Impacts of Internet Commerce on Resource Use

Dear Colleagues,

The economic development modes, social structures, and environment have all undergone significant transformations since the dawn of the digital age and the Internet. These digital innovations engendered a number of challenges, particularly global warming and climate change, which have gravely threatened the sustainable development of human civilization. There is already excessive greenhouse gas emissions, mostly CO₂ from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, which is expected to further increase and thus exacerbate the deterioration of the global climate system.

In recent years, a global emphasis on reducing carbon production and improving environmental quality has emerged as a result of the need for sustainable development and mitigation of climate change. For instance, the European Union (EU) has targeted a 55% reduction in carbon emissions as part of its 2030 Climate Target Plan. Investigating the factors that may reduce CO₂ emissions is essential to minimize environmental harm. Particularly, utilizing digital technology to reduce carbon emissions is now considered as a key driver for sustainable economic, high-quality and low-carbon transformation due to the fast expansion of the digital economy. With its broad-scale technological and structural effects, digitalization has extensive implications for energy consumption, whether at the micro level in encouraging enterprise technological innovation to strengthen environmental governance, or at the macro level in promoting the expansion of resource allocation parameters to further transform the industrial structures.

At the same time, the Internet industry's explosive growth has also altered the manner of production and consumption patterns. Firstly, by disruptive changes in the way that commodities are exchanged, secondly, by organizational changes in businesses and, thirdly, by changed consumption structures. As a result, production efficiency, particularly manufacturing efficiency has been influenced either directly or indirectly.

This special issue is intended to be a forum for articles discussing how Internet has influenced industrial technology or human behavior, and what impacts, positive or negative, digitalization has on carbon emissions.

Submission may concern, but are not limited to the following topics:

• Carbon footprint of Internet/digitalization/e-commerce
• The impact of digitalization on resources consumption and CO₂ emissions
• Sustainable e-commerce
• Packaging innovations and circular economy in e-commerce
• Energy efficiency in data centers, green data centers for e-commerce
• E-commerce platforms for resources use minimization, e.g., sharing economy, peer-to-peer commerce, collaborative consumption

Dr. Joanna Rosak-Szyrocka
Dr. Xin Zhao
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. Resources is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1600 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.

• digitalization
• e-commerce
• Internet
• CO₂ emissions
• resources consumption