Search

This article investigates the factors influencing food product purchases by young Polish consumers aged 18–25 – a group important for the development of the economy. In the process of deciding to purchase specific food products, consumers pay attention to various economic and non-economic factors, including marketing. We carried out survey in October/November 2020 using the CAWI method (Google Forms) to test the importance of 17 factors on young Polish consumers’ food purchases, applying factor analysis and cluster analysis to the resulting data. The results reveal that price and product expiration date are young Polish consumers’ primary concerns when purchasing food products. The study also found that environmental sustainability attributes, although less critical than price or product quality, are increasingly influencing young Polish consumers' purchasing decisions.

The concern for the condition of the natural environment requires taking a new approach towards consumption and meeting consumer needs (Bocking 2009). Despite many initiatives related to the paradigm of sustainable development and the concept of sustainable consumption, the situation is still far from a general departure from mass consumption and consumerism. The article aims to try to synthetically organise the views of other authors on the challenges of greening consumption, both for enterprises and consumers in the context of social responsibility. Competences play an important role in this process. The greening of consumption has not yet been widely propagated in societies, including also Polish society. One of the crucial elements of greening consumption is the purchase of ecological/organic food products. To learn about the behaviour of Poles towards the issue discussed in this article, the authors conducted a study on a representative sample of Poles (N = 1,000) during Nov. 15–27, 2021, using the Computer Assisted Web Interview (CAWI) technique (which is an online surveying technique that fits into the quantitative methodology of market and opinion research) and online panels as part of the omnibus study. The survey shows that only 7.1% of the respondents have never purchased ecological/organic food products. Among buyers, 21.8% do it rarely/sporadically, 40.1% occasionally/sometimes, 20.2% often/try to choose ecological products when shopping and 10.8% do it very often or always. Among the respondents, 55.3% declared that ecological/organic products are expensive but still worth the price due to the health benefits they bring. Noticing the advantages of these products, 63.7% of respondents would like to buy more of them. In view of the results obtained, it can be said that it is necessary to disseminate the main greening consumption ideas that are apparent from this study, and this can be done through education, building consumer competences or visualising the effects of the continuation of current consumption habits. The problem of protecting the natural environment, discussed in numerous documents issued by governments and international organisations and in scientific publications, cannot remain unnoticed. Greening consumption is a challenge for companies whose production should be rational in using non-renewable natural resources, reducing or eliminating toxic waste, using recyclable packaging and introducing ‘clean production’ principles aimed at obtaining consumer products using more cost-effective and healthier methods. It is also a challenge for consumers, who should replace perishable goods with products with a longer life cycle, consume goods and services more sparingly and cease to accept planned obsolescence of products or unethical behaviour of enterprises towards their employees.

This article proposes to consider the education system as a factor in the formation of people’s personal values. We examine students’ perceptions of the degree to which existing educational standards are oriented towards the formation and development of personal values, as well as formulate proposals for the implementation of a systems approach to the development of educational standards as a factor in improving the existing complex of personal values. The methodology applied included: desk analysis by comparison, deduction, and induction; a questionnaire study; variance, discriminant, factor and morphological analysis. Respondents were segmented according to the criteria “presence of groups of values” — “conjugation of groups of values with variables.” University students, i.e., the part of society that is considered the most active and progressive, were found to have a low level of moral and ethical values. After considering the place of education in the macro-environment of the country was substantiated, we propose a number of measures to address the problem of raising the level of values among all participants in the educational process, in order to reduce the gap between the pace of technical advancement and humanitarian development of society.

This study — carried out in May 2020, early on during the COVID-19 pandemic - examines the situation in the Polish e-education market, as perceived by secondary school and university students who consume e-education services and by the providers of such services. Firstly, to set the stage, in-depth interviews were carried out with eight owners of companies offering commercial e-education services. Next, an extensive online survey was carried out among secondary school and university students in the 2019–2020 school/academic year using the CAWI method on a sample of 803 respondents — with secondary school students (group I) accounting for 30% of the sample and university students (group II) making up the remaining 70% — concerning their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with e-education services. Taken together, the findings allow for an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning and point to the increased demand for e-education services during the pandemic, in tandem with a continually shifting e-education services market.

This paper aims to discuss the place of environmental right in the system of the 1950 European Convention – a fundamental Council of Europe treaty on protection of human rights. Interestingly, it does not explicitly guarantee the environmental right, it needs to be determined; therefore, if individuals can cite violations of this right in their complaints to the European Court of Human Rights – the authority guarding obedience to the European Convention. Analysis of the Strasbourg decisions implies the environmental right can be applied to highly diverse situations. In practice, complainants cite its infringements in connection with violations of the right to private and family life as incorporated in Article 8 of the European Convention. This does not mean, however, every time a complainant cites Article 8 of the European Convention to accuse a state of breaching their environmental rights, the European Court is going to accept such a charge.

The paper contains considerations on the issue of sustainable consumption whose stimulator may be consumer competences. The problem can be examined in the cognitive, emotional and behavioural dimensions. Besides the theoretical approach, the authors have presented findings of the research carried out for the purposes of the project “Consumer Competences as a Stimulant of Innovative Behaviours and Sustainable Consumption” (2011/03/B/HS4/04417) financed from resources provided by the National Science Centre. The research involved a research sample of 1,000 Poles meeting specific criteria established by the authors. The obtained empirical material allowed for the construction of the consumer competence index which took into account the following variables: Knowledge of the consumer’s rights and ways of use thereof (Knowledge), Planning measured with the following variables (Planning), Making rational consumption choices measured with the following variables (Rationality), Autonomy of choices measured with the following variables (Sovereignty). Three groups of consumers were singled out and characterised in the study, namely: highly competent consumers, consumers with a medium level of competences, and consumers with low competences.

The natural environment, as a source of natural resources, has long been perceived as being a factor in determining the development of many states and regions, especially less developed areas. The main research question in this article is what role is played by natural resources and traditional industry sectors based on natural resources (milk production and tourism), in the process of establishing a competitive advantage for Podlaskie Voivodeship, which is one of the less developed regions in Poland. The results of the research reveal weaknesses that are inherent in earlier ways of thinking about these industries and, at the same time, emphasise the importance of making use of natural resources in an integrated way and combining them with new technologies.

In the discussion of regional development factors in recent years, more and more importance has been attributed to territory, locality, site specificity and endogenous resources, as evidenced on theoretical grounds by the concept of territorial capital (Camagni 2008) and regional, place-based policy. This article aims to identify the elements of territorial capital that play a key role in the process of changing the development path of an underdeveloped region - Podkarpackie - as well as ascertaining what consequences territorial capital has for development planning within regional policy. The research highlights the importance of the immobile and intangible development factors - a high level of social capital, extensive networks and the ability to cooperate - which have helped to eliminate the limitations resulting from the weakness of other factors (especially material factors, such as private capital and low GDP).

All lindens provide Apidae insects with nectar, pollen, and honeydew. Lindens are important melliferous trees in Poland. The first purpose of the study was to carry out phenological observations of the flowering in ten linden taxa. The second aim was to analyse the content of linden pollen grains in the air of Lublin. A correlation between the parameters of the pollen season and meteorological factors was also determined. This study was conducted in the city of Lublin located in the central-eastern part of Poland. The flowering phenophases were analysed, using the method developed by Łukasiewicz, during the growing seasons of 2012-2015. Aerobiological monitoring, which was based on the volumetric method, was carried out over the 2001-2014 time period. As shown in the study, the flowering period of all the analysed linden taxa lasted 7 weeks, on average, from June 7 to July 24. The average length of the flowering period of the investigated taxa and hybrids was in the range of 12-17 days. Their flowering periods overlapped. The atmospheric pollen season lasted, on average, from mid-June to the second 10-day period of July. The highest concentration of airborne pollen was noted at the end of June. The pollen season pattern was significantly affected by temperature and relative air humidity as well as by rainfall in May and June. The investigations indicate a 9-day acceleration of the pollen season, which may be associated with global warming.

The decorative value of 24 fescue (Festuca trachyphylla) ecotypes from natural habitats in the Lublin region was assessed in the years 2004-2011. Plants with desirable ornamental characteristics were selected and the cuttings were planted in experimental plots in the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Botanical Garden in Lublin, where they grew in uniform habitat conditions. During the study years, 18 morphological traits that determine the decorative value of grasses were analysed; 11 quantitative traits (length and number of the culm, length of the panicle, number of spikelets in the panicle, number of vegetative stems, length, width and thickness of the leaf blade, length and width of the cauline leaf and diameter of the tuft) and seven qualitative traits (plant growth habit, greenness index of the leaf blade [SPAD], winter greenness, culm colour, waxy coating on the leaf blade, flowering periods and plant condition after 8 years). The analysis of quantitative and qualitative traits demonstrated that F. trachyphylla is a morphologically variable species. The variability is mainly manifested in the inflorescence morphology, length of the leaf blades and number of culms, which have been statistically corroborated by the results of the ANOVA analysis. A considerable degree of variability was also exhibited by plant habit, colour of leaves and culm, wax deposits on the leaves and flowering period. The high morphological variability of this species allowed for the selection of two interesting types among the plant individuals studied, which were characterised by desirable decorative traits. The most decorative features of the selected ecotypes include the shape and colour of the leaves and the plant habit.