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Sustainable business models can help us move beyond the current consumer society and integrate sustainability into our lifestyles. The COVID-19 crisis was a strong test of sustainability for these models. In our study, we assessed which business models are highly dependent on the economic cycle and are highly embedded in consumer society. We conducted our research at the height of the second wave of the pandemic and asked university students about changes in their consumption patterns and their expectations for the future. We carried out cluster analysis on our sample of 622 respondents. We were interested in the extent to which participation in certain business models could be associated with the rebound effect that could be predicted after the epidemic. The stronger this effect, the more embedded a sustainable business model is in consumer society and the less able it is to reduce its environmental impacts in the long term. We found that resource efficiency, the sharing economy, and digitalization fall into this category. Participation in sufficiency and stewardship-based business models predicted much less rebound impact. These models showed more clearly the sustainability characteristics of sustainable business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A huge set of sustainable business models have emerged during recent decades to promote decarbonization, but the drivers of their consumer adoption remain somewhat unclear. This paper examines these drivers based on a sample of 622 university students during the second wave of COVID-19 at the end of 2020. Our research links business models to the theory of planned behavior and discusses their adoption from a consumer perspective. Using exploratory factor analysis, we identified five major and nine minor components of SBM adoption. Findings suggest that functional benefits, general attitudes, and habits may play a more important role in these factors than sustainability values during the second wave of pandemic. Still, sustainability values have neither lost nor gained momentum during hard times. Thrift, localization, and digitalization have become more dominant. We find that some SBM models are very strongly embedded in consumer culture, so the spread of SBM models does not necessarily lead to a reduction in environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological price of economic growth is a heavily debated issue, where ideologies often neglect factual information. In this paper, through the relationship of the ecological footprint and GDP, we examine the tendencies of eco-efficiency in the first decade of the 21st century. We conclude that the average ecological footprint intensity of countries have improved significantly in the given period. In 2009, 50 percent less area was needed to produce a unit of GDP. Many countries could reach the so-called strong decoupling − these countries could increase GDP while decreasing the ecological footprint in absolute terms. We also repeated the analysis of a scientific article published in 2004. We managed to update data and identify ecologically positive tendencies. In ten years, the average of the world’s ecological footprint intensity has significantly improved, it halved all in all. We found that 90 percent of the countries started to move to the direction of sustainable development. Among the studied 131 countries, 40 experienced strong decoupling (absolute decrease of resource use), in 77 countries weak decoupling occurred (relative decrease of resource use), and there were only 14 countries, where no decoupling could be observed (relative increase of resource use). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authors have developed a GDP/EF correlation function and calculated the ecological footprint (EF) from 10.000 B.C. till 1960, using historical statistics, with the method of backcasting¹. In all major indicators growth patterns have been dominating, not only since the industrial revolution, but in the known history of mankind. From data since 1961, we calculate the correlation between GDP and the ecological footprint. Using existing historical statistics and these calculations, we are able to determine long time data series of population, GDP, biocapacity and EF. Examining these numbers in specific periods (transition points or jumps) give three interesting results. First: the main drive of growth is not population anymore, but consumption of the developed economies. Second: we are probably turning to an era of balance: we identified a seventh jump between the 1930s and 1970s. Third and most of all: our guiding paradigm legitimizing growth (from the late 18th century) should be revisited, to enable a calm transition to the post-capitalist age. Because in the time of establishing our mainstream paradigm, Earth was roughly 10 per cent full,² in 2008 this figure is over 150 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]