Environmental issues such as global warming, air pollution and ozone depletion have become global challenges. However, environmental awareness, environmental concern, environmental attitude and environmental behavior of individuals, as well as their academic background knowledge, are potential factors that may help in coping with these challenges. Here, we evaluated environmentalawareness, concern, attitude and behavior of university students across the five academic disciplines including arts & humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, biological sciences and environmental sciences. Further, we investigated how environmental- awareness, concern, and attitude influence the environmental behavior of individuals. Data was collected from 824 students of two public and two private sector universities through a self-administered questionnaire. The level of environmental awareness, environmental concern and environmental behavior of university students were found significantly high, whereas, level of environmental attitude was significantly low. Levels of environmental awareness, environmental concern and environmental behavior for all the five disciplines were found adequately high, but the level of environmental attitude was high for only two groups, i.e. physical sciences and biological sciences, and, low for three other groups. The group of biological sciences was ranked at top in all the four cases of awareness, concern, attitude and behavior. Moreover, the effects of environmental awareness and environmental concern on environmental behavior were found significantly positive, whereas the effect of environmental attitude was significantly negative.

Study examines the role of financial literacy and financial self-efficacy of individuals in explaining their behavior to have financial accounts. Study has used the questionnaire based survey and collected the data responses from 564 adults belonging to Sahiwal division. The binary logistic regression model is utilized to estimate the probability of having financial accounts in relation to individual’s financial literacy and financial self-efficacy level. Estimated results show that individual’s financially literacy level is positively related with individual’s account ownership model among the selected group. While individual’s financial self-efficacy level does not explain any positive significant impact on individual’s account ownership model. Other socio-demographic variables like gender, marital status, education, occupation, and income level are also found to have influential impact on the individuals’ account ownership behavior in Pakistan. Study recommends that financial literacy is pertinent to have equitable financial inclusion in the economy.

Bankruptcy risk is a fundamental factor affecting the financial sustainability and smooth functioning of an enterprise. The corporate bankruptcy risk‒return association is well founded in the literature. However, there is a dearth of empirical research on how this association prevails at different stages of the corporate life cycle. The present study aims to investigate the bankruptcy‒risk relationship at different stages of corporate life cycle by employing Hierarchical Linear Mixed Model (HLMM) regression estimation on the data of listed non-financial Pakistani firms from 12 diverse industrial segments. We grouped the firms into introduction, growth, mature, shake-out, and decline stages of the life cycle using Dickinson’s model. Empirical results assert that corporate risk-taking at the introduction stage yields superior financial performance in the future, while risk at the growth stage positively contributes to a firm’s current performance. Moreover, because of risk-averse and non-diversified managerial behavior, bankruptcy risk at the mature stage is negatively associated with both current and future performance. Likewise, risk-taking at the decline stage has significant negative implications for firm performance as the managers of such firms undertake heavy investments in a turnaround attempt; however, owing to the risk-averse behavior, they may indulge in negative net present value (NPV) projects. The study findings imply that managers synchronize a firm’s risk exposure with the corresponding life cycle stage to avoid going bankrupt. Moreover, excessive risk-taking during the mature and decline stages can considerably harm the financial sustainability of an enterprise. Hence, investors should exercise a degree of caution when investing in highly indebted later-stage (mature and decline) firms. Overall, bankruptcy risk‒return resembles an inverted U-shaped relationship. Our results are robust and can apply to various econometric specifications.

Purpose: This study analyses the organizational consequences of work–family conflict (WFC) among female nurses in health care sector. Moreover, this study focuses on the moderating effect of intrinsic motivation on the association between WFC dimensions with different organizational outcomes.Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected from 347 female nurses working in health care sector at Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Multan and Bahawalpur regions of Pakistan, using random sampling technique. Regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses of this study.Findings: The findings demonstrate that WFC conflict lowers job satisfaction, affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour. Contrary, WFC reduces job satisfaction, affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour and increases turnover intentions among female nurses. Moreover, intrinsic motivation moderates the association between WFC and certain organizational outcomes.Originality/value: The study offers valuable insights for female nurses at health care sector about WFC and finally leads to theoretical contributions and practical implications for the healthcare sector of Pakistan.

To improve the teaching-learning processes, the Government of Pakistan and UNESCO developed professional standards for teachers to standardise student assessments based on assessment types, use of assessment results, measurement theories, and assessment-related issues. Most tools developed for measuring teachers’ knowledge of student assessment do not cover these aspects. Therefore, this study aims to develop and validate an MCQ test for quantifying teachers’ knowledge of these aspects. A test consisting of 34 components was designed and administered to 1624 elementary school teachers. The test’s validity and reliability were measured using a difficulty index, a discrimination index, distractor efficiency, and the Kuder and Richardson Formula 20 ( ${\rho }_{KR20}$). Per the results, 31 items were found to be appropriate, three items rated poorly on the discrimination index, and, of these, two were rated too difficult according to the difficulty index. The estimated value of ${\rho }_{KR20}$ was 0.75, indicating appropriate reliability of the test.

A response surface design from one of the classes available in the literature can be a natural choice for many experimenters. Augmented Pairs designs were constructed for modeling second order response surfaces and shown to have several desirable properties. Here, Augmented Pairs designs for 3–6 factors are compared with designs of the same size selected from the class of Subset Designs. Designs are compared on the basis of different information based optimality criteria and graphical criteria in spherical and cuboidal regions. Many useful subset designs of the same size are better than the AP design. The user can think of a variety of properties to make a better choice of designs of a particular size from among these two classes.