Search Results (451)

An important question in sustainable consumption research is whether consumers’ green consumption orientation (GCO) extends beyond environmentally focused choices and relates to their willingness to purchase other types of ethical products, including those associated with fair trade, labor rights, animal welfare, and corporate social responsibility. Drawing on research on cross-domain ethical consumption and moral self-regulation, this study examines a cross-sectional associative model in which GCO is linked to purchase intentions toward other ethical products through three psychological mechanisms: warm glow, compensatory moral licensing (MLP-C), and identity-consistency mechanism (ICM). The moderating role of personal moral identity (PMI) is also considered. Data from 598 consumer questionnaires indicated a positive association between GCO and purchase intentions toward other ethical products. Warm glow and ICM were associated with positive indirect effects, whereas MLP-C was associated with a negative indirect effect. PMI further altered these relationships by weakening the association between GCO and MLP-C while strengthening the association between GCO and ICM. The robustness of the ICM pathway was further examined through an item-deletion sensitivity analysis, which continued to support the indirect association after two intention-like items were removed. In addition, an exploratory latent profile analysis identified four consumer profiles within the sample, which are interpreted as hypothesis-generating rather than confirmatory. Taken together, the results suggest that cross-domain ethical consumption intentions may reflect the joint influence of emotional rewards and competing forms of moral self-regulation. Given the cross-sectional and self-reported nature of the data, the findings should be interpreted as cross-domain associations between consumption orientation and purchase intentions rather than as evidence of behavioral spillover or causal effects across consumption domains. Full article

Futures Literacy is increasingly recognized as a key sustainability competence within the GreenComp framework, yet limited research has examined how arts-based pedagogies in teacher education can foster it. This study explores arts-based approaches to Futures Literacy within a micro-credential integrated into a first-year course for pre-service primary teachers. Developed within the GreenComp School project, the micro-credential comprised face-to-face and asynchronous components; the face-to-face arts-based activities were fully implemented, while engagement with the asynchronous component was limited. Data were collected through pre- and post-questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, participant artifacts, and the researcher’s reflective journal. The findings indicate increased self-reported understanding of Futures Literacy and identify six interconnected pedagogical processes: emotional engagement, communicating future-oriented messages, embodied learning, envisioning alternative futures, humanitarian values, and collaboration. Emotional engagement was particularly important to meaning-making and highlighted the affective complexity of engaging with uncertain futures. Arts-based speculative futuring supported envisioning alternative possibilities, although critical examination of assumptions, competing values, and perspectives was limited. The limited asynchronous component also highlighted challenges in integrating a non-assessed micro-credential into a compulsory first-year course. The study offers an empirically grounded account of how arts-based approaches can pedagogically enact Futures Literacy in teacher education. Full article

Large diversified firms seeking to enter eco-friendly markets must decide whether to source essential green components from specialized suppliers or develop comparable components in-house. External sourcing facilitates rapid market entry and avoids costly development, but it creates dependence on a specialized supplier that also competes downstream. Internal development eliminates this dependence and gives the diversified firm greater control over component production but it requires substantial investment and may place the firm at a production cost disadvantage relative to the specialized supplier. Moreover, sustainability reputation spillovers further complicate this make-or-buy dilemma, as participation in the eco-friendly market can generate positive reputational effects across the diversified firm’s broader product portfolio. To examine how these trade-offs and reputation spillovers jointly affect sourcing decisions and supply chain structures, we develop a game-theoretic model in which a specialized supplier serves as both a component provider and a downstream competitor. We identify three equilibrium supply chain structures: external sourcing with upstream–downstream coopetition, internal development with Cournot competition, and internal development leading to the supplier’s exit from the downstream market. A critical insight is the supplier’s dilemma: while moderate reputation benefits create mutually profitable coopetition, sufficiently large benefits trigger the diversified firm’s internalization, eliminating the supply relationship and potentially resulting in its exit from the downstream market. Further analysis shows that a higher supplier marginal production cost affects both the diversified firm’s sourcing decision and the conditions under which supplier market exit can occur, whereas a higher fixed development cost shifts the decision boundary toward external sourcing. Our findings suggest that policies amplifying reputation benefits may induce large firms to replace external sourcing from lower-cost specialized suppliers with higher-cost internal development, displacing specialized green producers and duplicating existing technology investments. Full article

Higher education is increasingly expected to cultivate the sustainability competences described by the European GreenComp framework, yet empirical evidence linking specific pedagogies to competence-specific change remains limited. This study examined whether participation in “Sibiu Impact Makers” (SIM), an interdisciplinary, Design Thinking-based challenge module, was associated with changes in students’ self-reported GreenComp sustainability competences and LifeComp transversal competences. Using a one-group pre-test/post-test design, 113 undergraduates at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (Romania) completed a 45-item questionnaire operationalising GreenComp and the complementary LifeComp framework at the beginning and end of the semester; responses were matched through anonymous identifiers. Composite scales showed good-to-excellent reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.70–0.95). Overall GreenComp scores increased with a small effect (Wilcoxon z = −2.47, p = 0.014, dz = 0.21), with the clearest change in “embracing complexity”; critical evaluation of sustainability information and problem framing remained significant after multiplicity correction. LifeComp competences, already high at baseline, remained stable. Exploratory subgroup analyses did not detect statistically significant differences in change across gender, faculty, study year and employment. Because the study lacked a control or comparison group, the observed pre–post changes cannot be attributed causally to the module. The study contributes a competence-specific GreenComp evaluation of an existing interdisciplinary Design Thinking module, highlighting that, within this module, short-term changes were more evident in analytical than in value-oriented sustainability competences. Full article

This study examines how firms convert dynamic capabilities into green innovation (GI) by developing green core competence (GCC). Drawing on resource-based theory and dynamic capability theory and incorporating core competence logic, the study investigates the direct effects of absorptive capacity (AC) and technological capability (TC) on GI, the mediating role of GCC, and the moderating role of green organizational culture (GOC) in the capability-to-competence process. Survey data were collected from 324 managers in China’s electronic information manufacturing industry, a technology-intensive sector facing pressures for technological upgrading and environmental improvement. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed mediation and moderation model. The results show that AC and TC both positively affect GI and GCC, while TC has stronger effects. GCC positively affects GI and partially mediates the relationships between AC and GI and between TC and GI. GOC further strengthens the positive effects of AC and TC on GCC. These findings suggest that GI depends not only on the possession of dynamic capabilities but also on their conversion into a green-specific competence base. The study offers a contextualized explanation of how technology-intensive manufacturing firms organize internal capabilities to support sustainable manufacturing practices. Full article

Background/Objectives: The healthcare sector accounts for an estimated 1–5% of the global environmental footprint, and hospitals concentrate a large share of that impact. As the largest professional group, nurses are pivotal to the transition toward green and regenerative hospitals. This review aimed to map the sustainable nursing practices implemented in hospitals internationally and to characterise the contribution of nursing to reducing the environmental footprint of care. Methods: A scoping review was conducted following the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, SciELO and Dialnet were searched for studies published between 2021 and 2026, complemented by grey and institutional literature, citation searching and hand-searching. Records were screened in duplicate against predefined eligibility criteria, and the evidence was charted into six thematic categories aligned with the review objectives. Results: Twenty-five sources were included—11 reviews and 14 primary studies, most of them descriptive. Waste management emerged as the domain most sensitive to nursing action, whereas energy and water use were only minimally nurse-sensitive. Education, leadership and nurse engagement were the main enablers; insufficient training, resistance to change and limited investment were the recurrent barriers. Only one study explicitly addressed the regenerative transition, from a governance perspective. Conclusions: Embedding sustainable practices in nursing can reduce the environmental impact of hospitals while preserving quality of care. Nurse-sensitive environmental indicators and the integration of sustainability competencies into curricula and hospital governance are key levers for this transition, whose regenerative dimension remains incipient and requires primary, comparative research. Full article

The core predicament of energy transition lies not in the availability of clean technologies, but in whether an economy possesses the institutional capacity and social foundation to systematically regulate its carbon-energy metabolic processes. Drawing upon co-evolutionary theory from evolutionary economics, this paper constructs a composite indicator of Low-Carbon Green Energy Eco-Co-evolution (LCEE) encompassing three functional dimensions: efficiency advancement, kinetic energy replacement, and boundary adherence. Concurrently, by integrating innovation ecosystem theory with inclusive development theory, we propose the concept of “Inclusive Potential of Regional Innovation Ecosystems” (IEP), characterizing the systemic potential for transforming innovation outcomes into social welfare across four dimensions: Knowledge Matrix Abundance (KMF), Cultural Capillary Permeation (CCP), Technological Community Succession (TCS), and Social Root Nourishment (SRN). Taking China’s 2016 intellectual property (IP) powerhouse construction pilot as the institutional prototype of Industrial Intellectual Property Upgrading Reform (IPR), we incorporate IPR, IEP, and LCEE into a unified causal analytical framework, proposing a testable transmission logic of ‘institutional supply → ecological development → co-evolutionary synergy. Using panel data from 30 Chinese provincial-level administrative regions over 2010–2022, we employ a Spatial Durbin Difference-in-Differences (SDM-DID) model to identify the direct and spatial spillover effects of IPR on LCEE, and embed a Double Machine Learning (DML) framework to test the mediating mechanism of IEP while controlling for high-dimensional nonlinear interference. The findings reveal that IPR exerts a significant and robust direct promoting effect on LCEE, generating positive spatial spillovers to neighboring regions through the public disclosure of patent information. IEP significantly promotes local LCEE, yet its spatial spillover lacks statistical support due to structural conflicts in inter-dimensional transmission attributes. IEP plays a significant partial mediating role between IPR and LCEE, with the indirect effect accounting for over one-third of the total effect, a finding robust to alternative machine learning algorithms, sample split adjustments, and exclusion of contemporaneous competing policies. Sub-path tests reveal that KMF bears the strongest mediating efficacy, serving as the primary transmission channel, while CCP exhibits full mediation—the institutional effect on LCEE in the cultural dimension depends almost entirely on the mediating transformation through the public cultural service system. Heterogeneity analysis further demonstrates full mediation in the Low-Carbon Green Energy Eco-Kinetic Replacement (KER) dimension, indicating that the institutional catalytic effect on clean energy substitution must be realized through IEP transformation. This paper provides empirical evidence for the proposed causal pathway through which institutional public goods indirectly enhance the synergistic quality of carbon-energy transition via the inclusive potential of innovation ecosystems, providing theoretical foundations and policy implications that, while grounded in China’s institutional context, may offer valuable reference points for emerging market economies facing similar dual pressures of technological constraints and green transition. Full article

Market gardening is increasingly discussed as a sustainability-oriented farming model with the potential to support resilient, locally embedded food systems and to contribute to food security through diversified fresh-produce supply, short value chains, and closer producer–consumer relations. However, limited empirical evidence exists on the competences and training needs required for its professional and agribusiness development. This study examines perceived competence confidence and training priorities for market gardening across Ireland, Greece, France, Germany, and Austria. The research draws on 53 interviews with education and training providers and a cross-sectional survey of 275 respondents, including practitioners, advisory actors, and institutional stakeholders. The survey was structured around EntreComp, DigComp, and GreenComp to assess entrepreneurial, digital, and sustainability competences. The findings show that practitioners reported relatively strong confidence in motivation, vision, ethical thinking, environmental responsibility, and local contextual awareness, but weaker confidence in market research, resource mobilisation, record-keeping, planning, digital farm management, online sales, technical troubleshooting, stakeholder engagement, and participatory sustainability action. Advisory and institutional respondents rated entrepreneurial and sustainability competences as highly important, while digital competences were also considered relevant but showed stronger cross-country variation. The study concludes that market gardening education should move beyond technical horticultural instruction and adopt an integrated, competence-based curriculum combining entrepreneurial, digital, green, and practice-oriented learning. The findings highlight competence-development priorities that may strengthen market gardening and its potential contribution to local food availability, resilient short value chains, and food security. Full article

The large-scale production and utilization of nitrogen-containing compounds have greatly promoted the development of modern agriculture and the chemical industry, but have also resulted in increasingly severe nitrate contamination and an imbalance of the nitrogen cycle. The efficient conversion of nitrate into value-added ammonia not only contributes to pollutant remediation but also provides a promising route for green ammonia synthesis. Owing to its mild reaction conditions, potentially lower environmental impact, and compatibility with renewable electricity, electrocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia has attracted considerable attention in recent years. This process involves a multielectron transfer process involving numerous intermediate transformations, and its catalytic performance largely depends on the adsorption and conversion of key intermediates on the catalyst surface, as well as the suppression of the competing hydrogen evolution reaction. This review systematically summarizes recent advances in electrocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia, with emphasis on the reaction mechanisms and major reaction pathways, as well as the design strategies, structure–activity relationships, and performance enhancement mechanisms of metal-based, carbon-based, and composite catalysts. In addition, the main challenges in this field, including product selectivity, mass transport, in-situ mechanistic characterization, and long-term stability, are discussed. Finally, the construction of highly efficient catalytic systems and key directions for future research are outlined, with particular emphasis on nitrate valorization and sustainable ammonia synthesis. Full article

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are synthetic fluorinated compounds widely recognized for their stability and persistence in the environment. These characteristics make PFAS valuable in many applications but also pose serious health risks because they do not break down easily. These chemicals can accumulate in living organisms and persist in water systems. PFAS typically transfer from water to other media rather than being completely degraded by conventional treatment technologies such as adsorption and membrane filtration. Chemical degradation techniques, i.e., advanced oxidation processes or electrochemical conversions, require harsh reaction conditions, which make them unsustainable. Microbial degradation offers a green, sustainable alternative for PFAS remediation in water. This review critically analyzes advances in the use of bacterial, fungal, and microbial consortia for PFAS transformation via reductive and oxidative defluorination and/or metabolic reactions. Later, the influence of PFAS structural attributes, i.e., chain length and functional head groups, on microbial activities has been discussed. In the following section, the current progress toward the complete mineralization of PFAS is evaluated. Considering the critical evaluation of microbial degradation processes, several research gaps have been identified, including the lack of detailed mechanistic studies of enzymatic degradation pathways, the need to optimize microbial systems for the sustainable degradation of PFAS, and the integration of biological approaches with other technologies to achieve complete PFAS mineralization. The most important is scaling up microbial techniques by cost evaluation of the process to compete with other physicochemical techniques. Full article

Behavioural nudges modify choice architecture to steer food choices without removing alternatives or substantially changing economic incentives. This critical narrative review synthesises 62 sources from behavioural public policy, public health nutrition, food ethics, and sustainable food-system governance. It distinguishes healthy food nudges, sustainable food nudges, green nudges, and responsible food-system interventions, and compares availability, placement, defaults, labels, digital architecture, and mixed policy packages. The evidence shows that nudges influence immediate food selection, but effects are heterogeneous and weaker for sustained environmental outcomes. Price instruments address affordability, nudges address attention and convenience, and boosts strengthen decision competence; none can substitute for the others. Ethical acceptability requires a transparent, calibrated opt-out process, equity monitoring, disclosure of commercial motives, democratic accountability, and integration with structural policy. Public institutions and profit-driven digital platforms therefore require different governance safeguards. Nudges are most defensible as components of coordinated food-system policy rather than stand-alone solutions. Full article

Urban tree mapping is necessary in environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation, and it depends heavily on the individual tree recognition and canopy segmentation to analyze city green cover. This systematic review discusses recent developments in the 2014–2026 mapping of these trees with the use of UAVs and high-resolution satellite imagery. Our preliminary selection of 4148 records reduced to 101 eligible publications following a systematic screening and synthesis of the records, assessed the efficiency of deep learning models such as Convolutional Neural Networks and Vision Transformers in processing various source images. We also compare object detection and semantic segmentation to see which one is more competent to deal with typical urban challenges, including overlapped canopies and building shadows. According to the reviewed studies, UAV-based models generally achieve higher spatial accuracy than satellite-based approaches for individual tree detection and crown delineation, with reported average Intersection over Union (IoU) values of approximately 70–75%, whereas satellite imagery provides superior spatial coverage for large-scale urban forest monitoring. Lastly, we present a research roadmap to address the existing weaknesses such as geographic bias, which propels the research direction towards multimodal data fusion and Foundation Models to sustain consistent, large-scale urban forest monitoring. Full article

Universities worldwide face escalating financial pressures while simultaneously confronting demands to adopt sustainable practices. This study examines whether Sustainable Green Innovation (SGI) serves as the central transmission mechanism through which AI-Driven Entrepreneurial Orientation (AI-DEO) and Green Metrics for Self-Efficacy (GMSE) influence University Financial Sustainability (UFS) in higher education institutions, within the broader framework of Circular Economy Principles (CEP). Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 1279 faculty and staff members at King Faisal University (Saudi Arabia) and Benha University (Egypt) between October 2025 and January 2026. Regression-based structural path analysis with nonparametric bootstrapped mediation testing (5000 resamples) was employed to test four hypotheses. The results show that AI-DEO emerged as the dominant positive predictor of SGI (β = 0.732, p < 0.001), while GMSE did not show a statistically significant association with SGI once AI-DEO was included in the model (β = −0.034, p = 0.246). SGI emerged as the strongest predictor of UFS (β = 0.369, p < 0.001), supporting an innovation-mediated route to financial sustainability. The indirect effect of CEP on SGI through AI-DEO was statistically significant (indirect = 0.3473; 95% CI [0.3123, 0.3835]), supporting full mediation. Hypotheses H1, H2a, H2b, and H3 were supported; H4 was not supported. These findings indicate that financial resilience in universities is primarily innovation-mediated and orientation-driven. The study contributes to the sustainability-in-higher-education literature by clarifying SGI as a central transmission mechanism and highlighting the importance of building operational green competence alongside strategic AI-Driven entrepreneurial orientation. Full article

Purpose: This paper investigates how product quality and green information transparency jointly influence customer trust in green products and examines competing retailers’ green disclosure and suppliers’ quality investment strategies under information asymmetry. Methodology: We develop a game-theoretic model of two competing retailers and two suppliers with asymmetric quality investment costs. We characterize equilibrium outcomes in sequential disclosure games and study the effects of the trust factor and transparency level on the equilibrium outcomes. Findings: Three main results emerge. First, a second-mover advantage exists in sequential disclosure, namely, the later retailer free-rides on the first mover’s information. Second, higher trust intensifies competition by homogenizing customer utility, whereas greater transparency softens competition by making valuations more heterogeneous. Third, customer trust can incentivize both retailers to disclose simultaneously. Novelty: First, this paper studies consumers’ heterogeneous green preferences and considers the information asymmetry of green attributes between supply and demand. Second, this paper determines the suppliers’ quality investment considering the retailers’ strategic green disclosure and constructs the endogenous trust function. Third, this paper analyzes the retailers’ green disclosure in equilibrium, further determines the market coverage, and points out the effects of key parameters on the market coverage and the product competition. Full article

Supply chain greening has become an important direction for sustainable development. This paper develops a two-stage game model involving a traditional manufacturer, a green manufacturer, and a retailer, to investigate the fairness concerns of the green manufacturer in a supply chain. Different from previous fairness concern models that focus on a single comparison relationship, this study incorporates both horizontal fairness concern with the competing traditional manufacturer and vertical fairness concern with the retailer into a unified framework for green supply chains. The results show that when traditional and green consumers hold equal market shares, the demand and profit of the green manufacturer are consistently higher than those of the traditional manufacturer, although this advantage diminishes as green R&D efficiency decreases. Moreover, increasing bidirectional fairness concern reduces the greenness of green products and significantly affects the retailer’s profit, while its impact on manufacturers’ profits is relatively limited. The effects of bidirectional fairness concern on product pricing depend on green R&D efficiency and the competitive relationship between green and traditional products. Based on these findings, managerial insights are provided for supply chain participants. Full article