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Special Issue "Transformation to Sustainability and Behavior Change"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2024 | Viewed by 1442

Special Issue Editors

Faculty of Law and Interdisciplinary Faculty, University of Rostock, 18051 Rostock, Germany
Interests: sustainability/environmental policy; global, European, national and regional governance; process of transformation and social learning towards more sustainability; theory of justice/human rights on an international, European and national level; legal issues in sustainability law, environmental law, economic law, constitutional law, European law and international law
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Greifswald, 17489 Greifswald, Germany
Interests: sustainability transformation; behavioral change; pro-environmental behaviour; food consumption; ocean literacy; climate justice; emotions; media; lobbyism
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability objectives—such as the Paris climate targets—require different strategies such as technological change and behavior change. These strategies can take place on a voluntary basis, but can also be implemented by various policy instruments such as regulatory law and economic incentives. Although these policies (or governance) instruments are relatively well investigated, the motivational drivers of different kinds of actors, such as political, economic, and societal actors—as well as the interactions between these actors—still deserve further research. This is the starting point of this Special Issue on sustainability transformation and behavior change. We want to investigate the specific conditions for voluntary individual behavior change, as well as the preconditions of acceptance for policy instruments that incentivize behavior change. How the different actors influence each other and how the interaction between technological and behavioral change works and makes societal change possible are of particular interest to this Special Issue. Examples of analyzing successful (policy) interventions to promote and achieve behavior change towards a sustainability transformation are welcome as well.

Inter- and transdisciplinary approaches should play a special role, i.e., approaches that do not operate from disciplinary boundaries but from questions of content without excessive subordination to established disciplinary dogmas. We invite qualitative as well as quantitative studies that adhere to high-quality standards and provide plausible justifications for their methodological choices and study design.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Felix Ekardt
Prof. Dr. Susanne Stoll-Kleemann
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 transformation
  • behavior change
  • pro-environmental behavior
  • societal change
  • environmental justice
  • (policy) interventions

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Article
The German Climate Verdict, Human Rights, Paris Target, and EU Climate Law
Sustainability 2023, 15(17), 12993; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151712993 - 29 Aug 2023
Viewed by 277
Abstract
The German Constitutional Court’s climate verdict provided a re-interpretation of core liberal-democratic concepts, and it is highly relevant for liberal constitutional law in general, including EU and international law—where similar issues are currently being discussed in ongoing trials before the European Court of [...] Read more.
The German Constitutional Court’s climate verdict provided a re-interpretation of core liberal-democratic concepts, and it is highly relevant for liberal constitutional law in general, including EU and international law—where similar issues are currently being discussed in ongoing trials before the European Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice. The present article applies a legal interpretation to analyse the national and transnational implications of the ruling. The results show that the verdict accepts human rights as intertemporal and globally applicable. It applies the precautionary principle to these rights and frees them from the misleading causality debate. However, the court failed to address the most important violations of human rights, it categorised climate policy as a greater threat to freedom than climate change, and the court failed to acknowledge that the Paris 1.5-degree limit implies a radically smaller carbon budget. Furthermore, little attention has so far been paid to the fact that the ruling implies an obligation for greater EU climate protection, especially since most emissions are regulated supranationally. Against this backdrop, the EU emissions trading system demands a reform, which has to go well beyond the existing EU proposals so as to enable societal transformations towards sustainability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transformation to Sustainability and Behavior Change)
Article
The Endowment Effect in the Circular Economy: Do Broken Products Face Less of a Trading Barrier Than Intact or Repaired Ones?
Sustainability 2023, 15(15), 11813; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151511813 - 01 Aug 2023
Viewed by 315
Abstract
Repairers may play a substantial role in the shift from a linear (make, use, dispose) to a more circular economy, where resources are continually reused and waste is minimized, which is therefore by definition more sustainable. Repaired defective products are usually reused by [...] Read more.
Repairers may play a substantial role in the shift from a linear (make, use, dispose) to a more circular economy, where resources are continually reused and waste is minimized, which is therefore by definition more sustainable. Repaired defective products are usually reused by their owners or may be traded in a second-hand market. A barrier commonly associated with trading is the endowment effect, which is caused by the difference between the maximum amount buyers are willing to pay for a product and the minimum amount sellers are willing to accept for a product. The present study examined whether second-hand market exchanges face an endowment effect, including in situations where the products are broken and repairers are recruited to repair possible defects in the product. An online survey that randomly assigns participants to one of eight experimental conditions (four product types × two buyer/seller statuses) was used for this study. The results show significant endowment effects for intact products and defective products with a repairer involved, but not for defective products. Furthermore, endowment effects occur for different product types. This suggests that sellers may be reluctant to sell their products in terms of the value that buyers would want to pay for them when repairers are easily accessible, which may impede transactions from taking place. The transaction of broken products may be facilitated by designing a system whereby sellers sell broken products to repairers and buyers buy repaired products from repairers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transformation to Sustainability and Behavior Change)
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