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Sustainability
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Psychological Well-Being from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Second Edition
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Psychological Well-Being from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Second Edition

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2026) | Viewed by 3308

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Maria Rita Sergi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Psychology, University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
Interests: mental health; psychological assessment; personality assessment; psychological testing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Alessandra Fermani

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy
Interests: identity in adolescence and emerging adult; coping; environmental psychology and sustainable tourism
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Marco Tommasi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Psychology, University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
Interests: mental health; psychological assessment; personality assessment; psychological testing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the Second Edition of the Special Issue titled “Psychological Well-Being from the Perspective of Sustainable Development”, to be published in the open-access journal Sustainability. In recent years, there has been increasing recognition that mental health and psychological well-being are not only outcomes of sustainable development but also key enablers of environmentally and socially responsible behavior. The global challenges we face—climate change, social inequality, economic instability—require psychologically resilient and engaged individuals. This research area is gaining momentum across disciplines, calling for new frameworks and rigorous methodologies that explore how psychological dimensions contribute to sustainable lifestyles and communities.

This Special Issue aims to explore psychological well-being within the broader framework of sustainable development, with a particular focus on psychometric approaches. It is aligned with the aims and scope of Sustainability, which promotes interdisciplinary research connecting human wellbeing, social justice, and ecological responsibility. We seek to highlight how psychological factors can serve both as drivers and outcomes of sustainability. A central objective is to collect contributions that use or develop validated tools to assess sustainability-related psychological constructs, offering methodological and applied insights.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and review papers are welcome. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies, empirical research using validated scales, and theoretical contributions linking well-being to sustainability science.

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

  • Development and validation of psychometric tools to assess sustainable well-being;
  • Studies on eco-anxiety, sustainable happiness, environmental engagement, and sense of community;
  • Mental health and pro-environmental behavior;
  • Psychological resources in climate adaptation and environmental activism;
  • Educational and community interventions promoting psychological well-being and sustainability;
  • Cross-cultural comparisons of psychological well-being in sustainable contexts;
  • Methodological innovations in assessing psychological indicators of sustainability;
  • Policy implications of psychological research in sustainability.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Maria Rita Sergi
Prof. Dr. Alessandra Fermani
Dr. Marco Tommasi
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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

  • psychological well-being
  • sustainability
  • psychometrics
  • environmental engagement
  • sustainable development
  • eco-anxiety
  • community connectedness
  • positive psychology
  • cross-cultural research
  • measurement tools

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (4 papers)

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25 pages, 924 KB  
Article
Dual-Pathway Mediation of Self-Regulation: How Socio-Contextual Ecosystems Foster Student Well-Being in Mathematics
by Wei Lin, Hongbiao Yin, Wenting Wang and Xintong Lai
Sustainability 2026, 18(5), 2175; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18052175 - 24 Feb 2026
Viewed by 419
Abstract
This study investigates the relationships among students’ socio-contextual ecosystems including interactions with parents, teachers, and society (i.e., participation in cocurricular activities), their dual-pathway self-regulatory strategies—emotional self-regulation (SR) and motivated learning strategies (MLS)—and their mathematics achievement emotions. Drawing on data from a sample of [...] Read more.
This study investigates the relationships among students’ socio-contextual ecosystems including interactions with parents, teachers, and society (i.e., participation in cocurricular activities), their dual-pathway self-regulatory strategies—emotional self-regulation (SR) and motivated learning strategies (MLS)—and their mathematics achievement emotions. Drawing on data from a sample of 1269 Chinese secondary school students, the findings indicate that all dimensions of parent–teacher–society interactions significantly predict students’ mathematics achievement emotions (i.e., enjoyment and anger) through the mediation of both emotional self-regulation strategies (i.e., positive reappraisal and rumination) and motivated learning strategies. Results in this study revealed a clear differential mediation pattern: teacher–student interactions exerted significant direct effects on students’ emotions alongside indirect effects through their self-regulation (partial mediation). In contrast, the impact of social cocurricular activities was fully mediated by students’ self-regulatory processes. Notably, parent–child interactions directly influenced enjoyment but only affected anger indirectly through self-regulation. These results unpack the “black box” of how socio-contextual ecosystems shape student well-being, highlighting the critical and distinct roles of dual self-regulation pathways. The study provides a novel theoretical framework for understanding achievement emotions and offers actionable insights for building supportive, sustainable learning environments that foster both emotional and academic resilience. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Psychological Well-Being from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Second Edition)
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16 pages, 501 KB  
Article
Climate Change Distress (But Not Impairment) Mediates the Relationship Between Positive Traits and Pro-Environmental Behaviour
by Carolina Cabaços, António Macedo, Margarida Baptista and Ana Telma Pereira
Sustainability 2026, 18(3), 1501; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18031501 - 2 Feb 2026
Viewed by 1022
Abstract
Personality traits are essential to understanding individual differences in values, attitudes, behaviours, and cognitive-emotional reactions to climate change (CC). Prosocial traits (empathy and altruism) and nature relatedness (NR), that is, the subjective sense of connection with the natural world, have been linked both [...] Read more.
Personality traits are essential to understanding individual differences in values, attitudes, behaviours, and cognitive-emotional reactions to climate change (CC). Prosocial traits (empathy and altruism) and nature relatedness (NR), that is, the subjective sense of connection with the natural world, have been linked both to pro-environmental behaviours (PEB) and to CC-related psychological distress. As these reactions are increasingly common in the context of CC, it is crucial to distinguish their adaptive components from their maladaptive ones, namely, by identifying which psychological predictors most strongly promote PEB, in order to design targeted interventions and communication strategies that effectively foster sustainable action. This study examined whether CC-worry, CC-distress, and CC-impairment mediate the relationships between prosocial traits, NR, and PEB. A community sample of 577 adults (mean age = 32.62 ± 14.71 years; 64.6% women) completed self-report measures of the abovementioned study variables, and a multiple mediation model using structural equation modelling was tested. Prosocial traits and NR were positively associated with CC-related psychological distress and PEB, and CC-worry and CC-distress showed significant mediating roles, whereas CC-impairment did not. The model explained 40% of PEB’s variance. Overall, CC-worry and CC-distress appear to function as adaptive, motivational processes that link positive traits and nature connection to environmental action, while CC-impairment reflects a maladaptive, unconstructive response that may index the more pathological end of climate change-related psychological distress. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Psychological Well-Being from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Second Edition)
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29 pages, 1766 KB  
Article
Impact of Gentrified Rural Landscapes on Community Co-Build Willingness: The Differentiated Mechanisms of Immigrants and Local Villagers
by Zixi Guo, Ruomei Tang, Xiangbin Peng, Yanping Xiao and Qiantong Liang
Sustainability 2025, 17(23), 10613; https://doi.org/10.3390/su172310613 - 26 Nov 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1001
Abstract
Rural gentrification is transforming China’s countryside, yet the ways gentrified landscapes shape community co-build willingness across social groups remain unclear. Guided by the Hierarchy Effects Model (HEM) and Martin Phillips’ four-dimensional view of rural landscapes (material, symbolic, social, and living), this study develops [...] Read more.
Rural gentrification is transforming China’s countryside, yet the ways gentrified landscapes shape community co-build willingness across social groups remain unclear. Guided by the Hierarchy Effects Model (HEM) and Martin Phillips’ four-dimensional view of rural landscapes (material, symbolic, social, and living), this study develops a “landscape–emotion–intention” framework linking spatial–environmental continuity, cultural landscape transition, social interaction embeddedness, and new rural livability to community identity, sense of belonging, and co-build willingness. Based on 50 in-depth interviews in She Village, Nanjing, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is used to extract key themes, which are combined with the four-dimensional framework to construct a 25-item questionnaire; 376 valid responses from immigrants and local villagers are then examined through multi-group structural equation modeling and artificial neural networks for robustness and importance analysis. Results indicate that cultural landscape transition and new rural livability are the main drivers of identity and belonging among immigrants, whereas cultural landscape transition, spatial–environmental continuity, and social interaction embeddedness are more critical for local villagers; in both groups, sense of belonging is the strongest predictor of co-build willingness. The study embeds HEM within gentrified rural settings, operationalizes stakeholder perceptions via an LDA–SEM–ANN pipeline, and proposes differentiated strategies for inclusive rural community building and sustainable governance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Psychological Well-Being from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Second Edition)
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24 pages, 1472 KB  
Systematic Review
Does Short-Term Exposure to Nature Enhance Prosocial Outcomes? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence
by Zhuojun Yao and Hanyao Liu
Sustainability 2026, 18(10), 4637; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18104637 - 7 May 2026
Viewed by 151
Abstract
Contact with nature is increasingly recognized as a potential way to enhance prosocial outcomes, yet causal evidence and boundary conditions remain unclear. This meta-analysis synthesized 29 independent experiments (derived from the 19 included reports; N = 4520) examining the effects of short-term nature [...] Read more.
Contact with nature is increasingly recognized as a potential way to enhance prosocial outcomes, yet causal evidence and boundary conditions remain unclear. This meta-analysis synthesized 29 independent experiments (derived from the 19 included reports; N = 4520) examining the effects of short-term nature exposure on prosocial outcomes. Overall, short-term nature exposure produced a significant small-to-medium effect (Hedges’ g = 0.46), robust across sensitivity analyses. Heterogeneity was low (I2 = 16.45%), and pre-specified moderator analyses, including exposure modality (media-based, unstructured direct, structured direct), outcome measurement type (behavioral tasks, observed behavior, self-report), and sample characteristics, were largely non-significant, suggesting that the observed effect may generalize across these methodological and demographic factors. These findings provide experimental evidence that short-term nature exposure can reliably enhance prosocial outcomes, with implications for interventions promoting social cohesion in increasingly urbanized societies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Psychological Well-Being from the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Second Edition)
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