Search Results (241)

This paper examines the impact of country risk on banking sector stability, employing the CAMELS framework, within 13 Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries for 1984–2024. The analysis exploits the impact of political, economic, and financial risk dimensions on 102 publicly listed banks using two-way random effects models and one-step dynamic panel data estimations. The findings reflected a significant inverted U-shaped nexus between country risk and the stability of the banking sector, addressing how high-country risk deteriorates banking resilience, whereas low country risk improves it. Political risk has the strongest impact with a similar nonlinear relationship. Conversely, economic and financial risks consistently have reverse linear effects. These findings signify the structural vulnerability of MENA banks to political, economic, and financial turmoil and address the urgent need for robust frames of risk management and fiscal discipline. This investigation extends sovereign risk theory, which explains the ability to maintain financial stability by integrating three core dimensions—political, economic, and financial risk—into a comprehensive empirical model that directly relates them to MENA banking stability and provides crucial insights for banking institutions, policymakers, and regulators in a highly volatile atmosphere. Full article

Against the backdrop of global food security and circular agriculture development, edible fungi, as a high-protein food source, have both ecological and economic value in their production model using agricultural and forestry wastes. Based on the “Cycle Production of Plants, Animals, and Fungi” theory, this paper systematically reviews the research progress of alternative substrates for edible fungi. First, alternative substrates are categorized into plant-derived, animal-derived, and microbial-derived types according to their sources. The physicochemical properties, application status, and bottlenecks of each type are analyzed, such as difficult lignin degradation in plant-derived substrates, pollutant risks in animal-derived substrates, and lack of unified application standards for microbial-derived substrates. Second, the mechanisms of key influencing factors including substrate nutritional content, pH and moisture content are elaborated. Furthermore, the paper points out current industrial challenges such as regional resource heterogeneity, difficult control of pretreatment parameters, pollutant residues, and poor batch stability, and summarizes targeted optimization strategies, including regional substrate formulations, precise pretreatment technologies, nutritional regulation, and circular utilization models. Finally, future directions are prospected from four aspects: localized resource utilization, technological innovation, circular model upgrading, and standardized governance, providing theoretical support for the large-scale and sustainable development of the edible fungi industry and contributing to agricultural waste resource utilization and the achievement of “dual carbon” goals. Full article

This article develops an interdisciplinary framework that applies topological and graph-theoretical methods to public procurement markets and digital platform economies. Conceptualizing legal–economic interactions as dynamic networks of nodes and edges, we show how structural properties—centrality, clustering, connectivity, and boundary formation—shape contestability, resilience, and compliance. Using EU-relevant contexts (public procurement directives and the Digital Markets Act), we formalize network representations for buyers, suppliers, platforms, and regulators; define operational indicators; and illustrate an empirical, value-weighted buyer → supplier network to reveal a sparse but highly modular architecture with a high-value backbone. We then map these structural signatures to concrete legal levers (lotting and framework design, modification scrutiny, interoperability and data-access duties) and propose dashboard-style diagnostics for proactive oversight. The findings demonstrate how topological modelling complements doctrinal analysis by making hidden architectures visible and by linking measurable structure to regulatory outcomes. We conclude with implications for evidence-informed regulatory design and a research agenda integrating graph analytics, comparative evaluation across jurisdictions, and machine-learning-assisted anomaly detection. Full article

This study explores the role of social trust, a critical informal institution, in mitigating corporate brownwashing—the strategic concealment of positive environmental performance. Drawing on a panel of 15,081 firm-year observations from Chinese A-share listed firms between 2010 and 2022, we operationalize brownwashing as a strategy where firms demonstrate substantive environmental compliance (i.e., no environmental penalties) while simultaneously practicing symbolic verbal conservatism (below-median environmental disclosure). Our empirical analysis reveals that higher regional social trust significantly curbs the propensity for firms to engage in brownwashing. This effect is not only statistically significant but also economically meaningful: a one-standard-deviation increase in social trust is associated with a 1.85 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of brownwashing. This effect operates through two key channels: enhancing stakeholder monitoring and reinforcing internal governance for environmental accountability. The impact of trust is significantly amplified under specific conditions: its role is more pronounced where formal sustainability regulations are weaker, highlighting trust as a crucial informal pillar of the sustainability governance architecture, and its inhibitory effect is strengthened when firms face higher reputational risks tied to their environmental performance. This study makes several contributions: it provides broad, cross-industry evidence on a key challenge in sustainability reporting; offers empirical support for the “trust fidelity” theory in the context of environmental disclosure; and develops a ‘channel-amplifier’ framework that advances our understanding of the complex institutional interplay required to foster corporate environmental transparency. Full article

Currently, many industrial cities in Northeast China are grappling with a surge in brownfields, population loss, and environmental degradation, largely driven by industrial decline. Consequently, brownfield regeneration has emerged as a critical pathway for exploring sustainable development in shrinking cities. This study investigates the regeneration potential of urban brownfields against the backdrop of population shrinkage and aging. Under the framework of Ecosystem Service Theory, this study adopts the Fulaerji District of Qiqihar City as a representative case, integrating its four key categories of ecosystem services into a three-dimensional “economic–social–environmental” evaluation framework. This approach facilitates the transformation of Ecosystem Service Theory from a conventional post-regeneration evaluation tool into a pre-regeneration framework for assessing potential and determining site prioritization. A tripartite evaluation system was constructed, integrating economic vitality (e.g., the population shrinkage index, the proportion of the elderly population, and transportation accessibility), social culture (e.g., the industrial heritage proximity index), and ecological regulation functions (e.g., proximity of green spaces and importance of ecosystem services). Leveraging multi-source geospatial data, land surveys, and field inspections, 12 candidate brownfield sites were identified. GIS spatial analysis and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were employed to decipher their spatial distribution patterns and comprehensive potential grades. The findings reveal the following: (1) The evaluation results exhibit distinct spatial characteristics: high-potential sites, clustered near transport hubs and policy-supported zones, demonstrate multi-dimensional advantages, while low-potential sites, constrained by aging demographics, poor accessibility, and ecological vulnerability, are predominantly located on the urban periphery. (2) Correlation analysis between potential grades and various evaluation indicators, combined with a cross-comparison of population shrinkage levels and average values of other evaluation indicators across different potential grades, reveals that neither the population shrinkage index nor the elderly population proportion exerts a systematic negative impact on industrial brownfield regeneration potential. This finding indicates that within specific urban development contexts, brownfield regeneration potential is influenced more by structural factors such as locational conditions, policy support, and ecological service functions than by singular demographic trends. This research provides both theoretical foundation and decision-making support for differentiated brownfield regeneration and spatial governance in population-shrinking cities. Full article

The key to achieving sustainable economic development and mitigating climate change lies in effective green transition governance. This study, based on evolutionary game theory, constructs a game model involving three subjects: heavily polluting enterprises, the government, and environmental information disclosure regulatory authorities, aiming to analyze the clean production decision-making mechanism under multi-subject interaction. It empirically examines the relationship among the three by combining panel data of listed companies in heavily polluting industries on China’s A-share market. The research findings indicate the following: (1) Excessively high environmental technology upgrade and information disclosure costs will hinder enterprises’ clean production. (2) The intensity of regulation is influenced by the government’s benefits and costs. (3) Effective environmental policies require multi-dimensional coordination. (4) Environmental regulations can effectively enhance enterprises’ environmental performance, and by improving the transparency and quality of environmental information disclosure, significantly improve their environmental performance. Full article

The uneven proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) presents unexamined challenges to sustainable regional development. This study provides robust empirical evidence on how the inter-city AI gap influences environmental dynamics, specifically via transboundary air pollution. Using a framework based on the Technological Gap Theory, the results demonstrate that a wider AI gap significantly intensifies air pollution transmission between cities. The primary mechanisms are widening disparities in digital infrastructure and imbalanced flows of capital and labor. This effect is context-dependent and most severe for economically underdeveloped cities, creating a new form of environmental inequity. The analysis further reveals that while environmental regulations can mitigate this negative impact, technology-centric policies lacking green synergy may amplify it. The research’s findings offer a new theoretical lens on techno-environmental inequality and underscore the necessity of synergistic policies that simultaneously bridge the digital and environmental divides to foster equitable and sustainable development. Full article

During the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant workers in Singapore endured one of the longest and most stringent periods of confinement globally. Segregationist policies were intensified as the state imposed strict disciplinary regimes over workers’ mobility and everyday lives, framed as public health interventions but functioning also as labor discipline and social control. This study asks: how did migrant workers experience, narrate, and endure life under such conditions of confinement? Drawing on sixteen in-depth interviews with South Asian male construction workers, conducted in dormitories and makeshift worksites, we adopt a grounded theory approach to elicit contextually grounded accounts of life under lockdown. The analysis highlights three interrelated themes: emotional regulation, migrant masculinity and the gendered politics of endurance, and digital connectivity as an affective infrastructure. These practices enabled workers to carve out agentic spaces within structures designed to render them passive. Our findings reveal that even amid fear, surveillance, overcrowding, and economic precarity, workers combined stoicism, transnational kinship ties, religious routines, and solidarity to sustain resilience. While initially guided by Foucauldian notions of surveillance and biopower, the study advances a counter-Foucauldian insight: that institutional control is never total, and migrant narratives of resilience offer nuanced understandings of agency under constrain. Full article

Existing research on live-streaming e-commerce consumption behavior is mostly limited by a single disciplinary framework, unable to systematically parse the mechanism of macro-policies and cultural values on intergenerational consumer psychology. This study takes ASEAN cross-border live-streaming e-commerce as a scenario, integrates theories of economics, political science, and sociology, and constructs an innovative three-layer analysis model of “macroeconomic system–meso-market–micro-behavior” based on multi-source data from 2020 to 2024. It empirically explores the formation mechanism of intergenerational differences in impulse buying. The results show that the behavior differences of different groups are significantly driven by income gradient, cross-border policies (tariff adjustment and consumer protection regulations), and collectivism/individualism cultural orientations. The innovative contribution of this study is reflected in three aspects: Firstly, it breaks through the limitation of a single discipline, and for the first time, it incorporates structural variables such as policy synergy effect and family structure change into the theoretical framework of impulse buying, quantifying and revealing the differentiated impact of institutional heterogeneity in ASEAN markets on intergenerational behavior. Secondly, it reconstructs the transmission path of “cultural values–family structure–intergenerational behavior” and finds that the inhibitory effect of collectivism on impulse buying tends to weaken with age. Thirdly, it proposes a “policy instrument–generational response” matching model and verifies the heterogeneous impact of the same policy (such as tariff reduction) on different generations. This study fills the gaps in related research and can provide empirical support for ASEAN enterprises to formulate stratified marketing strategies and for policymakers to optimize cross-border e-commerce regulation. which is of great significance to promote the sustainable development of the regional live-broadcast e-commerce ecology. Full article

As a complex ecosystem, a business environment plays a structural role in shaping enterprise vitality, yet its multidimensional mechanisms remain underexplored, particularly within transitioning economies. This study employs a time-series Global Principal Component Analysis (GPCA) model to measure the vitality levels of 1475 A-share listed enterprises and the quality of business environments across 284 cities between 2008 and 2022 in China. Based on Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory, we propose a three-dimensional “institution–resource–capability” theoretical framework to analyze the impact of a business environment on enterprise vitality and its underlying complex mechanisms. Our results reveal that, (1) a business environment and its constituent subsystems significantly enhance enterprise vitality, with the market environment and innovation ecosystem exhibiting the strongest effects; (2) the revitalizing impact of a business environment is more pronounced for enterprises in the tertiary industry, manufacturing, regulated sectors, and foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs), as well as those operating in Eastern China; (3) mechanistically, the positive association between a business environment and enterprise vitality is consistent with the following three core pathways: mitigating enterprise risks, restructuring resource provision, and cultivating enterprise capability. This research enriches theoretical frameworks for enterprise sustainable development within complex economic systems, while providing valuable policy implications for optimizing business environments in global transitioning economies. Full article

The acceleration of industrialization and urbanization have led to the increasingly serious problem of waste gas pollution. Pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ammonia (NH₃), formaldehyde (HCHO), and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) emitted from industrial production, transportation, and agricultural activities have posed a major threat to the ecological environment and public health. Although traditional physical and chemical treatment methods can partially reduce the concentration of pollutants, they face three core bottlenecks of high cost, high energy consumption, and secondary pollution, and it is urgent to develop sustainable alternative technologies. In this context, probiotic waste gas treatment technology has become an emerging research hotspot due to its environmental friendliness, low energy consumption characteristics, and resource conversion potential. Based on the databases of PubMed, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, Embase, and Cochrane Library, this paper systematically searched the literature published from 2014 to 2024 according to the predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria (such as research topic relevance, experimental data integrity, language in English, etc.). A total of 71 high-quality studies were selected from more than 600 studies for review. By integrating three perspectives (basic theory perspective, environmental application perspective, and waste gas treatment facility perspective), the metabolic mechanism, functional strain characteristics, engineering application status, and cost-effectiveness of probiotics in waste gas bioconversion were systematically analyzed. The main conclusions include the following: probiotics achieve efficient degradation and recycling of waste gas pollutants through specific enzyme catalysis, and compound flora and intelligent regulation can significantly improve the stability and adaptability of the system. This technology has shown good environmental and economic benefits in multi-industry waste gas treatment, but it still faces challenges such as complex waste gas adaptability and long-term operational stability. This review aims to provide useful theoretical support for the optimization and large-scale application of probiotic waste gas treatment technology, promote the transformation of waste gas treatment from ‘end treatment’ to ‘green transformation’, and ultimately serve the realization of sustainable development goals. Full article

Green innovation (GI) is a key measure for enterprises to realize green transformation and sustainable development. Top management teams’ environmental attention (TMTEA) plays a critical role in shaping organizational strategic direction, value orientation, management mode, and behavioral patterns, serving as a micro-foundation for GI. Based on exploring the relationship between TMTEA and GI, this study adopts the ambidexterity theory to categorize dual green innovation (Dual_GI) into breakthrough green innovation (BGI) and progressive green innovation (PGI), and examines the impact of TMTEA on Dual_GI from the perspectives of external government environmental regulation (GER) and internal absorptive capacity (AC). Drawing on the attention-based view (ABV), this study uses data samples of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2022 and establishes a fixed-effect model to empirically test this relationship. The results show the following: (1) TMTEA has a positive impact on corporate Dual_GI, and the promotion effect on PGI is more significant. (2) Both GER and AC can positively moderate the impact of TMTEA on Dual_GI, and both have a stronger moderating effect on TMTEA on PGI. (3) Further analysis shows that this driving effect is more obvious in state-owned enterprises, non-heavy polluting enterprises and enterprise maturity, and TMTEA can also drive Dual_GI to improve sustainable development performance. This study deepens the research scope and boundary conditions of TMT’s micro-psychological cognition and GI. It provides new insights for managers in emerging economies to rebalance their companies’ economic benefits and environmental transformation. Full article

Under the multiple pressures of intensifying global climate change disruption and rapid economic growth, China has become one of the countries facing the most serious water scarcity problems. Based on the ISO 14046 standard and the framework of water scarcity footprint theory, this study will break through the static limitations and lack of dimensions of traditional characteristic factors (i.e., water stress) and construct a water stress evaluation index system that combines nature, economy, and society. The results indicate that in recent years, regional water stress in China has exhibited significant spatiotemporal variations and spatial clustering, primarily driven by composite factors, with an overall decreasing trend. Among them, Shanghai is the highest-pressure area and Shaanxi is the lowest-pressure area, which is mainly due to the spatial projection of the coupling effect of multi-dimensional factors. In addition, the obstacle degree analysis method shows that indicators such as the utilization rate of water resource development constitute cross-regional constraints. To this end, all regions should make efforts to regulate and control the water use structure, introduce water-saving technologies, and strengthen water-saving publicity according to their needs. Therefore, this study not only provides a scientific basis for in-depth understanding of the distribution law and influencing mechanism of water stress but also provides an important reference for the rational allocation and sustainable use of water resources by upgrading the characteristic factors to system control signals. Full article

This study examines stakeholder perspectives regarding the feasibility, benefits, and challenges associated with the development of multipurpose shipyards that encompass shipbuilding, repair, and recycling within Indonesia’s maritime industry. A convergent mixed-methods approach was utilised to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 37 stakeholders, including managers, employees, shipowners, regulators, subcontractors, academics, and community representatives. The Stakeholder Salience Model and Diffusion of Innovations theory provided the integrated statistical and thematic analysis. Results indicated significant stakeholder support (97.3%) for multipurpose shipyards, with 81.1% expressing positive perceptions and 16.2% very positive perceptions. Results indicate that ship repair (97.3%) and shipbuilding (86.5%) are seen as critical activities, with 59.5% of respondents highlighting the importance of ship recycling. The advantages of the multipurpose yard concept for Indonesia included improved operational efficiency (70.2%), increased market competitiveness (54.1%) and job creation (91.9%). Major challenges identified include technical complexities (62.2%), regulatory ambiguities (45.9%), substantial capital investment (43.2%), and skill shortages (40.5%). The study suggests improvements in governmental regulations, financial support for businesses, and training for the workforce. Phased implementation and stakeholder collaboration can align economic, environmental, and safety objectives, potentially decreasing Indonesia’s dependence on foreign shipping services. This study integrates stakeholder theory with innovation diffusion, providing replicable insights for sustainable practices in shipyards within archipelagic economies like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, where similar geographic and infrastructure challenges shape the maritime industries. Full article

Today’s linear nutrient flows are rooted in a long history of agronomic and wastewater engineering strategies that have created cascading environmental, social, and economic side effects, signaling the need for more holistic and circular approaches. Our examination of the regulatory pathways that enable and constrain urine recycling—an underutilized approach to repurposing human waste as fertilizer—addresses a persistent research gap related to the mainstreaming of transformative technologies. Framed around policy process theories—Street Level Bureaucracy and Multiple Streams Theory—our methods include a review and mapping of 54 regulatory documents; action research where we reflect on our own efforts to expand urine recycling; and interviews with 16 practitioners and regulators in four states which, to our knowledge, are the only places in the US with efforts to scale up urine recycling in community settings. Given its circular nature, a key challenge we find is a lack of clarity around which sectors, or what scales of government, “own” the decision to allow the collection and use of urine as a fertilizer. Working around these challenges, we show how practitioners use many practical strategies to simplify the approval process and reduce the risk aversion regulators face when confronted with ambiguous rulemaking. Full article