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Car-sharing services are developing at an ever-increasing pace. Taking into account the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and pursuit of the sustainable development of transport, implementing electric cars in car-sharing fleets is being proposed. On the one hand, these types of vehicles are referred to as emission-free, but on the other hand, their environmental friendliness is questionable due to the emission of carbon dioxide during the production of energy to power them. Although many scientific papers are devoted to the issue of reducing emissions through car sharing, there is a research gap concerning the real production of carbon dioxide by car-sharing vehicles during car-sharing trips. To fill this research gap, the objective of the article was to analyze the actual level of carbon dioxide emissions from combustion and electric vehicles from car-sharing systems produced when renting rides. The test results showed that the electric car turned out to be significantly less emitting. The use of electric vehicles in car-sharing fleets can reduce carbon dioxide emissions from 14% to 65% compared to using cars with internal combustion engines. However, the key role during car-sharing trips is played by the driving style of the drivers, which has been omitted from the literature to date. This should be properly regulated by service providers and focus on the proper use of energy from electric vehicle batteries, especially at low temperatures. The article provides support for operators planning to modernize their fleet of vehicles and fills the research gap concerning car-sharing emissions.

Although the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocate, through SDG 4 and SDG 10, equitable quality education and the reduction of inequalities within and between countries, respectively, few studies have examined how inequalities in regional sustainability influence higher education. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between regional sustainability and higher education in China using fixed-effects panel modelling. A systematic force framework showing how regional sustainability drives higher education was constructed from economic, social, and environmental perspectives, and the endogeneity in the process of how regional sustainability affects higher education was explored by introducing one-year lagged values as instrumental variables. Our results show that regional sustainability has a significant impact on higher educational attainment in China, with differing effects in the eastern, central, and western regions, respectively. In central China, economic sustainability plays a significant positive role in higher educational attainment; in the western region, economic and social sustainability have stronger positive effects, while environmental sustainability has significantly negative effects. In terms of policy implications, our findings can be used to support regional development policies to promote regional higher education.

As an important livelihood strategy choice to promote the sustainable development of themselves and regions, returnees’ entrepreneurship has played a vital role in the governance of all-level Chinese local governments since the 21st century. The policy attention reflects the importance that the local governments attach to this issue, and the evolution process also reflects relevant policies’ internal rules and characteristics. Based on this, this paper, taking 242 policy texts related to returnees’ entrepreneurship issued by local governments from 2000 to 2021 as the research objects, uses grounded theory and social network analysis in order to explore the policy attention evolution from the aspects of time, space, specific policy domains and cooperative relationship among policy subjects. Finally, this research finds the main conclusions as follows: (1) The policy attention evolution on time dimension has the characteristic of synchronism, different levels and “reciprocal U”. (2) The policy attention evolution on space dimension is closely linked to “pull” and “push” forces of local population flow and has neighborhood effects. (3) The policy attention evolution on specific policy areas will gradually spread and diversify with the change in local governance environment and stage goals. (4) The evolution trend of collaborative social network among policy objects has the characteristic of “loose-central-loose”.

A variety of pipelines are distributed under urban roads. The upgrading of pipelines is bound to occupy certain road resources, compress the driving space of motor vehicles for a long time, aggravate the traffic congestion in the construction section, and then affect the traffic operation of the whole region. A reasonable layout of traffic signs for inducement to guide the traffic flow in the area where the construction section is located is conducive to promoting a balanced distribution of traffic flow in the regional road network, so as to achieve the reduction of automobile exhaust emissions and the sustainable development of traffic. In this paper, the layout optimization method of regional traffic signs for inducement is proposed. Taking the maximum amount of guidance information that the regional traffic signs can provide as the objective function, and taking the traffic volume, the characteristics of intersection nodes and the standard deviation of road saturation as the independent variables, the layout optimization model of guidance facilities is constructed, which can optimize the layout of traffic guidance signs in the area affected by the construction section, and achieve the goal that the minimum number of facilities can provide the maximum amount of guidance information. The results of the case study show that among the 64 alternative locations where traffic guidance signs can be set in the study area, eight optimal locations are finally determined as the setting points of guidance facilities through this model, and the effective increment of guidance information is the largest at this time. The model proposed in this paper can be used for reference to promote the sustainable development of traffic in the area where the construction section is located.

Globally, sustainable procurement is seen as a crucial component of public sector sustainability initiatives. This research investigates the internal and external barriers to the implementation of sustainable procurement in China’s public sector. Primary data for this research were gathered using survey techniques from 287 respondents who were procurement officials at higher education institutions that are part of the public sector. Twelve hypotheses were developed based on the conceptual model and literature review and evaluated using SEM-AMOS in order to look at the correlations between the variables. The study’s findings demonstrate that employee competency, employee motivation, training programs, financial aspects, management commitment, government rules and regulations, unavailability of green products, supplier capacity, and third-party pressure statistically influence the sustainability of public procurement. At the same time, green practices, the ineffectiveness of green products, and prices of green items had statistically no significant influence on sustainability in public procurement. This is a crucial effort to identify the factors that influence sustainable purchasing in China’s public colleges. This study draws interest from stakeholders and adds to the scant body of knowledge on sustainability in developing nations. In addition, this research is crucial for creating a roadmap for China’s long-term sustainable development in the area of procurement.

Sustainable tourism is essential for tourism sector development. Environmentally responsible behaviors and behavioral intentions are important prerequisites for sustainable tourism. This research explores the behavioral intentions of university tourism students and significant factors affecting these behavioral intentions. The questionnaire survey method was applied to university students from the tourism departments of nine universities in Taiwan. A total of 390 valid questionnaires were collected. The pro-environmental behavioral intentions of the students ranged from moderate to high. Environmental knowledge positively affected behavioral intentions and positively influenced environmental sensitivity and environmental responsibility. Furthermore, environmental sensitivity and environmental responsibility exerted a full effect in mediating the relationship between environmental knowledge and behavioral intentions. Hence, increasing students’ environmental knowledge will enhance their behavioral intentions. However, by improving students’ sensitivity and responsibility, their intentions to protect the environment can be more effectively elevated. Development implications and recommendations for sustainable tourism and higher education are provided.

This paper takes Taoxichuan Cultural and Creative Street as a case study. It explores how enterprises activate the value of “industrial heritage” resources and achieve sustainable development from the perspective of affordance theory. Research findings indicated that: (1) the creation of a culturally recognized context performs a vital role in activating the industrial heritage; (2) the evocation of industrial heritage resources is a dynamic process from the realization of fundamental values to the actualization of high-level values; and (3) the evoked industrial heritage resources can achieve sustainable corporate development. Additionally, the research findings provide reference for enterprises to realize high-level values of industrial heritage resources by creating contexts to transform them into sources of innovation in the post-pandemic era.

Ecological and environmental protection is the core content of ecotourism development. A quantitative evaluation of the effects of ecotourism environmental protection (hereinafter referred to as EEP) measures on protected areas is conducive to a deeper understanding of the key issues related to ecotourism development in China, thus providing the theoretical basis for formulating the relevant national policies of sustainable ecotourism development in China. This paper first discusses the evaluation index system and then establishes an index evaluation model of EEP measures and their effects on protected areas. Using surveys of more than 1110 protected areas in 27 provinces (autonomous regions or municipalities), we evaluated the EEP measures and their effects from a quantitative and spatial perspective. The completeness of EEP measures for Chinese protected areas was moderately effective, and the implementation status of the protection measures varied with the protection region. The effectiveness of EEP measures in different provinces and regions showed significant differences. The effectiveness decreased from east to west. The evaluation index values of the environmental protection measures displayed a high correlation with the effects of environmental protection on protected areas. The ecological protection measures should be further improved and strengthened according to their regional differences during ecotourism development.