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Purpose: Prosociality may in part determine sustainability behavior. Prior research indicates that pro-environmental behavior correlates with prosocial attitudes, and separately, that prosociality correlates with social support in homes and communities. Therefore, prosociality may constitute a keystone variable linking human well-being with pro-environmental behavior. The purpose of the paper is to test this conjecture. Design/methodology/approach: Data from a multi-year student survey at the University of Maine on environmental behavior, prosociality and experienced social support are used. A two-stage least-squares regression is applied to explore the relationships between these variables, and sub-scale analysis of the pro-environmental responses is performed. Additionally, spatial statistics for the student population across the state are computed. Findings: The data corroborate previous findings and indicates that social support within a community may bolster the prosociality of its members, which in turn may increase pro-environmental behaviors and intentions. Research limitations/implications: Cross-sectional data do not permit the imputation of causality. Self-reported measures of behavior may also be biased. However, student prosociality surveys may provide an effective and low-cost sustainability metric for large populations. Social implications: The results of this study corroborate prior research to suggest that pro-environmental and prosocial behaviors may both be enhanced by bolstering social support efforts at the community level. Originality/value: It is suggested that prosociality could become a keystone sustainability indicator. The study's results extend the understanding of the connections between prosociality, social support and pro-environmental behavior. The results of this study suggest that efforts to simultaneously improve the well-being and environmental status might focus on building prosociality and social support systems at the community level.

Urban areas around the world are increasingly turning to green infrastructure to promote resilience to climate change. Core traits of resilient systems have emerged from diverse disciplines. Here, we draw from existing literature on these core traits to elaborate an explicitly social–ecological systems (SES) and resilience trait‐based framework for operationalizing urban resilience through green infrastructure. We identify social and ecological dimensions of core resilience traits, cover methodological aspects of creating SES‐ and resilience‐based spatial inventories of urban green infrastructure, and discuss how this framework helps to promote systems‐based planning. We demonstrate the application of the framework to several real‐world cases and identify fruitful research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting rural sustainable development requires improving rural systems' self-organization to reduce dependence on external resources, which is inherently difficult in peasant economies due to low rural household income. Bottom-up collective action can help address these issues. However, few studies have examined how networks of elite and non-elite actors influence collective action and system transitions toward sustainability. This study scrutinizes the changing structures of collaborative networks in three Chinese villages through analysis of elite and non-elite actor groups and their relationships. We also examine the key elements that influence system transitions at every phase of rural sustainable development. The three case studies demonstrate that (1) elites play a vital role in the formation of collaborative networks and facilitate actor awareness; (2) spatial relationships are as essential as institutional design for successful collective action in response to sustainable development problems; (3) highly centralized collaborative networks help to improve the efficiency of the reorganization, renewal, and innovation of the village system, but the collective action outcome depends on the leadership and spatial relationships of the central actors; and (4) social memory and human capital are the most important system elements needed to exploit technology-driven windows of opportunity and achieve strong sustainability. These results provide important insights for enhancing rural systems' capacity to self-organize and capturing windows of opportunity to achieve sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]