Cleaner and Responsible Consumption最新文献

The development of the healthcare system is an important task for every country, given that long-term economic and social development is absolutely impossible without a healthy nation. Therefore, improving public health and ensuring that the maximum number of people have access to quality healthcare services is one of the state's strategic priorities. In this regard, the authors of the paper set a goal to establish how the reform of the healthcare system in Ukraine has led to changes in the behavioural determinants of healthcare providers and recipients in the domestic healthcare market. The paper uses such research methods as comparison, visualization, graphical data visualization tools, and statistical methods of data analysis. The study revealed that Ukrainian citizens got a chance to freely choose their physicians by signing declarations with them, which led to increased competition among physicians and other doctors and healthcare facilities; at the same time, the number of declarations signed with private healthcare facilities increased significantly. Furthermore, the developed econometric model allows us to identify statistically significant relationships between the amount of state funding and lifestyle and environmental indicators, which will allow us to improve the mechanisms and amount of funding in the sector, improving the health of the nation in the new competitive environment.

Climatic extremes have caused immense harm around the world. Its harm in terms of the proportion of people and regions affected continues to increase every single day. Due to people's psychological distance from such climatic threats, active initiatives are not undertaken for mitigation of its source. Rather, localized short-term solutions are marking a new status-quo. This study examines if fear can be used as a motivator to nudge people away from the psychological distance and motivate them to adopt electric vehicles (EVs). While subsidies and tax rebates are popularly adopted means to boost demand and supply of EVs, monetary incentives are costly to sustain for developing nations, amidst their diverse priorities. Instead, use of motivators like ‘fear’ is cheap, yet not much explored. Using the protection motivation theory, the study interviews 1112 Indian individuals, to examine if fear can nudge EV adoption. Using structural equation modeling and mediation analysis, the study finds that the expectation of personal harm from climatic threats can nudge one to actively mitigate the source of threat. Various aspects of threat and the associated coping processes that need to be triggered sequentially to nudge the formation of a pro-environmental intention to adopt EVs are also outlined.

Food waste is currently acknowledged as a major societal challenge, including the food waste at the household level estimated to be responsible for the wastage of one third of the food produced for human consumption. Hence, tackling household food waste (HFW) is gaining a momentum in societal and policy agendas accompanied by an increasing effort of the scientific community to deliver evidence to address the research gaps on the causes and on the solutions to address this multidimensional societal problem. The proposed solutions by published literature to mitigate HFW can be unfolded into four major types, actions to raise people awareness, participatory actions, economic incentives, and collective actions. However, there is little evidence on the household's assessment of the different types of actions and its combination. This paper contributes to this research gap by adopting an innovative participatory approach, using deliberative focus groups (DFG), and analyzing the collected data through content analysis resorting to the software Maxqda. We had conducted six DGF in the Porto metropolitan area before and during the pandemic COVID-19 crisis. Our results highlight the citizen's option for more holistic actions in comparison to separate actions as a way to effectively fight food waste at household level. Another finding of our study is that citizen's growing urban gardens found it the more effective way to reduce household food waste. These results suggest that urban policies and underlying legal frameworks should favor holistic solutions to incentivise fighting HFW and account for the urban gardens as a relevant part of the solution. In addition, the study has shown that qualitative deliberative citizen-led approaches show insightful to understand how common people perceive as alternative or complementary the different types of actions to fight HFW proposed by the literature review.

The lifestyle and consumption habits of individuals are crucial in the question of ecological sustainability. Current consumption patterns need to be changed, requiring societies to shift cultural norms and create new consumer habits which are within planetary boundaries. In the practices of teaching sustainable consumption in higher education participatory and action-oriented research and teaching methods can facilitate the transition towards a more sustainable lifestyle for students. In this paper, we present a method operating at the boundary of education and research, the so-called ecoclubs, based on the characteristics of cooperative inquiry and transformative learning. Ecoclubs enable systematic and democratic knowledge creation to achieve concrete social change. In this paper, we explore how the method can promote transformation in the knowledge, attitude and everyday practices of the participating students regarding a sustainable lifestyle. To analyse the transformative potential of ecoclubs we used qualitative content analysis on 38 semi-structured interviews and reflection diaries of co-researchers of ecoclubs. The results show that according to the members of the ecoclubs, the most important characteristics of this non-formal education are the community, autonomy of decision-making, knowledge sharing and experience-based format. From the students' point of view, these characteristics can contribute to their higher level of engagement with sustainability and additional changes in their lifestyle.

Home cooking is considered an important activity which promotes healthier lives, sustenance, and binds families and people together. Despite the benefits of home cooking, it is the leading source of household air pollution and its associated health risks particularly for developing countries including Ghana. The role of financial inclusion in facilitating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations is explored in this study for clean cooking technologies (i.e., SDG 7). The proposed study is based on three datasets from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), comprising of Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS) round 6, round 7 and the pooled form. Using distance to the nearest financial institution as instrument, the study employed probit two-stage least squares to investigate the heterogenous impacts of financial inclusion on household cooking fuels in Ghana. The findings show that financial inclusion increases the consumption of clean cooking fuel but reduces dirty fuels such as firewood, charcoal, kerosene etc. Female-headed households were found to be more impacted by financial inclusion over time than their male counterparts. The results also showed that financially included rural households reduced their consumption of dirty cooking fuels than their urban counterparts. These findings have important policy implications.

People waste a lot of food, especially at the consumption stage in consumer households. Despite the urgency of this topic, little is known about how consumers use visual inspection to decide to throw away fruits and vegetables at different stages of ripening and spoilage. We presented 366 US consumers with images of a banana, mango, cucumber, and avocado in 5 stages of decay in an online study and we determined how signs of decay affected participants’ consumption, preparation and disposal behaviors. As expected, product attractiveness, freshness, healthiness, and nutritiousness decreased, while the degree of decay, overripeness, and disgust increased over time. The number of people willing to consume the product was linearly related to the perceived proportion of the product affected by decay, while the number of people wanting to cut off bad parts was highest when about 40% of the product was judged to be affected. As time went on, the banana was cooked and mashed more often, while the cucumber was peeled more often. As growing, ripening and decay differ considerably between agricultural products, it is important to take sensory and preparation differences into account when investigating consumption and disposal behaviors.

Creative territories are geographic spaces of collaboration between different social actors, driving innovations and requiring regulatory mechanisms for sustainability and growth. This paper aims to synthesize available evidence on creative territories through a systematic literature review to analyze the significant actors in creative territories, the type of partnerships between them, the kind of innovations in creative territories, and the regulatory mechanisms for supporting these territories. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed to ensure a transparent and systematic approach. A comprehensive search in the Scopus database, employing predefined search terms and inclusion criteria, included 86 articles. The findings revealed several key topics within the existing academic literature on creative territories, including i) the individual social players in creative territories and partnerships and collaborations among them, ii) the various innovations in these territories and sectors, iii) the regulatory mechanisms applied by government and non-government actors. These topics or aspects were further analyzed and categorized to provide a comprehensive overview of the research landscape. The discussion section presents a critical analysis and synthesis of the findings, highlighting that the government supports creative territories through 16 regulatory mechanisms, while the literature highlights at least 5 levels of government intervention. Additionally, private social actors can positively impact creative territories through various regulatory mechanisms, including firm self-regulation, industry self-regulation, and civil regulation, with at least 21 social actors classified into 5 groups collaborating through six types/forms of collaboration. Furthermore, several circumstances and factors should be available to prosper in a particular partnership/collaboration like a clear definition of responsibilities, well-defined rules, mutual benefits, equal collaboration, and solid authority. The findings underscore the importance of creative territories and serve as a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, offering insights and directions for future research endeavors.

A two-week field study was conducted in 2019 to investigate the generation of German lightweight packaging (LWP) waste. The study involved 249 selected households throughout the country, and a total of 254,032 g (25,762 items) of LWP were analyzed. Participating households completed a questionnaire providing information on e.g., household and municipality size, as well as the local collection system. The annual LWP waste generation per capita (9.5 kg) was lower than the official German statistical 2019 data (32 kg). Smaller households led to higher waste generation per person. Furthermore, the study revealed a 14% rise in per capita waste generation among participants who did not correctly identify their collection system. A further sample of 207,138 g (21,380 items), taken from the total mass, was analyzed in more detail, revealing a 22.8% (w/w) share of polyolefins and a 29.5% (w/w) share of flexible packaging. In addition, the packaging contained an average of 7.7% (w/w) residual contents and 8.8% (w/w) incorrectly disposed waste. The study results indicate that consumer behavior, as well as external factors such as household size and local collection systems, can directly influence the quantity, weight, and to some extent, the quality (share of incorrectly disposed waste) of LWP waste. These observations reveal possible approaches to achieve higher recycling rates and qualities of plastic packaging in the LWP waste management value chain.

Human behaviour is at the centre of unsustainable consumption and production. Responsible consumption behaviours must therefore be at the centre of the solution. However, because it is inefficient for policymakers and practitioners, and ineffective for users, to attempt to target all responsible consumption behaviours simultaneously in a given initiative, some form of prioritisation is necessary. Through a combination of collaborative workshops and surveys with key stakeholders, this study applied established methods of prioritisation to identify a ‘long list’ of 84 responsible consumption behaviours across three material streams – fashion, electronics and furniture. The ‘long list’ was then taken to a prioritisation summit with government, academic, business, and community stakeholders. The behaviours were rated against explicit prioritisation criteria related to likelihood of adoption, timing, impact and potential system reach. This yielded a final ‘short list’ of seven prioritised behaviours, including a mixture of achievable consumer behaviours that can be realised in the short-term, as well as larger-scale and longer-term manufacturer- and government-related behaviours supporting fundamental design and policy shifts. By drawing on the collective knowledge and expertise of academic and non-academic experts, the study identified and prioritised behaviours to reduce material resource consumption in Australia that are impactful and transformative, while also being practical and realistic to implement.

Malaysia's solid waste generation is showing a worrying increasing trend, while public awareness towards achieving zero waste remains low. As a big data resource, social media gives valuable insight into the public's perspective on zero waste and, as such, may be fully utilized as an active informal learning platform to lessen the reliance on formal environmental education. Using big data analytics on Instagram, this study aimed to assess the public knowledge, attitude and practice concerning zero waste lifestyle in Malaysia in order to develop an informal learning strategy on social media. Purposive data sampling was conducted on Phantombuster using zero waste-related Instagram hashtags, which yielded 1723 high engagement posts and 1500 comments from 35 identified hashtags. The recorded posts were analyzed using descriptive statistics and sentiment analysis on Python's TextBlob. A total of 94.3% of posts were published by public and private sector accounts, highlighting their vital role in facilitating active knowledge sharing across the online zero waste communities. The sentiment analysis results indicated 41.3% of comments were fairly positive, while 36.1% were more objective and knowledge oriented, acknowledging the collective individual actions that have initiated influential social change in Malaysia. This study advances the existing literature on zero waste and informal learning by recommending the use of big data analytics on social media in the local context. Only with full commitment from all parties to raising public awareness about waste management will the zero waste nation be realized.