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It is common wisdom that the diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) in cultural institutions can influence their mission and activities, reshaping their role as producers and distributors of cultural content. Nevertheless, the extent of ICT facilities in European museums has been rather scarce, although recently it has grown faster in response to the new challenges brought up by the COVID-19 crisis. This paper aims at exploring the drivers of the ICT strategy adopted by museums and similar institutions (in terms of both in situ and online services), considering not only supply-side but also demand-side characteristics. To the best of our knowledge, such an issue has not been investigated so far in a systematic way. We use a novel dataset based on three waves (2011, 2015, 2018) of a census survey carried out by the Italian National Statistical Office on all the cultural institutes spread over the Italian territory. Results show that supply-side, demand-side and contextual factors are significantly associated with the use of ICT by museums and similar institutions. Interestingly, we find that the relationship between demand features and museums' digital strategy is closely related to the type of services and to the presence of financial incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the net social benefits deriving from the medium-scale production of geopolymers based on volcanic ash compared to traditional cementitious materials used in construction and restoration sectors. In contrast to the existing literature grounded on the physical and mechanical characterization of geopolymers, our analysis considers two aspects: public finance savings from avoiding the disposal of volcanic ash in landfills and environmental benefits deriving from reduction in CO2 releases due to the production process at room temperature. Our case study focuses on the reuse of natural waste, namely the volcanic ash of the Mt. Etna volcano (Italy), whose disposal involves significant costs for society. Its use in the alkaline activation process avoids the exploitation of natural resources. Considering the huge amount of volcanic ash from Mt. Etna that falls on the urban areas of Eastern Sicily, the results show relevant economic benefits, in terms of both avoided costs and tax reductions for the citizens. Alongside these, significant environmental benefits are evidenced thanks to the release of up to 78% lower CO2 emissions by synthesised materials with volcanic ash than by traditional cementitious ones. Overall, the social cost savings compared to traditional materials is 0.339 EUR/kg for geopolymer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently increasing public pressure to contain costs in the health care sector has led many national governments to introduce some type of prospective payment system and reduce the scope of global budgeting. This study investigates the extent to which the reimbursement systems of the Italian hospital sector have an impact on hospitals’ technical efficiency. Because of high variation in the financing and provision of health care services among regions and hospitals, Italy represents an interesting case study to test these effects. A two-stage data envelopment analysis was employed, in which the efficiency scores of all Italian hospitals were first calculated and then regressed on different environmental variables to capture the role of reimbursement systems. The results found a significant impact of the use of diagnostic-related group-based prospective payment systems on hospitals’ efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]