Search Results (10)

Emerging pollutants (EPs) associated with the petroleum industry present considerable challenges to environmental management and sustainable development. To support sustainable development and improve the control of EPs in the petroleum industry, this review systematically examines the functional uses of EPs as chemical additives across the entire petroleum supply chain—from extraction and transportation to refining and product blending. It also summarizes the environmental emissions, health impacts, mitigation strategies, and current regulatory frameworks of EPs. In addition, some challenges have been found, namely unclear data on EPs in chemical additives, insufficient attention to high-risk areas, undefined health risks of mixing EPs, lack of green assessment of alternative technologies, and regional policy disparities, which collectively hinder the effective prevention and management ofEPs. In response, we propose future perspectives including enhanced screening and substitution of high-EP-risk additives, development of source-specific fingerprinting techniques, expanded monitoring of mixed contaminants and understudied regions, accelerated deployment of green technologies, and strengthened global cooperation under sustainability-oriented governance frameworks. This study underscores the necessity of integrated, science-based approaches to align petroleum industry practices with global sustainability goals. This review underscores the critical need for a proactive and integrated approach toward the sustainable development of the petroleum industry through the control of and reduction in EPs. Full article

Consumers are increasingly engaging in green consumption practices through the lens of self-quantification. Both the pursuit of positive green data outcomes at the individual level and the comparison and even competition among green data at the community level may lead to insincere green behaviors such as “performative green engagement” beyond the positive outcomes of tracking and measuring one’s green consumption. Compared to outcome-oriented studies exploring the impact of self-quantification on the outcomes of consumers’ green behaviors, this research focuses on the deeper sincerity of behaviors beyond outcomes, comprehensively analyzing the influence of self-quantification on the sincerity of consumers’ green behaviors and their sustained willingness for green consumption. The scenario-based experimental results confirmed that under low situational involvement, in promoting goal-oriented green consumption, self-quantification leads consumers to participate less in substantive environmental activities, with weaker internal motivation, lower sincerity, and weaker sustained willingness for green behaviors. In defensive goal-oriented green consumption, self-quantification encourages consumers to engage more in necessary energy-consuming activities, with stronger internal motivation, higher sincerity, and stronger sustained willingness for green behaviors. Under high situational involvement, consumers with mechanisms for self-quantification and those without exhibit similar levels of green behavior sincerity, with no significant difference in sustained willingness. The findings provide guidance for stakeholders in green consumption to more scientifically quantify the self, promoting proactive and sincere approaches to achieve the sustainable and healthy development of green consumption. Full article

Corporate sustainability has become integral to business strategy worldwide, including in Romania. With growing awareness of environmental impacts and the need for sustainable development, Romanian corporations are increasingly adopting green policies. This study explores how Romanian companies balance economic goals with environmental responsibilities and examines how managers’ perceptions of financial outcomes, innovation, and proactive orientations influence sustainability practices. The research adopts a novel management-focused perspective to analyze factors driving sustainable practices within organizations. A two-pronged methodology was employed: qualitative data were collected via a questionnaire administered to 149 CEOs and CFOs, providing insights into financial health and strategies and performing the statistical analysis to comprehensively evaluate long-term environmental and economic sustainability. The results show moderate to strong positive correlations between financial performance, proactive orientation, innovation, and ecological performance. While proactive and innovation parameters significantly impact ecological policies, financial performance plays a more moderate, indirect role. Key findings reveal that transport companies are the least likely to adopt green strategies, while the age of companies does not play a vital role. The study underscores the complex interplay between corporate sustainability and economic performance, offering valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities for Romanian businesses in advancing green policies. Full article

In the context of economic globalization, international trade facilitates cross-border production and consumption but raises concerns such as carbon transfer from corporate trade activities. This study investigates the influence of executives’ green awareness on the global green value chain (GGVC) using matched data from Chinese customs and enterprises, along with newly constructed GVC net flow indicators and econometric models. From 2007 to 2016, executives’ green awareness in Chinese A-share listed companies significantly promoted GVC development, with proactive, green-oriented executives driving greater green upgrades. Variations in executives’ backgrounds, firm types, regional education levels, and highly digitalized production environments further shaped the effectiveness of green leadership. The findings provide empirical evidence and insights into green export management practices. Full article

While transit-oriented development (TOD) has been widely adopted in urban design alongside the expansion of urban metro transit, the creation of pedestrian-friendly environments has often been overlooked during implementation. This has resulted in a lower walking advantage around metro transit stations. To address this issue and encourage walking and public transport use in metro transit station areas, this study undertook a quantitative comparative analysis of the pedestrian environment in five Chongqing metro transit station areas. The analysis focused on three key dimensions: “comprehensive evaluation”, “basic scale”, and “structural quality”. The comprehensive evaluation considered factors such as the pedestrian catchment area ratio, POI kernel density distribution, and crowd agglomeration. The basic scale dimension comprised floor area ratio, building density, pedestrian road density, and the quantity of station entrances and exits. Finally, structural quality factors included land use type mixing degree, POI function mixing degree, intersection connectivity, median street length, pedestrian route directness, and green view index. Based on these analyses, this study proposes a series of pedestrian environment design strategies including land use and transportation. The strategies for land use advocate for “developing compact and diverse land use”, “strengthening attraction of station center”, “positioning large projects on the edge”, “restricting private transportation capabilities”. The strategies for transportation consist of “increasing pedestrian road density”, “traffic calming organization”, “subdivision of road types”, and “three-dimensional pedestrian traffic system”. These strategies aim to create a more humanized and environmentally friendly pedestrian environment, proactively rise to the challenge of climate change, thereby cultivating sustainable urban development. Full article

This study examines the impact of green process innovation (GPI), green entrepreneurial orientation (GPO), and proactive sustainable strategy (PSS) on environmental performance (EP). Data were collected from 294 Indian agriculture technology firms. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data using Lisrel 8.80. This study aimed to analyze how green entrepreneurial orientation, sustainability strategies, and green process innovation improve the environmental performance of agricultural technology firms. The results show that green process innovation, sustainability strategy, and entrepreneurial orientation play a significant role in enhancing agricultural technology firms’ environmental performance. Agricultural technology firms achieve high environmental performance primarily through strategy or sustainability. In every green process, innovation is crucial and essential. This research offers several practical implications that can be utilized by managers of agricultural technology firms to develop systems with cleaner production techniques in agribusiness. The novelty of the study lies in analyzing the direct relationships among green entrepreneurial orientation, strategy, and innovation in promoting the environmental performance of agricultural technology firms by drawing data from an agriculturally oriented developing country such as India. Full article

Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) is a municipal water supply, drainage, wastewater, and solid waste management utility in Seattle, Washington. This utility has explored the impacts of climate change and supported climate adaptation work since 1997. Faced with threats such as sea level rise, drought, wildfires, and extreme precipitation events, SPU has worked to “mainstream” climate science throughout its strategic planning, capital investments, management, operations, staffing, institutional culture, and more. This paper provides a descriptive, chronologically ordered account of how SPU’s climate-change-related work has evolved to become an aspect of a broader social and environmental sustainability orientation, aimed at resilience against climate impacts, but also towards improving greenhouse gas emissions reduction, carbon sequestration, water and waste circularity, green infrastructure, ecosystem and species stewardship, green and blue workforce development, affordability, an intergenerational perspective, and environmental justice. We frame this transition as a movement from a core focus on risk management toward a proactive and integrated mode of sustainable operations. While SPU’s journey has been enabled by a co-productive approach to climate services, we speculate on how this model can be broadened and diversified to help SPU pursue their goal of becoming a sustainable organization. It is our hope that this paper sparks reflection and discussion within the climate services community, amongst utilities, municipalities, and policy entrepreneurs that are interested in sustainability. Full article

The rapid growth of China’s renewable energy market and production capacity has attracted worldwide attention. Environmental policy integration in the energy sector and the institutional background behind this growth have seen little examination. In this paper, we present an assessment of environmental policy integration (EPI), attempting to reveal how the institutional factors facilitate EPI in the energy sector of China. A qualitative analytical framework involving normative, organizational, and procedural dimensions, incorporating multiple pieces of quantitative evidence, was applied. The results show that an ambitious and long-term normative vision covering political will, social backing, and cultural foundation in China is indispensable to the EPI process in the energy sector. The energy agency’s trans-sector cooperation in policy-making has been established to overcome the sectoral compartmentalization. China’s EPI in energy has a relatively complete and stable regulating system but, at the same time, it is expected to obtain more benefits from market cultivation and public participation. In this process, advantages such as the co-evolution of the green energy innovation, market, and society do exist; however, this market-oriented approach may bring the risk of economic and societal disturbances when interest-driven production capacity growth far surpasses market and societal requirements. This potential risk needs to be handled and prevented by strong governmental guidance and support. The continuous ambitious and long-term visioning of EPI, sufficient governmental funds, and a proactive industrial plan for renewable energy, are suggested. Full article

Emerging economies face the challenge of striking a balance between development and the environment. To adapt to the changes, organizations must develop dynamic capabilities for green innovation and corporate sustainability. Based on a resource-based view integrated with contingency and stakeholder theories, this study examines how strategic contingency makes differences in the transformation between learning and performance resources through innovation efforts. Oriented toward external and internal stakeholders, respectively, learning resources comprise absorptive capacity and transformative capability, innovation efforts include green product innovation and green process innovation, and performance resources contain green image and competitive advantage. Depicting their mediating relationships moderated by environmental proactivity, the research model is supported by survey observations collected from over 300 organizations in China. Environmentally proactive organizations are found to have more balanced dynamic capability development than those that are more reactive. To optimize green innovation, therefore, organizations need to embrace an ecological strategy and engage employees in learning. Full article

With environmental pollution, climate change and resource scarcity being serious global issues, green entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as an approach to simultaneously address economic performance, environmental impact and social responsibility. As green entrepreneurship needs to consider both venture performance and social responsibility, it will be subject to legitimacy constraints at the system level. Whether these legitimacy constraints are favorable to green enterprise is not yet clear from current research. Especially for transition economies, the problem of whether proactive green enterprises facing legitimacy constraints under institutional uncertainty can achieve green performance requires further study. Thus, a theoretical model to determine the relationship between green proactiveness orientation (GPO), green performance, legitimacy, and transitional economics was proposed. Based on the data from 235 new Chinese green firms, the empirical results suggest that green startups launch with a green proactiveness orientation, which enables them to acquire a green performance advantage over their competitors. Improvements in green performance is also shown to be driven by the pressure from institutional legitimacy. Better green performance can be easily achieved if green startups have a higher level of legitimacy. However, against the background of transitional economies, the increase in institutional uncertainty will damage the promotion of political legitimacy and make the enterprises that are subject to political legitimacy constraints lose their green performance. Currently, political legitimacy is no longer an impetus. However, the increase in institutional uncertainty will strengthen the promotion of commercial legitimacy and cause green-oriented startups to pursue more commercial interests. Thus, to a certain extent, it will lead to market uncertainty. The conclusion of this study not only provides guidance for startups in different industries to develop green actions under the pressure of institutional constraints but also warns governments to improve policies and regulations quickly under different situations of institutional uncertainty. Full article