The deployment of renewable energy at the local level can contribute significantly to mitigating climate change, improving energy security and increasing social, economic and environmental benefits. In many countries local authorities play an important role in the local development, but renewable energy deployment is not an obligatory task for them. Hence there are two research questions: (1) Do local governments think investments in renewable energy (RE) are urgent and affordable within the local budgets? (2) How do they react to the public aid co-financing investments in renewable energy? To provide the answer we performed qualitative analysis and non-parametric tests of data from a survey of 252 local authorities, analysis of 292 strategies of local development and datasets of 1170 renewable energy projects co-financed by EU funds under operational programs 2007–2013 and 2014–2020 in Poland. Findings showed that local authorities’ attitudes were rather careful, caused by financial constraints of local budgets and the scope of obligatory tasks, which made renewable energy investments not the most urgent. Public aid was a factor significantly affecting local authorities’ behavior. It triggered local authorities’ renewable energy initiatives, increasing the number and scope of renewable energy investments as well cooperation with other municipalities and local communities. Despite this general trend, there were also considerable regional differences in local authorities’ renewable energy behavior.

Purpose: The purpose of the research was to investigate how young consumers perceive food safety and if they trust that official food control agencies or other actors of food supply chains ensure a proper level of safety of food in Poland. The purpose of the paper was also to find out if young consumers are currently concerned that a proper level of food safety is not ensured.Design/methodology/approach: The analysis was based on a data set from 650 questionnaires collected in an online survey carried out in October 2020 and addressed to the group of young consumers, students of Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland. The analysis was carried out using standard methods of qualitative data analysis (QDA), descriptive statistics, Spearman’s correlation coefficient and Pearson’s chi-square test.Findings: Less than a half of Polish young consumers consider food to be safe and many other do not have an opinion about this matter. Young consumers do not perceive official agencies in charge of food control as the most responsible for food safety, and they either do not trust these institutions or have no opinion about it. Young consumers declare that food producers and food processing businesses are the most responsible for food safety while retailers and consumers are the least responsible ones. The majority of young consumers are not concerned about ensuring proper food safety.Originality/value: Up-to-date young consumers' perception of the role and trust in official food control agencies and food safety in Poland have not been investigated, which makes this study a novelty. The findings can be valuable to official agencies in charge of food control and consumer education, to improve their functioning. They can also be important as a basis for further studies, as young consumers’ attitudes and trust in official food control agencies can change.

The study aimed at reviewing the European Union funds’ distribution mechanism supporting investments in renewable energy deployment in Poland, its effects and the relationship between the value of each investment and its location, location area characteristics, the type of investing entity, and the type of RE to be utilized once the investment is completed. The study fills a gap in the literature on the regional dispersal of cohesion funds. The presented findings are novel and contribute to a better understanding of the use of funds to support local investment projects and improve planning and implementation of evidence-based policies aimed at increasing renewable energy utilization in the European Union. The applied methods included multiple linear regression and cartograms. The data on the renewable energy investments were obtained from the SIMIK database for the years 2007–2015, while the characteristics of counties were gathered from Statistics Poland. The results show that the European Union cohesion funding was essential in overcoming the major barrier to solar renewable energy utilization, which was the cost of the initial investment. There were significant differences in the dispersal of the analyzed investments–most of them cumulated in north-eastern and eastern Poland. Although the funding distributed through operational programs was accessed by a variety of applicants, the municipality self-governments and small and medium-sized enterprise contributed most to the increased share of energy generated from solar renewable energy. The largest number of projects involved solar and wind energy, allowing applicants to lower operating costs by reducing energy bills.

The slow city concept is associated with great care for the protection of the natural environment and the use of renewable energy sources. Thus, the study aimed to discuss the potential of the slow city model and the actual role of Cittaslow local governments in deploying renewable energy, based on the case study of the Polish Cittaslow Network. To achieve this aim, we carried out qualitative and quantitative data analyses, based on literature review and data for all 35 Polish Cittaslow municipalities, retrieved from: (i) development strategies (ii) a survey (iii) the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland, (iv) the Quality of Life Synthetic Index (QLI). To process the data, we applied descriptive statistics, the Shapiro-Wilk test, the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test, and the Spearman’s rank test. Findings showed that the support for renewable energy deployment was not at a high level and did not correlate with the goals set in the Cittaslow development strategies. This was the result of a cumulation of pressing social and economic problems, which the local authorities in Poland are legally obliged to solve, while the implementation of renewable energy is not obligatory. The QLI for these municipalities was low and renewable energy was not a significant element in improving the quality of life of citizens.

The deployment of renewable energy (RE) needs to be policy-driven and supported by public funds. Hence, the aim of this study was to find out whether urban and rural areas benefit from public funds for RE deployment equally and whether factors determining other types of investments also determine investments in RES. To do so, we carried out: (i) comparative analyses of qualitative and quantitative data describing 2642 investments in solar RE supported by the European Union funds and carried out in Poland under operational programmes in 2014–2020; (ii) multiple linear regressions, evaluating the predictions. Findings showed that principles of supporting solar RE investments were the same for all kinds of beneficiaries in both urban and rural areas. However, in rural areas, most RE investments cumulated in eastern, north-eastern and south-eastern parts of Poland, and depended only on few socio-economic characteristics. RE investments in urban areas were dispersed all over the country rather evenly and did not depend on any of the socio-economic characteristics. Individual households appeared to be important silent partners to RE investments carried out by local governments. Thus, future policies should focus on them more to increase the deployment and use of solar RE.

Aim: Female entrepreneurship is a still-untapped economic potential. To trigger it, it is necessary to better recognize barriers to its development. Thus, the aim of the research was to identify the motives that make women start their own businesses, the reasons why they postpone or decline such decisions, the barriers that they encounter when running a business, and their priorities concerning professional careers and family. Methods: Applied methods include an e-mail survey and direct interviews, both using a questionnaire. The gathered data was processed using standard qualitative data analysis tools and descriptive analysis. Results: Women decide on their own business mainly because of negative experiences of being an employee and, to a lesser degree, because of a lack of satisfactory job offers or a lack of job offers at all. However, they often postpone starting their own business because of subjective reasons: the feeling that they lack experience, the lack of self-confidence, the fear of failure, and objective ones: lack of capital. The identified barriers in women running businesses are mainly universal, not gender-related, i.e., high taxes, problems with findingemployees, and frequent changes in legal and administrative regulations. Limited time devoted to family is the only gender-related barrier. However, a considerable share of respondents claims that there are no bottle-necks to female entrepreneurship in Poland. Conclusions: To trigger the potential of female entrepreneurship, we recommend two types of actions: training, mentoring and promoting success stories aimed at decreasing the subjective barriers to women starting businesses and actions aimed at diminishing the universal, not gender-related obstacles in running businesses in Poland.