This paper reviews the academic literature related to religious tourism through a bibliometric study and citations of articles indexed in the multidisciplinary database Web of Science (WoS). Through an advanced search by terms, a representative set of 103 documents that form the ad-hoc basis of the analysis were selected. In view of the results, it is concluded that the United States is at the forefront of research, with almost 20% of the articles affiliated to one of its centres, mainly university centres. Publications on religious tourism are currently in an exponential growth stage, supported by the annual increase in the number of citations received. These papers are published in a small number of journals well positioned in their JCR category, classified within the field of Social Sciences Research.

Poverty is one of the main indicators of economic development worldwide, in such a way that one of the Sustainable Development Goals is to eradicate poverty in all its forms worldwide. The objective of this research was to examine the effect of the gross value added (GVA) of tourism on poverty in the 198 contiguous Ecuadorian cantons. The methodology used was the application of a set of spatial econometric models to capture the regional effect of tourism on poverty. Data were obtained from the Central Bank of Ecuador and the National Survey of Employment, Unemployment and Under-Employment of the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). The results show that tourism activities and regional poverty are negatively related; thus, a 1% increase in tourism-related economic activity decreases the regional poverty of the canton itself by 4.31%, and that of neighboring cantons by between 0.7% and 2.4%. The inclusion of the control variables shows that schooling and the mestizo population contribute to reducing the canton’s poverty, since the regions with a high GVA of tourism have high levels of schooling and a mestizo population. Thus, regional poverty increases when the level of schooling increases in neighboring cantons. On the other hand, in cantons with a high Mestizo population, compared to the African-American population, the poverty of the canton and its neighboring regions decreases. Public policy measures which aim at reducing poverty must take into account spatial spills from tourist activity in the cantons.

Beer is popular worldwide and it is considered the oldest and most consumed alcoholic beverage in the world. At the global production level, most of the market is dominated by a few multinational companies, but in recent years, craft beers have gained market share. In addition to being independent and produced on a smaller scale, the main characteristic of craft breweries is their broad differentiation capacity, attracting consumers who demand products that are more committed to sustainability and the environment, as well as being willing to pay higher prices for goods in line with their life philosophy. Their great popularity aroused the interest of researchers throughout the world, leading to the proliferation of a large number of scientific articles that address the production and consumption of craft beer. This research aims to identify and analyze the scientific production that addresses Craft Beer. A bibliometric analysis is used as the methodology to obtain the following information regarding the subject over the years: growth and coverage, article citations (quality indicator), the most relevant authors, etc., which will be useful information for researchers. The two main international databases, WoS and Scopus are used for document tracking and 137 articles are identified. The results show that this is a recent area of study, since researchers only started showing interest in the subject in 2015; 90% of the documents have been published in the last 5 years. Most of the authors are transient with a single authorship, so the production is low (productivity index 1.18). Therefore, the study area is incipient and is considered of great potential for researchers.

From an empirical point of view, the liberalization of the internal energy market reduces carbon dioxide emissions, promoting a wider range of renewable energy sources. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of the liberalization of the internal energy market on CO₂ emissions, which was implemented in the European Union in 2011. The research data cover 27 countries of the European Union during the period 2004–2017 and was processed by estimating a two-way effects econometric model. The results suggest that the liberalization of the internal energy market is negatively related to CO₂ emissions; the policy was effective in reducing CO₂ emissions and, therefore, slowing down climate change. This result is significant at the level of the European Union, and in high-income countries since the year the policy was implemented, being different in the upper-middle-income countries, which begins to be effective after two years, which is due to the economic characteristics of the countries. The public policies to be implemented to reduce carbon dioxide emissions should focus on reducing the barriers imposed on foreign trade, which prevent efficient use of resources and providing financial and operating facilities to renewable energy providers in order to stimulate their production and consumption.

The aim of this investigation was to help select design criteria that highlight customer satisfaction, and thus improve the design quality in buildings, specifically in a building of a thermal hotel. The methodology is based on applying the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) technique to listen to the voice of the customer, in addition to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which allows selection of the best design alternative. The literature shows that QFD–AHP methods have been tried in different areas of the building industry, but there are few examples of combining building design processes. In the study process, collaboration environments between stakeholders were established and the operability of the method used was tested with real actors. The matrix solutions realised in the horizontal and vertical sections of the framework of the model can be reused in different projects with different user demands. This added a modular and developable feature to the model. This study revealed that the most important customer needs, in order of importance, are “health”, “service”, “comfort”, and “functionality”. These are followed by “accessibility”, “aesthetics”, and “energy conservation”. According to the findings, QFD was shown to be an appropriate method for transferring customer (occupant) requirements to designs in the most accurate manner, given the complex structure of thermal hotel buildings.

Deforestation shows the constant environmental degradation that occurs worldwide as a result of the growth of economic activity and the increase in population. This research examines the causal link between renewable energy consumption, GDP, GDP², non-renewable energy price, population growth and forest area in high, middle- and low-income countries. Based on data obtained from World Development Indicators, the autoregressive distributed lag model, with a time series, is used to examine the long-term cointegration relationship between the variables. The results justify the existence of a joint long-term relationship between the variables analysed for the middle-income countries and low-income countries. When the forest area is not at its equilibrium level, the speed of adjustment is slow (0.44% and 8.7%), which is typical of the nature of this natural resource. An increase in the consumption of renewable energy is associated with an increase between 0.04 and 0.02 square kilometres of forest cover, respectively. The research does not show evidence about the equilibrium relationship in the short term. Growth in renewable energy consumption is one of the main drivers for preserving the forest area. Therefore, those responsible for making economic policies must aim their measures towards the use of clean energy.