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Higher education is increasingly asked to prepare learners for societies shaped by artificial intelligence, ecological destabilization, labour-market reconfiguration, and declining institutional trust. Yet many universities remain governed by a scarcity model: knowledge transmission, durable credentials, and economic productivity. This article argues that the model is structurally misaligned with emerging conditions because the central educational challenge is shifting from knowledge scarcity to power abundance. The deeper crisis is not a deficit of knowledge production but a deficit of formation: higher education has underdeveloped the human capacities required to use technologically amplified power wisely, meaningfully and responsibly. The article develops this argument through a conceptual design with an embedded systematized scoping review and thematic synthesis across higher education studies, AI governance, futures and foresight, sustainability transitions, human flourishing, wisdom science, and research metrics. It proposes flourishing stewardship as a new first principle for higher education: the cultivation of persons and institutions capable of pursuing meaningful lives while preserving and advancing the conditions for shared human and planetary flourishing. The article contributes the Flourishing Stewardship Transformation Model, linking external transition conditions, scarcity-model misalignment, the power–wisdom gap, six formation capacities, and five institutional transformation levers. The model is operationalized through design questions, researchable indicators, and propositions for future empirical testing. The paper contributes to technological forecasting and social change by positioning higher education as a socio-technical transition infrastructure whose purpose is not merely to adapt learners to technological change, but to form the human agency needed to govern it. Full article

Background: Global logistics generates 16–25% of greenhouse gas emissions, yet small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing economies lack the digital infrastructure to measure and improve their sustainability performance. Business intelligence (BI) systems can support data-driven sustainability decisions, but their application in SME logistics remains poorly understood, and no prior review has examined this intersection with a developing-economy focus. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, searching Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore for peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and April 2026. Two reviewers independently screened 412 records; 67 studies met inclusion criteria. Results: Five thematic clusters emerged: BI tools for logistics, sustainability KPI frameworks (triple bottom line [TBL], environmental–social–governance [ESG], Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs]), ERP integration, SME-specific barriers, and geographic gaps. Of the studies, 92% originate from developed economies; Africa and MENA remain almost entirely absent. No study combines open-source ERP with a validated TBL KPI framework for logistics SMEs. Conclusions: We propose a six-priority research agenda targeting empirical validation in developing economies and open-source BI solutions for SME logistics sustainability. Full article

Agricultural ponds are often narrowly reduced to water storage units, purification systems, or biodiversity reservoirs, reflecting a dominant yet incomplete perspective that overlooks their role in rural landscapes. By moving beyond that, this study argues that they should be understood as multifunctional socio-ecological infrastructures embedded within rural territorial dynamics. Their functions extend beyond hydrological and ecological processes to include productive, social, cultural, and landscape-related dimensions. Both utilitarian and aesthetic, agricultural ponds contribute to territorial organisation, support agricultural productivity, sustain rural livelihoods, and shape local socio-ecological interactions. Based on a review of Scopus-indexed literature, this study proposes a reconceptualisation of agricultural ponds through a socio-ecological and landscape perspective. The analysis identifies the main research themes, their evolution, associated functions, and persistent knowledge gaps. Results reveal a fragmented literature, strongly dominated by biophysical approaches that focus on water quality, nutrient cycles, microbial dynamics, and ecosystem processes. Despite increasing methodological sophistication, social and territorial dimensions such as local perceptions, governance systems, practices, and spatial organisation remain marginal. Drawing on empirical illustrations from exploratory investigations of rural villages in Belgium and Poland, the study further highlights the role of agricultural ponds in shaping territorial organisation, identity, and community interactions. These examples demonstrate that pond-related systems are inherently multidimensional and have historically played an underappreciated role in shaping rural landscapes and mediating socio-ecological relationships across scales. Full article

This study examines how Indonesian university students negotiate the meanings of extremism and tolerance across digital and campus environments. Using phenomenology, the research examines the lived experiences of 35 students from Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, and Bandung to understand how digital platforms, everyday interactions, and symbolic practices mediate their religious identity work. The analysis applies Castells’ concept of communication power and Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and symbolic power to explore how digital platforms shape ideological narratives and emotional framing. Key Findings reveal that extremism is experienced not merely as ideological deviation but as a communicative rupture—manifested through coercive discourse, exclusionary framing, and digitally amplified moral authority—while tolerance emerges as a socially cultivated practice embedded in relational norms, affective positioning, and strategic self-presentation in mediated environments. Social media functions simultaneously as a site of exposure, contestation, and subtle resistance, enabling students to reframe, soften, or oppose dominant narratives through micro-activism and selective curation. This study offers a novel contribution by integrating data-driven phenomenological insights with a theory-driven account of mediated power, demonstrating how symbolic power circulates through digital infrastructures and shapes the cultural politics of religious pluralism among youth in contemporary Indonesia. Full article

With the rapid growth of social media use in Nepal and their engagement with customers, understanding how these platforms support customer loyalty becomes essential for retail businesses. This study investigates the role of social media marketing in shaping brand loyalty among retail customers in Nepal through an integrated research design that combines systematic bibliometric and survey data analysis. The bibliometric findings suggest a clear progression in the literature, moving from a foundational emphasis on relationship marketing and loyalty theory toward a more integrated framework that incorporates social media engagement and, ultimately, measurable business outcomes. The quantitative results based on survey data conducted with 100 Nepalese consumers active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok show that effective social media strategies and the ability to address implementation difficulties significantly enhance brand loyalty. In contrast, the direct influence of customer trust is limited. The findings highlight the importance of tailored and interactive content, supported by appropriate digital practices, particularly in regions with developing infrastructure. This study offers practical recommendations to improve digital engagement, encourage retailers to collaborate with local influencers, respond to customer feedback, maintain transparency in messaging, and enhance digital capabilities to implement effective social media strategies. It also underscores the value of producing culturally relevant content that aligns with local interests and behaviours. Full article

This article examines how DressGO, a fashion game developed by DRESSX on Roblox, organizes immersive fashion commerce for youth-oriented audiences through persuasive and gamified interface design. Rather than treating purchase as a discrete transactional event, the study examines how monetization cues are embedded in progression loops, cosmetic status, and habitual return within a platform-mediated retail environment. Methodologically, the article adopts a qualitative single-case study and interface analysis based on a primary corpus of 12 screenshots selected from an initial pool of 34 screenshots collected across six gameplay sessions in January 2026, complemented by observational notes and contextual documentary triangulation and supplementary verification material for Robux/payment-route visibility. The analysis identifies four operational mechanisms: staged unboxing as a sensory gateway to acquisition, daily rewards and quantified tasks as retention infrastructure, rankings and rarity displays as social comparison cues, and accelerators, probability boosters, and waiting timers as conversion pressure mechanisms. The findings indicate that the interface integrates virtual fashion consumption into ordinary play and social visibility, while monetization cues operate through playful aesthetics, repetition, scarcity cues, and low-friction prompts embedded in progression systems. The article contributes to immersive commerce research by examining how gamification, interface design, and symbolic fashion value converge in a youth-oriented virtual retail environment. It further argues that randomized access, temporal friction, and comparative visibility should be understood not only as engagement features, but also as matters of digital fairness, platform trust, and responsible interface design. Full article

The 15 min city offers a framework for sustainable urban environments. However, its application in historic centres faces challenges such as tourist pressure and heritage fragility. This paper explores cultural heritage as a strategic resource for urban resilience within the European ENACT-15 mC project. The methodology applies four lines of research—socio-economic diagnosis, educational innovation, participatory action research, and digital tool implementation—to the historic centre of Valencia. The study involved 42 students from architecture, commerce and tourism programmes in documenting a selected sample of historic commercial establishments protected by the Special Protection Plan of Ciutat Vella (PEP 2020), while community workshops recruited 30 stakeholders representing local associations, businesses and heritage-related actors to analyse urban conflicts and functional transformation. Results show that integrating educational and participatory approaches facilitates the generation of situated knowledge and social co-responsibility. The technical documentation and diagnostic reports produced serve as empirical evidence of how heritage can be monitored and protected in urban settings under tension. The study concludes that cultural heritage provides a vital social infrastructure for building resilient communities. By bridging the gap between academic research and local agency through digital and participatory mapping, this integrated model provides adaptive intervention strategies that balance tourism demands with the preservation of everyday local life and the proximity economy in heritage-rich environments. Full article

As a key pathway to address climate change and biodiversity loss, and to promote sustainable development, Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have increasingly emerged as a vital theoretical framework and practical tool in global environmental governance. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the primary categories of NbS, including ecological restoration approaches, issue-specific ecosystem-related approaches, infrastructure-related approaches, ecosystem protection approaches, and ecosystem-based management approaches. It also reviews the many ecological, social, and economic benefits generated by NbS practices globally and in China, such as enhanced carbon sequestration, disaster risk reduction, water purification, livelihood improvement, and increased tourism revenue. The findings highlight that the effectiveness of NbS is influenced by a variety of factors, including climatic conditions, spatial patterns, socio-economic contexts, and governance capacity. In addition, the delayed ecological responses and potential trade-offs among ecosystem services present challenges for the long-term implementation and upscaling of NbS. To improve the scientific rigor and applicability of NbS, future efforts should focus on long-term ecological monitoring and dynamic evaluation, developing integrated performance assessment frameworks, and strengthening the integration of local knowledge with supportive policy mechanisms. This review offers theoretical insights and practical guidance for enhancing the implementation of NbS in ecosystem management and policy-making. Full article

Sustainable tourism development has become an increasingly important strategy for peripheral regions seeking to diversify local economies while maintaining environmental and social sustainability. However, the mechanisms through which tourism contributes to sustainable regional development remain insufficiently understood, particularly in post-Soviet and resource-based regional contexts. This study examines the relationships between infrastructural resources, local community participation, regional promotion, support for agro-ecotourism, tourism development, and sustainable regional development in the North Kazakhstan region. The study further investigates the mediating role of tourism development in transmitting the effects of regional factors to broader sustainability outcomes. Primary data were collected through a questionnaire survey conducted among residents and stakeholders of the North Kazakhstan region (N = 232). The proposed conceptual model was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results demonstrate that infrastructure and regional resources (β = 0.247, p < 0.001) and local community participation (β = 0.241, p = 0.001) exert significant positive effects on tourism development. In contrast, regional promotion and support for agro-ecotourism do not show statistically significant direct effects. Tourism development demonstrates the strongest positive influence on sustainable regional development (β = 0.620, p < 0.001) and significantly mediates the relationships between infrastructural and social factors and sustainability outcomes. The study contributes to sustainable tourism literature by developing a mediation-based framework that conceptualizes tourism development as a transmission mechanism linking regional resources and community participation to long-term socio-economic sustainability. The research also expands empirical evidence from peripheral and post-Soviet regional contexts that remain underrepresented in tourism sustainability studies. The findings emphasize the strategic importance of infrastructure investment, community engagement, and integrated regional planning for achieving sustainable tourism-driven development in peripheral territories. Full article

Sustainable rural development requires households to move beyond defensive medical spending and emergency borrowing toward more productive, forward-looking resource allocation. This study uses panel data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), covering the 2017, 2019, and 2021 waves plus a newly released 2023 green-channel wave. We examine whether improvements in safe drinking water, clean cooking energy, and sanitation are associated with lower rural household economic vulnerability. We employ a staggered difference-in-differences design with household and year fixed effects, complemented by event–study tests, mediation analysis, and robustness checks. Environmental infrastructure improvements are significantly associated with lower child hospitalization and out-of-pocket medical expenditure, reduced reliance on high-cost informal credit, and higher income-generating asset shares. Mechanism analysis supports a “health–credit–income” channel, in which environmental improvements reduce preventable health shocks, ease emergency borrowing, and relax liquidity constraints on productive asset allocation. Threshold results further show that these financial-resilience benefits are strongest among households with the lowest baseline resource endowments. The study focuses on rural China, yet the identified health–credit–income mechanism offers a broader, scalable framework. Environmental infrastructure first reduces preventable disease burden, then eases emergency informal borrowing, and finally frees liquidity for income-generating assets. This sequence helps explain how environmental investment can create the financial preconditions for sustainable consumption and investment across developing economies. These findings offer micro-level evidence for integrating environmental infrastructure, rural financial resilience, and ESG social-value assessment. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping higher education worldwide, raising tensions between efficiency, equity, and autonomy. This paper examines these dynamics in South Africa and Kenya, two countries that illustrate distinct governance frameworks and infrastructural challenges within African higher education. Using qualitative document analysis of policy frameworks, scholarly literature, and institutional reports, the study investigates how AI integration offers opportunities for personalized learning, streamlined administration, and enhanced educational quality, while simultaneously exposing risks related to algorithmic bias, digital divides, and the erosion of student agency. The findings show that AI can improve efficiency and enrich student experiences, but without ethical safeguards it may reinforce existing inequalities and diminish learner autonomy. Through situating the analysis in South Africa and Kenya, the paper contributes to debates on AI in education by demonstrating that efficiency gains must be balanced with equity and autonomy considerations. The study concludes with recommendations for educators and policymakers on responsible AI adoption, emphasizing ethical literacy, inclusive infrastructure, and participatory approaches to ensure that technological innovation enhances rather than undermines social justice in higher education. Full article

This article develops a conceptual framework for applied social-scientific research and advisory practice on safety culture in complex socio-technical systems. It starts with the observation that contemporary safety problems increasingly require forms of analysis that go beyond technical reliability and managerial control. Existing approaches to safety remain fragmented across engineering, management, and social science, often treating safety either as a technical design problem, a compliance issue, or a measurable organizational attitude. Against this background, the article argues that a practice-theoretical perspective can help integrate these approaches by understanding safety culture as an emergent configuration of meanings, routines, communication patterns, responsibilities, and situated professional practices. Particular attention is given to the risk paradox as it unfolds in critical infrastructures and safety-related organizations, where communication about possible failure is necessary for safety but may also generate anxiety, resistance, or mistrust. The central claim is that professional practice mediates between safety culture and organizational reliability: safety cultures become effective only insofar as they are enacted through communication, coordination, judgment, reporting, learning, and responsibility. On this basis, the article derives analytical dimensions for empirical research, organizational diagnosis, and advisory work aimed at cultivating reliable performance under conditions of uncertainty. Full article

With the widespread application of IoT and AI technologies in the sports equipment manufacturing sector, traditional sports equipment manufacturers are facing challenges such as financial pressures, technological integration barriers, and the gradual reduction in government subsidies during digital transformation. To investigate the intrinsic mechanism of multi-stakeholder collaborative transformation, this paper, based on the bounded rationality assumption, incorporates the government, sports equipment manufacturers, and third-party digital service providers into a unified analytical framework. A tripartite evolutionary game model is constructed, systematically deriving the replication dynamic equations for each stakeholder under different strategies, and analyzing the stability of the system equilibrium point using the Jacobian matrix. This study shows that the sustainability of government subsidies depends on the trade-off between social benefits, administrative costs, and subsidy expenditures; whether manufacturers choose to cooperate is mainly influenced by the cost of self-purchased equipment, digital service fees, operation and maintenance risks, and residual value recovery; and the investment willingness of digital service providers depends on infrastructure construction costs, service revenue, and government support. Further simulation analysis shows that a higher initial willingness to cooperate can accelerate system convergence, a moderate capital interest rate helps balance the incentives of both supply and demand sides, excessively high core equipment prices will inhibit manufacturers’ willingness to cooperate, and reasonable digital service fees are key to achieving stable collaboration. This paper provides a theoretical basis for policy optimization, service pricing, and industrial collaborative governance in the digital transformation of the sports manufacturing industry. Full article

This study presents the Multi-dimensional Flood Vulnerability Index (M-FLOVI), calculated by using an index-based method specifically tailored to capture the impact of nature-based solutions (NbSs) on vulnerability. It aggregates five vulnerability dimensions (physical, economic, environmental, social and institutional) into a single index within a multi-level framework. Each dimension is calculated from a set of indicators that can be computed with moderate data demands. These calculations generally require information about buildings, infrastructure, land cover, population, protected areas and cultural heritage, which can partly be obtained from open-access data. M-FLOVI ranges between 0 and 1, and it can be readily mapped and combined with flood hazard to produce flood risk maps. This paper elaborates a step-by-step M-FLOVI calculation in the Tamnava River Basin, Serbia, where various NbSs were proposed. Under the baseline conditions, most of the study area exhibits either moderate (83.5%) or low vulnerability (15.8%). These NbSs decrease future vulnerability in 6.6 km² (1.34%) of the study area. Afforestation (0.59%) and retention ponds (0.42%) decrease environmental vulnerability, while flood plain restoration (0.33%), which is expected to create a protected bird habitat, increases environmental vulnerability. These results suggest that M-FLOVI can effectively capture NbSs’ impacts on future vulnerability to floods. Full article