Early known cases of COVID-19 emerged in late 2019 in the city of Wuhan (China) and in a relatively short time, it has reached more than 200 countries up to July 2020. In Italy, from 21 February 2020, (first official Italian positive case of COVID-19) until 27 July 2020, 246,286 confirmed cases were observed of which over 68,150 (28%) needed hospitalization and 35,112 died. In recent scientific research, it has been shown that the severity of symptoms and mortality rates were different not only among the various countries of the world but also in different regions of the same country. This research investigates whether and by how much air environmental conditions (such as exposure to fine particulate matter-PM_2.5, sea air masses and altitude) influences the risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19 in Italy, once the spreading of the virus and the percentage of the elderly in the population have been accounted for. A log-linear multiple regression model was estimated where the log of the ratio of hospitalized patients per inhabitant, since the beginning of the epidemic up to July 27, has been considered as a dependent variable. Among the independent variables, the ones that have been taken into account are the spreading of the virus, the rate of people over 50 years of age, the concentration of PM_2.5, the rate of population living by the sea, the rate of green public space for each resident and the ratio of population living at a high altitude. The results showed an increase in the hospitalization rate in terms of the percentage of people over 50 and the average concentration of PM_2.5. If average limits of PM_2.5 concentration allowed by the current European regulations (25 µg/m³) were respected in all Italian provinces, that would have led to 7339 less hospitalizations for COVID-19 (−11%). On the contrary, near the coast there were lower hospitalized cases in the referred period. In the hypothetical case that no Italians lived near the sea, about 1363 (+2%) more hospitalizations would have been recorded in the analysis period in addition to the effect of a lower PM concentration. This paper wanted to investigate which are the areas with a higher risk of hospitalization in Italy, so as to help the Italian Government to strengthen Health System measures, predicting the most suffering areas and health care systems. According to the results, this is directly related to the severity of symptoms which decreased with the long-time exposure to the sea.

In recent years, the air transport sector has played a significant role in the economy of the areas served. The demand for air travel has doubled every fifteen years and has grown faster with respect to other industries. This is also due to the introduction of low-cost airlines (LCA). In the coming decades, more efficient management of airports will become an essential aspect to address. A clear understanding of the current airport structure based on the analysis of the operational efficiency will therefore be necessary. All air carriers seek to expand their operations at airports, which tend to operate efficiently in order to reduce costs. However, in carrying out their activities and maximizing operational efficiency, airports should simultaneously manage to increase their passengers’ satisfaction. All over the world, passengers are demanding higher levels of service and regulators are paying increasing attention to the provision of airport services and the quality of the services supplied. Starting from these considerations, the aim of this paper is to study the efficiency of an airport through joint analysis of the operational efficiency (with the Data Envelopment Analysis -DEA-model) for the airport manager (by maximizing the exploitation of existing infrastructures), taking into consideration the quality of airport services as perceived by the user. The original and added value of this work lies in the quantitative analysis of the main characteristics that determine the efficiency of main European airports, also taking into account the quality perceived by the users during their trips with the air mode. Thus, the efficiency of 103 European airports in 37 different countries, for the year 2018, were compared, highlighting the effect of low-cost airlines. This aspect, as far as the authors know, has not been treated in the literature. Indeed, this study represents a decision support system (DSS) tool for operational managers in the air sector for the identification of the characteristics that improve airport efficiency. This paper refers to the pre-COVID-19 period because it would not be useful to make an efficiency analysis influenced by the pandemic, since the latter represents a specific event. Therefore, this analysis provides interesting inputs for both researchers and practitioners to manage the issue of efficiency in ordinary contexts. Moreover, the airline industry is characterized by cut-throat competition, and it may be very useful in the close future to examine this issue to improve firms’ management in the industry.

Starting from December 2019, the world has faced an unprecedented health crisis caused by the new coronavirus (COVID-19) due to SARS-CoV-2

Transport quality has long been recognized as an important factor in influencing travelers’ behavior, and transport terminal quality undoubtedly plays no small part. Indeed, transit promotion policies explicitly based on qualitative factors and high-standard architecture are increasingly being adopted in designing new bus terminals and stops. High architectural standards can be found in several bus terminals worldwide. Nevertheless, the literature in transport sector has yet to explore the impact of bus terminal “hedonic quality” on users’ behavior or use their willingness to pay (WTP) in cost–benefit analyses or other transport policy applications. Hedonic value is here intended as the aggregate of all elements related to travelers’ pleasure in spending time in a terminal where architectural beauty and the passenger services offered are arguably the most visible and representative attributes. Within this context, we propose a quantitative analysis of the perceived hedonic value of bus nodes in terms of users’ WTP (pure preference) for a high-quality bus terminal. To this end a discrete choice experiment based on a visual immersive experience was performed, and data were collected from 324 residents of Milan (Italy) traveling for tourism. Different binomial Mixed Logit models with panel data and random coefficients were estimated for the purpose. Monetary valuation of pure preference for using a high-quality bus terminal was estimated with a mean of about 25 % of the average trip cost observed for the case study considered. This pure preference means that the Italian tourist is willing to spend up to €4.35/trip more for a high-quality bus waiting space or travel up to 28.2 min/trip more, instead of using a traditional bus terminal for the same trip. Category-specific analyses show that females > 30 years old have a greater pure preference for a high-quality bus terminal (up to + 220 %) against males and young users. The employed also have a higher (+42 %) pure preference for the beauty of a bus terminal against others. The results of this paper should be compared with those from other case studies as they have a potential impact for transportation planning applications, underling the importance of also incorporating “hedonic quality” as explicit design variables for new/revamped transportation hub. At the same time, new challenges are posed for modeling user behavior and determining quality-related indicators and measures.