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The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of service quality and innovation on competitive advantage and sustainable local economy, with marketing mix strategy as the mediating variable (Study in small and medium enterprise (MSME) in Java and Sumatera).

The study population of this paper is the MSME in Sumatera and Java Islands in Indonesia, as the highest population in Indonesia in 2010–2016 (portion of MSME in Indonesia: Java 58.29 percent and Sumatera 22.22 percent, or total 80.51 percent), and total 16 province in Indonesia: Aceh, Sumatera Utara, Riau, Sumatera Barat, Jambi, Sumatera Selatan, Bengkulu, Lampung, Kep Riau, Kep Bangka Belitung (Sumatera Island), and Banten, DKI Jakarta, Jawa Barat, Jawa Tengah, Jawa Timur, DI Yogyakarta (Java Island). The analysis used in this study is a quantitative approach, namely, structural equation modeling based on variance, also known as the WarpPLS method.

The findings of this study are as follows: first, service quality has an influence on marketing mix strategies, meaning the application of service quality according to customer needs will create satisfaction. In other words, the better the quality of service provided, the higher the customer satisfaction will be. Second, the quality of service has a direct influence on creating a sustainable local economy, meaning that improving service quality to understand customer needs can enhance sustainable economic growth and competitive advantage through marketing mix strategies. This means that improving service quality in accordance with customer needs will improve the marketing mix strategy leading to a sustainable local economy. Third, the marketing mix strategy has a positive influence on the sustainable local economy, meaning that the higher the marketing mix strategy, the better the strategy for sustainable economic growth and competitive advantage will be.

The effect of marketing mix strategy as mediation (using the Sobel test) on the influence of service quality and product innovation on sustainable local economy and competitive advantage is shown in this study. No previous research studies this relationship at the research location: MSME in Indonesia, especially in Java and Sumatra Islands. Hence, this is one of few studies comprehensively evaluating the effect of service quality and innovation, toward competitive advantages and local sustainable economic: marketing mix strategy as mediating variable (study in MSME in Java and Sumatera).

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of environmental pollution and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution in different stages based on the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of economic development level and industrial structure upgrading level in eastern, central and western regions of China and discuss whether there is adjustment effect and threshold effect in the process of economic growth affecting environmental pollution, and finally realizes sustainable economic development.

Based on panel data from 30 provincial-level administrative regions of China (excluding Tibet and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) from 2000 to 2019, this paper uses the environmental Kuznets curve, regulating effect model and panel threshold model to analyze the impact of economic growth and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution.

The results present that the uneven distribution of natural resources leads to different levels of economic development and industrial structure upgrading in eastern and western regions, and its impact on environmental pollution is also different. Economic growth and industrial structure upgrading have a positive effect on environmental pollution, and the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution is inverted U-shaped. At present, the eastern, central and western regions of China are at the right end of the inverted U-shaped relationship. In general, industrial structure upgrading in eastern, central and western regions has a significant inhibitory effect on environmental pollution. Industrial structure upgrading has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution, and the regulating effect is most significant in the central region, followed by the eastern region, and not significant in the western region. The results of panel threshold model show that the industrial structure upgrading can slow down the positive impact of economic growth on environmental pollution and strengthen the negative moderating effect of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution.

The innovation of this study is to bring economic growth, industrial structure upgrading and environmental pollution into a unified analytical framework, analyze the impact of economic development and industrial structure upgrading levels in different periods on environmental pollution, and select industrial structure upgrading as the moderating variable and threshold variable. It provides a thought for the influence mechanism of different levels of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution. Based on the panel data in China, this study emphasizes the concept of sustainable development, adheres to green development and proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution. And this paper proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution from the perspective of transforming economic growth mode and optimizing industrial structure in China, which also has reference significance for developing countries to realize sustainable economic development.

The paper aims to evaluate how progressive stakeholders view the adoption of contemporary techniques such as virtual technology in driving sustainable quality in an emerging economy context.

The authors adopted a systematic literature review to develop the theoretical framework for virtual reality (VR) technology adoption in sustaining quality in agriculture production. The framework was refined after discussion with a panel of academic experts. The refined theoretical framework was further empirically validated using Partial Least Square Structure Equation Modelling.

The study focuses on the future perspective of the perception for progressive farming with the adoption of VR technology in an emerging economy. The data were collected from the stakeholders (farmers, collectives, cooperative, etc.), for their future perspectives for the adoption of VR technology and sustainable quality agriculture production. The study may help build up VR technology in emerging economies which may take years to be established.

The perception of the future perspective of VR technology study conducted has limitations. The findings are well established on technology adoption; however, the technology used will take many extra years to find its application in the agriculture sector. The study offers insightful theoretical, managerial and policy implications for sustainable quality in agriculture production through the adoption of virtual reality (VR) technology. The authors found very few works that focused on VR technology adoption.

The study discusses VR, which has an impact on sustaining the quality of agriculture production. The study has notable managerial and policy implications that suggest the future perspective for VR technology in agriculture production. The study is an unexplored area that needs research to capture future perspectives.

The relationships among institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth are hotly contested topics. The objective of this present study is to conduct a systematic literature review aimed at comprehensively assessing the relationships between institutional pillars, entrepreneurship and economic growth.

Specifically, a comprehensive analysis of 141 empirical publications was carried out using the PRISMA protocol. The reviewed publications were taken from the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar databases. Thirty-three articles that met the eligibility criteria of quality, relevance and timeliness of the publications were included in the the study.

Three key lessons emerged from the review. First, it was discovered that entrepreneurship and economic growth are influenced by three institutional pillars at various levels, including the regulatory, cognitive and normative pillars. Second, according to the type of institutional quality, the institutional pillars in a causal framework have a good or negative impact on entrepreneurship. Third, novel enterprise creation, self-employment, citizen employment, poverty alleviation, radical innovation, formalization of the informal sector, promotion of competition in existing and new markets, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and the emergence of new business models that significantly improve quality of life.

The study proposes a conceptual framework for further exploring this important relationship based on solid empirical evidence. By providing a theoretically grounded framework, the paper fills the gaps in the literature and helps to clarify the relationship between institutional foundations, entrepreneurship and economic progress.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate undergraduate industrial design students’ perception of sustainable design concepts and how their conceptualization evolves as a function of their attendance to a specific sustainable design studio (SDS) course.

Two groups of students participated in the study. Students who did not attend to SDS were in the control group, whereas students who attended SDS were in the experimental group. In total, 22 concepts, which have been highlighted in literature and the SDS course, were selected as keywords. Participants were asked to provide relatedness scores of these keywords before and after they attended the course. The data were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and pathfinder (PF) networks.

Results indicate that the SDS caused a change in the conceptualization of sustainable design concepts parallel to the course outcomes and the literature. Some concepts were highlighted as conveyors that guide students to conceptualize sustainable development and design.

This study is considered a case study focusing on declarative knowledge, and owing to the low number of participants, the results should be carefully interpreted.

The findings may support design educators to enhance their courses and promote deeper debates on teaching sustainable design.

Two specific dimensions were found from the analysis of multidimensional scaling, and several conveyor concepts were identified from PF networks. Allocating proposed dimensions and concepts into a course may have the potentials to enhance students’ perception of sustainability concepts.

Based on the theoretical definition of the quality of economic growth as well as the availability and reliability of the given data, the purpose of this paper is to build an evaluation system of a regional economic growth quality on three levels: conditions, processes and results.

From the perspective of economic quality, this paper offers a theoretical interpretation on how the urban–rural income gap affects the quality of economic growth and takes an empirical test on the sample panel data from 30 provinces and regions through difference GMM and system GMM models.

The results show that the excessively large income gap will influence economic growth in terms of the foundation, operation and the outcome, thereby, restricting the quality of economic growth. In addition, investments in human and physical capital and improvements in terms of transport infrastructure, industrial structure and economic openness play an active role in economic growth quality, whereas government expenditure scale, financial development and the deviation of industrial structure have a negative effect.

There has been a substantial amount of experience and evidence on the research about the issue of China’s income distribution and the quantity of economic growth, whereas there are relatively fewer discussions about the income distribution and the quality of economic growth. This paper, based on what has been mentioned above, tries to give a theoretical interpretation and an empirical test to describe the relationship between urban–rural income gap and the quality of economic growth from the quality point of view.

This paper addresses housing problems of coastal areas in Bangladesh and investigates container-modular-housing (CMH) as a potential sustainable solution that establishes a resilient community.

Primary data highlight the underlying challenges of coastal-housing developed by monitoring the day-to-day operations of the community and conducting interviews with community members. Secondary data came from existing literature on coastal-housing rules and regulations, CMH and similar ideas. The study used a hypothetical CMH cluster design, with three primary objectives in mind: future settlement re-arrangement, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability. To achieve the objectives, the research used a comparative examination of the current constructed form and CMH, as well as a computer-aided simulation approach.

Primary findings encompass issues of a given coastal area, including surrounding site studies, sustainability and resiliency demands due to broad exposure to the natural calamities. Driving toward a “CMH” based home design has the ability to create strategies for a resilient and sustainable community development while taking three primary objectives into account.

A pilot project is needed to analyze the socio-cultural impact and overall construction feasibility.

This research could be implemented to transform an informal construction system into a technical, resilient, sustainable architectural and engineering solution to build resilient communities.

Numerous research projects have focused on the environmental sustainability of CMH. However, this study focuses on construction sustainability considering three major aspects which are yet to be addressed.

Despite unanimity in the literature that eco-innovation (EI) leads to sustainable development, evidence remains limited on measuring EI efficiency with the Malmquist productivity index (MPI). In conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) models, decision-making units (DMUs) are inclined to assign more favorable weights, even zero, to the inputs and outputs to maximize their own efficiency. This paper aims to overcome this shortcoming by developing a common set of weights (CSW).

Using goal programming, this study develops a CSW model to evaluate the EI efficiency of the organization for economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries and track their changes with MPI during 2010–2018.

Achieving a complete ranking of DMUs, findings show the higher discrimination power of the proposed CSW compared with the original DEA models. Furthermore, results reveal that Iceland, Latvia and Luxembourg are the only OECD countries that have incessantly improved their EI productivity (MPI > 1) from 2010 to 2018. On the other hand, Japan is the OECD country that has experienced the highest yearly EI efficiency during 2010–2018. This paper also found that Iceland has the highest MPI over 2010–2018.

More investment in environmental research and development (R&D) projects instead of generic R&D enables OECD members to realize more opportunities for sustainable development through minimizing energy use and environmental pollution in any form of waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to developing a novel common weights model for DEA-MPI to measure and evaluate the EI of OECD countries, this paper develops a CSW model by including the undesirable outputs for EI analysis.

German ethical banks have experienced a significant increase in customers, deposits, and lending. They aim to establish a fairer banking system. But the simultaneous pursuit of social, ecological, and economic goals leaves them vulnerable to conflicting orders of worth. The authors examine the normative foundations that ethical bank employees refer to when they describe their everyday practices and identify the specific problems that arise from negotiating between moral principles and economic demands to provide insights into the impacts, constraints, and paradoxes of normatively oriented business practices. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the sociology of critique, the authors assume that moral categories, social processes of interpretation, and justification are an essential part of markets. Ethical banking is characterized by the need to meet both market-limiting and market-expanding requirements, and this particularly becomes contentious when dealing with economic growth. By analyzing ethical banks’ freely accessible documents, the authors first outline the institutional guidelines. In a second step, the authors analyze 27 qualitative interviews with employees of ethical banks to gain insights into everyday lending practices and action-guiding normative orientations. The goal of this chapter is to examine the tensions that may arise from applying normative guidelines under the condition of increasing economic requirements and to disclose the way that ethical banks negotiate between mechanisms of expansion and limitation. The analysis of this chapter points out a paradox of ethical banking: due to the banks’ economic expansion, investments corresponding to their ethical commitments tend to become a luxury they cannot afford.

On review of literature on “Smart Cities”, it can be asserted that there are multiple definitions of the term “Smart Cities”; however, a universally accepted definition of “Smart Cities” has not been adopted till date. In these circumstances of uncertainty, this paper aims to propose a conclusive definition of “Smart Cities” from systems thinking view.

The key properties, components and dimensions of “Smart Cities” were identified through text analysis of existing definitions of smart cities in literature using tools such as word cloud, network graph, bubble chart, mind map and web chart of top keywords. The definitions were further subjected to principal component analysis to identify the key components such as characteristics and enablers of “Smart Cities”. The concept of “Smart Cities” was then examined from systems thinking view, to arrive at a systemic understanding of the concept, as it examines the key elements of Government, Citizens and Business using the Golden Circle tool (Why, What and How). Thereon, the interactions between these elements were scrutinized by drawing a Systemigram, which aided in constructing the definition of “Smart Cities”. Thereafter, the validity of the definition was empirically tested by applying it to a set of cities and testing the efficiency of cities through data envelopment analysis.

The Literature Review and definition analysis of “Smart Cities” have not only facilitated in identifying elements of widely accepted constructs of “Smart Cities” also helps in advancing a formal conceptual definition of “Smart Cities”. A formal definition, which is commonly accepted, would enable researchers in advancing theory and building measurement instruments for “Smart Cities”.

Given the fact that there is no uniform definition of “Smart Cities” leading to varying standards for conceptualization or construction of a “Smart City”, this paper attempts to propose a formal conceptual definition of “Smart Cities” from systems thinking view. Thus, this paper shall not only attempt to advance theory building of the concept of “Smart Cities” but shall also provide a reference to researchers and practitioners, to enable them to build appropriate measures for Smart Cities.