Search Results (869)

While deepening regional connectivity, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) poses formidable challenges to conservation of biodiversity in ecologically sensitive areas along its routes. It makes stronger international cooperation on biodiversity conservation imperative for participating countries. However, the existing literature predominantly focuses on single-country institutional analyses or project-level ecological impact assessments, leaving a gap in the integrated governance framework that bridges “internal institutional supply” and “external international cooperation”. The study finds that recent practices along BRI routes show concentrated progress in several key areas: refining targeted legislation in key sectors, integrating local ecosystem characteristics into conservation approaches, and safeguarding the rights and interests of local communities through diverse channels. By systematically classifying the practices of six representative case studies—including the Mombasa–Nairobi Railway and the Karot Hydropower Plant—the evolving trends for biodiversity conservation under the BRI have been revealed: diversification of conservation subjects and digitalization of conservation methods. To balance the supply and demand of the system, the institutional innovation of China’s biodiversity conservation could be realized through dual-dimensional optimization (internal institutional design + external international cooperation). The specific proposals are as follows: (1) Strengthening domestic institutional rigidity: At the top-level design stage, this entails advancing sui generis legislation for biodiversity conservation, encouraging joint rulemaking by local governments and line ministries, and leveraging the supplementary and constraining effects of treaty-based and contractual standards. At the implementation stage, introducing the community co-management model requires improving public participation mechanisms, such as diversified communication channels. (2) Activating the flexibility of international cooperation, establishing BRI Ecological Cloud digital platforms for data sharing and dynamic monitoring, and joint conservation efforts should be conducted through cross-border projects with BRI partner countries, harnessing project resources to achieve mutual benefits in global biodiversity governance to promote the transnational legal process of biodiversity conservation and global ecological civilization construction. Full article

The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) is reshaping how the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector manages projects across their lifecycle, yet the systemic uptake of this convergence remains poorly understood in developing-economy contexts such as Morocco. This study examines the state, opportunities, and barriers of BIM–AI integration in Morocco’s AEC sector through a PRISMA-guided scoping review combined with a bibliometric analysis. An initial global search of Scopus and Web of Science identified 1842 records; after successive screening for relevance to BIM–AI integration and to the Moroccan context, six core studies were retained for detailed synthesis. The bibliometric analysis, covering the broader filtered corpus, shows a publication trend with three distinct growth phases between 2015 and 2025 and reveals that Moroccan research output on digital construction is disproportionately concentrated on energy-efficiency applications rather than construction management or structural engineering. The synthesis of the six core studies further indicates that BIM–AI integration in Morocco remains at an early, largely 3D-focused stage, with significant conceptual and empirical gaps. Building on these findings, this study proposes a three-tiered strategic roadmap, targeting policy, industry, and academia, to accelerate digital transformation and innovation in Morocco’s construction sector. Full article

The modern agricultural sector faces a multidimensional crisis, mainly consisting of an aging workforce, labor shortages, exhausting working conditions, and high rates of work-related accidents. In response, the authors carried out a systematic literature review (SLR), to explore the latest research on smart agricultural technologies, their effects on occupational safety, ergonomics, and worker health, and pinpoint obstacles to sustainable adoption. A thorough search was performed solely in the Scopus database, covering peer-reviewed publications from 2020 to 2026, strictly following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Based solely on Scopus, this study provides a focused synthesis, with the results suggesting that hazards such as chemical exposure and musculoskeletal strain are significantly reduced with the use of innovations such as unmanned vehicles, exoskeletons, and collaborative robots. These technologies also show great promise in cutting down resource waste, helping farmers practice sustainable agriculture. However, a recurring gap between research and real-life deployment exists, as adoption is hindered by cost considerations, reliability issues, and ergonomic problems. To achieve a sustainable technological transition in agriculture, it is necessary to simultaneously bridge three critical gaps: technological (ensuring robust field performance), ergonomic (design and testing processes based on real end-users and their needs), and socio-economic (addressing adoption barriers). Full article

In this paper, we formulate a new endogenous growth framework designed for the artificial intelligence era. We theorize AI as a hybrid production factor, possessing the non-rivalrous properties of public knowledge and the rivalrous constraints of computing power. By endogenizing the role of public finance, the model demonstrates that strategic government investment in digital infrastructure and AI-specialized human capital acts as a primary catalyst for the marginal productivity of private capital. We derive the Theorem of Digital Optimality, identifying the optimal allocation of tax revenue between physical hardware and intangible intelligence. Our findings suggest that in an AI-driven economy, public spending generates a significant crowding-in effect, shifting the private investment frontier upward. The model warns that failure to optimize these public inputs leads to digital secular stagnation, in which the lack of sovereign digital platforms bottlenecks private-sector innovation. Full article

Digital financial inclusion (DFI) serves as a key catalyst for corporate green transition, primarily by easing financing barriers to low-carbon investment and supporting emission abatement efforts. Leveraging a panel dataset of Chinese A-share firms from 2013 to 2023, this paper investigates how DFI influences CO₂ emissions and identifies the underlying channels. We find a significant negative correlation between access to DFI and CO₂ emissions, with the effect exhibiting pronounced regional heterogeneity, being significant primarily among firms located in eastern China, as well as large-scale enterprises and those in the public services and manufacturing sectors. Mediation tests indicate that this reduction operates through three interrelated pathways: accelerated green technological upgrading, strengthened environmental responsibility, and relaxed credit constraints for sustainability-oriented projects. Further analysis confirms that DFI fosters green transformation by encouraging cleaner production methods and promoting innovation in eco-friendly technologies. Accordingly, we recommend targeted policy interventions, differentiated by firm size and industry, to scale up DFI for corporate decarbonization, complemented by institutional reforms to ensure effective implementation. Full article

Despite nationwide transparency mandates and expanding digital infrastructure, Chinese local governments adopted online budget disclosure at markedly different times. This study explains this staggered diffusion by integrating the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework with policy diffusion theory and analyzing 290 prefecture-level governments in China from 2002 to 2023 using discrete-time event history models. The results show that government website development, central government mandates, and peer-city adoption are positively and robustly associated with the likelihood of adoption. By contrast, provincial government disclosure, regional economic development, fiscal pressure, and internet penetration show no stable independent effects in the full models. Interaction analyses reveal, however, that economic development and internet penetration strengthen the association between website development and adoption, while fiscal pressure does not. These findings indicate that local environmental conditions function primarily as enabling conditions that amplify technological capacity rather than as autonomous drivers. The study advances research on fiscal transparency and public-sector innovation by shifting attention from whether governments disclose to when adoption occurs, offering a conditional interpretation of the TOE framework, and demonstrating how vertical authority, horizontal peer dynamics, and digital readiness jointly shape policy diffusion in a unitary governance system. Full article

This study contributes to the literature on sustainable international investment by examining how public data openness—treated as a non-rivalrous production factor—enables firms to overcome information asymmetries, reduce financing constraints, and catalyze innovation-driven overseas expansion. Grounded in China’s dual strategic imperatives of digital factor marketization and high-quality outbound investment, we exploit the staggered rollout of municipal public data platforms (2008–2023) as a quasi-natural experiment and apply a firm- and city-level staggered difference-in-differences (DID) design to a sample of A-share listed firms. Our findings demonstrate that public data openness significantly enhances the sustainability of outward investment, measured through improved capital allocation efficiency and long-term resilience. Mechanism tests reveal that innovation capacity and eased financing constraints serve as key transmission channels, with stronger effects observed in firms with higher human capital endowments, robust internal controls, and exposure to technologically dynamic sectors. Heterogeneity analyses further indicate that the sustainability impact is amplified under environmental uncertainty, suggesting that data openness acts as an institutional buffer. The results offer actionable policy implications for aligning digital governance with corporate sustainability goals, and provide empirical grounding for integrating open data infrastructure into national strategies for responsible internationalization. Full article

Public sector organizations face mounting pressure to improve employee performance while pursuing sustainable management practices, yet evidence on how sustainability-oriented leadership relates to tangible performance outcomes remains scarce, particularly in regional government settings. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, this study examines the association of Human Capital Sustainability Leadership (HCSL) with Employee Job Performance (EJP) and the mediating role of Innovative Work Behavior (IWB) among Indonesian civil servants managing regional government assets (Barang Milik Daerah). Survey data were collected from 541 civil servants across the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government using validated multi-item scales and analyzed with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). HCSL was positively associated with IWB (β = 0.834, p < 0.001) and EJP (β = 0.438, p < 0.001), and IWB was positively associated with EJP (β = 0.383, p < 0.001). Bootstrap analysis indicated a complementary partial mediation of the HCSL–EJP relationship through IWB (β = 0.319, 95% CI [0.194, 0.440]). The model accounted for 61.9% of the variance in EJP and 69.5% in IWB, though the cross-sectional, single-source design and very high construct reliabilities mean these estimates should be read as upper bounds. The findings suggest that sustainable leadership development may be one credible lever for supporting innovation and performance in public asset stewardship, with implications for sustainable governance and human capital development. Full article

This study examines whether state capital refocusing promotes innovation-driven development by reshaping the scale and technological direction of innovation in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Using 499 firm-year observations for 42 Beijing municipal SOEs from 2013 to 2024, we distinguish innovation output from innovation allocation across invention-oriented, green, and internationally oriented patents. Two-way fixed-effects estimates show that a one-standard-deviation increase in core business focus is associated with increases of 0.610, 0.468, 0.383, and 0.090 log points in overall, invention-oriented, green, and internationally oriented innovation output, respectively. Refocusing also raises the shares of invention-oriented and green innovation, while leaving the international share unchanged. The main patterns remain broadly robust to alternative measures, additional controls, alternative specifications, and a continuous-treatment difference-in-differences design based on the 2020–2022 SOE Reform Three-Year Action Plan. Mechanism analyses provide evidence consistent with industrial-chain control as an important transmission channel, while heterogeneity analyses show that functional missions, industrial-chain positions, and strategic-sector status condition the effects. The findings indicate that state capital refocusing influences not only how much SOEs innovate, but also where innovation resources are directed, providing firm-level evidence on how public-capital reallocation can support mission-oriented innovation. Full article

Sustainable mobility is undergoing a profound transformation driven by emerging technologies, increasingly stringent government regulations, and rising societal expectations, challenging traditional mobility models and fostering the emergence of new collaborative ecosystems. Actors from diverse sectors are converging to co-create innovative solutions that support a more sustainable mobility paradigm. Given the novelty of this phenomenon, this study proposes a theory-based taxonomy of innovation ecosystem initiatives for sustainable mobility. To this end, an exploratory literature review was conducted on 760 peer-reviewed articles published over the past twenty years, linking publications on innovation ecosystems with those on sustainable mobility. Topic analysis, performed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), identified ten key themes. These themes were then grouped into three main categories during an expert roundtable: smart transportation systems, sustainable mobility planning, and logistics optimization. Furthermore, the analysis of author networks reveals a segmented and specialized collaborative structure, characterized by strong cohesion within thematic groups but limited connectivity between them. This fragmentation reinforces thematic concentration while limiting inter-domain interactions. Overall, the proposed taxonomy offers a structured framework for better understanding and supporting the design, coordination, and orchestration of innovation ecosystems in sustainable mobility. Full article

Against the rapid expansion of the digital economy in Southeast Asia, improving firms’ digital capability has become increasingly important for sustaining employee innovation in the IT services sector. However, existing research has mainly emphasized organizational or performance outcomes and has paid less attention to the internal mechanisms through which corporate digital capability shapes employees’ sustainable innovation behavior, especially in the heterogeneous institutional and cultural context of ASEAN. Drawing on Conservation of Resources theory and Social Information Processing Theory, this study examines the relationship between corporate digital capability and sustainable employee innovation behavior, with innovation atmosphere and knowledge sharing as mediating mechanisms. Using cross-sectional survey data collected from 257 employees in IT services firms across five ASEAN countries, and employing hierarchical regression analysis with bootstrap mediation testing, this study finds that corporate digital capability positively promotes sustainable employee innovation behavior (β = 0.38, p < 0.01). The results further show that innovation atmosphere and knowledge sharing serve as important mediating pathways through which digital capability is translated into employee-level innovation outcomes (indirect effects: 0.20, 95% CI [0.10, 0.31] for IA; 0.19, 95% CI [0.11, 0.28] for KS). In addition, innovation atmosphere strengthens knowledge sharing, forming a sequential mechanism (indirect effect = 0.26, 95% CI [0.15, 0.37]) that further supports sustainable innovation behavior. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying how digital capability affects sustainable employee innovation at the micro level, by distinguishing the organizational climate and knowledge exchange mechanisms involved in this process, and by providing context-sensitive evidence from ASEAN’s diverse digital transformation environment. The findings also provide practical insights for firms and policymakers seeking to strengthen sustainable innovation capacity through digital capability building, supportive organizational climates, and stronger knowledge-sharing practices. Specifically, policymakers should align DEFA-funded digital skill programs with organizational climate interventions that foster psychological safety and cross-border collaboration, while managers in resource-constrained SMEs can leverage low-cost measures such as monthly idea recognition schemes, public endorsement of reasonable failure, and designated cross-border knowledge brokers to amplify the innovation returns of digital investments. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly recognised for its transformative implications for sustainability transitions. Yet little is known about how AI co-evolves with green technological innovation systems and whether institutional adaptation keeps pace with technological diffusion. This study maps 3357 peer-reviewed publications between 2003 and 2025 using transformer-based topic modelling and cross-model triangulation to characterise structural evolution across enabling technologies, sectoral applications, and governance domains. Results reveal a reproducible triadic configuration consistent with innovation-system layering, alongside pronounced asymmetry in growth trajectories. While AI-enabled application domains (e.g., energy systems, waste and circularity, agriculture, and urban mobility) exhibit sustained expansion and increasing specialisation, governance and institutional strands demonstrate thinner density, greater model sensitivity, and delayed acceleration. These patterns are consistent with an asynchronous relationship between technological capability and institutional oversight, echoing the innovation-regulation lag observed in other technology-diffusion processes. The findings contribute to technological change literature by providing systematic evidence on the thematic structure and evolution of AI-enabled sustainability research and by proposing a co-evolution diagnostic framework for monitoring alignment between technological expansion and governance attention. Full article

Digital Twin technologies hold significant promise for advancing smart campus initiatives by enabling data-driven management of facilities, sustainability planning, and safety monitoring. Despite this potential, affordability remains a critical barrier to widespread adoption across higher education institutions. This study introduces an initial exploratory scenario-based affordability index for campus digital twin and maps the affordability of implementing campus digital twin across 1872 U.S. higher education institutions using spatial analysis techniques. Sensitivity analysis is also conducted to evaluate the robustness of the results. Our analysis yields three key findings: (1) Under the baseline scenario, most campuses show moderate-to-high affordability with spatial clusters concentrated in coastal and metropolitan regions, while nearly one-quarter remain unaffordable or marginally affordable, with clusters located in the Midwest. (2) Private institutions demonstrate relatively greater affordability than public institutions, with for-profit private institutions exhibiting higher affordability than their non-profit counterparts. Spatial aggregation patterns further reveal heterogeneity in affordability between these sectors. (3) States with strong economic and educational infrastructures, such as California, contain a greater number of affordable campuses for digital twin implementation, while resource-constrained states face significant barriers. These findings remain generally robust and consistent across the baseline and sensitivity scenarios. The results underscore the need for standardized cost models, public cost databases, targeted policy guidance, and multi-stakeholder collaboration to promote equitable adoption. By positioning digital twins as strategic tools for campus resilience, efficiency, and innovation, this study advances the conceptual understanding of their role in higher education and provides exploratory yet actionable insights for institutional leaders and policymakers to support inclusive digital transformation. Full article

The findings of this study indicate that although artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in operational practices across the Australian insurance sector, explicit engagement with ethical AI principles remains limited. Based on an analysis of 156 AI-related web pages from Australian insurers, the results show that 58% of companies do not reference any AI Ethics Principles, highlighting a gap between AI adoption and ethical governance. The predominance of operational themes over governance-oriented discourse suggests that ethical considerations are not yet systematically integrated into public-facing communication strategies. While certain principles, particularly human wellbeing and privacy, receive greater attention, others such as accountability and contestability remain comparatively underrepresented. This imbalance indicates a structural gap between technological implementation and transparent ethical articulation. From an actuarial and governance perspective, strengthening the visibility and consistency of responsible AI commitments may enhance stakeholder trust and support sustainable innovation. This study provides one of the first empirical assessments of publicly articulated ethical AI governance in the Australian insurance sector; future research could extend the analysis to international markets and additional data sources. Full article

Livestock production, encompassing both meat and dairy industries, constitutes a sector of significant global economic value, providing livelihoods for numerous families and communities worldwide. This paper presents a mixed-methods systematic review of scientific literature published between 2015 and 2026 to map emerging regenerative technology archetypes. While regenerative livestock farming is gaining ground as a sustainable alternative, a significant research gap persists regarding the systematic identification of emerging technologies and the lack of specific frameworks for their technical implementation in tropical regions. This article addresses this gap by mapping the strategic frontiers of regenerative technologies using high-resolution text mining software (Vantage Point V15.1) combined with advanced bibliometric analysis and advanced searches in specialized databases. Fifty-six high-impact publications in Scopus and ScienceDirect were analyzed, and the results identified 14 key regenerative activities, highlighting silvopastoral systems, integrated pasture management, and crop–livestock integration as the most prominent solutions. An additional analysis was applied, identifying 10 variables in regenerative livestock farming as well as their alignment with seminal authors on regenerativity issues. A crucial finding is the existing disconnect between the theoretical benefits of regeneration and its practical application in diverse geographical contexts. To mitigate this gap, the study proposes technical implementation models and a step-by-step procedural sequence specifically designed for the Colombian context, although these can be replicated in other regions, particularly in tropical zones. By synthesizing technical limitations and local adaptability, this research provides a strategic roadmap for the transition to sustainable livestock systems, offering valuable insights for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers committed to regenerative innovation. Full article