In the second decade of the 21st century, in the developed countries of Central Europe, we can observe the transfer of free time to consumption, including the consumption of cultural services. This change, however, has led to some disturbances in the consumption of cultural services. Disturbances, which in particular relate to the sphere of needs, the sphere of the means of meeting needs and, finally, the sphere of consumer behaviour; for example, in relation to transport. In this article, most of the attention was devoted to the last category of disturbances (the sphere of consumer behaviour) and specifically concerned the culture service customers’ choice of means of transport to a specific cultural event. The research carried out by the authors shows that the most popular means of transport used on the way to a symphonic concert held in Katowice is still one’s own car. This applies to both residents of the city of Katowice, who could easily get to the concert using public transport (bus, tram) or on foot, as well as people from outside Katowice (who, as the research shows, very rarely use Katowice’s extensive rail network and well-developed intercity bus service). Thus, it has been proved that despite various legal regulations conducive to sustainable consumption, the majority of Polish consumers of cultural services in the analysed area of consumer behaviour do not follow this concept. The article opens with a review of the literature on free time and the sustainable consumption of cultural services. The next part of the study presents the results and conclusions of research conducted on a group of 515 consumers of philharmonic services. The last part of the article discusses the results obtained and indicates the existing management implications.

Producers and retailers are the driving force behind the adoption of the idea of sustainability. It has been found that while preparing their product range offer, many still pay attention to the same set of criteria: size of the customers’ earnings, how often they shop, and how much they buy when shopping. In general, sustainable values applied by consumers in their purchasing decisions are rarely taken into account in consumer segmentation. The aim of this study is to recognize if values such as environmental protection, producers’ ethical behavior, fair trade or maximizing the utility function of consumption are important factors in the purchasing process of coffee and if they can be used as segmentation variables. The discussed findings come from a standardized online survey conducted on a sample of 800 Polish coffee consumers in July 2018. The obtained results are discussed by employing multi-dimensional analyses, such as exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and cluster analysis (CA). In consequence, six segments of coffee consumers are identified and described: “responsible, aspiring to be connoisseurs”, “loyal coffee enthusiasts”, “pragmatic users”, “coffee laypersons”, “sophisticated connoisseurs”, and “consumerists, connoisseurs, but not at any price”. Among the identified segments, the most often indicated sustainable consumption values refer to “responsible, aspiring to be connoisseurs”, and the least often to “consumerists, connoisseurs, but not at any price”. The conclusions may be used by manufacturing and trade enterprises operating in the coffee market to respond to the identified needs and expectations of consumers.

The concept of sustainable management in culture has been recognised in global strategic documents on sustainable development for more than a decade. It is also increasingly reflected in the cultural polices of particular states, and—very importantly—cultural managers who are responsible for shaping the cultural offer in cities are becoming more interested in this concept. Despite the increasing attention being paid to this topic among both practitioners and theoreticians of management, in none of these documents or other works can we find any content that is directly related to the possibility of applying this concept in a town which, due to political turmoil, has been divided by a national border. Hence, this gap was the direct impulse for taking up research in this field. In the article, by using different notions of the market, our own definition of a cross-border market for cultural services was developed, and the conditions for the functioning of this market were presented based on the example town of Cieszyn (Poland) and Český Těšín (Czech Republic). In the opinion of the authors of the article, the development and functioning of a cross-border market for cultural services is essential for the application of the concept of sustainable management of the cultural offer in a town divided by a border. For the purpose of the article, a survey and individual interviews with experts shaping the cultural offer in Cieszyn and Český Těšín were conducted. The results of the research prove that despite numerous cross-border Czech–Polish projects carried out by cultural institutions, there are still many barriers in the town, which make it difficult for the residents to benefit from the cultural offer that is available on the other side of the border. These barriers limit the full implementation and application of the concept of sustainable management of the cultural offer.

Presently power control and management play a vigorous role in information technology and power management. Instead of non-renewable power manufacturing, renewable power manufacturing is preferred by every organization for controlling resource consumption, price reduction and efficient power management. Smart grid efficiently satisfies these requirements with the integration of machine learning algorithms. Machine learning algorithms are used in a smart grid for power requirement prediction, power distribution, failure identification etc. The proposed Random Forest-based smart grid system classifies the power grid into different zones like high and low power utilization. The power zones are divided into number of sub-zones and map to random forest branches. The sub-zone and branch mapping process used to identify the quantity of power utilized and the non-utilized in a zone. The non-utilized power quantity and location of power availabilities are identified and distributed the required quantity of power to the requester in a minimal response time and price. The priority power scheduling algorithm collect request from consumer and send the request to producer based on priority. The producer analysed the requester existing power utilization quantity and availability of power for scheduling the power distribution to the requester based on priority. The proposed Random Forest based sustainability and price optimization technique in smart grid experimental results are compared to existing machine learning techniques like SVM, KNN and NB. The proposed random forest-based identification technique identifies the exact location of the power availability, which takes minimal processing time and quick responses to the requestor. Additionally, the smart meter based smart grid technique identifies the faults in short time duration than the conventional energy management technique is also proven in the experimental results.

In the last years, the fact of anthropogenic impact on climate change taking place in the world has become indisputable. Both countries and international organizations have taken steps to reduce GHG emissions, move to a low-carbon economy and implement solutions that reduce human impact on the environment. The EU, by intensifying its activities, has also prepared a strategy known as the European Green Deal. In implementing the EGD, it is important to analyze the impact of energy development in energy-intensive sectors of the economy (industry, transport, agriculture, services and other cores) on atmospheric pollution. Energy development is understood as the energy consumption percentage from all its consumption. In the article, complex correlation–regression analysis was implemented, which included not only energy development impact on the CO₂ emissions level (i.e., production-based CO₂ efficiency), but also its impact on economic growth. The research was conducted for the EU euro area countries. It was determined that the strongest positive correlation is to be found in the transport sector, which implies that with an increase in energy consumption in that sector, production-based CO₂ efficiency is increasing. On the other hand, this increment in efficiency was relatively small and was achieved with the rapid growth of the energy consumption. The implemented research confirmed that the transportation sector is the one which is polluting the atmosphere the most with CO₂ emissions in the Eurozone. The results of the implemented research could be used for the formation of targeted measures for the green growth strategy implementation, and also for ECB and EIB to support “green” projects.