Social Sustainable Development Goals Research Articles

Evaluating complementaries among urban water, energy, infrastructure, and social Sustainable Development Goals in China

Urban areas' performance in water, energy, infrastructure, and socio-economic sectors is intertwined and measurable through Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6–13. Effective synergy among these is critical for sustainability. This study constructs an indicator framework that reflects progress towards these urban SDGs in China. Findings indicate underperformance in SDGs 8–11, suggesting the need for transformative actions. Through network analysis, the research reveals complementarities among these SDGs. Notably, the SDG space divides into socio-economic and ecological clusters, with SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) central to both. Additionally, SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) act as bridges, while greater synergies exist between SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and SDG 13 (Climate Action). An in-depth view at the indicator-level shows a core-periphery structure, emphasizing indicators like SDG 6.2 (Wastewater Treatment Rate) and SDG 6.6 (Recycled Water Production Capacity per capita) as pivotal. This study confirms the urban SDG space's stability and predictiveness, underscoring its value in steering well-aligned policy decisions for sustainable growth.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) practices and firms' financial performance: Moderating role of country governance

<abstract> <p>It is becoming increasingly apparent that businesses must consider the impact they have on the environment and society while pursuing profit maximization. As a result, there is a growing need to incorporate sustainable frameworks into business decision-making. By focusing on sustainable performance at the firm level, we addressed a significant gap in understanding how environmental and social Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) impact bottom-line performance and the crucial role that effective country governance plays in implementing sustainability at the organization level. In 2015, the United Nations established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), where firms are encouraged to practice in the strategic operation of their businesses. In addition, country governance can play a significant role in adopting sustainable practices and policies that can impact bottom-line performance. In this study, we examined the relationship between environmental and social Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) practices, country governance, and firms' financial performance from 2017 to 2021. The sample data set consisted of top-listed firms in the finance, manufacturing, and technology industries of 100 companies from 17 countries in developed and developing and emerging economies. We utilized content analysis to account for the qualitative aspects of how firms implement social and environmental SDGs. Ten environmental SDGs and eight social SDGs were incorporated in this study as a means of measuring sustainable development goals' impact on a firm's financial performance. We adopted return on assets (ROA) to measure the firm's financial performance. We adopted government effectiveness and regulatory quality to moderate the relationship between social and environmental sustainability practices and firm performance. The panel regression method was exercised to find out the relationship between environmental and social SDGs' impact on financial performance. In addition, we measured the interaction effect between environmental and social SDGs and country governance on firms' performance. We also deployed two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression estimation to mitigate endogeneity concerns. We found that environmental SDGs had a positive and significant impact on firms' financial performance. The coefficient of social SDGs on firm performance was negative and statistically significant. We observed that the coefficient of interaction terms between environmental SDGs and country governance was positive and statistically significant. Moreover, the coefficient interaction terms between social SDGs and country governance were positive and statistically significant, lessening the negative impact of social SDGs on firm financial performance. Finally, we also performed a robustness test on our analysis based on the firm's average capital and average assets. The findings almost held the same.</p> </abstract>

The environmental sustainable development goals and economic growth: an empirical investigation of selected SAARC countries.

Environmental SDGs, or Sustainable Development Goals, are a set of targets outlined by the United Nations to address the most pressing environmental issues of our time. These goals aim to promote sustainable development by addressing issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. By achieving these goals, we can safeguard the planet's resources for future generations while improving the quality of life for people around the world. This research investigates the effect of environmental SDGs on economic growth (GDPGRO) at the disaggregated level, with two dimensions: economic and social goals. Using panel data from selected SAARC countries between 2000 and 2020, we employ a panel ARDL (PMG) technique. The finding of this study shows that increasing access to SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG 13 (climate action), and SSDGs (social Sustainable Development Goals) is negatively associated with potential decreases in economic growth which can occur in several ways, such as increased government spending and taxes, redistributive policies, and regulations that increase costs for businesses. Promoting SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) can lead to long-term economic growth. SDG 15 (life below water) and ESDGs (economic Sustainable Development Goals) have a positive relationship with economic growth by conserving and sustainably using terrestrial ecosystems that can contribute to economic growth in the long term. ESDGs lead to increased income, improved living standards, and reduced poverty and inequality. Policies should prioritize disaster risk mitigation, align climate change goals with sustainable development goals, and promote sustainable production and consumption. This can be achieved by incentivizing cleaner energy sources and sustainable cities. To balance economic growth with sustainability, policies should encourage responsible business practices and sustainable industries.

Exploring the combined impact of ecosystem services and urbanization on SDGs realization

The impact of ecosystem services (ES) or urbanization on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) realization has been widely recognized. However, in the context of complex social-ecological coupling, the combined impact of ES and urbanization on SDGs lacked quantitative analysis. In this study, we selected four types of ES and three types of urbanization factors, and further used geographical detector to compare the impact intensity and temporal changes of ES-ES combination, urbanization-urbanization combination, and ES-urbanization combination on social SDGs, ecological SDGs, and economic SDGs from a spatial perspective. The results showed that the economic SDGs was most highly impacted by the ES-urbanization combination with stable intensity of impact (average score of 0.66). The ecological SDGs was most strongly impacted by ES-ES combination (average score of 0.3), and the intensity of impact gradually increased. The social SDGs was most strongly impacted by ES-urbanization combination (average score of 0.57), but the intensity of impact gradually decreased. In conclusion, policymakers should focus on the impact of ES-urbanization combination on social SDGs and economic SDGs, and focus on the impact of ES-ES combination on ecological SDGs. This study provided a social-ecological decision guidance for SDGs realization in developing countries and regions.

A Big Data Analytics-Based Methodology For Social Sustainability Impacts Evaluation: A Case Study

Nowadays, Big Data (BD) technology is considered by institutions, enterprises and governments a primary key to addressing sustainability challenges. The business ecosystem is becoming more and more complicated, due to large and strong interactions between the directly involved stakeholders such as suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and customers on one hand, and the indirect stakeholders such as the environment and society on the other hand. Thus, moving toward corporate sustainability requires an accurate understanding of these business partners’ impacts on each other. Indeed, enterprises must incorporate the three sustain-ability dimensions to assess a product, a service, or process performance on environmental, economic, and social aspects. To this end, this paper presents a big data analytics (BDA) based methodology to analyze the social sustainability impacts of enterprises. Besides, a real-life case study from the database proposed by the impact-weighted account project (IWAP) team at Harvard business school, is used to validate the methodology. The obtained results show the added value of using BDA technology to achieve enterprises’ social Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda launched by the United Nations.

The impact of banking organization’s initiatives aligned with economic, environmental, and social Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the behavior of their customers

The impact of banking organization’s initiatives aligned with economic, environmental, and social Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the behavior of their customers

Gearing-up for purpose: The relationship between entrepreneurs’ usage of incubation support services and sustainable impacts

Business incubators (BI) are increasingly expected to nurture sustainability-driven start-ups and contribute to the economy's sustainable transformation. However, while previous (qualitative) research suggested a positive relationship between BI support services and sustainable impacts by entrepreneurs, no study has explored this link statistically, leaving sustainability-driven business incubation (SBI) haphazard and strategically ill-informed. Given the absence of a comprehensible assessment approach, this paper develops a coherent theoretical framework for structuring SBI. Moreover, it quantitatively investigates the relationship between entrepreneurs' usage of various BI support services and their self-proclaimed contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Building on a sample of 299 German university spin-off start-ups, we provide empirical evidence that BI support services are generally related to the sustainable impacts of entrepreneurs. However, at a more nuanced level, we show that economic and ecological SDGs are associated with only a few BI services. In contrast, social SDGs are attained by a broad support service portfolio. In conclusion, we advise policymakers and BI managers to recognize the diverse support needs of sustainable entrepreneurs and tailor BI programs towards specific sustainability challenges rather than generalized approaches.

Influence of Social, Environmental and Economic Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) over Continuation of Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were proposed in 2015 to promote worldwide improvements in human wellbeing. Governments have different levels of commitment to the SDGs, reflected in the SDG index, which shows the compliance of each country, detailing each score by SDG. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports show the advances of global entrepreneurship in various countries, while the Global Competitiveness Report shows their competitiveness. This analysis was based on environmental, social, and economic outcomes of SDGs from the SDG index 2018. We also evaluated data from the Global Competitiveness Report 2018 and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report 2018. A partial least-squares structural-equation-modeling technical analysis was used. It was found that social SDGs (0.796) and environmental SDGs (0.196) had a positive influence on economic SDGs; also, economic SDGs had a positive influence on the continuation of entrepreneurship (0.590) and competitiveness (0.918). The model explained 34.8% of the continuation of entrepreneurship and 84.3% of that of competitiveness. The outcomes of the bootstrapping test were used to evaluate whether the path coefficients were significant. This information can help governments and organizations to recognize the impact of support and promote compliance with SDGs and the continuation of entrepreneurship and competitiveness. Moreover, this information provides the means to analyze the influence of open innovation in accomplishing the SDGs faster. The study’s novelty is the use of the PLS-SEM technique to analyze these worldwide indicators.

Transition towards Sustainable Carwash Wastewater Management: Trends and Enabling Technologies at Global Scale

Carwash wastewater (CWW) contains grease, oil, hydrocarbon residues, heavy metals, and surfactants, posing severe impacts to the environment and human health. Accordingly, various physical, chemical, and biological processes for CWW treatment have been demonstrated in recent research. In this study, a bibliometric approach was performed to comprehensively illustrate the recent progress, current direction, and future perspectives of CWW-related research. A keyword co-occurrence network was used to represent the results of the bibliometric analysis and to show the major pollutants in CWW effluents and the common systems for treating CWW via coagulation/flocculation, electrochemical, oxidation, membrane, adsorption, biological, and hybrid methods. An integrated anaerobic digestion/oxidation process has been reported to degrade CWW-associated pollutants and help develop an energy-efficient approach for waste management. The results demonstrated that the treatment of CWW has several benefits relevant to sustainable development, viz., good health and well-being, protection of life below water, bioenergy generation, and community awareness and acceptance towards wastewater reuse. Hence, these benefits could assist in meeting the environmental, economic, and social sustainable development goals (SDGs). These study outputs can encourage policymakers and stakeholders in implementing sensible regulations that control water usage and treatment in car sharing and personal vehicle services to either directly or indirectly adopt the agenda 2030 with its seventeen SDGs.

Bundling regions for promoting Sustainable Development Goals

The needs and capacities to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) differ across regions and nations, but little research has been done to investigate their similarities and differences. Here, we proposed using SDG bundles (i.e. groups of regions with similar performances on all individual SDGs) to classify regions when assessing SDG progress and applied the method at the provincial level in China from 2000 to 2015. Five SDG bundles with distinct characteristics were identified. The dominant bundles changed from ‘poor performance for all SDGs’ in 2000 to ‘high scores for environmental and some social SDGs and intermediate scores for others’ and ‘low scores for environmental SDGs but high scores for others’ in 2015, indicating the overall improvement of China’s sustainable development level. However, no bundle had relatively high scores in all SDGs, implying that China has much work left to do. Changes in the SDG bundles across space and time were related to regional socioeconomic development, climate, and geographic conditions. This study sheds light on identifying regions’ strengths and weaknesses in achieving all SDGs, which can inform targeted sustainability actions for regions within certain SDG bundles and promote collaborations among regions with different bundles.

Circular economy for phosphorus supply chain and its impact on social sustainable development goals.

To be able to grow crops, we have interfered with Earth's reserves of one of top three essential elements, phosphorus (P), as to which we face a problem related to its high consumption compared to available resources. This forces us to follow the alternative of closing the phosphorus loop from a circular economy perspective. However, there is a lack of research on regional and global social sustainability in this area, as emphasized in the United Nations' Agenda 2030 goals for sustainable development. In this paper, we address social challenges involved in global phosphorus supply chain, such as eradicating poverty, child labor and malnutrition; promoting gender equality; providing decent work and economic growth; maintaining sustainable water use; and achieving food security. Our research is driven by the question of whether the circular economy aims to direct phosphorus management towards tackling social issues associated with its supply chain. We use system dynamics modelling by combining the concept of material flow analysis and social life cycle assessment. Detailed analysis at regional and global levels indicates a paradoxical social impact of phosphorus circular model. This reflects the multiple stakeholders involved, and the regional interactions with phosphorus circular economy transitions. Improvements can be demonstrated in reducing poverty and providing safer work environment in many regions, e.g., Western Asia (93%), New Zealand, Central Asia, and Europe (44-61%), while achieving employment targets is limited in Northern and Eastern Europe. Circular model fails to promote gender equality, it also exacerbates exploitative child work problem for the Caribbean and most Africa. It provides sufficient nutrition to North America, Australia/New Zealand, and Northern Europe. It achieves water use targets in several regions with 53% savings worldwide. Finally, circular model contributes to P efficiency (average balance of 1.21 kgP/ha) and strengthens P security within most regions with an average of 64%.

Social Entrepreneurship on Its Way to Significance: The Case of Germany

The environmental context plays a very important role in the success of entrepreneurial behaviour. Governments used this opportunity by introducing specific programmes, but do social entrepreneurs have a comparable chance of getting governmental support as commercial entrepreneurs do in these programmes? We analyze the EXIST Start-up Grant in terms of likelihood for entrepreneurs following economic and social sustainable development goals (SDGs). Our results indicate that there is a decreased probability to get the EXIST Start-up Grant when following social SDGs. We argue that it is about time to introduce specific programmes for social innovation and/or reassess existing programmes in terms of their openness to social entrepreneurs.

An Internal Control System that Includes Corporate Social Responsibility for Social Sustainability in the New Era

Although the importance of corporate social responsibility has received more attention over the years, the goal of social sustainability has still not been achieved. The main reason is that companies seeking to implement social sustainability, have failed to incorporate the concept of corporate social responsibility into their corporate internal control objectives. Furthermore, studying the interactive relationship between corporate social responsibility and internal control and ensuring the consistency of corporate strategy and internal control objectives are done to help promote the sustainable development of enterprises. In order to promote social sustainability and improve management decision-making gaps, therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a new hybrid multi-attribute decision model to assess the impact of corporate social responsibility for the implementation of internal control that includes corporate social responsibility. The empirical results show that a social responsibility-oriented internal control system may be a better strategy than maintaining the original internal control objectives. In addition, by adjusting the internal control system to jointly promote the sustainable development goals of the company and ensure the consistency of corporate strategy and internal control objectives, the company can be truly guided to implement the social responsibility management objectives. Finally, the social sustainable development goals can be truly realized, and the interests of all stakeholders in the enterprise can be truly satisfied.