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We propose a synthesis of two lines of sociological research on boundary spanning in cultural production and consumption. One, research on cultural omnivorousness, analyzes choice by heterogeneous audiences facing an array of crisp cultural offerings. The other, research on categories in markets, analyzes reactions by homogeneous audiences to objects that vary in the degree to which they conform to categorical codes. We develop a model of heterogeneous audiences evaluating objects that vary in typicality. This allows consideration of orientations on two dimensions of cultural preference: variety and typicality. We propose a novel analytic framework to map consumption behavior in these two dimensions. We argue that one audience type, those who value variety and typicality, are especially resistant to objects that span boundaries. We test this argument in an analysis of two large-scale datasets of reviews of films and restaurants.

Griggs et al. (2013) redefine sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present while safeguarding Earth’s life-support system, on which the welfare of current and future generations depend.” We recommend this as the end goal that the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) should strive to achieve. Integration across the SDGs is less than what is required from a science perspective. Effective implementation of the SDGs will require States to attend to trade-offs and overlaps. We argue that continuous failure to address integration within the SDGs will jeopardize realization of this ultimate end goal. Therefore, we adopt a systems approach to identify gaps and connections across the goals and targets of the SDGs as well as leverage points for effective intervention. We triangulate across methods of critical analysis, conceptual modeling, and keyword network analysis to draw out seven “overarching directions” that could provide a prioritization framework to enhance efficient implementation of the SDGs. Our results identify main gaps as exclusion of key actors (e.g., corporations) and issues (e.g., intergenerational equity and population); inadequate reconciliation of economic growth with maintaining the Earth system; and deficient consideration of the relationship with international law. Conceptual mapping identifies education and innovation; governance and implementation; sustainable consumption and production; and addressing the key drivers of climate change as key leverage points. The keyword analysis highlights greater integration within the SDGs than what appears at face value. Keywords “access,” “women,” “resources,” and “finance” feature across the SDGs and provide further leverage points. Targeting these issues will facilitate realization of a high proportion of SDGs and correspondingly could have a disproportional impact on effective SDG implementation. We conclude that the success of the SDGs needs to be evaluated by the extent to which it contributes to human development while advancing protection of “planetary must-haves” for current and future generations.

Contemporary food production and consumption cannot be regarded as sustainable and raises problems with its wide scope involving diverse actors. Moreover, in the face of demographic change and a growing global population, sustainability problems arising from food systems will likely become more serious in the future. For example, agricultural production must deal with the impacts of climate change, increasingly challenging land-use conflicts, and rising health and social costs on both individual and societal levels. The unsustainability of current arrangements arises from the industrialization and globalization of agriculture and food processing, the shift of consumption patterns toward more dietary animal protein, the emergence of modern food styles that entail heavily processed products, the growing gap on a global scale between rich and poor, and the paradoxical lack of food security amid an abundance of food. These factors are attributable to national and international policies and regulations, as well as to prevalent business practices and, in particular, consumers' values and habits. The most effective ways for affluent societies to reduce the environmental impact of their diets are to reduce consumption of meat and dairy products (especially beef), to favor organic fruits and vegetables, and to avoid goods that have been transported by air on both individual and institutional levels (e.g., public procurement, public catering). In examining the unsustainability of the current food system this article reviews the pertinent literature to derive a working definition of sustainable food consumption, outlines the major issues and impacts of current food-consumption practices, and discusses various policy interventions, including information-based instruments, market-based initiatives, direct regulations, and \"nudges.\" It concludes with a call for integrative, cross-sectoral, and population-wide policies that address the full range of drivers of unsustainable food production and consumption.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, applications, and capabilities have received tremendous attention from industry practitioners, scholars, and policymakers. Despite the substantial progress of the literature on AI, there is a considerable scarcity of research investigating the effects of AI capability, considering the importance of a data-driven culture and whether a data-driven culture truly mediates the relationship between AI capability and firm performance from a sustainable development perspective. Anchored by the resource-based theory (RBT), we developed a high-order model of AI capability and its resources (tangible, intangible, and human). We used a two-stage approach, with PLS-SEM in the first and fsQCA in the second. The findings from the first step suggest that AI capability directly impacts firm performance and that data-driven culture mediates the relationship between AI capability and firm performance. The results from the second step indicated that different configurations of AI resources could be considered for firms to achieve high performance but that AI infrastructure is a crucial resource. Our study advances the literature on AI capability and sustainable development goals. Similarly, it contributes to moving the RBT theory forward by suggesting that AI capability is a paramount variable that substantially influences firm performance. Simultaneously, it is harmoniously connected with SDG 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure) and SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production).

The scale and nature of early cultivation are topics that have received relatively limited attention in research on the origins of agriculture. In Southwest Asia, one the earliest centers of origin worldwide, the transition to food production is commonly portrayed as a macroevolutionary process from hunter-gatherer through to cultivator-forager and farming stages. Climate change, resource intensification, sedentism, rising population densities, and increasing social complexity are widely considered by prehistorians as pivotal to the emergence of protoagricultural village life. In this paper we revisit these narratives that have been influenced by culture-history and social evolution, together forming the dominant theoretical paradigms in the prehistory of Southwest Asia. We propose a complementary contextual approach seeking to reconstruct the historical development of Early Holocene plant-food production and its manifold sociocultural environments by intersecting multiple lines of evidence on the biology of plant domestication, resource management strategies, settlement patterns, cultivation and harvesting technologies, food storage, processing and consumption, ritual practices and symbolic behaviors. Furthermore, we propose that early plant-food production in Southwest Asia should be dissociated from ethnographically derived notions of sedentary village life. Plants emerge as important components of community interactions and ritual performances involving suprahousehold groups that were mediated through communal food consumption.

Developing trust in a company is a significant part of building the company-consumer relationship. Previous studies have sought to identify the positive consequences of trust such as loyalty and repurchase, but the question of what builds trust remains largely unanswered. To answer the question, we developed a model that depicts the relationships among transparency, social responsibility, trust, attitude, word-of-mouth (WOM) intention, and purchase intention. An online survey was conducted with a US nationwide sample of 303 consumers, and the data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling method. The results indicated that consumers' perceptions of a corporation's efforts to be transparent in the production and labor conditions and to be socially responsible by giving back to the local community directly affected these consumers' trust and attitudes toward the corporation, and indirectly affected their intentions to purchase from and spread positive WOM about the corporation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Trust plays a critical role in determining social welfare in the digital economy and has significant socioeconomic implications. To investigate the relationship between trust and social welfare in this context, we developed a social welfare function that accurately quantifies the positive impact of the digital economy. Employing a Markov analysis framework, we modelled trust as a variable that evolves based on the agent's interactions with the system, characterizing the system's dynamic behavior as a series of probabilistic transitions between states. We ran multiple simulations to gather a significant sample of possible outcomes and analyzed the statistical correlation between trust and social welfare. We used the time it takes for the digital economy to converge towards the non-digital economy as a metric to compare the performance of the separate economies. We controlled for other factors influencing social welfare, such as the number of transactions and market competition levels. We compared the actual outcomes of the simulation study with our theoretical predictions. Results indicate a significant impact of trust in maximizing social welfare by achieving a steady state in fewer iterations for a developed digital economy. The socioeconomic benefits of trust are more visible in a digital than in a non-digital economy. Technological progress or innovation is crucial to attaining responsible consumption and production patterns. The digital economy's sustainability hinges on trust, which policymakers must prioritize in light of trust erosion. An effective and inclusive approach, taking into consideration cultural and socioeconomic factors, is imperative to foster increased public trust in institutions and government. Policymakers should strategically prioritize measures such as bolstering data privacy, promoting digital literacy, and formulating robust legal frameworks that facilitate trust-building. The cultivation of mutual trust among all stakeholders, including the state, corporations, government, and individuals, is essential for the creation of a more sustainable and equitable digital economy that maximizes social welfare.

The circular economy concept is popular among developed countries contributing to sustainable production, efficient resource utilization, a new economic model, and higher skill job creation. In production and consumption, it is inevitable in our modern life that we are used to the traditional linear economy cradle-to-cradle model. With the gap in developing countries within the Southeast Asia region, this research aims to understand the motivators and barriers to circular economy business model adoption among the manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Subsequently, the impact of sustainable production will be studied based on the circular economy business model adoption. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling, this study assesses the responses of 102 respondents from various industries with environmental management systems within Malaysia. Survey-based primary data was gathered to understand motivators and barriers that negatively influence the circular economy business adoption, affecting sustainable production. The findings show that motivators have a positive impact while barriers have a negative impact on circular economy business model adoption. Apart from the barriers and motivators, the research also assesses the level of circular economy adoption among manufacturing firms with certified environmental management systems. This implies a general overview for manufacturing firms in Malaysia regarding circular economy adoption and contributes to the studies done in developing nations. In conclusion, motivators positively impact the adoption of the circular economy business model, while barriers have a negative effect. In addition, adopting the circular economy model has a positive relationship with sustainable production.

What role does China play in the recent rush for land acquisition in Africa? Conventional wisdom suggests a large role for the Chinese government and its firms. Ou r research suggests the opposite. Land acquisitions by Chinese companies have so far been quite limited, and focused on production for African consumption. We trace the evolution of strategy and incentives for Chinese agricultural engagement in Africa, and examine more closely several of the more well known cases, sorting out the myths and the realities.

The economic system’s interdependent relationship with nature is fraught with contradictions. While over half of global GDP moderately or highly depends on nature and subsidies to sectors driving nature’s decline, e.g., agriculture, fossil fuels, forestry, amount to trillions of dollars annually, funding for biodiversity conservation and restoration remains woefully inadequate. Bridging the biodiversity funding gap is crucial but alone does not ensure ecosystems’ health. Beyond innovative economic instruments and the elimination or reform of harmful subsidies, a selective downscaling of production and consumption has been proposed as a transition strategy to lower the overall ecological footprint of the economic system. Only by aligning economic flows with the biophysical limits of the planet can we envision a future where human well-being coexists with ecological integrity.