Explore Sustainable Development in Multiple Dimensions for Human Well-Being

Dear Colleagues,

Research on the intersection between well-being and sustainable development is gaining more attention in light of increasing global challenges and the pressure to achieve global commitments for sustainability. Environmental psychology, which explores the relationship between humans and the external world, in the last decade, has been more sustainability- and policy-oriented, encompassing sustainability at larger levels of analysis and life domains beyond resource management, as well as in an interdisciplinary context.

Expanding environmental psychology to embrace multiple dimensions of sustainable development can be important for understanding the tensions that arise between needed action and challenging behavior changes. These can be seen as requirements that reduce subjective well-being, as ecosystem degradation does not have an immediate effect on well-being, and because critical sustainability transformations will trigger individual and collective action.

In this regard, this Special Issue is focused on exploring the intricate connection of multiple dimensions of sustainable development and human well-being. Global priorities have shifted toward well-being and sustainable development, which are both priorities in global agendas but are somehow pursued in separate directions.

This collection of works aims to advance research in this field and contribute to synergizing sustainability and well-being research agendas. The aim is to do so by showcasing articles from various disciplines, including environmental psychology in an interdisciplinary context, that challenge concepts of sustainability even beyond the triangular framing, considering a broad definition of well-being that is not only limited to a state of existence that fulfills various human needs (having, loving, being, and doing). In this way, we can embrace the idea that human well-being is inseparable from the nature and vitality of ecosystems.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Exploring the well-being-related dimension of sustainability in relation to current global challenges and solutions to multilevel, interdisciplinary impact assessments (including time delay effects).
2. Understanding mixed effects: human wellbeing as a result and/or a condition of and/or a threat to sustainable development.
3. The dimension of human well-being in the Sustainable Development Goals—SDGs (i.e., SDG12 and SDG13), missing elements, contradictions and synergies, context dependencies, policy guidance, etc.
4. Sustainable alternative forms of living in non-urban environments and their impact on human well-being/quality of life.
5. Sustainability and human–nature relations through lenses of biophilic design.
6. Consequences of pandemic restrictions for awareness raising regarding the interdependence of well-being and natural ecosystems.
7. Impact of the language used to talk about sustainability in changing subjective perspectives of human well-being in society.
8. Choice of language and its impact on perceptions of sustainability and related attitudes and behaviors (i.e., sentiments of sustainability, metaphorical expressions of sustainability and beyond).
9. Analyses of a range of contemporary concepts that relate to “sustainability” and “well-being”.
10. AI as a tool for the identification of commonalities across definitions related to well-being and sustainability.
11. Unsustainable aspects of AI for quality of life/well-being and environmental relations, as technology and innovation have, to some extend, decoupled well-being from nature.
12. Exploring the links between well-being/quality of life and sustainability through the perspective of Gen-Z.
13. The inter-relation of well-being and sustainability in post-pandemic recovery processes (policies, plans, strategies, etc.).
14. The employee's well-being in the sustainability strategies/reports of companies and comparisons of the sustainability reports/strategies of companies.

Dr. Kalterina Shulla
Prof. Dr. Bernd Friedrich Voigt
Guest Editors

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.

• human well-being
• sustainable development
• environmental psychology
• resilience
• AI
• interdisciplinary
• subjective well-being
• language
• sustainability