Dynamic semantic network analysis for identifying the concept and scope of social sustainability

Abstract

Social sustainability is important across disciplines in the era of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, many scholars note that its concept and scope are ambiguous regardless of public attention and importance. It limits the development of social sustainability research. Therefore, in this study, we introduce a data-driven approach for identifying the concept and scope of social sustainability. We apply dynamic semantic network analysis to the current social sustainability literature over time. This analysis partitions the diffusion of social sustainability in academia into several periods by detecting change points. It also builds semantic networks periodically to discover the concept and scope in the network analysis perspective. Our result shows that social sustainability penetrated into disciplines with minimal innovation and high imitation rates. The concept of social sustainability has been changed several times by including the humanity of community and individuals during its diffusion. The scope of social sustainability has been enlarged but is densely intertwined. That is, social sustainability more concerns quality of life in a society, which is independent from economic and environmental sustainability. And thus, it considers human factors and social effects in a supply chain of products and services. This statement means that social sustainability developed to include the various values of humanity in our society that we should retain.