This article follows two important interconnected aspects. On one hand, it investigates whether the political factors represented by the presence of ethnic minorities can be a catalyst for tourism development in cross-border regions, in addition to the development of transport infrastructure. On the other hand, it offers a comparative analysis and territorial diagnosis of the Bihor-Hajdú–Bihar and Maramureş–Zakarpattya cross border regions, analyzing the main tourist indicators and the advances made in the development of the transport infrastructure with a role in the development of tourism. The paper is based on desk and quantitative research involving national and regional statistic data. Research on the literature regarding Hungarian–Romanian and Romanian–Ukrainian borderland was also realized, in order to conduct comparative analysis useful to identify and evaluate the factors linked with tourism development. Using a multiscale approach, the objective is to determine if there is a correlation between the development of the transport network and the increase in tourist traffic. The results show that transport infrastructure plays a critical role in ensuring the connections of border regions. Although the two regions are contiguous, there is an obvious difference in cross-border traffic due to the presence of two different types of border. The transport network and tourism situation in Bihor has improved in the last years, especially under the impact of cross-border cooperation, but the accessibility remains relatively low. In Maramureş, the development of cross-border connections is based on cultural exchange, and less on economic relations. Transport accessibility is a strong point of the Hungarian–Romanian borderland and represents an obstacle for the development of tourism in the Romanian–Ukrainian borderland.

Rural areas and peripheral borderland territories are experiencing socio-economic marginalization featuring depopulation, population aging, and an increasing inequality gap in the quality of life compared to cities. Integrated rural tourism is argued to be ideal for supporting the well-being of rural communities, providing an additional income, decreasing unemployment, offering new and appealing jobs out of traditional rural activities, while preserving the conventional lifestyle. In this study, we discovered the tourism capacity of rural borderland territories affected by cross-border tourism using the data on the geography of cross-border movements, the distribution of tourist sights, and the density of tourist accommodation facilities. The geographical scope of the study covered two cross-border coastal regions—the Russian–Polish region on the Baltic Sea and the Russian–Kazakh region on the Caspian Sea. The statistical and geoinformation analysis were used to allocate areas of prospecting rural tourism integrated with cross-border movement. The research results on the development and distribution of tourist infrastructure suggest that: the rural territories of these regions feature tourist attractions and accommodation facilities at a different level of density and remoteness from the border crossing; each cross-border region is featuring different types of travel restrictions for tourists; and both border-land territories show asymmetry by the more active Russian tourists traveling abroad. Each of the regions under consideration is attractive for cross-border tourism while having different degrees of penetration of tourist flows into the interior territories and coverage of rural areas. The study resulted in a tourist flow model that allows integrating rural areas.

(1) Background: In the context of differences among countries developing pre-entrepreneurship ecosystems in relation to agritourism, the need to define the specific challenges and facilitators in the group of post-communist countries is recognised. Given that, we aim to examine the differences between the countries belonging to the former USSR and the satellite countries of the former USSR. (2) Methods: For the realisation of the intended objective, we analysed studies of the literature on the subject, in terms of the theoretical treatment of the entrepreneurial eco-system in the field of agritourism, and current legal acts. Our own observations from stays in the regions in question were also used, along with statistical methods concerning the density of the transport network, comparative analysis of historical and political conditions, and SWOT analysis. (3) Results: Substantial differences were found between the components of the agritourism entrepreneurship ecosystem in Poland and Kazakhstan, primarily related to the level of transport infrastructure density (satisfactory in West Pomeranian Voivodeship, insufficient in North Kazakhstan), tradition of individual farming (well established in Poland, poorly present in Kazakhstan), support for agritourism development by central and local authorities (relatively high in Poland, incidental and with a short history in Kazakhstan), and finally, differences in the target group of agritourism service recipients (stable in Poland, undefined in Kazakhstan). (4) Conclusions: The research leads to the conclusion of the heterogeneity of the determinants of the development of the agritourism entrepreneurship ecosystem in countries collectively defined as post-communist. There are clearly different challenges and facilitations resulting not so much from the past political system as from the ethnic-historical considerations, the position of agriculture in the economy, and the degree and effectiveness of the involvement of administrative authorities in the development of agritourism. The study leads to a recommendation on the need for more efficient targeting of agritourism consumers abroad.

There are many published bibliometric works in the literature on the broadly understood topics of tourism, sustainability, and security (STS). Most of these studies present an indexed approach, showing the impact of works, journals, spatial diversity, and the most frequently published or cited authors. The research and analysis undertaken in our work had a different goal: they were an attempt to answer questions about the degree of interest of researchers in the issue of STS, the dynamics of research devoted to the topics of STS, and internal differentiation in the broadly understood concept of security/danger in STS research. Data from the Web of Science journal database were used for the analysis. To determine the number of articles devoted to the topics of security, tourism, and sustainability, several combined keywords and simple statistical analyses were used. In the last 10, and especially 5 years (2019–2023), in each of the three topic groups, there has been an exponential increase in publications in journals indexed in the WoS database. In the sustainability category, risk and security received the most responses; in the tourism, COVID-19, and risk category; and in the tourism, sustainability, risk, and COVID-19 category. The use of keywords indicated thematic diversity in the field of security in each of the examined categories. The greatest interest among STS researchers was in studies related to the “COVID-19” threat. The results of the analysis allowed us to conclude there is an ongoing process of securitization in tourism research.

The article presents the current evolution of the global information society and the problem of digital divide. An additional category is globalization, which has been presented as an accelerator for the development of a global information society. The role of ICT in filling the development gap between regions of the world was identified on the basis of the UN classification. The concept of “digital divide” was introduced as a synonym for a new kind of development gap between the rich North and the poor South, and analysis of data from UN publications showed a constant high diversity of the global information society, which is clearly regionalized.

Konflikt zbrojny pomiędzy Rosją a Ukrainą spowodował znaczne ograniczenie dostaw surowców energetycznych z Rosji do Polski, a ceny energii w Polsce drastycznie wzrosły w drugiej połowie 2022 r. Konieczne wydaje się zatem zbadanie skali ubóstwa energetycznego (EP) w Polsce, aby skutecznie wspierać dotknięte nim gospodarstwa domowe. Ponieważ polityki wsparcia mają sens jedynie na poziomie gmin, celem podjętych przez autorów badań była analiza czynników i określenie zasięgu EP gospodarstw domowych na wybranym obszarze — powiatu augustowskiego. Drugim celem badania jest wykazanie, iż wybór metody badawczej i przyjętych kryteriów może prowadzić do znacząco dużych rozbieżności w wynikach, co może determinować wybór metody badawczej ze względów politycznych i ekonomicznych. W celu weryfikacji hipotezy o większym stopniu EP na wsi niż w gminach miejskich wykorzystano dane na poziomie gmin, w podziale na gminy miejskie i wiejskie. W badaniach wykorzystano obliczenia statystyczne oraz analizę bogatej literatury dotyczącej definicji i teorii pomiaru ubóstwa. Badania wykazały przestrzenne zróżnicowanie EP na terenie badanego powiatu (w którym wynosiło 27,85%) i jego gmin. W mieście Augustów EP wyniosło 11,00%, a w gminie Płaska, charakteryzującej się najwyższym poziomem ubóstwa, sięgało ponad 64,00%. Wybrana metoda badawcza, oparta na ustawowej definicji ubóstwa energetycznego, w istotny sposób ogranicza występowanie tego zjawiska w porównaniu z innymi metodami. W literaturze przedmiotu nie osiągnięto konsensusu co do definicji ubóstwa energetycznego. Doprowadziło to do przyjęcia odmiennych metod i kryteriów badania, co spowodowało istotne różnice w określeniu jego skali, co utrudniało prowadzenie polityki wsparcia gospodarstw domowych.