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AbstractThe term "terrorism" is notoriously difficult to define, but terrorism has become a global concern over the last two decades. The findings of prior research on the social, political, and economic determinants of terrorism are mixed and inconclusive. Accordingly, this study investigates the relationship between socioeconomic indicators and terrorism in Tunisia for the period 1979–2015. The error correction model has been used to determine the stability of any long‐term relationship. Using autoregressive distributed lag bound testing, the findings reveal that the unemployment rate, political instability, the informal sector and higher school enrollment rates positively and significantly affect terrorism. However, gross domestic product per capita and foreign direct investment have a negative and significant impact on terrorism. Interestingly, the poverty rate has no relationship to terrorism. Policy implications and future research are also discussed.

Tourism is viewed increasingly as an essential sector to local, regional and national reconstruction and development for economies at various scales. However, its contribution on environmental quality degradation is more important. Indeed, any increase in the number of tourism requires amounts of growing energy, which increases CO2 emissions. The objective of this article is to empirically investigate the relationship between tourism development, energy consumption and carbon emissions in Tunisia over the period of 1974-2014.To recognize this relationship, a bonds test of co-integration, ARDL model and Granger Causality Tests have been employed. After having confirmed that the existence of co-integration relationship between energy consumption tourism demand and CO2 emission, the results indicate that tourism has a direct impact and statistically significant effect on the consumption of energy for the future of the Tunisian economy. The short-term results indicate bidirectional causality between energy consumption and emissions of CO2 and also between the consumption of energy and tourism, meanwhile the absence of any causal relationship between the emissions of CO2 and tourism. Tourism affects the quality of the environment indirectly through the consumption of energy. So, the protection measures in the tourism sector should be laid down in Tunisia. Sustainability in the tourism sector is one of the major axis of debate on tourism development integrated in the environment.

AbstractThe deterioration of bank profitability poses a threat not only to the interests of consumers and internal staff members but also affects investors who may equally suffer from significant financial losses. It is important to establish an effective system which assists investors in their investment choices. In prior literature, traditional models have been developed, but achieved short‐term performances such as logistic regression and discriminant analysis. This paper applies a partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS‐DA) to distinguish between conventional and Islamic banks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region based on the financial information for the period 2005–2011. This method can successfully identify the non‐linearity and correlations between financial indicators. The results demonstrate superior performance of the proposed method. On one hand, our model can select all financial ratios to distinguish between banks and at the same time identify the most important variables in the distinction process. On the other hand, the proposed model has high levels in terms of accuracy and stability.

The application of technology, in smart cities, to create meaningful sustainability is set to change all our lives. The smart city of the future will be equipped with communication infrastructures to improve the comfort of all citizens, while respecting the environment, and supporting good governance. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) will play a key role, making it possible to better manage infrastructure and transport. Contributors from around the world here present modern insights for use by decision-makers to solve real-world challenges. The authors shed light on forthcoming developments and set out how to plan for increasingly rapid changes. Smart Cities for Sustainability: Approaches and Solutions provides a modern insight for researchers, students, professionals, and decision-makers on the application of digitalization in global cities to achieve their SDG goals.