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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2023) | Viewed by 15961

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Daniel Gilmour

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Guest Editor

School of Applied Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee DD1 1HG, UK
Interests: sustainability assessment and enhancement; decision support and public participation in decision making

Dr. Andrew Reid

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Guest Editor

School of Design and Informatics, Abertay University, Dundee DD1 1HG, UK
Interests: design, production, and evaluation of “applied games” with particular sectoral interests in the third-sector, education, public engagement, and health and wellbeing

Mr. Edward Simpson

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Guest Editor

School of Applied Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee DD1 1HG, UK
Interests: environmental and sustainability issues; management and leadership

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable decision making is critical for the successful delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), where operationalizing the concept of sustainable development involves different actors, processes, structures and institutions in decision making and implementation. Decision support tools (DST) are commonly applied across different disciplines and subject areas to help to support and enhance the decision-making process. Research has led to the development of more discipline-specific support tools that can be applied to decisions across service provision, for example, in water, energy, food, the built environment, infrastructure and health and social care. The effectiveness of these tools depends on appraisal processes being clear, supported by relevant data, transparent and inclusive of all stakeholders. The involvement of stakeholders in the decision-making process is essential for ensuring that the variables are identified and equitable boundaries and priorities are established. DST and support frameworks often rely on the weighting and ranking of indicators (criteria) by decision makers. One of the key challenges with DST is that decisions are context specific, and it is important to recognize and value the feedback from stakeholders within the decision-making process. Engaging with stakeholders meaningfully requires inclusivity and subsequent data management that can evidence stakeholder values.

Sustainable decision making arising from the inclusion of stakeholders in the decision-making process can therefore be supported by a number of approaches providing the right information to the right people at the right time. Essential factors include mapping stakeholders and decision makers, indicator identification and measurement approaches, appropriate mathematical and analytical tools, and effective ways to communicate complex information to diverse stakeholder groups. This Special Issue offers a platform with which to identify new trends, developments and applications of sustainable decision making.

The objectives of this Special Issue are to provide a thorough analysis of the status, potential, challenges, and recent developments of approaches for supporting the decision process and to explore the issues around new ideas. We invite researchers and experts to submit original research and review articles that can describe innovative processes with evidence of successful application. Manuscripts based on integrated and interdisciplinary approaches, theoretical discussions to encourage community dialogue and participation, the links between sustainability decision making and digital innovation, and the adaptation of approaches from other fields to support wider participation in decision making are particularly welcome.

Dr. Daniel Gilmour
Dr. Andrew Reid
Mr. Edward Simpson
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.

Keywords

decision making
decision support tools
stakeholder
participation

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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23 pages, 1120 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Stakeholder Perceptions about Incorporating Externalities and Vulnerability into Benefit–Cost Analysis Tools for Watershed Flood Risk Mitigation

by Thomas H. Douthat, Fahmida Akhter, Rachelle Sanderson and Jerrod Penn

Sustainability 2023, 15(9), 7473; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097473 - 2 May 2023

Viewed by 1546

Abstract

Multi-scalar climate hazards in watersheds and growing consideration regarding equity call for innovation in how agencies evaluate and prioritize mitigation and adaptation projects. Benefit–Cost Analysis (BCA) is one approach that is increasingly being applied to decision-making (i.e., FEMA BCA toolkit), but that has not been applied to watershed and equity-based flood management initiatives. This paper addresses this topic and presents a case study evaluating projects for watershed flood and climate mitigation projects by the Louisiana Watershed Initiative (Louisiana, USA). Through semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and practitioners, we found that BCA tool design must be embedded in the program and policy in order to be successfully applied and that equity has not traditionally been a core value of mitigation practice. Even though many stakeholders understand the need for incorporating environmental and social project consequences at a watershed scale, challenges to doing so include inequitable barriers to project design in competitive processes, the complexity of integrating modeling and environmental outcomes data, jurisdictional interests, and the need for better science communication with local decision-makers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Decision Making)

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18 pages, 1935 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Impact of Citizen Participation on Public Sentiments during Crises: Comparative Study of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

by Vidmantė Giedraitytė, Rasa Smaliukienė and Tomas Vedlūga

Sustainability 2022, 14(24), 16981; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416981 - 18 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2204

Abstract

Citizen participation is identified as one of the essential tools of modern public governance in developing sustainable cities and communities. This is especially important during crises. This analysis revisits the debate regarding citizen participation and its impact on two public sentiments: the sense of security of the citizen and the citizen’s attitude toward the future during a crisis. The aim of this analysis was to discover how the variables of citizen participation in support, decision-making, and physical assistance to state institutions during crises affect these two public sentiments within geographically proximate countries. A cross-country omnibus survey was conducted on a random sample of 2875 citizens in the three Baltic countries: 959 in Estonia, 931 in Latvia, and 985 in Lithuania, respectively. Poisson regression procedures and linear regression analysis models were used for data analysis. Citizen participation was examined as a complex phenomenon manifested in the domains of citizen-led and government-led participation. It was found that the correlation between citizen participation, sense of security, and attitude toward the future varies from country to country despite the same nature of the crisis and despite the geographical proximity of the countries in question. The correlation analysis provided the only exception to trust in government (element of citizen-led participation), which was directly associated with the citizen’s sense of security. In all other cases, the correlations found were country-specific and not engagement-specific. The findings suggest that the phenomenon of citizen participation during times of crisis has not yet been fully explored. Furthermore, despite prevailing paradigms about the positive impact of citizen participation in a non-crisis situation, its impact is not necessarily direct or positive. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Decision Making)

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30 pages, 4594 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainable Society: Wellbeing and Technology—3 Case Studies in Decision Making

by Edward Simpson, David Bradley, John Palfreyman and Roger White

Sustainability 2022, 14(20), 13566; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013566 - 20 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3177

Abstract

Throughout history, technology has provided many and significant improvements to the way we live, but the current pace of development now often exceeds the ability for the full potential of any technological innovation to be explored and implemented before further innovations are introduced. This pace of change results both in missed opportunities for a technology in its ability to contribute to effective solutions in addressing issues such as reducing adverse environmental impact or improving the health of society. In considering the nature of technological innovation and development, the associated engineering design processes can themselves be characterized as being associated with a highly complex, iterative problem-solving exercises, involving the integration and synthesis of a wide range of technologies. This in turn requires the design team to manage trade-offs across a range of primary constraints, as for instance embodied energy in manufacturing, energy consumption in use, capital costs and operating and resource recovery costs. Further investigation into the complexity of societal issues and means for achieving a more effective and fuller utilization of both existing resources and technologies is necessary to place sustainability as a priority of the decision making process. To support discussion and provide context, three case studies are presented. The first case study examines a strategic framework adopting metrics aligned with environmental issues used as proxies for evaluating wellbeing and common good. The second case study examines the specific contribution of eHealth to wellbeing and the balance of technological, societal and political issues in determining outcomes. The third case study considers how technology might be embedded as part of the process of obtaining meta-data from within a small rural community to demonstrate the impact of mitigation strategies associated with the reduction of its carbon footprint, and hence on climate change. In doing so, the paper seeks to bring together issues surrounding environmental problems in relation to a technology driven engineering design process while positioning them in the context of social benefits arising from sustainable decision making. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Decision Making)

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39 pages, 3522 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Application of the Choquet Integral: A Case Study on a Personnel Selection Problem

by Slaviša Dumnić, Katarina Mostarac, Milena Ninović, Bojan Jovanović and Sandra Buhmiler

Sustainability 2022, 14(9), 5120; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095120 - 24 Apr 2022

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2057

Abstract

Personnel selection plays a decisive role in human resource management since it determines the input quality of personnel. One approach, fuzzy decision-making methods, has become popular in decision making for personnel selection, considering those methods provide a wide range of tools for dealing with uncertainty. Choquet integral is an aggregation operator, frequently used to unite interrelated information. Choquet integral, with respect to fuzzy, allows consideration of the phenomenon of dependence between criteria. In this paper, personnel selection was performed using the Choquet integral, based on a fuzzy measure. The problem of the evaluation of employees is performed with respect to the personal characteristics of the employees, task performance, employee–employee relationship approaches, and effectiveness of communication. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Decision Making)

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20 pages, 1401 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Managing Resources Based on Influential Indicators for Sustainable Economic Development: A Case Study in Serbia

by Mimica R. Milošević, Miloš M. Nikolić, Dušan M. Milošević and Violeta Dimić

Sustainability 2022, 14(8), 4795; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084795 - 16 Apr 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1950

Abstract

The balance between resource consumption and the ability of natural systems to meet the needs of future generations emerges as a prerequisite of sustainability. Sustainability means aligning economic growth and development with the interest of the environment and social development. Decision-making is a significant responsibility in an environment and the business world because decisions affect the ecology and business performance. It is necessary to adopt new approaches in decision-making to find an appropriate method for assessing and setting priority goals. Various methods for multi-criteria decision-making have been developed, including the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The paper deals with the management of natural and human resources for the sustainable economic development of Serbia by selecting influential factors, relying on a multi-criteria decision-making framework. Appropriate methods have been applied: AHP and several fuzzy AHP (FAHP) approaches. These methods’ application enables the analysis of results from different aspects of expert opinion. Through a case study, this paper investigates the AHP method from several facets in which the identification of decision criteria is based on the perception of experts of different profiles. The findings of this research can be a guideline for decision-makers in resource management to enhance sustainable economic development. The case study confirms that the stability of the business environment and business sectors is the most influential indicator in all scenarios. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Decision Making)

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Review

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25 pages, 1731 KiB

Open AccessReview

Emergency Decision Making: A Literature Review and Future Directions

by Wenxin Su, Linyan Chen and Xin Gao

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10925; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710925 - 1 Sep 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2366

Abstract

In recent decades, various types of emergencies have started to occur more frequently. Their impact and complexity have increased significantly, bringing serious challenges to the sustainable development of the economy, society and the environment. Emergency decision making (EDM) for emergencies is vital for successfully handling crisis events and achieving sustainable development goals. It has attracted widespread academic attention. The purpose of this study is to summarize the progress made so far in research and identify future directions through a literature review. First, a two-stage literature search was conducted to identify a sample of studies. Then, the literature was analyzed econometrically and coded for content. Finally, a theoretical framework based on stakeholder theory was developed to identify current insights and to uncover what needs to be further researched. The article suggests that future in-depth research should be conducted in four areas: analysis of social media information related to emergencies, improvement in computer-aided tools, the influence of decision makers’ characteristics on decision outcomes, and efficient linkage of multiple subjects in the organization and implementation phase of emergency projects. This study hopes to draw the attention of more scholars to conduct research related to EDM to promote theoretical progress and contribute knowledge on the sustainable development of the practice of EDM. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Decision Making)

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