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Multi-disciplinary Sustainability Research

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 March 2017) | Viewed by 28560

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
1. Polo Centre of Sustainability, Via Nizza, 5/8, 18100 Imperia IM, Italy
2. University of Gdansk, 80-309 Gdańsk, Poland
Interests: human geography; sustainability; consumption; globalisation and resources; sustainability indices and trends; interdisciplinary societal studies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Polo Centre of Sustainability is a research centre that was founded in Liguria, Italy, and has expanded its research base in Southeast Asia. The center focuses on a wide array of multi-disciplinary research activities within the scope of sustainability, human geography, environmental studies, and interdisciplinary societal studies. Our Southeast Asia office is hosting the “2nd International Conference on Sustainability, Human Geography and Environmental Studies 2017” (icshges17), 15–18 February, 2017, in the city of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. The icshges17 conference will host a top range of academics (professors, researchers, and Ph. D. students), businesspersons, and representatives from a large array of international organisations. The conference will target individuals and organizations to exchange and share their experiences, novel ideas, and research findings, in regards to its themes and supporting tracks.  
▪ Theme 1: Sustainability
Supporting tracks: Governance, globalisation, consumption, sustainability indices, ecosystem services, urban sustainability, green infrastructure
▪ Theme 2: Human Geography
Supporting tracks: Developing world, Africa, Asia, Latin America, global health and medical geography, remote sensing, population migration, transportation, food and agriculture, geographic information systems
▪ Theme 3: Environment
Supporting tracks: Nature and culture, energy and climate, resource management, conservation, environmental ethics, environmental management systems
▪ Theme 4: Interdisciplinary Societal Studies
Supporting tracks: Society studies, rights, socioeconomics, politics of food, gender, poverty and aid, political ecology, geopolitics

In conjunction with the icshges17 conference, we are excited to announce an agreement with the international publishing house MDPI for its support in putting together a Special Issue of Sustainability. The Special Issue will be comprised of the top full text papers selected by the Scientific Committee, Academic Advisory Board, and Chairpersons of the Sessions. Suitable topics will include any application or methodology investigating any of the four themes and their supporting tracks. The Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the objective of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments and applications. The acceptance decisions will take into account paper novelty, technical depth, elegance, practical or theoretic impact and presentation.

Prof. Giuseppe T. Cirella
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Sustainability
  • Human Geography
  • Environment
  • Interdisciplinary Societal Studies

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Editorial

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7 pages, 233 KiB  
Editorial
Exploring Social Sustainability and Economic Practices: Multi-Journal Compendium
by Giuseppe T. Cirella, Anatoliy G. Goncharuk, Corrado lo Storto and Alessio Russo
Sustainability 2020, 12(5), 1718; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12051718 - 25 Feb 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4579
Abstract
In consideration of the three pillars of sustainability, alongside the environment, social and economic dimensions interplay valuable insight into how society is molded and what key components should be considered. In terms of social sustainability, there are processes and framework objectives that promote [...] Read more.
In consideration of the three pillars of sustainability, alongside the environment, social and economic dimensions interplay valuable insight into how society is molded and what key components should be considered. In terms of social sustainability, there are processes and framework objectives that promote wellbeing integral to the balance of people, planet, and profit. Economic practices consider the system of production, resource allocation, and distribution of goods and services with respect to demand and supply between economic agents. As a result, an economic system is a variant of the social system in which it exists. At present, the forefront of social sustainability research partially encompasses the impact economic practices have on people and society—with notable emphasis centered on the urban environment. Specific interdisciplinary analyses within the scope of sustainability, social development, competitiveness, and motivational management as well as decision making within the urban landscape are considered. This book contains nine thoroughly refereed contributions that interconnect detailed research into the two pillars reviewed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-disciplinary Sustainability Research)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

569 KiB  
Article
Consumer Empowerment in the Digital Economy: Availing Sustainable Purchasing Decisions
by Patrizia Gazzola, Gianluca Colombo, Roberta Pezzetti and Luminița Nicolescu
Sustainability 2017, 9(5), 693; https://doi.org/10.3390/su9050693 - 27 Apr 2017
Cited by 59 | Viewed by 13087
Abstract
The advent of the digital economy and, implicitly, of competition in the online marketplace has triggered new challenges in terms of consumer protection approaches. Online, consumer skills are expected to be improved and the level of consumer awareness and engagement increased. These are [...] Read more.
The advent of the digital economy and, implicitly, of competition in the online marketplace has triggered new challenges in terms of consumer protection approaches. Online, consumer skills are expected to be improved and the level of consumer awareness and engagement increased. These are the baseline prerequisites of the sustainable purchasing decision and, thus, should be considered as pillars of responsible online consumption. Consistent with the novel consumption challenges, the current paper is intended to advance and test a research model integrating five main constructs, namely, competition in the online marketplace, online consumer skills, online consumer awareness, online consumer engagement and sustainable purchasing decision. A total of 318 college students—a representative population of the new Millennials generation—accepted the invitation to participate in a questionnaire-based survey. In order to pertinently analyze the collected data, a structural equation modeling technique based on partial least squares was employed for the assessment of the measurement and the structural model. The findings indicated that the model explained 24.4 percent of the variance of sustainable purchasing decisions, while the highest influence was exerted by the improvement of online consumer skills. This implies that online providers should revisit their products sustainability standards on purpose to preserve a competitive advantage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-disciplinary Sustainability Research)
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856 KiB  
Article
Value Assigned to Employees Who Preserve the Social and Organizational Environment
by Crisanta-Alina Mazilescu and Bernard Gangloff
Sustainability 2017, 9(2), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/su9020170 - 25 Jan 2017
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5098
Abstract
In this study, we were interested in the behaviors of individuals who preserve the social and organizational environment by ensuring sustainability. More specifically, we are interested in allegiant behaviors. Numerous studies have highlighted the normative character of allegiance. Therefore, we questioned the value [...] Read more.
In this study, we were interested in the behaviors of individuals who preserve the social and organizational environment by ensuring sustainability. More specifically, we are interested in allegiant behaviors. Numerous studies have highlighted the normative character of allegiance. Therefore, we questioned the value attributed to allegiance. We questioned 170 employees on social values that they attribute in terms of desirability and utility to a future colleague (subordinate or peer) starting from the responses that these future colleagues were supposed to have submitted to an allegiance questionnaire. It was observed that desirability and utility make reference to two independent dimensions, utility being often more important. It was also noted there is greater severity assigned to endo-group targets (future peers) than to exo-group targets (future subordinates). Finally, it was noted that there was not so much a valuation of allegiant targets, but rather a rejection of rebel targets, which raises the question of the bi-dimensionality of the valuation-devaluation process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-disciplinary Sustainability Research)
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2885 KiB  
Article
Scale-Free Relationships between Social and Landscape Factors in Urban Systems
by Chunzhu Wei, Mark Padgham, Pablo Cabrera Barona and Thomas Blaschke
Sustainability 2017, 9(1), 84; https://doi.org/10.3390/su9010084 - 09 Jan 2017
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 5214
Abstract
Urban planners and ecologists have long debated the relationship between the structure of urban landscapes and social activities. There have, however, been very few discussions as to whether any such relationships might depend on the scales of observation. This work applies a hierarchical [...] Read more.
Urban planners and ecologists have long debated the relationship between the structure of urban landscapes and social activities. There have, however, been very few discussions as to whether any such relationships might depend on the scales of observation. This work applies a hierarchical zoning technique to data from the city of Quito, Ecuador, to examine how relationships between typical spatial landscape metrics and social indicators depend on zoning scales. Our results showed that the estimates of both landscape heterogeneity features and social indicators significantly depend on the zoning scale. The mean values of the typical landscape metrics and the social indicators all exhibited predictable responses to a changing zoning scale, suggesting a consistent and significant scaling relationship within the multiple zoning scales. Yet relationships between these pairs of variables remain notably invariant to scale. This quantitative demonstration of the scale-free nature of the relationship between landscape characteristics and social indicators furthers our understanding of the relationships between landscape structures and social aspects of urban spaces, including deprivation and public service accessibility. The relationships between social indicators and one typical landscape aggregation metric (represented as the percentage of like adjacencies) were nevertheless significantly dependent on scale, suggesting the importance of zoning scale decisions for analyzing the relationships between the social indicators and the landscape characteristics related with landscape adjacency. Aside from this typical landscape aggregation metric, the general invariance to the zoning scale of relationships between landscape structures and socioeconomic indicators in Quito suggests the importance of applying these scale-free relationships in understanding complex socio-ecological systems in other cities, which are shaped by the conflated influences of both anthropogenic and natural factors. Moreover, this scale-free behavior of landscape–social relationships challenges the traditional modifiable area unit problem, and provides mechanistic insight into the conflicts and compatibilities between human activities and human-induced land use change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-disciplinary Sustainability Research)
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