EESG (Economics, Environmental, Social, and Governance)

Special issue information:

As global sustainable development issues become increasingly prominent, the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework has become a crucial standard for assessing practices in businesses and countries. However, the practice of ESG often has an inherent flaw: it overlooks the importance of economic factors. This oversight may not only lead to the pursuit of ESG goals becoming an end in itself, but sometimes also result in strategies backfiring due to a lack of economic support. Globally, some companies have sparked anti-ESG waves, arguing that ESG measures hinder economic interests and avoiding the term in their development goals. This further emphasizes that in a highly commercialized market environment, if economic factors are not integrated into sustainability strategies, ESG will become contentious and divisive. Clearly, companies cannot achieve true sustainability without considering economic goals, and the integration of economics and ESG is the way to go. Therefore, we advocate for expanding the ESG framework to "Economics+ Environmental, Social, and Governance (EESG)," explicitly including economic performance as a key component in assessing and implementing sustainable development strategies. Prof. Lawrence Loh from the National University of Singapore pointed out, "EESG is the way to go, but the color of money has to be green too."

This special issue aims to explore how economics interacts with environmental, social, and governance factors to form a more comprehensive framework for sustainable development strategies. We hope to attract scholars from multidisciplinary fields to participate, fostering in-depth discussions on how to ensure economic benefits while pursuing ESG goals, and exploring the possibility of coexistence between sustainability and profitability.

The theme of this Special Issue (SI) is “EESG (Economics, Environmental, Social, and Governance)”. All types (empirical and theory) of papers on this theme are welcomed. The special issue especially welcomes (including but not limited to) topics in the following fields:

• EESG framework analysis

• Comparative analysis of ESG and EESG performance metrics

• ESG controversies and corporate development

• Economic benefits of integrating EESG into corporate strategies

• Impact of economic factors on ESG investment decisions

• Investor perspectives on EESG

• Economic benefits of environmental sustainability

• ESG transparency and market valuation

• ESG, corporate profitability, and shareholder value

• Economic incentives for environmental governance

• Impact of economic policies on EESG performance metrics

• Financial instruments driving ESG and economic growth

• Impact of the EESG framework on enterprise development

• Industry variations in implementing EESG frameworks

• East-West differences in EESG framework

Guidelines for Submissions:

Open for manuscript submission: September 1, 2024Manuscript submission deadline: February 28, 2025

Manuscript submission information:

The Innovation and Green Development’s submission system will be open for submissions to our Special Issue from September 1st, 2024. When submitting your manuscript to Editorial Manager, please select the article type “VSI: EESG”. Please submit your manuscript before February 28th, 2025.

All submissions must contain original unpublished work not being considered for publication elsewhere. Submissions will be refereed according to standard procedures for Innovation and Green Development.

Once your manuscript is accepted, it will go into production, and will be simultaneously published in the current regular issue and pulled into the online Special Issue. Articles from this Special Issue will appear in different regular issues of the journal, though they will be clearly marked and branded as Special Issue articles.

Please ensure you read the Guide for Authors before writing your manuscript. The Guide for Authors and link to submit your manuscript is available on the Journal’s homepage at: Innovation and Green Development | Journal | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier

Why publish in this Special Issue?

• Special Issue articles are published together on ScienceDirect, making it incredibly easy for other researchers to discover your work.

• Special content articles are downloaded on ScienceDirect twice as often within the first 24 months than articles published in regular issues.

• Special content articles attract 20% more citations in the first 24 months than articles published in regular issues.

• All articles in this special issue will be reviewed by no fewer than two independent experts to ensure the quality, originality and novelty of the work published.