Search Results (3,862)

Proximity-based urban models, including the widely discussed 15 min city, aim to bring everyday destinations within a short walk, cycle, or shared-mobility trip, with promising benefits for well-being, public health, local economies, and low-carbon mobility. While the appeal of proximity is widely shared, far less is known about how to deliver and govern such neighbourhoods so that these benefits are realised, durable, and embraced by residents across the full range of their mobility needs. Implementation, public acceptance, and governance therefore remain comparatively under-examined. This article contributes an enabling governance approach for proximity-based, accessible neighbourhoods, centred on co-creation and on a rich, attractive menu of mobility options. Through a cross-disciplinary synthesis organised by the CalmMobility paradigm, a governance-posture lens that emphasises co-creation, sequencing, and readiness, it integrates evidence on proximity, accessibility, active travel, shared mobility, well-being, and low-carbon outcomes. The article argues that proximity and shared mobility widen the range of convenient and attractive options for everyday trips, and that this supports health, quality of life, and lower emissions. It also argues that these benefits are more likely to last under calm, co-created governance, which builds good options first and respects the freedom of residents to choose among all modes, including the car. To put the paradigm to work, the study introduces the Governance Compass and applies it to Paris, Barcelona, and Melbourne. The Compass was applied through a qualitative document analysis carried out by one analyst. It is offered as an exploratory tool that aims to make the reasoning open to inspection, not as a validated measuring instrument. Results are reported as ordinal bands, from Absent to Exemplary, and a 0 to 100 index is kept only as an illustration. The three cases show different patterns. In Paris and in the early Barcelona work, the documents set ambitious proximity goals but say much less about how change is paced, how residents shape it, and how choice is preserved, and these dimensions fall in the lower bands. In Melbourne, whose programme is still a pilot, the pattern is the reverse. The process dimensions are stronger there, but proximity itself is less developed. These bands describe the documents examined, not a fixed ranking of the three cities. Positioned as a constructive complement to the proximity-city agenda rather than a critique of it, the article closes with a cross-disciplinary research agenda spanning planning, transport, public health, and policy. Full article

Population aging has increased the need to improve visual comfort in age-friendly residential interiors. However, limited empirical evidence is available on the combined perceptual effects of correlated color temperature (CCT) and wood surface gloss in older adults. This study recruited 30 older adults and used a 2 × 3 within-subject design combining two CCT levels (2700 K and 4000 K) with three wood surface gloss levels (low, medium, and high). Eye-tracking, paired-image preference selection, and psychological impression ratings were used to assess visual attention, choice behavior, and subjective perception in a wood-based residential interior. The 4000 K condition produced greater sustained visual attention and a higher selection proportion than the 2700 K condition. However, the two CCT levels showed different subjective advantages: 2700 K received higher ratings for Warmth and Relaxation, whereas 4000 K performed better in Naturalness, Interest, Desire to use, and Overall comfort. Wood surface gloss affected visual attention and psychological impressions but showed no significant main effect on selection preference. Selected images also received consistently greater visual attention than unselected images. These findings indicate that CCT and wood surface gloss influence older adults’ visual responses through different perceptual dimensions. The results support function-specific coordination of lighting CCT and wood surface treatment in age-friendly residential interiors rather than a single uniform configuration. Full article

The house cricket (Acheta domesticus) is among the edible insect species authorized under the European Union novel food framework and is increasingly explored as a food ingredient. This review synthesizes current evidence on its nutritional composition, techno-functional properties, safety, sustainability, and application potential for human consumption. A. domesticus powder is a nutrient-dense ingredient, with reported protein contents ranging from 57.4 to 76.19 g/100 g dry material, together with a relevant amino acid profile, unsaturated lipid fraction, chitin-associated fiber, and selected minerals and vitamins. Its techno-functional profile, including water absorption capacity around 175%, oil absorption capacity around 140%, and emulsifying capacity around 77.7%, supports applications in bakery products, snacks, pasta, meat analogs, and protein-enriched foods. From a sustainability perspective, reported feed conversion ratios around 1.5–1.9 and controlled indoor rearing strengthen its relevance for scalable production, although outcomes depend on substrate choice, energy inputs, production scale, and processing conditions. Safety issues, especially allergenicity, cross-reactivity, microbial control, and contaminant monitoring, remain central to industrial use. Overall, A. domesticus powder has emerged and should be regarded as a nutritionally valuable, technologically versatile and promising functional ingredient for sustainable food innovation. Full article

This study analyses the Environmentally Sustainable Human Development Index (ESHDI) across 42 municipalities in Puebla, Mexico, which share the same predominant biome, in 2010 and 2020. The objective was to compare four methods for constructing synthetic indices—Geometric Mean (GM), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and two variants of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA-CCR and DEA-SBM)—to identify the approaches most consistent with the ESHDI’s multidimensional nature. Considering the dimensions of Health, Education, Income, and per capita CO₂ emissions, the robustness of the classifications was evaluated using Kendall’s W, Spearman’s rho, and Kendall’s tau coefficients. The results reveal statistical convergence among the methods, as well as relevant structural differences in the weighting schemes and the generated rankings. While MG, ACP, and DEA-SBM assigned relatively balanced weights to the dimensions and produced similar rankings, DEA-CCR concentrated weights on the best-performing dimensions of each municipality, allowing a single dimension to exert a disproportionate influence on the aggregate index and compromise its multidimensional balance. Among the methods evaluated, DEA-SBM stood out for its ability to combine conceptual consistency with benchmarking capacity. In addition to measuring environmentally sustainable human development, the method enables the identification of reference municipalities, the establishment of realistic performance targets, and the diagnosis of specific inefficiencies in each dimension, thereby supporting the formulation of more effective and territorially contextualised public policies. The evidence reinforces the theoretical and empirical relevance of incorporating environmental sustainability into human development metrics and demonstrates that methodological choices in aggregation significantly influence the evaluation of territorial performance. Full article

Co-production plays an important role in improving community safety worldwide. However, in China’s governance system, where governmental authority remains strong, enterprises and the public have traditionally been passive participants, creating multiple challenges for the development of co-production. To address these challenges, this study examines the behavioral patterns and strategic choices of grassroots governments, property service enterprises (PSEs), and community residents in co-producing community safety. A tripartite evolutionary game model is constructed as the analytical framework, and the “Property Deliberation Council” (PDC) practice in Changsha is used to calibrate the parameters and conduct simulation analysis. The study explores the interest interactions and stability mechanisms among the three actors in community safety co-production. The results show that, under the benchmark parameter settings, the system can evolve toward an ideal stable state characterized by guided cooperation from grassroots governments, active cooperation from PSEs, and active participation from community residents. Moderate government incentives can increase the participation benefits of enterprises and residents, whereas excessive incentives may increase the cost burden on governments. Information transparency and sanction intensity generate a synergistic constraint effect. Social capital can reduce cooperation costs, suppress opportunistic behavior, and promote the transition of co-production from external mobilization to endogenous stability. This study argues that community safety co-production in the Chinese context is neither simple administrative mobilization nor citizen-led co-production. Rather, it is a governance process jointly shaped by government guidance, the embedded role of PSEs, and resident participation. The findings provide theoretical explanations and policy implications for improving community safety governance platforms, strengthening information disclosure and accountability mechanisms, cultivating community social capital, and promoting sustainable community safety co-production. Full article

The United Nations 2030 Agenda often employs universalist metrics that overlook situated territorial ontologies. This study analyzes the Reverdece Association in Ráquira, Colombia, where an evolving self-determined peasant-mestizo family has articulated a model of resilience rooted in a Muisca-inspired worldview. Utilizing Participatory Action Research (PAR) and qualitative modeling in ATLAS.ti 26, this research examines how community practices generate functional sustainability outcomes. The findings reveal that the association’s efficiency stems from a “Coherence Framework” that synchronizes Identity (Being), Social Agency (Doing), and an Economy of Rootedness (Having). Central to this operational logic is the community making resource management decisions based on direct, somatic interactions with the landscape—such as evaluating fiber quality or water cycles—rather than relying on abstract market signals. By intentionally prioritizing long-term permanence, the association demonstrates that ecological regeneration is a natural outcome of their daily practices. This study concludes that community-led initiatives are more successful in achieving global sustainability goals than top-down institutional interventions. By recognizing situated epistemologies as valid forms of knowledge, the research suggests that the most resilient approaches to sustainability emerge from a collective commitment to regenerate ecosystems and maintain a dignified life within the territory. This indicates that locally grounded practices can complement and, in some cases, surpass standardized global indicators. Full article

Building green data centers is an important task in constructing a new generation of information infrastructure and is an inevitable choice for promoting sustainable economic development. This study regards the implementation of the national green data center (NGDC) policy in batches as a quasi-natural experiment and uses the multiperiod difference-in-difference (DID) method to study the effect and mechanism of NGDC policy on the green transformation (GT) of Chinese listed enterprises. Research has found that the NGDC policy has a substantial improvement effect on the level of GT of enterprises, mainly achieved through two paths: enhancing the investment in environmental protection and improving the environmental, social, and corporate governance performance of enterprises. Heterogeneity analysis found that the effect of NGDC policy on empowering enterprises to improve their GT level is more remarkable in state-owned enterprises and those located in more competitive industries. In addition, the technology business environment and environmental regulation in the region emphasize the positive regulatory effect of NGDC policy on promoting enterprise GT. The results of this paper provide empirical evidence and policy implications for improving the construction of national green data centers and promoting sustainable development of enterprises. Full article

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings are now central to how firms’ sustainability is assessed, yet leading providers disagree sharply, injecting measurement error and uncertainty into any rating-based decision. This study proposes and applies a transparent, fully reproducible alternative for the environmental pillar: an ordinal, sector-based carbon-exposure measure constructed solely from firms’ publicly observable industry classifications, free of vendor scoring choices and reconstructable at zero cost. The measure captures structural, between-sector carbon exposure; it is not a firm-level environmental-performance score and does not use reported emissions. Using 3067 firm-year observations on 1049 listed non-financial firms that carry an observed sector classification across six developed markets (the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Italy, and Spain) over fiscal 2021–2025 (with a small number of early fiscal-2026 period-ends), we assess the measure’s informativeness by estimating its association with accounting profitability in high-dimensional fixed-effects models. Descriptively, more carbon-intensive sectors are less profitable (a monotone brown tilt), but this association is not robust: once firm controls and country-by-year fixed effects are absorbed, carbon exposure is not significantly related to return on assets, return on equity, or net margin, and there is no evidence of a concave (inverted-U) pattern. The measure does recover a real operating difference, higher asset turnover among carbon-intensive sectors, but this is offset by margins and does not translate into a profitability premium. A within-firm design detects no differential effect of mandatory non-financial reporting. The contribution is a transparent, rule-based environmental measure that sidesteps rating divergence; the honestly reported null on profitability cautions that apparent effects are sensitive to sample construction and sectoral composition, and positions the measure as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, proprietary ESG ratings. Full article

This study aims to identify and rank the critical factors influencing the sustainability of medium-scale mining in the Coquimbo Region, Chile. To address this decision problem, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied using Expert Choice software (Comparion^® version 11) to structure and prioritize economic, social, and environmental criteria within the decision model. The analysis was based on an expert panel comprising 14 senior professionals from the regional mining industry. Their expert judgment was elicited through structured pairwise comparison questionnaires, consistent with the AHP model. The aggregation of judgments enabled the derivation of weights and the corresponding priority vector, ensuring a rigorous prioritization process. The model results indicate that the “Environmental” and “Social” criteria achieved the highest relative weights (42.9% each), significantly exceeding the “Economic” criterion (14.3%). At the level of alternatives, “Identify Emission Sources and Environmental Risks” attained the highest global priority (5.3%). However, the sensitivity analysis reveals that alternatives associated with the subcriterion “Air Pollution” demonstrate greater model robustness under variations in weights, maintaining dominant positions across multiple scenarios. From an applied perspective, these findings support resource allocation and the formulation of sustainability strategies in mining operations by prioritizing actions with greater impact and stability, particularly in atmospheric emissions management and community engagement. This contributes to improving environmental performance and strengthening the social acceptance of mining operations. Overall, the study provides a robust methodological framework that enhances strategic decision-making in complex mining contexts. Full article

Due to its brilliant literary narrative and profound ideas, Xiao Hong’s Tales of Hulan River has had a profound influence on the history of Chinese modern literature. Academia has conducted in-depth discussions on Tales of Hulan River, but these have largely overlooked the folk shamanic rituals and their crucial significance in this novel. The expression of literary narrative ideas cannot be studied independently without the folk shamanic ritual’s survival resilience. Starting from the dimensions of material, spiritual, and cultural resilience, this article discusses the folk shamanic rituals in Tales of Hulan River, and is dedicated to constructing the mechanism of survival resilience. Material resilience is reflected in the most reasonable choice under limited material conditions, the cultivation of critical thinking, and the understanding of contingency and eternity; spiritual resilience is reflected in the pursuit of transcendence, the provision of psychological comfort, and the emphasis on the motivation of goodness; cultural resilience is reflected in establishing the common goal of the community, cultivating pragmatic cultural values, and maintaining the sustainability of folk shamanic rituals. Full article

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has emerged as a major non-parametric technique for measuring efficiency in sustainability and environmental economics because it can handle multiple inputs and outputs without making explicit functional assumptions. DEA allows the simultaneous consideration of economic performance, resource utilization, environmental impacts, and recycling results in the evaluation of the circular economy (CE). This review investigates the evolution of DEA models in the last years and the variables used to measure the CE performance. We analyze 209 peer-reviewed articles to systematically explore the evolution of DEA applications from conventional single-stage efficiency models to advanced network-based structures that better reflect the intricacy of circular systems. The review discusses the most advanced DEA approaches to date in the literature on CE assessment and uncovers specific factors that affect the choice of models in empirical studies. Finally, it points to promising directions of future research by showing interest in the development of comprehensive DEA models adapted to the specificity of the CE systems. Full article

Fear and aggressive responses in zoo animals are commonly maintained by negative reinforcement, with the animal’s behavior functioning to create distance from an aversive stimulus. Traditional approaches such as systematic desensitization and counterconditioning may be less effective because they do not contact this maintaining contingency and may instead superimpose competing contingencies, producing incomplete change. This paper presents the case for negative reinforcement shaping as a functionally aligned, welfare-positive intervention applied within the constructional approach. We review the empirical literature, address persistent misconceptions, and provide procedural guidance. Two case studies are presented: a male Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) at Copenhagen Zoo whose aggressive responses toward a specific caregiver changed to calm, affiliative responding across 42 min of training, enabling subsequent positive reinforcement-based medical care; and an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) at Dublin Zoo whose avoidance of a suddenly aversive night holding area was resolved within approximately 15 min, resulting in calm, sustained presence with the door closed. Genuine choice, contingency analysis, and the transition from negative to positive reinforcement are discussed. We conclude that negative reinforcement shaping within the constructional approach may provide a useful, function-based alternative for distancing-maintained behavior and is accessible to practitioners with foundational training. Full article

Digital technologies play a dual role in sustainability transitions: they can enable more sustainable practices while simultaneously reinforcing unsustainable patterns of use. Although design is increasingly recognized as a critical lever for steering sustainability-oriented behavior, little is known about how users perceive and prioritize sustainability design cues when these compete with functional, performance-oriented, and hedonic cues. Thus, this study examines how digital design cues shape sustainability-oriented decision-making by analyzing participatory design data from 18 sustainability-focused workshops with secondary-school students. Drawing on an affordance-based analytical lens, we conducted an affordance-oriented qualitative content analysis of 109 digital product concepts and 374 peer evaluation statements using an iterative coding procedure to identify sustainability affordances and competing affordances and examine how they are prioritized during evaluative judgments of digital product concepts. The findings reveal distinct context-dependent shifts in affordance salience. While sustainability affordances were most prominent in prototype concepts, where they accounted for 58% of all sustainability-related codes, they declined to 32% in positive evaluations and 10% in negative evaluations. Conversely, functional and performance affordances gained prominence during evaluative judgments. These patterns indicate that affordance salience varies across contexts and help explain why sustainability considerations may become less salient in evaluative decision settings. Interpreting these patterns through the concept of affordance competition, the study shows how multiple perceived action possibilities simultaneously compete for attention. By applying an affordance-based perspective to digital sustainability, the study contributes to research on sustainability-oriented design by highlighting how competing affordances shape the visibility and evaluation of sustainability considerations across different contexts. The findings offer practical implications for designing digital artifacts that make sustainability affordances more visible, meaningful, and competitive in everyday decision contexts, particularly for future generations of users. Full article

Closed-loop habitats in space-analogue and other extreme environments must sustain life and performance within tightly bounded constraints on water, energy, food, air revitalisation, waste processing, space, and crew time. Existing assessments emphasise engineering reliability, resource throughput, and human factors, but less often address everyday practices—meals, hygiene, privacy, social rituals, sensory comfort, and care work—as variables relevant to sustainability. This conceptual paper develops closed-loop hospitality as an integrated sustainability assessment framework for analysing how such practices mediate between resource constraints and environmental, social, and operational outcomes. Drawing on sustainability assessment, circular resource use, resilience, socio-technical systems, habitability, and hospitality theory, the framework links constraint variables—including resupply interval, closure ratio, bottlenecks, redundancy, volumetric capacity, crew time scarcity, intercultural crew composition, and health-support capacity—to hospitality design choices and measurable indicators. It identifies outcomes such as resource intensity, recycling and waste burden, system reliability, labour distribution, equity and legitimacy of access, psychosocial wellbeing, compliance, and adaptive resilience. The paper supports threshold setting, scorecards, and protocol design in analogue habitats, arguing that sustainable habitation requires balancing resource stewardship with minimum viable hospitality: preserving dignity, care, privacy, cohesion, and operational continuity within closed-loop limits. Full article

Background: Last-mile delivery is the most operationally complex and consumer-visible segment of E-commerce fulfillment, and direct-from-store (DFS) operations account for a growing share of online orders; yet packaging has been studied largely as a materials or sustainability problem rather than as a consumer-facing logistics decision. This study characterizes consumer packaging expectations across fulfillment channels and compares them with observed DFS practice. Methods: We integrate two empirical efforts: an online survey of general E-commerce packaging perceptions (n = 1947 U.S. consumers) and a DFS investigation comprising an exploratory international field audit of 51 orders across four countries and an online DFS consumer survey (314 participants). Analyses include professional–consumer comparisons, internal-consistency and exploratory factor analyses, and a mixed-effects model of the repeated scenario ratings. Results: Consumers consistently prioritize functional protection, content concealment, and practical sustainability over experiential and branding attributes; packaging professionals rate experiential attributes more highly than consumers do (medium-to-large effects); and observed DFS practices frequently misalign with consumer-prioritized functions. Conclusions: The findings support treating packaging as a managed, consumer-centric logistics variable and identify packaging choice at checkout as a feasible lever for DFS providers. Full article