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Facing the rise in threats that the environment confronts, several studies were conducted regarding the possible sources of renewable energy in general and biomass energy in particular. This study raises the question of the role that biomass energy can play to reduce ecological footprint in a country rich in fossil fuel energy and on which its economy is largely dependent. The results of the NARDL method applied to the case of Saudi Arabia during the period 1984–2017 showed that the positive change in biomass energy consumption reduces the ecological footprint both in the short and long term. For a country dependent on fossil fuel energy as Saudi Arabia, fossil fuel energy and natural resource rents exert negative effects of the ecological footprint in the short term since they provide the necessary funds to finance green projects. However, natural resources rents and positive changes in fossil fuel energy consumption significantly increase ecological footprints in the long term. Urbanization has negative effects on ecological footprint both in the short and long term. The effects of GDP and GDP square on environmental degradation are negative and positive, respectively. However, the effects of these two variables on the ecological footprint are reversed in the long run. For a fossil fuel energy–dependent economy as Saudi Arabia, the biomass energy and the demographic dimension linked to urbanization are important levers for the transition to sustainable development, both in the short and in the long term.

The environmental challenges are currently placed at the forefront in order to achieve sustainable development. Although existing studies have largely examined the underlying factors of the environmental sustainability, the institutional quality and the role of ICTs still insufficiently investigated. The aim of this paper is to clarify the role played by institutional quality and information and communication technologies (ICTs) to mitigate environmental degradation at different scales of the ecological gap. The results of panel quantile regression applied to fourteen selected Middle East and CIS countries from 1984 to 2017 reveal that the rule of law in countries with high ecological gap and the control of corruption in countries with medium and high ecological gaps reinforce the effects of renewable energy in reducing environmental degradation. In addition, our findings show that the positive effects of renewable energy on environmental degradation are supported by the Internet use and the mobile use in countries with medium and high ecological gaps. In the case of selected countries, the rule of law, control of corruption, Internet use and mobile use are not able to decline the ecological gap. However, environmental degradation is mitigated by financial development in countries with low ecological gaps. Urbanization has perverse effects on the environment across all quantiles. The findings from this paper can serve decision-makers in terms of environmental sustainability given the globalizing and conditional approach followed.

This study aims to analyze the moderating impact of governance in the relationship between FDI and CO2 emissions for the case of Golf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and by focusing on a moderated mediation model at two stages. We will try to determine whether governance in the GCC countries as resource-abundant countries is acting between the FDI and the energy consumption or as a moderating factor of the effects of energy use on environmental degradation. In our research, we examined the conditional effects of FDI on pollution through energy consumption. The results found based on fixed and variable effects models validate the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) according to our model of the moderated mediation. The results of the first stage analysis showed that the rule of law is the most important governance mechanism for conditioning the effects of foreign direct investments on energy demand, while the findings of the second stage analysis indicated the government effectiveness is the most appropriate governance instrument to moderate the effects of energy use on pollution.

This study examines whether responsible innovation can be an important channel through which the corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy influences the competitive advantage of the firm. Specifically, we tried to test the role of firm size and activity sector as conditional factors in the mediation of responsible innovation between CSR strategy and the competitive advantage for the case of Saudi Arabia enterprises. Based on structural equation modelling (SEM), our results show that responsible innovation is a key element of the sustainable business model since it determines the success of CSR strategy in boosting the competitive advantage of firms. In this model, the mediation of responsible innovation is moderated differently by the firm size and the activity sector, and it is dependent on the choice between strategic or reactive CSR strategy. Within this context, we also find that the indirect effects of the CSR strategy on competitive advantage are moderated by the firm size in the case of reactive CSR, whereas by the activity sector in case of strategic CSR. The originality of this paper is that it examines whether the competitive advantage of firms in a developing country is more dependent on the reactive CSR strategy or the strategic CSR strategy. It also proposes an empirical investigation into the conditional factors of responsible innovation and their effects on the relationship between CSR strategy and competitive advantage.

This study investigates the driving factors of the social commerce intention of online communities in Saudi Arabia by building a model that comprises two exogenous variables (social support and social commerce constructs (SCCs)), a mediating variable (trust), and one endogenous variable (social commerce intention). The study population comprises Facebook and Twitter users in the kingdom. A convenience sample of 500 social media users was chosen. Data were gathered via a questionnaire-based online survey. Our findings indicate that social support had a significant relationship with trust and social commerce intention. This relationship was significantly mediated by trust. SCCs also had a significant relationship with emotional as well as informational support and social commerce intention. Unexpectedly, the relationship between SCCs and social support dimensions was significantly mediated by trust. Consequently, it was concluded that social support, trust, and SCCs are key drivers of social commerce intention. These results invite social media retailers to consider such factors to increase social media users’ intention to purchase.

The assimilation of natural resources to a “curse” or “blessing” cannot be analysed only from the side of the impact of resource endowments on economic growth as it was advocated by most of the previous studies. This paper aims to examine whether the financial development is dependent on varying effects of natural resource rents, human capital, economic and institutional factors. For this purpose, the study applied the quantile regression estimator for a panel of 10 countries during the period 1984–2016. The results reveal that natural resources rents have negative effects on financial development in countries with better-developed financial systems, while these effects are positive for countries with high natural resource income. Law and order, and human capital act positively on financial development regardless of the level of natural resources income. Our findings showed also that control of corruption has a positive influence on financial market development in countries with a developed financial sector. In the light of our empirical analysis, it also emerges that “the resource curse” hypothesis is rejected for countries with least-developed financial markets whatever their natural resource abundance.

This article explores the asymmetric impacts of FDI for employment in an oil producing country. Its objective is to verify the nonlinearity of FDI's effects for employment and to examine the extent of significance of specific factors in efficiency-seeking, which are human capital and institutional development, in oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia. The Non-Linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) method is applied to identify asymmetric impacts from FDI for job creation during the period 1984–2015. The NARDL findings show that positive changes in FDI exert no short-run impact on employment and exert a negative longer-term impact. Moreover, the negative changes in FDI exhibit a long- and short-run negative effect on job creation. The findings also show that human capital has a positive conditioning influence on the effects of FDI on employment over the long term, as does law and order. In the short-run, there is a positive moderating role from human capital, while that of law and order is negative in the relation between employment and FDI. Our study indicates that oil rents can only promote employment over the nearer-term period, while its longer-term impact on job creation is negative.

This paper explores the factors that determine the FDI inflows in an oil abundant host country. The approach followed in our study allow us to check short- and long-run validity of the resource curse not only in terms of the abundance of resources but also in terms of their cost. Moreover, our study investigates short- and long-run policies that can serve an oil-rich country in order to benefit from resource-based FDI and move to becoming a country that is not dependent on oil resources. Results based on the ARDL approach applied to the case of Saudi Arabia during the period 1984–2017 show that the effects of oil factors, macroeconomic factors, infrastructure, and law and order differed according to the time horizon. The findings indicate that the size of markets, the real exchange rate, and law and order have positive effects on FDI, over short- and long-run periods. The results of short-run VECM modelling and long-run cointegration reveal that FDI inflows in Saudi Arabia are stimulated by a rise in the price of oil price over the short run, and openness over the longer term. Oil exports have no impact on short or long-run FDI. Consequently, inflow of FDI in an oil abundant host country is more sensitive to cost and not to the abundance of resources.

Our paper aims to analyze the role played by corporate social responsibility in boosting the responsible innovation and the competitiveness of North African small and medium-sized enterprises by focusing on the commitments toward internal and external stakeholders as well as environmental management. In our study, we used a multiple regression analysis applied to a sample of 131 SMEs from North Africa. Our results showed that the mediating effects of responsible innovation in the relationship between corporate social responsibility, environmental management and the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises are driven by the inclusion of the stakeholders in the innovation process, the anticipation of the future trends in terms of socially responsible innovation, and responsiveness to potential risks. The originality of this paper lies in the choice of the field of application of the study, which is corporate social responsibility in the case of developing countries and the attempt to formulate a sustainable development model based on responsible innovation in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises.

In the developing countries, foreign technology was largely compared to the one of the principal engines of the economic growth. However, according to the economic literature, the assimilation of this technology is far from being an automatic process. If the developing countries (or firms located in such countries) are not able to satisfy the conditions which their make it possible to learn this technology, so that they are deprived of sufficient absorptive capacity, they will face difficulties to transform these spillovers into profits of competitiveness. Initially, we will analyze within this paper the interaction between absorptive capacity of R&D spillovers and technological lag. In the second time, we will analyze the effects of the current and lagged R&D spillovers on the international competitiveness measured by exports and this, in the specific context of Tunisia.

Our paper aims to analyse the effects of the networking of the entrepreneur on the innovation capability of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). For this purpose, we examine the mediation of the knowledge management in our business model in the relationship between structural and cognitive features of networking and innovation capability. Our results show, in the specific case of 124 entrepreneurs in North African SMEs, that the networking is concretised by innovation capability in the presence of a partial mediation of the knowledge management for cognitive features, and a full mediation for structural features. The originality of research lies in the formulation of networking-based entrepreneurship model in which the reinforcement of innovation capability of SME is conditioned by knowledge management, which is facilitated by structural and cognitive features of networking.