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The purpose of this study is to develop a framework that will provide the services marketing manager a systematic, holistic and transparent means of enhancing sustainability performance through the marketing function. We review the literature dealing with the confluence of services marketing and sustainability, identify gaps in current sustainability-services marketing literature and inductively develop a conceptual framework for Sustainability Services Marketing (SSM). We describe services marketing practice examples in order to uncover the implications of a sustainability focus for services marketing and illustrate how to operationalise the framework. The resulting framework, (i) ensures that sustainability is incorporated into the strategic services marketing planning process, (ii) adapts and expands the traditional concept of the services marketing mix, by adding Partnerships to the traditional mix elements, and (iii) cross-references services marketing mix decision-making with the triple bottom line to describe the marketing task in terms of a matrix rather than a mix. This permits sustainability benchmarking and planning across the triple bottom line, and across the range of activities the services marketing manager might be expected to manage in order to enhance sustainability performance. We shift services marketing management attention to a broader and more sustainability-responsible whole-of-business approach. This research provides timely and effective guidance for the services marketing manager seeking to enhance his or her business’s sustainability performance in a systematic, holistic, and transparent way.

Evaluation of existing operational and managerial provisions and identification of specific actions that fit and impact in a local context is key to find sustainable solutions. The study aims to develop an understanding of existing waste management practices for a medium sized city of Pakistan and to quantify the related environmental impacts using life cycle assessment (LCA). The existing waste management system in “Bahawalpur”, a city with predominant rural-urban infusion, is characterized by straining resources, low generation rates (0.424 kg/capita/day), prominent source separation, high scavenging activities and open dumping practices. The waste composition analysis proposes organic wastes as the largest constituent (64%) followed by recyclables (27%) and inerts (9%). The LCA model “EaseTech” used to quantify the environmental performance of existing waste management arrangements illustrated that existing waste management system in Bahawalpur City has tangible effects on climate change (3.16 × 107 kg CO2-Eq) and ecotoxicity (3.12 × 106 CTU) categories, while depletion of abiotic resources fossil (−9.60 × 107) category points up most environmental savings. Significant environmental compensations for different impact categories are offered due to high source separation and recycling trade off. The overview necessitates suitable modification in existing waste disposal practice that poses severe impacts on the environment.

Most climate change messages depict a picture of the devastating effects that anthropogenic activities have on the environment, expecting to mobilise human action. Built on the daunting scientific evidence, these gloomy messages can potentially emotionally harm a young audience. By contrast, this study explores the impact of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) as an innovative marketing technique to communicate positive climate change messages. This study investigates whether ASMR could be used to encourage pro-environmental behaviour and create social bonding among young people. An ASMR video and two series of interviews with high school students were conducted in Sydney, Australia. The results show that the participants are divided in their opinion about the effectiveness of ASMR. Although all see ASMR as a completely new world in marketing, some are of the opinion that it can influence positive climate change behaviours while others are reluctant to accept it as a way to encourage action. Given the vastness and urgency of the climate change agenda, this novel marketing technique can find its way in promoting pro-environmental behaviours by utilising positive messaging and influencing a section of the young population.

Urban and rural areas are the cradles of human development and civilization as all practical progress and feasible products have emerged from these places. Having a clear understanding of the sustainability of these areas, especially the progress of research in this field, is highly important. This study undertakes a comprehensive scientometric analysis to visualize and quantitatively measure the outcome of the scientific enterprise to construct sustainable urban and rural areas. The scientific productivity of recorded publications, their impacts, and their importance were systematically measured in diverse aspects by virtue of ten distinctive techniques. A critical assessment of the respected criteria for sustainable urban and rural areas is presented in order to further clarify its boundaries with other related topics, as well as providing a clear benchmark for future studies. After screening the search results between 1900 and 2018 on the Web of Science database, 7397 publications explicitly related to sustainable urban and rural areas were extracted and analyzed by the CiteSpace software via the relevant bibliometric indicators. The results of this study shed light on the trends and patterns, consisting of kernel research areas, countries, journals, institutions, and how these entities have been concatenated, inside the bibliographic records around sustainable urban and rural areas. The findings facilitate in identifying the barriers and weakness in the current sustainable urban and rural areas research, and consequently help in identifying auspicious directions for prospective investigations.

Sustainable interdisciplinarity focuses on human–nature relations and a multitude of contemporary overlapping research between society and the environment. A variety of disciplines have played a large part in better understanding sustainable development since its high-profile emergence approximately a quarter century ago. At present, the forefront of sustainability research is an array of methods, techniques, and growing knowledge-base that considers past, present, and future pathways. Specific multi-disciplinary concentrations within the scope of societal changes, urban landscape transformations, international environmental comparative studies as well as key theories and dynamics relating to sustainable performance are explored. Specializations in complex sustainability issues address international governance arrangements, rules, and organizations—both public and private—within the scope of four themes: sustainability, human geography, environment, and interdisciplinary societal studies. This book contains eleven thoroughly refereed contributions concerning pressing issues that interlink sustainable interdisciplinarity with the presented themes in respect of the human–nature interface.

This paper examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices among travel agents and tour operators within the Australia–China tourism supply chain. A sequential, exploratory mixed-methods approach was employed, combining key-informant interviews with a reduced form of discrete choice analysis—best-worst scaling. The findings highlight that while Australian and Chinese travel intermediaries differed significantly in terms of their preferences regarding the different CSR factors, they were unanimous in regard to their belief that commitment to CSR was critical to firm performance. The research also reports universal support for a partial-mediating relationship, suggesting that firm performance is enhanced by strong alignment in the CSR orientation of supply chain intermediaries. This finding reinforces the inter-dependent nature of tourism supply chains, emphasizing that firms and society can benefit from supply chain partners working more closely together.

The growing popularity of electric vehicles (EV) is creating an increasing burden on the power grid in Bangladesh due to massive energy consumption. Due to this uptake of variable energy consumption, environmental concerns, and scarcity of energy lead to investigate alternative energy resources that are readily available and environment friendly. Bangladesh has enormous potential in the field of renewable resources, such as biogas and biomass. Therefore, this paper proposes a design of a 20 kW electric vehicle charging station (EVCS) using biogas resources. A comprehensive viability analysis is also presented for the proposed EVCS from technological, economic, and environmental viewpoints using the HOMER (Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources) model. The viability result shows that with the capacity of 15–20 EVs per day, the proposed EVCS will save monthly $16.31 and $29.46, respectively, for easy bike and auto-rickshaw type electric vehicles in Bangladesh compare to grid electricity charging. Furthermore, the proposed charging station can reduce 65.61% of CO2 emissions than a grid-based charging station.