Sustainable Development Capability Research Articles

Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Non-Substitutable of Resources in Building Innovation Capability for Sustainable Development: Evidence from Creative Social Enterprises

Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Non-Substitutable of Resources in Building Innovation Capability for Sustainable Development: Evidence from Creative Social Enterprises

Integrated governance of the Yangtze River Delta port cluster using niche theory: A case study of Shanghai Port and Ningbo-Zhoushan Port

The integrated governance of port clusters is an important way for economic powers to improve port efficiency and marine economic benefits. As the Yangtze River Delta port cluster is the most densely distributed port cluster with the largest throughput in China's coastal region, further strengthening its integrated governance and enhancing its global influence is a key element of China's strategy to promote the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta region. We investigate the niches of Shanghai Port and Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, both of which are critical ports in the Yangtze River Delta port cluster. The results show that Shanghai Port is superior to Ningbo-Zhoushan Port in terms of economic contribution, competitiveness, resource utilization, and sustainable development capability. Meanwhile, Ningbo-Zhoushan Port has advantages in natural hardware and resources and has huge development potential. To enhance the economic radiation and international competitiveness of the Yangtze River Delta port cluster, it is necessary to strengthen integrated governance, form a reasonable division of labor among ports, and achieve win‒win cooperation among ports. In addition, the government should strengthen the overall planning of coastal management, improve the functional positioning of each port, strengthen the integrated management of waterways, and promote the innovation of cooperation models between ports. Finally, the integrated management of the ecological environment of the Yangtze River Delta port cluster should be strengthened, especially the integrated cooperation in marine ecological protection.

Evaluation Model of Rural Environmental Sustainable Development Capability Under the Background of Rural Revitalization

Sustainable development cannot be achieved in a society with substantial inequalities in development between rural and urban regions. Sustainability in terms of environmental and human well-being can be attained by applying ecological livability. Agriculture, rural areas, and farmers are crucial for developing countries and their populations. Literature on rural innovation is becoming more neglected as the need for rural regeneration develops. This paper suggests structural equation modeling based on sustainable rural development (SEM-SRD) to build an SRD index system with a universal value based on the interplay between ecological livability and SRD. There are two aspects to sustainable rural development (SRD): ecological sustainability and living sustainability in rural areas. Any country can use a comprehensive quantitative tool to assess its SRD status using the SRD index method. When it comes to environmental sustainability and garbage disposal, the former is green, and the latter is social. With the SRD index method, any nation can utilize a comprehensive quantitative tool to evaluate its SRD status. New perspectives for achieving rural revitalization, antipoverty, and global sustainable development can be gained through the rural innovation system suggested in this paper, which directly adds to the literature in this field. Research shows that agricultural eco-efficiency is substantially greater than rural economic growth, which has a considerable impact on overall rural development, as shown by the findings. For a long time, there has been a huge disparity in the economic growth of different regions of the country. The efficiency of rural development continues to increase with time. The experimental result of the suggested method enhances the inadequate management of RES development, rural development ratio, stability ratio, productivity ratio, and loss of growth in the rural area. Rural areas play an important role in the sustainable development of global society, and therefore, their preservation is necessary.

Does Uncertainty of Trade Environment Promote Green Technological Innovation? Empirical Evidence from China

In recent years, the international environment has changed rapidly, and the uncertainty of the trade environment faced by enterprises has dramatically increased. As a major participant in world trade, the uncertainty of the trade environment has significantly impacted the daily business activities and various behaviors of Chinese manufacturing enterprises. Green technology innovation has also become an important tool for enterprises to enhance their sustainable development ability and improve their ability to cope with changes in the external environment. The change in the trade environment will affect the business development of enterprises. To face the change in the trade environment, enterprises often choose to improve their technology level and increase the added value of their products. In the context of sustainable development, green technology innovation has higher technical strength and is more in line with the requirements of international development, which is strong support for enterprises to cope with the change in the trade environment. However, the current literature is scant on the association between trade uncertainty and green innovation. In this context, this study used the data of Chinese manufacturing listed companies from 2011 to 2020 to empirically analyze the relationship between trade environment uncertainty (UTE) and green technology innovation (GTI) using panel data estimation methods and further explore the related heterogeneity and its impact on sustainable development. The results show that: (1) UTE has a significant positive impact on the GTI of enterprises, and the robustness test verifies these findings. Different kinds of UTE have different effects on enterprise GTI. UTE also has a positive impact on the independent GTI of enterprises. (2) Compared with non-state-owned enterprises, the GTI of state-owned enterprises is more vulnerable to the positive impact of UTE. (3) UTE significantly and negatively impacts enterprises’ business activities and further challenges enterprises’ sustainable development. However, the enterprise’s GTI behavior, especially the substantial GTI, helps mitigate the adverse impact of UTE on the company’s sustainable development. Finally, this paper provides targeted suggestions for enterprises to better cope with UTE and improve their sustainable development capabilities.

Emergy-based sustainability measurement and evaluation of industrial production systems.

The sustainability of industrial production systems is considered to be the key to promoting green transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry. This study proposes an emergy-based method for the measurement and evaluation of the sustainability of industrial production systems. The method uses emergy as a measure, expresses all types of inputs and outputs of production systems in terms of solar emergy, and constructs indicators for the sustainable evaluation of industrial production systems that account for economic and environmental benefits from the perspectives of system functions, ecology, and sustainability. This method was applied to a disc cam machining system at a machinery company, where the user was able to quantify the sustainability of the production system and, through feedback, optimise the production process to reduce energy consumption and environmental pollution and improve the sustainability of the production process. The results show that after optimization, the emergy yield ratio of the disc cam machining system is increased from 1.45 to 4.32, the environmental load ratio is reduced by 16%, and the emergy-based sustainability index is increased by 85%. The system has long-term sustainable development capability in the future. This study provides a new theoretical perspective on sustainability assessments of industrial production systems, and our findings provide a scientific basis for guiding the sound operation and sustainable development of industrial production systems.

A Method of Evaluating Safe Operating Space: Focus on Geographic Regions, Income Levels and Developing Pathway.

Safe and Just Space (SJS) is a framework for determining the range where the use of natural resources within the Earth’s carrying capacity can maintain human well-being. However, there has been no systematic monitoring and evaluation of their sustainability across time and space. Here we developed and applied a model and a sustainable development human safe operation space (SDHSOS) index to assess the sustainability capacity and development path of 149 countries from 2000 to 2018. The results demonstrate that (1) The overall sustainable development capacity of all countries is at the middle or lower level and that it has increased over time. (2) The sustainability of natural and socio-economic dimensions and their degree of change show obvious geographic differences and income differences. (3) The national development path divided by income is characterized by a decline in natural environment dimensions and an increase in socio-economic dimensions, which mainly reflects a traditional development path model that promotes social welfare at the expense of the natural environment. This study suggests that nations can accurately identify development characteristics, expand their comparative advantages is the key to improving sustainable development capabilities.

Exploring the Differences of Sustainable Urban Development Levels from the Perspective of Multivariate Functional Data Analysis: A Case Study of 33 Cities in China

Sustainable urban development is a dynamic, continuous, and long-term process. However, only a few studies have considered the continuous changes in urban development levels over time. From a novel perspective of multivariate functional data, this study aims to analyze the sustainable development capability of cities through dynamic evaluation, and to explore the differences in the level of sustainable development of cities. Firstly, a sustainable urban development evaluation system with 18 indicators across the economic, social, and environmental indices is established. Secondly, based on the index system, an entropy weight method for functional data is developed to assign weights to the indicators. The time weight is used to consider the effects of missing values. Then, a new method of urban development level clustering is proposed. Thirdly, the differences in sustainable urban development levels among the 33 cities in China from 2005 to 2019 are analyzed, and the cities are separated into 5 categories. The results show that the coordinated development of the economy, society, and environment can promote the sustainable development of cities. The overall level of sustainable development in Chinese cities is not high, and significant differences are observed in sustainable urban development. Notable differences and significant imbalances are observed between the sustainable development level of the cities in the central and western regions of China and the cities in the eastern coastal areas. Finally, relevant conclusions and suggestions are proposed to improve sustainable urban development.

Environmental protection and sustainable development of enterprises in China: The moderating role of media attention

Faced with global environmental problems, such as global warming, enterprises have become important players in environmental protection. By fulfilling their environmental responsibilities, enterprises can create a good external image and gain support from the public and government, thereby increasing the influence of their enterprises. At the same time, the media plays the role of guiding public opinion and supervising the market economy in enterprise development and market economy. Therefore, this study investigates whether the environmental protection measures taken by enterprises have a positive effect on their sustainable development, and how media attention affects the relationship between environmental protection and sustainable development. This study uses the fixed effect regression method to empirically study the data of A share listed companies in China, from 2016 to 2019. The results of the study show that the enterprises’ fulfillment of environmental responsibilities or carbon trading can promote sustainable development. Furthermore, the higher the network or print media attention, the more environmentally responsible behavior and carbon emissions trading can promote sustainable development capabilities of enterprises. This study enriches the understanding of the important role played by environmental protection in driving enterprise sustainability and contributes to the literature by emphasizing the need for media attention about environmental responsibilities and carbon emissions trading.

Emergy-Based Sustainability Evaluation of the Mulberry-Dyke and Fish-Pond System on the South Bank of Taihu Lake, China

The Taihu Lake drainage basin is the birthplace of the Mulberry-dyke and Fish-pond System (MFS), a traditional eco-agricultural system. In 2017, the largest and best-preserved “Zhejiang Huzhou Mulberry-dyke and Fish-pond System” located by the South Bank of Taihu Lake, China was recognized as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and its value has been appreciated. As a dynamic heritage, the sustainable development of MFS is a fundamental requirement of the conservation of GIAHS. In this regard, it is necessary to figure out an approach to evaluating the status of its sustainable development. This paper analyzes and contrasts the emergy embodied in the three patterns of MFS over different periods, then constructs an index system of sustainability evaluation involving the production and consumption processes based on that. Finally, it provides the evaluation and analysis. The three patterns of MFS differ in the system structure. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties (abbreviated as Ming-Qing pattern), MFS was an integrated system compromised of mulberry cultivation, silkworm breeding, fish breeding, and sheep breeding, while other patterns exclude sheep breeding, but increase the input of fertilizer, and add the production of mulberry-leaf tea and other local specialties. The results show that the MFS in the Ming-Qing pattern has the highest integrated evaluation index of sustainable development, followed by the traditional MFS pattern and the new MFS pattern employed nowadays. This indicates that the current capability of sustainable development has decreased compared to that in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The integrated evaluation index regarding the consumption process of the new MFS pattern is higher than the traditional one, suggesting that it needs to promote sustainability in the production process, especially via the utilization rates of renewable resources and wastes.

Multi-objective closed-loop supply chain network design: A novel robust stochastic, possibilistic, and flexible approach

Nowadays, the production of stone paper, in addition to its widespread utilization in various fields, does not require water consumption, cutting down trees, and stone paper products are easily recyclable and recoverable. Due to the importance of developing and using stone paper and paying attention to environmental matters, Closed-Loop Supply Chain Network Design (CLSCND) is very important for stone paper products. Moreover, due to epistemic, randomness uncertainties, the uncertainties in Objective Function (OF), and the flexible constraints for CLSCND in the real world, this paper introduces a novel Mixed Robust Stochastic, Possibilistic, and Flexible Programming (MRSPFP) approach based on credibility theory. The different attitudes of the Decision-Makers (DMs) are addressed by a more flexible measurement of the optimistic and pessimistic parameters using the criterion of credibility. In the study, a comprehensive procedure is proposed for stone paper CLSCND, to minimize costs, increase responsiveness by minimizing transit time between different facilities, and regarding environmental concerns into account through minimizing carbon emissions. The model is solved utilizing an interactive fuzzy programming solution procedure and the Best-Worst Method (BWM). The results of sensitivity analysis, the effect of changing the problem parameters, and the performance of the proposed model are investigated and compared. The results show that the MRSPFP model has a better performance compared to other previous models. The MRSPFP model performs better in strategic decisions that require high investment costs due to the minimization of the absolute deviation of OF from its mean. Also, the applied results of the study show that CLSCND has a good capability and potential for sustainable development in the field of stone paper.

Changes and Characteristics of Green Infrastructure Network Based on Spatio-Temporal Priority

With advancements in urbanization, natural lands are constantly being encroached upon by artificial impervious surfaces, leading to serious ecosystem damage. Calls for Green Infrastructure to address urban environmental issues and resource reallocation are growing. How to optimize Green Infrastructure networks are becoming increasingly important under rapid urbanization. In this study, we used the main city zone in Hangzhou as the study area, and we extracted 2000, 2010 and 2020 land-use data. We used morphological spatial pattern analysis to identify Green Infrastructure landscape types and further extract Green Infrastructure elements. We identified the spatial priority of Green Infrastructure network elements through landscape connectivity evaluation according to ecological importance and development vulnerability. After the construction of a Green Infrastructure network, we analyzed its spatio-temporal characteristics to determine the Green Infrastructure network’s spatial priority. Through spatial prioritization, the gradual construction and optimization of Green Infrastructure networks will help to improve urban green spaces in stages. Smartly coordinating urban growth and ecological protection based on Green Infrastructure spatial prioritization may help improve urban living environments and enhance sustainable urban development capabilities. In conclusion, sources dominate corridors and codes are changing. If sources are fragmented, the integration degree decreases and the first-level source advantage is weakened. The corridor morphology continuously develops, and the corridor structure stabilizes. Second-level corridors gradually replace third-level corridors to guide Green Infrastructure network structure development. Codes present a scatter distribution and tend to average, closely following corridor change.

Evaluation of employee green behavior ability based on a fuzzy BWM-VIKOR approach

As a core resource of the company, employees play a major role to implement green management related behaviors in enterprises. Management department is also working hard to improve the ability of employees to perform these green behaviors for the company’s sustainable development capabilities. This study is the first effort that evaluation of effect factors of employee green behavior ability (EGBA) by intuitionistic fuzzy number-best worst method (IFN-BWM). To reach the study objective, a total of four criteria and twenty-seven sub-criteria for evaluation of EGBA are collected from the existing literatures. Subsequently, the PFN-VIKOR methodology (Pythagorean Fuzzy Number-Visekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kom-promisno Resenje) is proposed to rank EGBA levels. The results of this study show that employee self-efficacy and employee initiative in learning relevant green knowledge are important factors to enhance EGBA. Moreover, findings confirm that extended fuzzy semantic values and novel algorithm can accurately measure the decision makers’ mind and improve the accuracy of evaluation. This study also provides a framework for managers to evaluate their employee’ green behavior ability.

THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL OWNERSHIP AND SOCIAL SUPPORT ON ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY

Faced with a complex and volatile environment, improving the resilience of organizations to resist various risks, enhancing the viability of enterprises, and ultimately achieving sustainable development capabilities has become a top priority for business managers. This study first explores the relationship between employee psychological ownership, organizational resilience, and social support by combining the relevant literature, constructing a theoretical research model, and proposing hypotheses. Through statistical analysis of 332 valid questionnaires, the results show that employee psychological ownership positively impacts organizational resilience. Also, social supports positively affect organizational resilience and organizational identity in employee psychological ownership, and social supports and organizational resilience both play an intermediary role.

Evaluation of the Impact of the Introduction of Overseas High-Level Talents on the Development of Central Cities with Artificial Neural Network

For the central cities, the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure, the continuous deepening of innovation capabilities, and the improvement of sustainable development capabilities, human resources are playing an increasingly important role. In the modern era, assembling an army of highly educated, high-quality, and highly talented personnel has become a practical demand of talent development strategy. In order to respond to national policies, keep up with the trend of the times, and give play to the comparative advantages of talent competition, the primary task of central cities is to do a good job in the introduction of overseas high-level talents. It is necessary for the central cities to establish a mechanism for the introduction of overseas high-level talents with the government as an important task and to formulate targeted talent introduction policies according to the local characteristics of the central cities. It is very important to evaluate the impact of the introduction of overseas high-level talents on the development of central cities so that the central cities can formulate talent introduction strategies according to the actual situation. This work uses an artificial neural network to evaluate the impact of the introduction of overseas high-level talents on the development of central cities. Aiming at the problem that the evaluation accuracy and computing efficiency of the deep learning-based method decrease due to the proliferation of neural network layers, and the improved residual network model is proposed. On the one hand, a multiscale feature fusion block is designed in the first layer of the network model, which can extract the multiscale feature information in the original special. On the other hand, the residual block is optimized and improved by using depthwise separable convolution to remove the computational burden on the network.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: The effect of firm size, industry type and ownership structure on the relationship between firms' sustainable innovation capability and stock liquidity

Does the company attach importance to research and development (R&D) investment in its operations? Is stock liquidity detrimental to corporate innovation and thus damages the company’s sustainable development capabilities? We estimate the relationship between between stock liquidity and firms’ sustainable innovation capability on China’s stock market by OLS method and difference in difference (DID) method. The traditional conclusion is: the higher the stock liquidity, the weaker the enterprise's sustainable innovation level, especially in state-owned enterprises. The DID estimation using the share-trading reform and the policy of large and small-sized non-tradable share shows that: stock liquidity will affect the sustainable innovation level of the enterprise positively. The reasons for this mechanism are the supervision mechanism in the operation of the enterprise, the effect of the balance of the ownership structure and the improvement of corporate governance. The conclusions are that the improvement of ownership concentration promotes this positive relationship, and the behavior of institutional investors does not have a significant impact. These findings also provide new insights into the relationship between corporate management and shareholder investment behavior on the level of innovation.

Will enterprise technological innovation enhance the value of energy-based enterprises? ——Analysis of the Moderating Effect Based on ESG Information Disclosure

Facing the stage of high-quality economic development, energy-based enterprises not only need to improve their energy development technological innovation capabilities, but also actively face the transition to green, low-carbon and sustainable development. Technological innovation realizes the continuous accumulation of corporate value by innovating production technology and improving production efficiency. The ESG concept focuses on the three dimensions of environmental protection, fulfillment of social responsibilities and corporate governance, and helps companies cultivate green and sustainable development capabilities. Based on the two new development concepts of “innovation” and “green” as the research starting point, the article selects 208 listed energy-based companies in A-shares from 2015 to 2019 as the research sample, and uses empirical research to test the impact of corporate technological innovation and ESG information disclosure on energy. The impact of the value of the type of enterprise. The empirical results show that both corporate technological innovation and good ESG information disclosure have positive value creation effects; at the same time, good ESG information disclosure by energy- based companies can further enhance the value creation of technological innovation. At the end of the article, it also puts forward relevant suggestions for energy-based enterprises to improve their technological innovation capabilities and enhance environmental protection awareness.

Managing Supply Chain Complexity and Sustainability: The Case of the Food Industry

Consumer demand for organic products, rapidly growing urbanizations levels requires the food supply chain to reduce lead-time and maintain higher product quality. For the food supply chain to cope with the raising issues an e-commerce type of supply chain must be implemented. This approach creates challenges for supply chain, because the food industry must shift towards high variety and low quantity freight forwarding with multiple delivery points. The methodology of the paper consists of scientific literature analysis and macro indicator clustering. The author of the paper proposes a supply chain management framework, which is grounded through complexity theory. The framework mainly consists of 3 characteristics, which organizations should operationalize to maintain system resilience and which in the long-run would evolve to sustainable development–capabilities, collaboration, complexity management. The proposed framework defines how operational and tactical levels should be automated through cyber-physical systems, while the automation should be controlled through strategic level variables. The macro level analysis of existing EU markets of the food industry has been conducted to identify the food industry’s contingencies, in which an agent-based model will be used to validate the proposed framework. Main 3 clusters were identified, which number was chosen based on the elbow method and validated with the silhouette score of 0.749. The food industry can be categorized in to developing, underdeveloped, and developed food industries. Moreover, singularities of different contingencies have been identified which considers population size, population density, market size of the food industry and disruption intensity. The application of the framework depends on the identified contingencies. From strategic level the SCMF is similar in all contingencies, however, depending on the type of market, more emphasize on vehicle routing or demand forecasting should be made.

How to Improve the Corporate Sustainable Development?—The Importance of the Intellectual Capital and the Role of the Investor Confidence

In the era of the intelligent economy, to achieve business development, companies have shifted from focusing on physical resources to intangible resources and increasingly rely on investment in intangible assets. This phenomenon is a consensus. Intellectual capital is a skill that is difficult for competitors to replicate and is the most significant intangible asset of modern firms. Research on intellectual capital mainly focuses on the impact of companies’ performance; however, this study focuses on the sustainable development effects of companies. Taking manufacturing companies from Chinese A-share listings from 2015 to 2020 as the sample space and adding innovation capital based on the traditional intellectual capital model, a two-way fixed-effects model was used to conduct empirical research on the relationship between companies’ intellectual capital and corporate sustainable development. Meanwhile, research was conducted to test whether investor confidence innovatively played an intermediary role. This study showed that intellectual capital was positively correlated with the sustainable development of companies and investor confidence. In general, investor confidence was a bridge that connected intellectual capital and sustainable development. The results provided an empirical basis for companies that can enhance their sustainable development capabilities through intellectual capital investment. Managers should focus on the development of activities that have a positive impact on companies’ intellectual capital, increase the investment of intellectual capital, and achieve high-quality, sustainable development.

Using Net Primary Productivity to Characterize the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Ecological Footprint for a Resource-Based City, Panzhihua in China

An ecological footprint is a primary indicator in measuring the sustainability of regional development, especially in resource-based cities. Here, we built an ecological footprint-based framework to assess the sustainability for a resource-based city of Panzhihua, in China. In this framework, a suite of long-term ecological parameters (2000–2020), essentially including Net Primary Productivity (NPP), land cover, as well as social statistical data, was used as the input indices of a provincial hectare ecological footprint model. The model outputs are composed of the ecological footprint (EF), ecological footprint per capita (PEF), ecological capacity (EC), ecological capacity per capita (PEC), ecological deficit/surplus (ED/S), and per capita ecological deficit/surplus (PED/S). Then the sustainable development capability of the city was comprehensively evaluated using a suite of ecological indices, including the ecological pressure index (EPI), ecological footprint per ten thousand GDP (EFG), ecological sustainability index (ESI), and ecological coordination index (ECI). The study reveals that, from 2000–2020, (1) PEC and PED/S presented an increasing trend (0.2401 hm2/person and 2.1421 hm2/person, respectively), while PEF decreased by 1.9 hm2/person. In the case of the ecological deficit, fossil energy land and forest were the dominant land types in controlling the ecological footprint and ecological capacity, (2) EPI and EFG decreased by 6.6381 hm2/person and 2.2462 hm2/person, respectively, and ESI and ECI increased by 0.3436 hm2/person and 0.2897 hm2/person, respectively. These indices also reflect that the utilization rate of natural resources in Panzhihua City has been improved, with enhanced sustainability, as well as a decline in ecological pressure. This ecological footprint-based framework could work as a template for evaluating the sustainability of resource-based cities from positive and negative ecological footprint indices.

Research on the Sustainable Development and Dynamic Capabilities of China’s Aircraft Leasing Industry Based on System Dynamics Theory

The Boeing 737 MAX crisis and COVID-19 pandemic have seriously influenced the development of China’s aircraft leasing industry in the past two years. This paper applies system dynamics theory to explore the sustainable development of China’s aircraft leasing industry. It analyses the dynamic mechanism and constructs a system dynamics model. Based on China’s macroeconomic data and historical data from the financial, aviation, and leasing industries, it aims to stimulate the development of China’s aircraft leasing industry in the next five years. Through sensitivity analysis, this research finds that changes in GDP growth have the most obvious impact on the sustainable development of China’s aircraft leasing industry. Reducing the average financing cost and the income tax rate of aircraft leasing companies, increasing their investment in talent, and controlling risk will increase the market share of China’s aircraft leasing companies and promote the development of the industry. However, increasing the number of aircraft leasing companies has little effect on market share. On this basis, this paper proposes policy recommendations to promote the sustainable development of China’s aircraft leasing industry.