The COVID-19 crisis seems to have disproportionately impacted women’s financial resilience. In fact, women’s economic involvement in the financial sector remains unequal. This study compares the impact of digital financial inclusion on women’s economic empowerment before and after the COVID-19 epidemic in Saudi Arabia. Using data collected from the Global Financial Inclusion Database for 2017 and 2021 and ordered probit models, the paper examines the relationship between economic women’s empowerment and digital financial inclusion. Findings indicate that using digital financial services has become more crucial since the pandemic. The results demonstrate that women now play a more significant economic role in decision-making than they did before the epidemic because they have access to a variety of digital financial services that could affect their choices and decisions. The findings are consistent with a number of previous studies, which found that financial digitization is a significant factor in women’s economic empowerment. The distinctiveness of this study is that it provides a recent assessment of Saudi women’s present financial circumstances and assesses current Saudi government initiatives to enhance women’s economic empowerment and leadership capabilities. The research conclusions provide insights for regulators and implications for future research in promoting digital financial inclusion and ensuring Saudi women’s economic empowerment.

Banking services are now branded and are provided in distinct ways. It has been proven that the development of new financial services and products substantially impacts bank performance. This paper investigates the effect of e-banking services on the performance of banks before the pandemic. The study looks at a sample of 24 nations, including leading fintech nations. Data from 2012 to 2019 was gathered from the World Development Indicators and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) databases. The findings show a significant positive correlation between cashless payments and banks' ROA. The performance of a bank is significantly impacted by mobile subscribers. In fact, customers are willing to use mobile transactions in place of traditional bank accounts. Banks' ability to generate revenue from assets (in the form of credits) is consequently restricted, which has an impact on their ability to earn a profit. The research suggests a range of policy implications and policy interconnections between digital financial services, banking stability, and efficiency. The banking sector has become more digitalized after the recent pandemic. To date, there is very little literature that has focused on the effect of digitalization on the banking sector before the Covid-19 crisis. The current study contributes to the literature by providing an overview of the relationship between the banking industry and digitalization before the latest pandemic for some leading fintech countries. This research will contribute to later comparisons between the different situations of the banking sector pre- and post-pandemic.

One of the main challenges faced by companies, scholars, and governments nowadays is achieving economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Remote working, reduced work weeks, and other types of flexible working time arrangements (FWAs) are the new characteristics that will shape the future of work to ensure social sustainability. In changing work patterns, working styles are changed to possibly improve women employees’ mental health and life–work balance. However, recently, very few firms have succeeded in adopting these new FWA trends. The purpose of this paper is to investigate women’s preferences towards FWAs in the academic sector as a social sustainability source. We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on female faculty members’ future job preferences. The data used in the research are collected from a survey given to female faculty members who work in a Saudi women’s university and have already experienced FWAs during the COVID-19 period. The study uses mixed methods of research, combining a choice modeling (CM) method, one sample t-test, a paired sample t-test, cluster analysis, and probit models. Our results show that flexible working arrangements improve the wellbeing of women employees, which ensures sustainable social development. The findings also show that flexibility in location plays a significant role in the decision made by female faculty members when revealing their flexibility preferences. However, flexibility in time did not play a significant role in the decisions made by respondents. This study adds to the empirical evidence in the current literature on female academic staff preferences for FWAs in Saudi Arabia, using choice modeling conjoint analysis and mixed approaches.

This paper examines the effect of environmental change on inclusive finance in African countries during the period 1996–2020. It also investigates the moderating role of government quality on the association between environmental change and inclusive finance. We collected five-year average data from various sources such as the World Development Indicators, the World Governance Indicators, and the International Monetary Fund. Government quality is measured by six dimensions: political stability, voice and accountability, government effectiveness, regulation quality, the rule of law, and corruption control. Environmental change is measured by CO₂ emissions. Inclusive finance is measured by the financial development index through depth, access, and efficiency ratios. These variables represent the most used in prior studies as they are published by international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which represent a reputable source of timely information related to the business environment in which business executives operate in several countries. The results show a significant impact of environmental change on inclusive finance. Including economic governance induces a significant and positive effect on financial inclusion in all instances. Our results also show that the coefficients of the interaction between environmental change and governance dimensions are positive and significant. The moderator role of governance is improved when taking into account political, institutional, and economic governance. Our findings offer more motivation for regulators and governments to develop environmental policies that integrate inclusive finance to meet sustainable development goals. Our results are important as they can help regulators, investors, and policymakers to assess and better understand the potential moderation role of governance quality in the relationship between inclusive finance and environmental change.

This study explores the role of green building technologies in the development of a sustainable future by evaluating the techno‐economic benefits of phase change materials (PCMs) in building walls. The purpose of this research is to investigate how PCMs can be incorporated into bricks to reduce the use of electricity for cooling the building and temperature fluctuations caused by varying indoor temperatures ( T _i = 18, 20, 22, and 24°C) and outdoor temperatures ( T _o = 25, 28, 31, and 34°C). An analysis of the thermal and economic behavior of three aluminum cylindrical capsules containing PCM embedded within brick structures is presented using computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) simulations conducted over a period of 12 h in order to determine the interaction between the brick, the PCM capsules, and the buoyant forces. Results indicate that PCM capsules perform optimally within specific temperature ranges, achieving their peak efficacy between 20 and 24°C, while 25–31°C are ideal T _o values. It is estimated that adoption of PCM‐integrated bricks can save you between $414.7k and $444.3k over the course of 30 years. The internal rate of return (IRR) of this system averages 1.583–1.70, which is significantly higher than the discount rate of 0.02, thus highlighting its attractiveness as an investment.