SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-26DOI: 10.3390/su16156409
Shu An, Yifang Duan, Dengshuai Chen, Xiaoman Wu
{"title":"Spatiotemporal Evolution and Drivers of Carbon Storage from a Sustainable Development Perspective: A Case Study of the Region along the Middle and Lower Yellow River, China","authors":"Shu An, Yifang Duan, Dengshuai Chen, Xiaoman Wu","doi":"10.3390/su16156409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156409","url":null,"abstract":"Carbon storage (C-storage) is a critical indicator of ecosystem services, and it plays a vital role in maintaining ecological balance and driving sustainability. Its assessment provides essential insights for enhancing environmental protection, optimizing land use, and formulating policies that support long-term ecological and economic sustainability. Previous research on C-storage in the Yellow River Basin has mainly concentrated on the spatiotemporal fluctuations of C-storage and the investigation of natural influencing factors. However, research combining human activity factors to explore the influences on C-storage is limited. In this paper, based on the assessment of the spatiotemporal evolution of C-storage in the region along the Middle and Lower Yellow River (MLYR), the influences of anthropogenic and natural factors on C-storage were explored from the perspective of sustainable development. The findings reflected the relationship between socio-economic activities and the ecological environment from a sustainable development perspective, providing important scientific evidence for the formulation of sustainability policies in the region. We noticed the proportion of arable land was the highest, reaching 40%. The increase of construction land because of the fast urbanization mainly came from arable land and grassland. During the past 15 years, the cumulative loss of C-storage was 71.17 × 106 t. The high-value of C-storage was primarily situated in hilly areas, and the area of C-storage hotspots was shrinking. The aggregation effect of low-value C-storage was strengthening, while that of high-value C-storage was weakening. The dominant factors (q > 0.5) influencing the spatiotemporal variation of C-storage in the region along the Middle Yellow River (MYR) were temperature and precipitation, while the primary factor in the region along the Lower Yellow River (LYR) was temperature. Overall, meteorological factors were the main determinants across the entire study area. Additionally, compared to the MYR, anthropogenic factors had a smaller impact on the spatiotemporal evolution of C-storage in the LYR, but their influence has been increasing over time.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"56 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141799525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-26DOI: 10.3390/su16156403
Qu Yao, Yingjie Zheng, Jianhang Chen
{"title":"Sustainability in Leadership: The Implicit Associations of the First-Person Pronouns and Leadership Effectiveness Based on Word Embedding Association Test","authors":"Qu Yao, Yingjie Zheng, Jianhang Chen","doi":"10.3390/su16156403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156403","url":null,"abstract":"The first-person pronoun is an indispensable element of the communication process. Meanwhile, leadership effectiveness, as the result of leaders’ leadership work, is the key to the sustainable development of leaders and corporations. However, due to the constraints of traditional methods and sample bias, it is challenging to accurately measure and validate the relationship between first-person pronouns and leadership effectiveness at the implicit level. Word Embedding Association Test (WEAT) measures the relative degree of association between words in natural language by calculating the difference in word similarity. This study employs the word and sentence vector indicators of WEAT to investigate the implicit relationship between first-person pronouns and leadership effectiveness. The word vector analyses of the Beijing Normal University word vector database and Google News word vector database demonstrate that the cosine similarity and semantic similarity of “we-leadership effectiveness” are considerably greater than that of “I-leadership effectiveness”. Furthermore, the sentence vector analyses of the Chinese Wikipedia BERT model corroborate this relationship. In conclusion, the results of a machine learning-based WEAT verified the relationship between first-person plural pronouns and leadership effectiveness. This suggests that when leaders prefer to use “we”, they are perceived to be more effective.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"39 28","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141800215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-26DOI: 10.3390/su16156407
Qi He, Hongli Jiang
{"title":"Digital Inclusive Finance, Digital Technology Innovation, and Carbon Emission Intensity","authors":"Qi He, Hongli Jiang","doi":"10.3390/su16156407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156407","url":null,"abstract":"Decreasing carbon emission intensity (CEI) has emerged as a crucial strategy for nations to attain low-carbon economic growth. Nevertheless, a definitive conclusion about the correlation between financial development and CEI has not been reached. This research examines the influence of digital inclusive finance (DIF), a novel financial sector, on CEI, and the role of digital technology innovation (DTI) in this impact. Firstly, this study analyzes the influence of DIF on CEI from the perspectives of technology effect and scale effect and proposes the hypothesis that the impact of DIF on CEI is U-shaped. Then, using a double fixed-effect model and a sample of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2021, this study verifies the accuracy of the hypothesis. Subsequently, this study examines the mechanism by which DIF impacts CEI, and the results indicate that DIF can exert a U-shaped influence on CEI via enhancing DTI. Then, this study further investigates the impact of DIF on CEI from three angles: geographical location, human capital level, and green finance. It also explores the geographical spillover effect and spatial heterogeneity by employing the Durbin model. Lastly, drawing from the aforementioned analysis, this report proposes some recommendations.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"40 37","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141800196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-26DOI: 10.3390/su16156389
Amila Kasun Sampath Udage Kankanamge, M. Erdiaw‐Kwasie, Matthew Abunyewah
{"title":"Towards a Taxonomy of E-Waste Urban Mining Technology Design and Adoption: A Systematic Literature Review","authors":"Amila Kasun Sampath Udage Kankanamge, M. Erdiaw‐Kwasie, Matthew Abunyewah","doi":"10.3390/su16156389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156389","url":null,"abstract":"The role of technology in e-waste management is receiving increasing attention as a dominant strategy to achieve long-term sustainability and well-being goals. However, a lack of comprehensive understanding of the contemporary factors influencing e-waste urban mining technology design and adoption remains. This is the first study to propose a taxonomy to clarify the contemporary factors influencing e-waste urban mining technology design and adoption. The taxonomy comprises four thematic clusters, notably the device cluster, the process cluster, the organizational cluster, and the macro cluster. This study further shares insights on how the taxonomy of e-waste urban mining technology design and adoption can be applied to assess each stage of the technology transition process. Drawing from this study synthesis, this study taxonomy model characterizes the embedded internal and external various states of technology design and adoption and derives informed decisions from a sustainable technology perspective. This study’s taxonomy framework supports the outlook measurement analysis of e-waste urban mining technology factors from both developing and developed countries’ perspectives, which can contribute to broadening the scope and level of the applicability of technologies.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"23 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141800719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-26DOI: 10.3390/su16156391
Dachen Sheng, Heather A. Montgomery
{"title":"Charting Pollution Effects on Tourism: A Regional Analysis","authors":"Dachen Sheng, Heather A. Montgomery","doi":"10.3390/su16156391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156391","url":null,"abstract":"This study presents empirical findings highlighting the role of pollution control measures in shaping the trajectory of local tourism market development. Analysis of provincial-level panel data underscores the pronounced impact of water pollution compared to air pollution. While water pollution tends to manifest as a localized issue, air pollution transcends provincial boundaries, posing challenges that extend across multiple regions simultaneously. The results demonstrate how imperative it is for northern China’s heavily polluted provinces to redouble efforts aimed at ameliorating their negative image within the tourism market. In contrast to their southern counterparts, these regions currently face hurdles in attracting tourists, underscoring the disparity in tourism acceptance between northern and southern provinces. Drawing insights from the successful implementation of tourism initiatives centered on the small-town economy in southern China, this research advocates for a paradigm shift in policy formulation for northern provinces. By leveraging lessons learned from southern counterparts, policymakers can chart a course toward sustainable tourism development tailored to the unique characteristics of each region. In delineating the differential impacts of air and water pollution on the Chinese tourism market, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of tourism dynamics across provinces. The findings serve as a foundational framework for guiding future tourism market development strategies tailored to the heterogeneous landscape of Chinese provinces.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"33 48","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141800740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-26DOI: 10.3390/su16156392
Wenjin Wu, Qianlei Yu, Yaping Chen, Jun Guan, Yule Gu, Anqi Guo, Hao Wang
{"title":"Land Management Scale and Net Carbon Effect of Farming in China: Spatial Spillover Effects and Threshold Characteristics","authors":"Wenjin Wu, Qianlei Yu, Yaping Chen, Jun Guan, Yule Gu, Anqi Guo, Hao Wang","doi":"10.3390/su16156392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156392","url":null,"abstract":"The net carbon effect of farming is crucial for climate change mitigation, yet there is insufficient research on the impact of land management scale on it in China. This study aims to explore the magnitude and role of land management scale on the net carbon effect of farming at the spatial level, including threshold characteristics. Unlike previous studies focused on the domestic agricultural economy, this study employs ecological findings to calculate carbon sinks and certain carbon emissions. The carbon-balance ratio is used to characterise the net carbon effect of farming. The spatial Durbin model and threshold regression model were utilised with a sample of 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2004 to 2019. The results indicate that national farming generally exhibits a net sink effect, with significant interannual fluctuations. After applying robust standard errors, the expansion of the land management scale significantly increases sinks and reduces emissions, and it has a positive spatial spillover effect on the carbon-balance ratio, demonstrating significant spatial heterogeneity. Furthermore, as the land management scale expands, the influence of rural residents’ income and education level on the carbon-balance ratio changes direction, showing significant non-linear relationship characteristics.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"11 25","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141801122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-25DOI: 10.3390/su16156378
Abdellah Saoualih, Larbi Safaa, Ayoub Bouhatous, Marc Bidan, Dalia Perkumienė, M. Aleinikovas, B. Šilinskas, Aidanas Perkumas
{"title":"Exploring the Tourist Experience of the Majorelle Garden Using VADER-Based Sentiment Analysis and the Latent Dirichlet Allocation Algorithm: The Case of TripAdvisor Reviews","authors":"Abdellah Saoualih, Larbi Safaa, Ayoub Bouhatous, Marc Bidan, Dalia Perkumienė, M. Aleinikovas, B. Šilinskas, Aidanas Perkumas","doi":"10.3390/su16156378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156378","url":null,"abstract":"The allure of urban green spaces has captured the attention of researchers, especially in regions abundant in botanical wonders worldwide. Surprisingly, the case of Morocco, a country with a strong botanical tradition, has received little attention from researchers. Here, we explore the unique case of the emblematic “Majorelle Garden” in Marrakech, southern Morocco, through the reviews of its many visitors posted on the TripAdvisor platform. This article looks at the question “to what extent can a garden—such as the Majorelle—be a major attraction in a cultural tourist destination?”. Methodologically, we adopted a quantitative approach, examining visitors’ sentiments using the VADER tool from 2006 to 2023, and classifying them into three categories: negative, neutral, and positive. Furthermore, by utilizing LDA (latent Dirichlet allocation), we uncover key topics running through visitors’ experiences. Our findings show that positive sentiments prevail, given the culturo-historical and symbolic quality of the garden as a crucible and vector of creativity, with the emergence of sub-corpuses that highlight certain divergences and convergences around the “Majorelle” case. This insight supports sustainability efforts by empowering the managers of the garden studied and industry professionals to develop and implement relevant strategies for managing and marketing the garden tourism attraction experience. In addition, this case study shows how a private urban garden reveals its key role in preserving cultural and botanical heritage, essential for future generations. It shows the garden’s positive impact on sustainable tourism through its ability to attract cultural visitors who appreciate and respect the local environment.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"15 21","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141803158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-25DOI: 10.3390/su16156363
Qianxing Ding, Lianying Zhang, Shanshan Huang
{"title":"Research on Environmental Pollution Control Based on Tripartite Evolutionary Game in China’s New-Type Urbanization","authors":"Qianxing Ding, Lianying Zhang, Shanshan Huang","doi":"10.3390/su16156363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156363","url":null,"abstract":"The inconsistency of interests among local governments, polluting companies, and the public reduces the efficiency of environmental pollution control, posing a significant challenge in harmonizing these interests to achieve environmental sustainability in China’s new-type urbanization. To elucidate the strategic decision-making rules of each party in environmental pollution control, this study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model and analyzes the evolutionary stable strategies (ESS), identifying the influencing factors of the parties’ strategies. Subsequently, numerical simulations are used to examine the asymptotic stability of various ESS and the effects of parameter variation on these ESS. The results indicate the existence of optimal ESS wherein all three parties adopt environmentally friendly strategies. Specifically, local governments can mitigate expenses for polluting companies to implement low-pollution strategies, while concurrently facilitating public participation in pollution control. Public participation can enhance the supervisory capabilities of local governments and exert a positive influence on polluting companies. Furthermore, the simulation results suggest that the ESS of the parties can evolve into the expected ESS by adjusting the influencing factors reasonably, thereby supporting environmental sustainability in China’s new-type urbanization.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"56 41","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141804751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-25DOI: 10.3390/su16156385
Davood Omidzadeh, Seyed Mojtaba Sajadi, Ali Bozorgi-Amiri, Mohammad Daneshvar Kakhki
{"title":"Enhancing Sustainability Attributes in New Product Design Insights from Automotive Industry","authors":"Davood Omidzadeh, Seyed Mojtaba Sajadi, Ali Bozorgi-Amiri, Mohammad Daneshvar Kakhki","doi":"10.3390/su16156385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156385","url":null,"abstract":"Product design is an innovative process that, through the stages of problem statement, concept, and initial and detailed design, meets the needs of customers, the requirements of companies, and their limitations. In the current process of product design and development, formulating design objectives plays a crucial role in objective setting, project implementation, product needs and requirements specification, and performing activities validation. Currently, the role of the design and development stages in the sustainability of products, identifying strategies for improving this stage is of particular significance, and paying attention to the product planning and definition process group and focusing on establishing sustainability principles in the target book and defining new attributes can be regarded as one of the sustainable product development strategies. Consequently, this research is a case study in the field of applying the sustainability principles in the target book as one of the deliverables at the stage of product planning. The present study proposes strategies towards developing the attributes of the target book as a tool for exerting sustainability pillars in the process of design and development by means of surveying automotive industry experts, applying the DEMATEL and Fuzzy ANP combined method, and evaluating and determining new attributes.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"58 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141804830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SustainabilityPub Date : 2024-07-25DOI: 10.3390/su16156386
Zongxian Feng, Huiting Hua, Lingle Wang
{"title":"The Influence Mechanism of Bidirectional Foreign Direct Investment on Green Total Factor Productivity in China’s Manufacturing Industry","authors":"Zongxian Feng, Huiting Hua, Lingle Wang","doi":"10.3390/su16156386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156386","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, China has actively advocated green transformation in manufacturing. This paper applies the Malmquist–Luenberger (ML) index method to measure the green total factor productivity (GTFP) and its decomposition of 28 segments of China’s manufacturing industry from 2004 to 2020; then, it empirically investigates their causal relationship and impact mechanism on bidirectional foreign direct investment (FDI). The results show that inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) and outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) significantly inhibit GTFP, whereas the interactive development level between the two (DFDI) significantly promotes GTFP during the sample period. After decomposing GTFP, it is found that IFDI or OFDI has a significant promotional effect on green technical change (GTC) but an inhibitory effect on green technical efficiency change (GEC), while DFDI has a promotional effect on GTC or GEC. Further research also finds that OFDI can effectively weaken the inhibitory effects in the long run; IFDI, OFDI, and DFDI have the same direction of impact on GTFP or GEC, only showing heterogeneity at the significant level, while their impact on GTC has uncertainty in different types of manufacturing industries. The more rational the manufacturing industry structure, the more significant the promotional effect of IFDI, OFDI, and DFDI on GTFP.","PeriodicalId":509360,"journal":{"name":"Sustainability","volume":"29 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141802543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}