis communication framework and Situational Crisis Communication theory, this study investigates whether responding to a crisis helps retail managers better understand their customers. The results uncover that customers experiencing certain social media interactions may evaluate attributes differently, resulting in varying levels of customer information collection, and grocery companies could benefit from engaging in social media crisis communication with customers. As new variants of COVID-19 keep appearing, emerging managerial problems put businesses at risk for the next crisis. Based on the results of text-mining analysis of consumer perceptions, this study identifies emerging topics in the UK grocery sector in the context of COVID-19 crisis communication and develop the sub-dimensions of service quality assessment into four categories: physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, and policies. This study reveals how supermarkets could use social media data to better analyse customer behaviour during a pandemic and sustain competitiveness by upgrading their crisis strategies and service provision. It also sheds light on how future researchers can leverage the power of social media data with multiple text-mining methodologies.

How emotions from content social relevance mediate social media engagement: evidence from European supermarkets during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of consumer engagement with supermarkets' social media accounts. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and social sharing of emotions theory, the authors test if the content posted on the social media brand pages of supermarkets dealing with a topic of high social relevance, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, stimulates social media consumer engagement and if and how the engagement is mediated by the arousal of positive and negative emotions. Design/methodology/approach The authors retrieved data from the Facebook accounts of the top 20 European supermarkets identified in the Deloitte 2020 Global Powers of Retailing report during the first wave of the pandemic from 1 March to 30 June 2020, collecting a sample of 2,524 posts from 8 different countries. After a content analysis to classify COVID-19 content, the authors applied the Baron and Kenny (1986) methodology to verify the hypothesised relationships. Findings The findings highlight a positive direct relationship between the social relevance of a topic (COVID-19) and social media consumer engagement mediated by the arousal of positive and negative emotions. Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the earliest empirical research using Facebook data to investigate the role of the social relevance of content as an antecedent of social media consumer engagement with a specific focus on supermarkets. The paper contributes to the stream of social media literature investigating the antecedents of social media engagement behaviour, exploring the role of topics' choice and aroused emotions, which to date are both under-investigated.

The Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Food Sector and on Supermarket Employees in France during the First Lockdown Period.

During the first lockdown period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from the 17 March 2020 to the 11 May 2020 in France, essential professionals (nursing staff, police officers, supermarket staff, etc.) continued to be physically present at their workplaces. The present study focuses on exploring impacts of the pandemic on supermarket staff and on the food sector in France: COVID transmission among supermarket workers, working conditions, food supply, etc. For that, two anonymous surveys were addressed to supermarket employees and to supermarket supervisors. In total, 1746 responses from employees and 171 responses from supervisors were recorded all over France. Over 70% of employees and almost 50% of supervisors were women and over 50% of employees were between 25 and 40 years old. The following main trends in terms of physical and psychological impacts are revealed: 7% of employees working during the lockdown reported having COVID, although a still poorly developed screening and lack of diagnostic tests during the first lockdown should be kept in mind. The working conditions changed; higher work load, a more stressful environment, inappropriate client attitude, a lack of recognition, fatigue, and shortages were reported. A lack of government recognition, namely no prime allocations to supermarket staff during the lockdown period, is also often mentioned. Finally, no priority was given for store employees in terms of childcare.

Smart technologies in supermarket retail and their influence on citizens' quality of life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose - This research aims to propose the development of a model that identifies, in essential services, the determining factors affecting the technological advances offered by different smart technologies in supermarket retail channels that influence citizens' quality of life, amidst the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Design/methodology/approach - The data were collected using a cross-sectional questionnaire survey (n = 469). The authors applied the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to test the hypotheses, along with the partial least squares (PLS) method for estimating latent variables and combining with the necessary condition analysis (NCA) method. Findings - According to the results of the NCA method, the results were adequate, and more attention should be paid to the quality of life construct after finding the bottleneck point of 50%. In this sense, adaptive resilience was characterized as the main necessary predictor construct for quality of life. In addition, Generation Z and Millennials have the highest frequency of use in all smart technologies, with "assisted purchase" being the most widely used. Social implications - Finally, the effect of the pandemic changed the consumption routine with supermarkets, not being a mere option but a necessity in the context of a smart city. Originality/value - As a result, the proposed model was consistent, showing that all direct and indirect SEM paths were validated, highlighting data security and privacy and resilience issues. In addition, the NCA method complemented the procedures performed in the SEM phase.