Are Citizens Ready to Make an Environmental Effort? A Study of the Social Acceptability of Biogas in France.

Despite the potential benefits of anaerobic digestion in the context of climate change and the need to move towards energy transition, there is a lot of resistance to biogas projects. Using a contingent valuation method, we test the extent to which the socio-economic characteristics of populations influence the environmental effort that people are willing to make for the deployment of biogas in a French region. Our results show that young people and people familiar with the biogas process are more inclined to develop biogas. We also highlight that the educational and location aspects should not be neglected in order to increase environmental effort and promote the adoption and development of biogas.

Economic globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic: global spread and inequalities.

In just a few weeks, COVID-19 has become a global crisis and there is no longer any question of it being a major pandemic. The spread of the disease and the speed of transmission need to be squared with the forms and characteristics of economic globalization, disparities in development between the world's different regions and the highly divergent degree of their interconnectedness. Combining a geographic approach based on mapping the global spread of the virus with the collection of data and socio-economic variables, we drew up an OLS model to identify the impact of certain socio-economic factors on the number of cases observed worldwide. Globalization and the geography of economic relations were the main drivers of the spatial structuring and speed of the international spread of the COVID-19.

Spatio-temporal evolution of the COVID-19 across African countries.

The aim of this study is to make a comparative study on the reproduction number R 0 computed at the beginning of each wave for African countries and to understand the reasons for the disparities between them. The study covers the two first years of the COVID-19 pandemic and for 30 African countries. It links pandemic variables, reproduction number R 0, demographic variable, median age of the population, economic variables, GDP and CHE per capita, and climatic variables, mean temperature at the beginning of each waves. The results show that the diffusion of COVID-19 in Africa was heterogeneous even between geographical proximal countries. The difference of the basic reproduction number R 0 values is very large between countries and is significantly correlated with economic and climatic variables GDP and temperature and to a less extent with the mean age of the population.

Digital entrepreneurship indicator (DEI): an analysis of the case of the greater Paris metropolitan area.

The digital entrepreneurship indicator (DEI), which combines individual and institutional data, is designed to chart the vitality of metropolitan areas in terms of digital entrepreneurship on a suburban scale. In this study, we apply it to the case of the Greater Paris Metropolitan area. Using geographically weighted regression, we explore the spatial heterogeneity of the effect of digital entrepreneurial ecosystems on the location quotient of information and communication technology firms with fewer than 10 employees. The results highlight a positive link between the DEI and the location quotient of small ICT firms. In particular, the aspects of both ATTitudes and CAPacities (i.e., urbanization economies, Human Development Index, density of incubators, accounting and financial services, and fiber optic coverage) appear to have a significant effect on a suburban scale.

The role of a local authority as a stakeholder encouraging the development of biogas: A study on territorial intermediation.

In a context where anaerobic digestion is a controversial subject, it is not surprising to see that between 20% and 30% of anaerobic digestion projects are abandoned, mainly for reasons of local opposition, problems of coordination between stakeholders and the implementation of real territorial governance capable of facing the challenges encountered during the setting up of the project. We can consequently question the role that local territorial authorities could play to encourage the development of biogas in France. We used semi-structured interviews conducted with anaerobic digestion stakeholders to identify the main functions of territorial intermediation (and their specific elements) that local authorities could have to encourage the deployment and success of these projects. Local authorities play the role of intermediation by (i) ensuring spatial and cognitive proximities between actors, (ii) mobilizing territorial resources and favoring local anchorage (iii) installing trust among the local stakeholders and (iv) having a role of instigator by participating in the supply (inputs) of biogas plants and the purchase of the energy produced (outputs).