Environmental Production Practices Research Articles

Research Hotspots and Trends of Nitrification Inhibitors: A Bibliometric Review from 2004–2023

Nitrification inhibitors are essential in agricultural and environmental production practices. They play a crucial role in promoting agricultural and environmental sustainability by enhancing nitrogen use efficiency, boosting crop yields, and mitigating the adverse environmental effects of nitrogen losses. This bibliometric analysis covers the period from 2004 to 2023, offering a detailed examination of the development of nitrification inhibitor research. The study demonstrates a consistent growth in research publications, indicating sustained interest and dedication to advancing the field. It identifies key contributors, such as institutions and researchers, and underscores the significance of their work through citation analysis. Keyword co-occurrence analysis reveals four distinct clusters focusing on enhancing crop yields, understanding microbial community dynamics, exploring grazing pasture applications, and addressing environmental impact mitigation. The cutting-edge area of keyword burst detection research has transitioned from fundamental research to comprehensive nitrogen management practices. This analysis provides insights into the current research landscape of nitrification inhibitors and proposes future research directions, underscoring the critical role of this field in tackling global agricultural and environmental challenges.

Assessing the influence of external factors on agricultural production in Brazil

This article uses 2017 Brazilian agricultural census data (aggregated at county level) to evaluate the impact of external factors on agricultural efficiency in Brazil. The external factors are defined as access to credit, participation in cooperatives, proportion of literacy, technical assistance, and environmental production practices. All variables are transformed as the log of the municipal (county) rank. The response variable is defined as the free disposal hull (FDH) conditional ratio and a one-inflated beta regression is estimated. The results show that in counties where the FDH ratio is equal to 1, cooperatives have the biggest impact on efficiency, and where the FDH ratio is not equal to 1, environmental practices, which are most often associated with technology, have the largest effect on efficiency. Finally, the regions that are expected to see the largest gains in efficiency with increases in external factors are the Northeastern and the Northern regions of Brazil.

Understanding the influence of environmental production practices on firm performance: a proactive versus reactive approach

PurposeExploring ways to sustain competitive positions as well as improve firm performance through environmental production initiatives has been a major preoccupying topic for mostly practitioners and researchers. Despite several studies on the influence of environmental initiatives on firm performance, many questions remain unanswered as to how to further extract more gains from environmental production initiatives. This study, thus, explores environmental production practices impact on firm performance from proactive and reactive perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted a survey research design, a quantitative approach and partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique in making data analysis and interpretations due to its suitability for predictive research models.FindingsThe results indicated that proactive environmental production practices positively related with process and environmental performances but negatively associated with financial performance. Although the findings contrast with majority of past findings, they gain the support of other scholars in establishing that early adoption stages of proactive environmental production initiatives strain financial capabilities and thus present a negative relationship. Reactive environmental production practices are positively and significantly related with process, environmental and financial performances.Originality/valueThe study is among the first to expose environmental production practices from a proactive and a reactive perspective and in the context of a developing country. As such, the study provides guidance to relevant authorities in further promoting sustainable production practices to preserve the environment by manufacturing safer consumer products through efficient sustainable production processes and practices.

Environmental investment and firm performance: A network approach

This study examines the role of investment in environmental production practices for both environmental performance and energy efficiency over time. We employ a network DEA approach that links successive production technologies through intertemporal investment decisions with a period by period estimation. This allows us to estimate energy efficiency and environmental performance separately, as well as productivity change and its associated decompositions into efficiency change and technology change. Incorporating a network model also allows us to account for both short-term environmental management practices and long-term environmental investments in each of our productivity measures. We apply this framework to a panel of detailed plant-level production data for Swedish manufacturing firms covering the years 2002–2008.