Genghao Zhang (p)

Simona Cafieri

Issues such as energy poverty and digital divide in less developed areas lead to increases in inequality problems during the era of climate change. Digital divides exist at three levels across the UK, including accessibility to and quality of internet services, digital capacities of using ICT and revenues from ICT usage (Budnitz & Tranos 2022). Scholars discuss whether the adoption of ICT and industry 4.0 technologies ameliorates climate crisis, while governments introduce a development strategy named twin transitions. However, limited research investigates the spatiality of how digital transition (DT) affects green transition (GT) directly and indirectly in industrial and commercial sectors based on a comprehensive index system.

Filling in this gap, my research creates a conceptual framework to illustrate effects of DT on GT from various perspectives including industrial productivity, clean energy structure, green-tech innovation and so on (Chen 2022, Huang et al. 2022, Kopka & Grashof 2022, Ma & Zhu 2022, Magazzino et al. 2021, Montresor & Vezzani 2022, Peng et al. 2022, Santoalha et al. 2021, Wang et al. 2022, Wang et al. 2021, 2022, Wang et al. 2021, Wang et al. 2022). Based on this framework, I adopt OLS, ordinal logistic and multinomial regression methods to examine how digital capacities affect industrial and commercial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per person (PP) across 374 local authorities (LAs) in the UK during 2010-2019. Data of energy consumption and GHG emissions stem from the Office of National Statistics.

Results found that LAs with higher gross value added (GVA) proportions of ICT sectors have significantly positive effects on industrial GHG PP. Indirectly, the GVA proportion of ICT sectors affect positively commercial GHG PP by increasing GDP per capita significantly. What’s more, urban areas conducting service activities locally with higher GDP per capita may take advantage of pollution in rural areas conducting production activities. Urban inhabitants with higher income consume local services and manufacturing products produced in and transported from rural areas, but environmental pollution is shared by every individual. Last but not least, industrial and commercial sectors in urban areas decrease GHG PP to a greater extent in general than that in rural areas in the UK during 2005-2020.

Simona Cafieri (p)

Genghao Zhang

In recent years, the term 'sustainability' has also increasingly been associated with the world
business world, focusing on the impact of their activities on the natural environment and the
well-being of the people and territories where they work.
The increasing interest in the issues of environmental impact and corporate social responsibility has stimulated the search for new indicator to measure these phenomena. However, although the construction of indicators systems linked to well-being and sustainable development are widespread internationally,the measurement of the micro aspects of enterprises is
taking place in the absence of structured and shared systems within the international statistical system.
This paper presents an experimental initiative to collect information
on the phenomenon directly from companies in order to produce some initial indicators on the
spread and orientation towards sustainability in the Italian production fabric. The objective of the
project is, therefore, to provide an integrated information framework, in continuous
evolution, useful in particular for observing the economic performance of companies that
develop business models oriented towards sustainable development.
The aim of this experimental statistic is therefore to make available the first data that
photograph the characteristics of companies in terms of environmental and social sustainability and their
their relationship with classical economic parameters.

Merve Orakci (p), Hilal Erkus (p)

Simona Cafieri

Metaverse is a compound word of ‘meta’ and ‘universe’, which means transcendence and the world. It is a digital world effecting daily life and economic activities. The concept of metaverse, which has a 30-year evolutionary process, ceased to be a fictional idea with the development of technology and is now used to name decentralized, 3D virtual platforms. While the Metaverse is being actively used as an alternative space to enjoy leisure life since COVID-19, not much academic research on the influence of digitalization on urban life is discussed. The developmentof technology transforms both the physical and social processes of the space. Such transformations that the metaverse universe will bring to the physical space on the urban fabric have been recently under attention. Within this point of discussion, this study focuses on the possible scenarios of digital transformation on urban space formation.

Simona Cafieri (p)

Merve Orakci

It is widely acknowledged that innovation is a key element in the global pursuit of sustainable development. This means shifting from the traditional innovation logic of merely finding economic applications for inventions in pursuit of limitless economic growth (Schumpeter, 1912) towards sustainability-oriented innovation – developing solutions to existing global problems in order to cre-ate and realise social and environmental value, as well as economic returns (Adamset al., 2015) or responsible innovation (Stilgoe et al., 2020; Owen et al., 2013).
Sustainability is understood as a wicked problem (Rittel & Webber, 1973) with multiple “hard to identify” root causes that impact various stakeholders and that are deeply intertwined with other issues. Thus, determining appropriate solutions is difficult and determining the sustainable nature of an innovation calls for a wide lens of inspection.
Sustainable change is deeply entrenched in socio-technical systems emphasising the role of technological innovation that is fundamentally linked to societal constructs that need to co-evolve with it.
The course Innovation and Technology for a Sustainable Future is designed to improve understanding of the role innovation and technology play in sus-tainable development and how it is translated into engineering (Jansen, 2008) and business management education (Wankel & Stoner, 2009) — the primary target audience for this course. This course goes beyond techno-utopianism and promotes a critical approach to technological innovation development in the context of sustainability. By the end of the course, students should be able to understand the challenges, benefits, and potential of developing engi-neering-driven solutions to sustainability problems; to evaluate the impacts of innovations and to forecast possible development trajectories for the future; and begin to create solutions to solve the complexities that relate to their adaptation as part of larger socio-technical and economic systems.
This paper gives insights into important factors that are shaping effective learning for sustainability and describes innovative teaching formats that will enable students to contribute to a more sustainable world in their future role as decision makers. Basic concepts in the context of sustainability-related teaching and learning are defined and the relation between learning objectives, methods, skills and outcomes is conceptualised. The detailed description of teaching formats, including their learning objectives, course contents and structure, as well as applied methods aims at supporting lecturers and trainers in the design of their own teaching formats.