Sustainability

Journal Browser

► Journal Browser

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Silvia Riva

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Psychology, St Mary's University, Twickenham, London, UK
Interests: cognitive psychology; health psychology; decision making applied to several contexts including health and environment; health-related quality of life analysis and health interventions evaluation

Dr. Gherardo Girardi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Psychology, St Mary's University, Twickenham, London, UK
Interests: public attitudes towards climate change; economics of the commons; industrial and labour economics; economics and spirituality; the arts in economics education

Dr. Roland Daw

E-Mail
Guest Editor

Department of Psychology, St Mary's University, Twickenham, London, UK
Interests: sustainability strategy in religious organisations; organisational paradox; sustainable entrepreneurship and accountability; critical Anthropocene studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental protection has been often described as “doing good and avoiding bad” in the natural environment, but its underlying roots can be quite complex and arise from combinations of political, economic, pedagogical, cultural, spiritual, organizational and psychological changes involving macro and micro level decisions in communities. The social sciences are therefore fundamental both to ensuring a comprehensive understanding of environmental protection strategies and developing more sustainable development pathways in the future.

This call for papers explores the relationship between environmental issues and human behaviour in a social context. Social sciences applied to environmental research are not purely theoretic fields but rather include much applied theory and research on how people think about and respond to environmental challenges (to give some examples: water shortage, energy demand, global warming, food security, or waste management).

This call for papers encompasses research and theory on human behaviours, attitudes, values, and culture as well as how to promote policies and develop interventions on the social, political and economic dimensions of environmental issues. The call is open to a wide interdisciplinary range of social science disciplines including economics, psychology, education, sociology, religious studies and political science.

This call is openly soliciting original papers, both research and review types, which are either empirical or theoretical contributions to environmental research topics with broad interests across the social sciences. Topics of interest include but are not limited to*:

Motivating people to change their behaviours
Encourage people to rethink their positions in the natural world
Help people to live more sustainable lives
Discuss theoretical aspects of environmental protection education

*Please note that this call for papers is not focused on technical or engineering solutions

Dr. Silvia Riva
Dr. Gherardo Girardi
Dr. Roland Daw
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

environmental protection and environmental attitudes
pro-environmental behaviours
environmental education
ecospirituality
climate change mitigation
climate change adaptation
interdisciplinarity
sustainability

Published Papers (2 papers)

Download All Papers

Research

Jump to: Review

18 pages, 545 KiB

Open AccessArticle

From Greening to Meaning: Understanding the Content of Catholic Attitudes towards the Ecological Crisis

by Roland Daw, Gherardo Girardi and Silvia Riva

Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 3210; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043210 - 9 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1517

Abstract

The contribution of faith organisations to public discourse on the ecological crisis appears to be intensifying, leading some to conjecture that Christians are becoming more concerned with the environment. In social science research, this observation is generally understood as the greening of religion hypothesis. Empirical studies have tried to confirm this hypothesis for over three decades, but have generally returned the same, negative results. In this paper, we argue that the ill-fated preoccupation with quantifying the extent of Christian environmental concern has overlooked the more substantive investigation of how environmentally engaged Christians think, feel about, and perform the relationship between Christianity and the environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate environmental attitudes within a parish community. We surveyed 254 parishioners in the Catholic diocese of Salford, U.K. We used cluster analysis to identify groups of parishioners within the sample who exhibited especially pro-environmental attitudes. We then conducted a regression analysis on the relationships between the individuals’ beliefs and the number of pro-environmental actions they performed. We found that, on the one hand, belief in the importance of caring for the environment to the Catholic faith does not result in parishioners being more ecologically active, consistent with existing findings in the literature. On the other hand, however, the importance of care for the environment to one’s own religious practice results in parishioners being more ecologically active, consistent with the greening of religion hypothesis. These results point to the need for a much subtler analysis that considers the precise meaning of faith for Christian parishioners. We conclude with recommendations for further investigation of the greening of religion that can generate more detailed hypotheses from the greater level of detail afforded by this study. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Protection: “Doing Good and Avoiding Bad”. A Multi-Disciplinary Thinking to Change Our Minds)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Review

Jump to: Research

22 pages, 607 KiB

Open AccessReview

Gameful Green: A Systematic Review on the Use of Serious Computer Games and Gamified Mobile Apps to Foster Pro-Environmental Information, Attitudes and Behaviors

by Ștefan Boncu, Octav-Sorin Candel and Nicoleta Laura Popa

Sustainability 2022, 14(16), 10400; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610400 - 21 Aug 2022

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4816

Abstract

As the issues related to climate change intensify, new methods to raise awareness of environmental issues, foster pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, and offer a viable alternative to traditional environmental education are needed. In recent years, various computer games and mobile apps targeting sustainability-related information, attitude, and behaviors have been developed. In this systematic review, we aimed to verify which pro-environmental information, attitudes, and behaviors are targeted by serious games and gamified apps, how their efficiency is tested, and the main results. A total of 29 studies were included in the analysis. The results show that serious games and apps were used to decrease energy consumption, water spending, and food consumption, and increase sustainable mobility. Furthermore, technology was used to offer pro-environmental education regarding a myriad of issues. Most interventions were successful and some of them did have significant effects while others provided only short-term changes. The limitations of the current approaches are discussed together with some future expansions that can help develop more efficiency in this domain. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Protection: “Doing Good and Avoiding Bad”. A Multi-Disciplinary Thinking to Change Our Minds)

► Show Figures