Statistical Methods for Measuring and Understanding Economic, Environmental and Social Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last few decades, sustainability and its policy corollary, sustainable development, have inspired intense research and public debate, thus becoming paramount in any policy-making processes to work towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in the UN 2030 Agenda.

The SDGs, which serve as guideposts for the difficult transition to sustainable development, comprise 17 goals relating to social, ecological and economic outcomes.

How to measure these dimensions and understand their relationships represents a fundamental issue in supporting sustainable development.

Hence, this Special Issue aims to collect original research articles advancing statistical methods and applications in the fields of sustainable development through different perspectives for assessing the environmental, social, and economic consequences of consumer behaviour as well as for supporting decision-making processes towards the reduction in poverty, inequality and social exclusion.

Considering consumer behaviour, food consumption is recognized as an important determinant of greenhouse gas emissions, and a potential area of improvement and policy interventions. However, the evaluation of the environmental effects of consumption choices faces major challenges, related to statistical information and statistical and econometric methods to model purchase choices.

The measurement and analysis of poverty and living conditions at the national and especially at sub-national level are challenging tasks for statisticians and economists.

In this context, consumer price indexes are also required, not only to establish the rates of inflation for the purpose of tracking living conditions over time, but also to compare price levels between different areas. Estimating consumer spatial price indexes within a country, i.e., sub-national purchasing power parities (PPPs), is essential for assessing inequality in the distribution of real incomes, consumption expenditures, and differences in poverty rates in order to promote more balanced and sustainable territorial development.

Finally, research papers may also address the measurement of social sustainability, with special attention paid to subjective well-being.

Prof. Dr. Tiziana Laureti
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• social sustainability
• poverty analysis
• living conditions
• consumer price indexes
• purchasing power parities
• consumption
• well-being
• environmental sustainability