Call for papers for a special volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production on Greening Behavior towards Low-Carbon Society: Theory, Measurement and Action
Lixin Tiana,b, Bin Suc, Axing Zhud, Hong Chene, Matthew D. Turnerd
aEnergy Interdependence Behavior and Strategy Research Center, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China
bEnergy Development and Environmental Protection Strategy Research Center, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China
cEnergy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
dDepartment of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
eSchool of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116. China
1. Introduction
It is a consensus of governments around the world to respond to climate change and promote green low-carbon development. As a comprehensive strategy of economic and social transformation, "green development" and "low-carbon economy" are the important measures to deal with climate change and maintain ecological security.
Being the basic subjects of social production and economic activities, enterprises and the public are the decisive force affecting the development of green low-carbon economy. Only through the correct management of the green low-carbon behavior of enterprises and the public can the green and low-carbon development of the economy be truly realized. How to establish reasonable constraint and restraint mechanism for enterprises and the residents, to open the shared green low-carbon product market, and how to effectively guide the green low-carbon behavior of enterprises and the public, then establish a corresponding dynamic response mechanism, are related to whether a green low-carbon economy can be effectively developed in the future and then sustainable development of economy be realized. In the context of climate change and low-carbon development, increasing complexity has been seen in the green low-carbon behavior and interactions between enterprises and the public. The uncertainty of market, technology, and policy also has great influence on the green low-carbon behavior of enterprises and the public. Traditional environmental theory and economic theory seem hard to solve the problem of multi-objective "win-win” of economy, society, and the environment. The long-term mechanism of development urgently expects new theoretical exploration, method breakthroughs, and practice.
The green low-carbon behavior of enterprises and the public is an activity related to the interests of all classes of the society, and is inseparable from participation of the three main bodies of the government, enterprises, and the public (Iyer et al., 2015; Mo et al., 2016). The study of human behavior has always been the focus in sociology, psychology, and economics (Nishi and Christakis 2015; Pinheiro et al., 2016; Hauert and Doebeli, 2004). It can improve the understanding of both human beings itself and the evolutionary results of the social system based on human behavior (Alberto, 2005). As different individual behavior will bring different expected gains, under the complex social environment and different excitation mechanism, choice of human behavior changes over time (Flynn et al., 2014; Roger, 2014). Studies have shown that traditional economic and management theories often fail to explain or predict the social consequences of human behavior (Battiston et al., 2016). It is necessary to explore the laws and the influences of the green and low-carbon behavior of enterprises and the public based on the perspective of the complexity of human behavior. As our knowledge of the green low-carbon behavior of enterprises and the public is still limited, we welcome submissions with high quality in conceptual, theoretical, and empirical study to inspire the theme. Submissions are expected to involve model, theoretical analysis, simulation, empirical studies, and related researches on green low-carbon behavior in the production and consumption fields, including but not limited to the following:
(1) Endophytic dynamics and growth theory driven by green low-carbon behavior
With the increasing concern of climate change, a large number of studies have focused on analyzing the economic and social impacts of climate and environmental change. One branch of the literature explores the effects of the environment, which is taken as the dependent variable, on economic growth, industrial structure change, ecology, and health (Marshall et al., 2015; Nick et al., 2015). The most representative research in this branch is the environmental Kuznets curve (Rogelj et al., 2013). Another branch introduces environmental objectives or policy regulations in order to study the problems of growth and industry where the environment is regarded as an external constraint condition and or example. Revesz et al. (2014) discuss the path of economic growth, the path of maximum emission, and other problems for warming of less than 2℃. In the production theory considering the environment and regulations, the object is to discuss the problem of resources and environment. But it is under the guidance of the traditional economic theory and aims to achieve growth. Maximizing the profit is the only aim in this way of production and it has never fundamentally been changed. The environmental is often considered as an exogenous variable, or as an influencing factor or as an external constraint. A theory system in which the environment is an endogenous variable or a production target has not been established. Therefore, there are many hot issues to be studied, for example, establishing a new endogenous growth theory driven by green low-carbon behavior, exploring the green low-carbon behavior system, analyzing the relationship between economic growth, green output, and consumption, clarifying the impact of technology and policy shocks on green production and investment as well as green consumption behavior.
(2) Rational choice, preference, and utility of green low-carbon behavior
The existing literature studies the ways to deal with climate and environmental problems mainly from the perspective of restraining enterprise behavior and restraining negative externalities. The fundamental goal of researches on enterprise behavior is still to maximize the economic benefits with environment and related policies often being the constraint conditions rather than the purpose of behavior and decision. The theory of green low carbon behavior of enterprises that considering environmental objectives has yet to be established. According to the previous researches, we need to further reveal the regional characteristics of the impact of individual psychological factors, family and social culture on public green low-carbon behavior, and we also need to do further research on the rational choice of public green low-carbon behavior driven by data. Furthermore, we need to study how behavioral decision and social psychology match the preference and utility of public green low-carbon behavior. Therefore, rational choice and preference of enterprises' production and investment decisions behavior should be researched by constructing a green low-carbon carbon value chain, analyzing the source and formation process of the green competitiveness and aiming to achieve carbon value optimization. Sharing selection theory of green low-carbon behavior should be constructed by overall evaluating the preference of residents’ green low-carbon behavior and the diffusion mechanism of green low-carbon behavior from the perspective of residents' multi-interaction.
(3) Sustainable development ability under green low-carbon behavior
Sustainable development is composed of three subsystems: economy, society, and the ecology. With the idea of green low-carbon development, people pay more attention to the relationship between economic development, resources, and environment. Resources and environment are the foundation and guarantee for the sustainable development of the economy. The purpose of green low-carbon development is to achieve sustainable development. Specifically, it is the sustainable and coordinated development of economy, resources, and environment. To realize green development of the economy, economic growth must be decoupled from a load of resources and environment, and the sustainability of resources and environment should be enhanced. On the one hand, innovation drive will be the new driving force of green development-oriented economic growth. By promoting the application of green technology and speeding up the development of green industry, economic growth and sustainable improvement of resources and environment can be achieved simultaneously. On the other hand, economic growth should follow laws of the nature, and the key is that the load of resources and environment should not exceed the carrying capacity of resources and environment, especially in areas of overloading. In order to promote economic development and protect the resources and environment, a series of theoretical and practical researches should be explored on low-carbon economy, low-carbon industry, green management, green marketing, green trade, green consumption, and other green low-carbon behavior from the perspective of sustainable development. Evaluation system and framework for sustainable development of green low-carbon behavior should be constructed from two perspectives: the improvement of corporate carbon productivity and the use of public green low-carbon products.
(4) Action and market influence under green low-carbon behavior
Response management of behavior from the demand side is an important scientific means to promote energy-saving and emission-reduction as well as green low carbon energy utilization under the modern market conditions. Enterprises' actions under green low-carbon behavior are conducive to the promotion of enterprise value. The relationship between low-carbon behavior and the enterprise value is more significant in the environment sensitive industry. However, compared with the passive low-carbon behavior, the active low-carbon response behavior does not gain a greater market value for the enterprise. The willingness and action of low-carbon production of industrial enterprises and the ability of independent innovation have great impact on the implementation of energy-saving emission reduction from the demand side of the market. At present, due to a lack of systematic comprehensive researches on public green low-carbon behavior patterns, the internal mechanism between the policy environment, the market impact, and the public consciousness cannot be accurately and objectively identified. The traditional economic and management methods failed to explain well laws of action under the green low-carbon behavior caused by the complexity of human behavior. Therefore, theoretical innovation is in urgent need in related researches such as revealing the impact and mechanism of energy-saving and green low-carbon energy utilization under enterprise's market demand, identifying the path and effect of promotion of carbon productivity in enterprises, obtaining the evolution law of public green low-carbon behavior, and formulating effective intervention strategies of multi scale green low-carbon behavior in different regions.
(5) Carbon footprint and activities that affect low-carbon behavior
Carbon footprint is a measure of the total amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by human activities or throughout the life cycle of a good or service. Carbon footprint is not only a simple quantification process of greenhouse gases, but also a way to reflect whether the state, organization (enterprise), and individual behavior conform to the principles of environmental justice. Carbon cycle is an important research component in many core projects such as global change and terrestrial ecosystems. The study of the terrestrial carbon cycle mechanism and its response to climate change is an important basis for predicting atmospheric content and climate change. Carbon finance uses financial capital to drive the improvement of environmental rights and interests. Support by laws and regulations, carbon-related financial products and their derivatives are traded or circulated using financial means and methods on market-based platforms with the ultimate aim to achieve low carbon development, green development, and sustainable development. The Paris Agreement aims to ensure global greenhouse gas emissions peak as soon as possible, and to balance emissions and removals of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century. Due to the capability to reduce greatly carbon emissions, carbon capture and carbon sequestration are widely regarded as one of the most important technologies to deal with global climate change and control greenhouse gas emissions in the world. In summary, it is a novel frontier issue to study carbon behaviors, such as carbon footprint, carbon cycle, and carbon finance, and their response to green low-carbon development of the economy and the society. Carbon activities, such as carbon capture, carbon sequestration, and net emission, are closely related to green low-carbon development. The study of their relationship and laws of evolution is a hot issue to be discussed.
2. Tentative Schedule
Call for papers: August 1st, 2018.
Submission due: March 30, 2019.
Peer review due: May 30, 2019.
Final decision notification: June 30, 2019.
Publication: August 30, 2019.
3. Paper submission
Authors should select‘Green Behavior’as the theme of article for the Special Issue on ‘Greening Behavior towards Low-Carbon Society: Theory, Measurement and Action’when they submit their manuscript to Elsevier's EES system.
Authors are invited to submit different types of papers for potential publication in this Special Volume. Papers should be between 9,000 and 12,000 words for ‘comprehensive reviews’, between 7,000 and 8,500 words for ‘theoretical papers based upon empirical studies’, and between 5,000 and 7,000 words for ‘case studies’.
Papers must be written in good English. Authors with limitations in the command of written English are recommended to have their papers edited by an English Scientific Editor before the first submission because poorly written pieces can compromise the decisions during the review process. Similarly, they should have their final document edited by an English Scientific Editor before they submit it to the editorial team for the final review and for publication in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
All authors must follow the editorial guidelines provided in the Instructions for Authors for the Journal of Cleaner Production, which can be accessed via the website:http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-cleaner-production/.
By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) must certify that the contribution is original and has not been published or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and that no part of the material breaches the copyrights of others. All articles will be first evaluated by the editors of this special issue to assure suitability with the scope of both the Special Issue and of the Journal. After the first screening, suitable papers will be submitted to a single-blind, peer review process according to the standards of the Journal of Cleaner Production. The review/revision process may need to be repeated several times for many articles to ensure that all authors or author teams achieve top quality.
4. Contact information of the guest editorial teamManaging Guest Editor
Prof. Lixin Tian, Energy Interdependence Behavior and Strategy Research Center, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China.tianlixin@njnu.edu.cn
Guest Editors
Dr. Bin Su, Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore.subin@nus.edu.sg
Prof. Axing Zhu, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.axing@geography.wisc.edu
Prof. Hong Chen, School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116, China.hongchenxz@163.com
Prof. Matthew D. Turner, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.mturner2@wisc.edu.
Authors may also confer with the ‘Co-Editor-in-Chief’ of the Journal of Cleaner Production Prof. Yutao Wang, who oversees Special Volumes.
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