Smart Villages: IoT Technology Based Transformation

In recent years, large-scale urbanisation has been on the rise with cities being the hubs for growth, but rural business continues to play an important role in any country’s overall development. A recent report reveals that almost 69 percent of India’s population resides in their villages, accounting for almost 50 percent of the nation’s GDP. This agricultural region varies from small towns with less than 500 residents to small towns. There are also similar situations in western nations. Despite their economic contribution, smaller villages seem to earn fewer in terms of infrastructural expenditure. The major problems addressed in these small towns include shortage of adequate public transit, emergency care and limited knowledge on federal subsidies for rural areas. Our vision is to expand the Smart city to Smart village by allowing use of recent technical advances and giving more attention to the problems in rural areas. The approach in this chapter is to bring IoT technology to Villages by literally showing a network of linked sensors and knowledge dissemination devices, controlling energy use and ensuring infrastructure protection. It gives a wide-ranging vision of enhancing the standard of living in villages and encourages them to meet the essential needs of domestic villagers.

Influence of Interpersonal and Institutional Trust on the Participation Willingness of Farmers in E-Commerce Poverty Alleviation

To explore the influence of interpersonal trust and institutional trust on the participation willingness of farmers in e-commerce poverty alleviation in China, a questionnaire survey of 320 farmers in Chongqing Ecological Tourism District was adopted for data collection, and a binary logistic model was used for data analysis. The results showed that (1) both interpersonal trust and institutional trust had a positive influence on the participation behavior of farmers in e-commerce poverty alleviation, and the priority ranking from high to low was: trust in government, trust in relatives, trust in neighbors, and trust in village cadres. (2) Institutional trust had a greater impact on the participation behavior of farmers than interpersonal trust, especially in the poverty-stricken areas where economic development was relatively backward. (3) Individual attributes, household attributes, and rural resource attributes had a significant positive impact on the participation intention of farmers. Among these, the role of rural e-business service platform was particularly important. The role of institutional trust at the village level still did not perform well in promoting the participation willingness of farmers. Based on empirical analysis, the suggestions for promoting the active cooperation of farmers and participating in the cooperation of e-business were put forward, such as enhancing the interpersonal network of farmers, improving the rural e-commerce information service platform, and strengthening the construction of the rural business environment.

Cadena de valor sustentable de la apicultura en la Ciudad de México apoyada en la innovación sociocultural

The general goal of this research is to determine the necessary criteria to design a sustainable value chain for beekeeping in Mexico City, with the support of sociocultural innovation and understood as the process of gradual change through action research in localized territories. First, the historical background of beekeeping in Mexico is presented to understand the importance of this activity in the development of cultures. Next, the materials and methods used for the development of this study are described. After that, the main results obtained in this study and their discussion are presented. Finally, the general conclusions are issued. The relevance of socio-cultural innovation is that it can be favored through beekeepers associations in cooperatives, since these are highly preferred as organization schemes, which provide a solution to most of the rural business operation challenges.

Proposal to Increase the Level of Rural Business Activity after COVID-19

Our study uses a number of fundamental provisions of modern economics to ensure business excellence of enterprises, as well as used mathematical methods based on the use of integrated indicators in the direction of: leadership of scientific and technical cooperation, strategy of scientific and technical cooperation, people of knowledge, partnership and resources that matter, processes, products and services, research results, customer results, community and society vision. The study of key trends in the innovative development of domestic agribusiness is indicating the positive and negative aspects of proposal to increase the level of rural business activity. During the study it was found that this algorithm for assessing the level of business excellence, it is advisable to use it in order to identify the current state of the enterprise by the criteria of excellence, including evaluation of competitors. These exponential equations indicate that the algorithm of predictive calculation can be used in practice due to any changes in indicators.

Defining Rural Smartness and Its Impact: A Systematic Literature Review

The utilisation of information technology to facilitate “smartness” is considered as a promising approach to improve the rural economy. However, the explanation of how the adoption of smartness in rural areas can lead to an improvement in the citizen’s economic welfare is still lacking in current studies. This paper aims to formulate a theoretical model that explains the causal mechanism of smartness adoption in rural areas to contribute to the improvement of rural citizen’s economic welfare. To achieve this, we conducted a systematic literature review based on three research questions resulting in 119 selected articles, which we used to formulate a theoretical model. The proposed model posits that rural smartness has a mediating effect on the citizen’s economic welfare through its positive impact on the competitiveness and innovativeness of rural business entities. Additionally, the proposed theoretical model highlights the necessity of adopting a smart service platform, representing the IT artefact for smartness. We argue that the adoption of such a platform would have a significant moderating effect on the competitiveness and innovativeness of rural business entities. We also contribute a comprehensive set of candidate measures we extracted from the selected literature as operationalisation of the proposed model. In terms of contribution to practice, the proposed theoretical model can be used as the starting point to guide the diffusion of smartness in rural areas.

DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL AREAS IN CONDITIONS OF DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER IN UKRAINE

The article considers measures of reorganization of the economic mechanism of territorial administration in the context of decentralization of power. It is indicated that the decentralization reform is directly related to the development and optimal use of the resource potential of rural areas. It is emphasized that one of the fundamental conditions for the independence of local governments is financial decentralization, which reflects the financial powers of regional authorities. It is stated that the process of voluntary unification of territorial communities has created the preconditions for the transformation of the territorial structure and subregional level. It is emphasized that the main alternatives to agriculture today are the spheres of construction, trade, social services, etc. It is highlighted that in the Ukrainian realities there is a significant untapped potential of inclusiveness in the form of self-organizational activity of rural territorial communities and productive activity of rural business in solving local socio-economic problems. Modern decentralization changes in the country and its regions are carried out by intensifying the self-government of territorial communities, which must clearly understand their own needs and the need to achieve balanced development of settlements, be sufficiently motivated as permanent residents and interested in economic growth and social prosperity. The leading feature of the development of rural settlements at the present stage should be inclusiveness, ie active involvement in the process of ongoing reforms of all actors, each of which is important and valuable, regardless of their level of socio-economic development and available potential. It is concluded that local communities can regulate the process of accumulation of funds, provision of appropriate services, based on short- and long-term planning. It can also be argued that decentralization should be seen as a factor that directly affects the diversification of rural development.