E-commerce for Sustainable Development: Status and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

The United Nations General Assembly has committed to harnessing the potential of e-commerce, in order to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achieve other internationally agreed development goals (UN, 2016). Notably, among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 10 of them are linked to e-commerce (Revinova 2021). They are:

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere;

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture;

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all age groups;

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all;

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls;

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth; full and productive employment and decent work for all;

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries;

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns;

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts;

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize global partnerships for sustainable development.

The rapid growth of e-commerce creates both challenges and opportunities for society. In terms of opportunities, e-commerce can lower transaction costs and enable the remote delivery of more goods and services. For example, through e-commerce, sellers in developing countries may reach more potential customers in developed countries in a more targeted way and at a lower cost. In addition, e-commerce is also shown to support rural development. In China, Alibaba’s Taobao villages, an application of e-commerce focusing on rural areas, has shown how e-commerce can empower a marginalized community, giving rise to a rural e-commerce ecosystem that can aid self-development (Leong et al. 2016).

Nonetheless, e-commerce also poses a number of potential challenges, such as unreliable and costly power supplies, limited awareness and skills regarding how to implement and use e-commerce, insufficient or inconsistent laws and regulations, limited or deficient transport and logistics infrastructure, limited purchasing power, and cultural preferences for face-to-face interactions. The COVID-19 pandemic has also exacerbated some of these challenges.

This Special Issue calls for papers that contribute to addressing the abovementioned opportunities and challenges. The main topic is electronic commerce for sustainable development, but papers are not restricted to this specific topic. Papers could be conceptual or empirical, quantitative or qualitative, or case studies, as long as they address business practices related to sustainability.

References:

Revinova, S. (2021). E-commerce effects for the sustainable development goals. In SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 114). EDP Sciences.

Leong, C., Pan, S. L., Newell, S., & Cui, L. (2016). The emergence of self-organizing E-commerce ecosystems in remote villages of China. Mis Quarterly, 40(2), 475-484.

UN (2016), Outcome document of the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the overall review of the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 16 December 2015, (GA/RES/70/125), http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ares70d125_en.pdf

Prof. Dr. Patrick Chau
Dr. Joseph Jie Yu
Guest Editors

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• E-commerce
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• poverty
• hunger
• health
• education
• equality and inclusiveness
• climate change
• global partnerships