While the positive economic impact of tourism cannot be denied, it has also a number of negative side effects. The article focuses on the residents’ perception regarding the tourist activity and on identifying the factors influencing their acceptance for the tourist activity, in Constanta (Romania). A questionnaire based quantitative research was employed, creating several indexes, subsequently included in econometric models in order to reveal the factors which determine residents’ acceptance and support for tourism. The results reveal that residents are highly in favour of tourism activity and support tourism expansion and further development. Most respondents considered that tourism contributed to the improvement of the city image and identified a fairly positive economic impact, while tourism was accountable for the increase in several negative phenomena. The impact of tourist activity on the sustainable development of the city was perceived as medium positive, while most respondents considered that the number of tourists should increase. The residents’ acceptability toward tourism was revealed to depend on several variables and computed indexes: city development index, impact on residents’ quality of life index, sustainable development index, and perceived intensity of contact with tourists.

The tendency to implement diverse environmental tools and promote the adoption of environmentally friendly practices in tourism activities is relatively new. One such tool is the EU Ecolabel used in the hotel industry as a voluntary European initiative meant to attest to the responsible attitude towards the environment. Since holding the ecolabel by the Romanian accommodation units is rather an exception, our aim was to investigate the views of industry managers on environmental issues, focusing on the EU Ecolabel, and get a glimpse of the challenges and prospects of ecolabelling within the seaside hotel industry. To this end, the study was designed and conducted on 60 hotel managers. The research results gave evidence to the measures already implemented, those pending implementation, reasons for not applying for the EU Ecolabel, and the most challenging criteria. The potential impact of the EU Ecolabel on the economic activity efficiency, and its role in customer decision processes and in marketing communication, was highlighted. Subsequently, a mathematical model was proposed, revealing that the intention to meet the criteria and obtain the EU Ecolabel depends on the managers’ level of knowledge of the EU Ecolabel, their opinion on whether holding the EU Ecolabel represents a competitive advantage, and the current efficiency level of the hotels’ economic activity. Considering the research findings, it is obvious that the industry would benefit from ampler and more sustained information campaigns on the EU Ecolabel.

The set-off of the financial crisis in 2007, as well as the natural dynamics of the banking sector, have determined a fierce competition within the banking industry. The Romanian banking system developed rapidly in terms of profitability and rhythm of credit growth up to 2007, and therefore credit institutions did not make efforts to investigate and support customer satisfaction through concerted actions, since the economic growth period created and maintained the phenomenon commonly referred to as "the client searches for the bank". Starting with 2008, however, the prospects have changed significantly due to the drastic reduction of the consumption of banking products, especially loan products. Credit institutions were therefore forced to rethink their promotion strategies and pay more attention to all elements that impact customer satisfaction including digitalization of the banking products without additional costs. Under these circumstances, banks are preoccupied, more than ever, with customer satisfaction. The particular nature of the banking activity limits the possibilities for banks to differentiate their offer of products and services (Ilie et al., 2017). Bearing in mind that in the end all organizations strive to obtain customer loyalty, banks' concern with customer satisfaction appears as a natural and legitimate preoccupation. Although the concept of satisfaction was introduced several decades ago by Cardozo (1965), a consensus regarding its definition has not yet been reached. Some authors view satisfaction as a process (Hunt, 1977, Tse and Wilton, 1988), while others regard it as an outcome (Howard and Sheth, 1969). Although a generally accepted definition has not yet been developed, numerous models including determinants or antecedents of customer satisfaction are available in the dedicated literature. As in the case of the definition of customer satisfaction, consensus has not been reached regarding the determinants or antecedents of customer satisfaction either. The focus of this paper is to grasp the importance of e-banking within the general satisfaction of customers with regard to banking services. Following an ample literature review, we selected five categories of customer satisfaction determinants with bank services: convenience, environment, quality, tariffs, and e-banking, each comprising several sub-criteria. We then employed a descriptive quantitative research, in Constanta County (South-East Romania), during November and December 2016. The research tool was a questionnaire comprising three main sections: a general socio-demographic section, a section dedicated to the assessment of the general customer satisfaction level with bank services, and a third section focused on assessing the five categories of customer satisfaction determinants in terms of bank services. Five-point semantic differentials (from 1-very unsatisfied to 5-very satisfied) were used in order to assess the general satisfaction level with banking services as well the satisfaction level with each of the 16 criteria.

Consumers are reluctant to change immediately their consumption patterns when confronted with budgetary changes, in spite of fluctuating economic conditions. Their reluctance evokes the notion of hysteresis used by economists to describe the persistent influence of past economic events. The importance of hysteresis in economic research represents a natural consequence of the development of economic sciences and of the pursuit of understanding economic systems' evolution by taking into account their 'memory', their conscience of the past. The present paper represents an attempt to review some of the most relevant approaches to hysteresis in economics and to emphasise the impact of the phenomenon on macroeconomic consumption in Romania. The paper aims at reviewing the application of hysteresis to economic models, and subsequently at constructing a two-phase research on households' individual final consumption in Romania during 1990 and 2016, employing both the unit root and the so-called 'true' approach to hysteresis. The research results indicated the existence of hysteresis at the macroeconomic consumption level, thus revealing several implications for economic policy, inaccessible through the standard economic models.

The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially transformed the individuals’ lives, affecting various industries and accelerating digitalization in almost all activity fields. The paper presents the way in which the banking sector has adjusted the financial services features in order to help the community during the health crisis, shaping the main opportunities offered by the new COVID-19 context for the Romanian banking sector. In the same time, the paper aims to analyze the clients’ perceptions of the banks’ CSR actions during COVID-19 crisis, suggesting the supportive role of the banks and the increased solidarity through digitalization. The customers’ expectations were addressed in correlation with a SWOT analysis applied to the most representative credit institutions by total assets. The investigation was based on a semi-structured questionnaire focused on the assessment of the CSR efforts of the banks to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, correlated with a SPSS analysis. According to the research findings, pandemic has redesigned the Romanian banking sector, being a primary starting point to rewrite the CSR strategies to improve the organizational resilience of banks. The main lines of investigation focused on how banks can cope with complex crisis by highlighting the features of the most resilient banks, expanding the use of digital banking and linking the banks’ CSR approach to clients’ demand for digital services after the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis.