Cleaner and Responsible Consumption最新文献

In this study we ask how a range of environmental sustainability adjustments that consumers find it easy to adopt affect the carbon footprint of their food consumption. The study is based on information about real purchases of food products and responses to a questionnaire about the various sustainability adjustments that the study participants apply and their concern about climate change. Based on principal component and regression analysis the results from the study indicate that sustainability adjustments such as organic consumption, buying domestically produced food and eating seasonal produce, as well as concern about climate change, are associated with a reduced carbon footprint from food consumption. The largest reductions were found for organic consumers. The results suggested that most committed organic consumers have a carbon footprint that is about one third smaller than that of consumers who seldom buy organic food products. The results also indicate that these voluntary sustainability adjustments are not sufficient to secure conformity with today’s goals for reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Food sustains human life, but household food consumption impacts negatively on the environment. Therefore, many studies in the literature focus on sustainable food consumption. However, these studies are quite fragmented and study only some aspects of food consumption. By applying the thematic analysis approach to available studies in the literature, this research aims to build a framework covering all three phases of food consumption: the acquisition phase (purchasing ingredients), usage phase (cooking, eating, sharing leftover food), and disposal phase (food waste). The framework proposed in this research can become a more comprehensive reference source for future studies in sustainable food consumption topics. In specific, policymakers can use this framework to design effective campaigns/policies to promote sustainable food consumption practices of their residents. Future researchers can reference this framework to conduct more comprehensive studies on sustainable food consumption topics.

Purpose

Considering the role of community outreach of a Higher Education Institution (HEI) in promoting sustainable regional development, based on the objectives of the UN 2030 Agenda, the present study aims to verify, with the usage of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool, the alignment of community outreach actions of an HEI to the SDGs and identify its actions with the greatest impact.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is descriptive through a case study at a university in Brazil. Documentary analysis was carried out using data on more than 15,000 community outreach projects developed from 2009 to 2022, using natural language processing (NLP). In addition to the descriptive aspects, combining NLP with statistical techniques allowed us to discuss the alignment between community outreach projects and the SDGs from a longitudinal perspective.

Findings

The results demonstrated that the main SDGs in community outreach actions are SDG 17: Partnerships and Means of Implementation; SDG 4: Quality Education; SDG 12: Sustainable Consumption and Production and SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. These results are prominent because community outreach aims to establish a dialogical relationship between society and the university, conceiving the exchange of knowledge based on the actions developed and sharing knowledge with those involved in community extension.

Originality

The use of AI technologies to identify and monitor data on community outreach actions in HEI towards the SDGs, and to propose ways to share this information with internal and external stakeholders of the institution.

In Ethiopia, agriculture is the primary source of food and livelihood for many rural households, making it a dominant sector that seeks to reduce food/nutrition insecurity and poverty. Even if it is dominant, currently the sector is facing many challenges such as unexpected shock like drought and flooding, reduction in output mainly due to soil nutrient degradation and lack of capital to use improved agricultural technologies. Hence, rural households are compelled to develop strategies to cope with the increasing vulnerability associated with agricultural production. The current study therefore assessed rural households' participation in a combination of multiple livelihood diversification strategies and its impact on diet quality and welfare of smallholder farmers in Southwestern Ethiopia. As the average treatment effect on the treated result from multinomial endogenous switching regression model shows, an isolated participation in non-farm livelihood diversification results in a significant effect on smallholder farmers' welfare but, it doesn't have a significant effect on nutrition security measured in dietary diversity. Likewise, joint participation in off-farm and non-farm livelihood diversification results in a significant effect on rural households' nutrition security however it doesn't have a significant effect on welfare. The only livelihood diversification package that has a significant effect on both welfare and nutrition security simultaneously is off-farm livelihood diversification alone. As a result, policymakers and rural finance programs should shift their focus and place a greater emphasis in incentivizing smallholder farmers to invest on diversification strategies that can boost both welfare and nutrition security simultaneously, which is off-farm diversification.

The objective of the study is to assess the roles of pandemics and perceived consumer effectiveness in factors affecting the sustainable consumption behavior in the Vietnam's context. Based on two main theoretical foundations: Ajzen's TPB theory (1991) and Schwartz's NAM model (1977), the study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods with 9 scales of 43 observed variables. 645 valid survey responses were collected from five major cities in Vietnam in 2022 and were analyzed by using SPSS and SmartPLS 3.8 softwares. The results showed that pandemics have positive impacts on factors affecting the sustainable consumption behavior, including: environment concern, attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, personal norms. Except the subjective norms factor which did not reach statistical significance, the remaining hypotheses were tested to have positive impacts on the intention and sustainable consumption behavior. In addition, the study also demonstrated a positive moderating effect of perceived consumer effectiveness on the relationship between intention and sustainable consumption behavior. Some managerial implications and future researches are also suggested.

The study examined organic vegetable attributes, consumer decisions and consumption patterns of consumers in Ghana. A sample of 399 consumers was selected using a simple random sampling technique and data was collected through structured questionnaires. The study analyzed the important attributes of organic vegetables using Kendall's coefficient of concordance. The factors influencing consumers' decision to consume organic vegetables and the proportion of their total expenditure allocated to organic vegetables was analyzed using Cragg's double hurdle model. Finally, ordered logit regression was employed to analyse the factors influencing the consumption patterns of organic vegetables consumers. The results revealed that consumers prioritize health concerns and sensory attributes when purchasing organic vegetables as these were identified as the most important attributes. Also, socioeconomic factors, viz. age group, educational level and income level, as well as institutional factors, viz. market type, availability of organic vegetables and accreditation, significantly influenced the decision and expenditure on organic vegetables. In addition, consumers exhibited irregular consumption patterns, and a significant proportion of consumers acquired information about organic vegetables through family and friends. Furthermore, the ordered logit regression analysis revealed several factors that significantly influenced the consumption patterns of organic vegetables. These include age category, educational level, household head, household size, income level, type of market, time to market, and accreditation. The study recommends that government and other stakeholders should consider consumers' consumption patterns, attributes of organic vegetables they consider prior to purchasing as well as factors influencing their decision-making when developing marketing strategies and policies for organic vegetable farmers. This approach can help meet consumer demands and help improve the development and promotion of organic vegetables in the market.

Transitions toward a circular economy require a nuanced understanding of how change plays out in households in relation to the role of consumers and daily consumption practices. However, little policy and research attention has been paid to the complexities of achieving necessary transformations in everyday cultures of consumption and the possible challenges faced by citizens and householders in achieving a circular economy. As a result, we know little about how circular consumption practices are already emerging in everyday life and can be scaled up across society. Additionally, critical gaps in understanding exist concerning how rebound and spillover effects occur in daily practices and the role of social and material contexts in configuring possibilities for circular consumption. Addressing these gaps, we develop an agenda for attending to the social embeddedness and complexity of participating in the circular economy. This agenda includes several critical elements, including the examination of routine and habitual aspects of social life, dynamics of rebound and spillover effects within interconnected practices, and the impact of institutional-material arrangements and provisioning systems on how consumers use services and products in the performance of social practices. In discussing these elements we outline research gaps and recommendations for future CE policy and research that better appreciates the social and material dynamics of everyday life, with the aim of addressing critical scientific and societal knowledge gaps concerning circular consumption transformations.

Compared to residential and commercial buildings, hotels use a high amount of resources in their operation, particularly electricity, water and gas. Resource use in hotels is influenced by both hosts and guests, however initiatives to reduce consumption are typically initiated by the host. To improve the effectiveness of host requests aimed at guests to use less resources, it is important to understand how hotel guests contribute to overall consumption. This study assesses quantitative resource consumption and occupancy data from two Australian case study hotels and investigates the impact of guest occupancy on net resource use. Agency theory is adopted as a framework to examine the host (principle) – guest (agent) exchange, and the agency costs associated with discretionary resource usage by the guest. It is found that guest numbers have little impact on net electricity consumption, however, are closely correlated with water consumption in both case studies. The findings suggest that strategies to reduce resource use are to be organised differently between electricity and water, with the former targeted at the hosts and the latter with the guests. Engaging with guests to reduce discretionary water consumption is expected to achieve greater reductions as compared to electricity and gas. The findings have implications for hotel operators and researchers toward designing and implementing effective resource use reduction strategies in hotels, and for understanding hotel resource use in the context of agency theory.

Material Flow Analysis (MFA) has been widely used to understand the physical economy of the country and its implication on the economic and environmental issues. By subscribing to the data on Global Material Flow Database released by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) International Resource Panel, the material flow account and derived indicators of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were assessed from 1970 to 2019. Results show that the Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) of these countries grew from fourfold to ninefold from 1970 to 2019, with the dominance of biomass despite the increasing share of nonmetallic minerals. The DMC per capita of Myanmar (3.97 tonnes/capita) remained to be within the agrarian socio metabolic regime, while Cambodia (7.39 tonnes/capita) and Lao PDR (14.33 tonnes/capita) are amidst the transition to industrial socio metabolic regime. Material footprint of Lao PDR in 2019 is dominated by nonmetallic minerals with 50% share, while biomass has the highest share in Cambodia and Myanmar. The growing affluence in these countries has been the major driver of material consumption. While trends of relative decoupling of economic growth and material consumption have occurred in Myanmar and Cambodia, the growth of Lao PDR's DMC surpassed the GDP from 2012 up to the recent year. This analysis of material flow indicators to monitor progress on SDG 8.4 and 12.2 for Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao PDR shall serve as basis for policy development in relation to these country's material consumption.

This article examined how Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility (ECSR) activities directed through green innovation influence corporate image and corporate social performance. The stakeholder theory was used to examine how stakeholders' expectations affected environmental CSR, green innovation activities and how corporate innovation initiatives affected corporate image and corporate social performance. Corporate environmental practices refer to the entire process of adopting technologies and product designs for protecting and sustaining natural resources. Selected companies in Ghana were used for this study. The study employed a cross-sectional quantitative approach where data from employees were collected across six months. This study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the effects of environmental CSR on social performance through mediators: green innovation and corporate image. The empirical findings demonstrate that corporate environmental CSR practices have an impact on the development of green innovations that promote companies' social performance. Additionally, evidence from the findings supports that corporate image influences companies’ social performance in Ghana. Furthermore, the findings from the study demonstrate that corporate environmental CSR enhances corporate social performance through green innovation and corporate image. The study recommends green innovation adoption to improve CSR practices, corporate image and corporate social performance.