Sustainability is often conceived of as an attempt to balance competing economic, environmental and social priorities. Over the course of three decades of scholarship, however, the meaning and appropriate application of the ‘social pillar’ continues to inspire confusion. In this paper, we posit that the inherent challenge of understanding social sustainability is its many legitimate meanings pl...

Sustainability has been assessed by measuring the environmental, social and economic performance. Such diverse measurements could include contrasting attributes in sustainability measures namely environmental, social, and economic attributes. Our research argues that it is necessary to use a multidimensional approach for sustainability knowledge improvements that consist of all sustainability d...

Software’s social sustainability is an important concern that needs an in-depth investigation. The objective of this paper is to understand what social sustainability is, how it is measured today, and how is social sustainability of a software system evaluated today. We present the initial results of a systematic literature review on these questions. Our findings so far highlight a large gap in...

Since publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987, the notion of sustainable development has come to guide the pursuit of environmental reform by both public and private organizations and to facilitate communication among actors from different societal spheres. It is customary to characterize sustainable development in a familiar typology comprising three pillars: environmental, economic, and ...

Social sustainability is a relatively underexposed dimension of the sustainability debate. Diversified and discipline-specific study perspectives and the lack of contextualization make it difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of social sustainability in non-Western societies. In examining the problems facing a rapidly ageing Chinese society, this paper aims to construct an integrative...

Agribusiness managers as the major players in the agricultural industry greatly determine agribusiness practices and affectperception about agricultural sustainability. This study develops a framework to analyze how agribusiness students, the future agribusiness managers, in California view sustainable agriculture. An educational program was created and implemented to raise awareness and educat...

The social dimension of sustainable development has most often been neglected when developing future scenarios, or, at best, been dealt with as a framework condition for successful environmental sustainability strategies. However, given the long-disputed trade-off between social and environmental improvements in a market economy, environmental and social criteria must be developed and incorpora...

Social complexity and sustainability emerge from successful problem solving, rather than directly from environmental conditions. Social complexity develops from problem solving at all scales from local to national and international. Complexity in problem solving is an economic function, and can both support and hinder sustainability. Sustainability outcomes may take decades or centuries to deve...

Achieving environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability is predicated on changing human behavior; the purview of Psychologists. For instance, research based in cognitive, social, and behavioral psychology has informed initiatives regarding public education and advocacy, framing of messages, decision making, incentive-based regulation, and social marketing. This special issue of S...