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Big Data and Digital Transition for Sustainable Development

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 (31 December 2024) | Viewed by 3853

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, 95124 Catania, Italy
Interests: medical statistics; biostatistics; data analysis; big data; demography
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Business School, University of Sussex, Brigthon and Hove, UK
Interests: statistical modeling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The data revolution has been propelled by several key factors, such as the increasing scientific interest in the open data movement, the new opportunities for crowdsourcing, new sources for data collection, the proliferation of techniques of analysis of Big Data, the emergence of new standards of artificial intelligence, and the implementation of technologies related to the Internet of Things. All these elements have brought data to the forefront of decision-making and accountability processes in the digital era.

This influx of new data sources, technologies, and analytical approaches has the potential to enhance forms of evidence-based decision-making, providing greater fairness and inclusivity. The insights derived from data mining can complement and integrate official statistics and survey data, providing high-quality, detailed, timely, and relevant information crucial for tracking and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlined in Agenda 2030.

Digitalisation has reshaped the conceptualisation of the processes of development, and Big Data and computationally intensive analytics empower the economic choices at many levels. Their role is now pivotal for the advancement of modern scientific discoveries in a high-paced landscape of demand for technological innovations, but they also help institutions to unveil underreported disparities within society, providing critical insights for global, regional, and national development and policy making. However, the access to such technology is still imperfect: the risk is that the less developed and most marginalized countries could be left behind in the access to digitalization. Factors related to the exclusion from access of the value of information technology are language barriers, a lack of resources to maintain stable infrastructures, a lack of education, and low digital literacy, or even forms of discrimination against minorities and socially remote groups. All of these issues especially impact the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Land-locked Developing Countries (LLDCs), and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

This Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research papers on the following topics (but is not limited to them):

  • Contributions on the topic of the role of Big Data for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals;
  • Multivariate models of evaluation of the impact of the digital transition on sustainable development;
  • Large observational and experimental studies on the sustainability of consumer behavior with digital data collections;
  • Computationally intensive methodologies for sustainable and robust decision-making;
  • Techniques of data fusion and composite indicators to synthesize new measures of digital transition or sustainable development from multivariate data sources.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Venera Tomaselli
Dr. Giulio Giacomo Cantone
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

  • sustainability
  • Big Data
  • data science
  • digital transition
  • sustainable development

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

27 pages, 2867 KiB  
Article
The Impact of Digitization on Urban Social–Ecological Resilience: Evidence from Big Data Policy Pilots in China
by Yucen Zhou, Zhong Wang, Lifeng Liu, Yanran Peng and Beatrice Ihimbazwe
Sustainability 2025, 17(2), 509; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17020509 - 10 Jan 2025
Viewed by 1029
Abstract
Digitization plays a vital role in fostering economic and social development. This study empirically investigates the impact of digitization on urban industrial structures, technological innovation, public service levels, and social–ecological resilience. Various approaches, including the two-tier stochastic, spatial econometric, and panel threshold models, [...] Read more.
Digitization plays a vital role in fostering economic and social development. This study empirically investigates the impact of digitization on urban industrial structures, technological innovation, public service levels, and social–ecological resilience. Various approaches, including the two-tier stochastic, spatial econometric, and panel threshold models, have been employed to analyze panel data from 287 cities from 2008 to 2023. These data are examined through a quasi-natural experiment analyzing the evolution of urban social–ecological resilience following China’s promotion of the national comprehensive pilot zone for big data. The findings are as follows. (1) The positive effects of digitization on urban social and ecological resilience substantially outweigh the negative effects, with an overall increasing trend in the positive net effect, albeit with significant regional differences. (2) Digitalization exhibits a significant spatial spillover effect, enhancing local social–ecological resilience while inhibiting improvements in neighboring cities. (3) Technological innovation and public service levels positively affect social–ecological resilience, whereas industrial structure upgrading has a negative indirect effect. Both industrial structure upgrading and public service levels demonstrate nonlinear effects under the threshold constraints of the intermediary mechanism. (4) In terms of policy mechanisms, regional differences in the urban industrial structure, innovation capacity, and public service levels must be considered. This approach is essential for promoting the organic integration of digitization across regions, mitigating the polarization effect, and enhancing the diffusion effect. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Big Data and Digital Transition for Sustainable Development)
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20 pages, 284 KiB  
Article
How Digital Transformation Enables Corporate Sustainability: Based on the Internal and External Efficiency Improvement Perspective
by Yang Li and Tianye Zhao
Sustainability 2024, 16(12), 5037; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16125037 - 13 Jun 2024
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2251
Abstract
The promotion of the simultaneous advancement of digitalization and sustainability has emerged as a crucial concern for achieving high-quality economic growth within the framework of the ‘dual-carbon’ objective. Based on the micro data of Chinese A-share listed companies between 2009 and 2022, this [...] Read more.
The promotion of the simultaneous advancement of digitalization and sustainability has emerged as a crucial concern for achieving high-quality economic growth within the framework of the ‘dual-carbon’ objective. Based on the micro data of Chinese A-share listed companies between 2009 and 2022, this paper systematically examines how digital transformation affects the ESG performance of enterprises in order to explore the effective path for digitalization to promote the sustainable development of enterprises. The results indicate that implementing digital transformation can enhance the ESG performance of enterprises, which in turn boosts their capacity for sustainable development. The test of the mechanism indicates that enhancing internal total factor productivity and optimizing external financial allocation efficiency are the key strategies for driving ESG performance improvement in companies through digital transformation. Further analysis reveals that the improvement effect of digital transformation on corporate ESG performance is more prominent in state-owned enterprises, non-heavily polluted industries, central and western, and low-marketization regions. In addition, while digital transformation enhances the ESG performance of enterprises themselves, it also creates beneficial ripple effects on the ESG metrics of their suppliers and customers, ultimately boosting the sustainable growth of the entire supply chain. The conclusions of this paper help to deepen the potential value of digital transformation and provide policy and practical insights for achieving sustainable economic development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Big Data and Digital Transition for Sustainable Development)
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