Urban Sustainability and Smartness Understanding (USSU)—Identifying Influencing Factors: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Urban Sustainability and Smartness Understanding (USSU) can be defined by a group of sociopsychological determinants (such as awareness, perception, attitude and behavior) which shapes the relationship between human beings and the environment in which they live. A variety of influencing factors must exist in relation to USSU, however, a comprehensive examination of these, looking at personal, social, environmental, economic, technical, and governance perspectives in an urban context, appear to be less well researched. As such this paper provides an exploratory and critical evaluation of the literature by focusing on the USSU determinants; with an aim toward identifying the key factors (and sub-factors) that are in relation with these determinants. Two big databases of Scopus and Web of Science—have been searched systematically for the relevant studies. Therein it is observed how these factors affect USSU according to the characteristics of the study. Sustainability focused studies were found to be more commonplace than smartness studies. Moreover, there is currently ambiguity in evaluating the impacts of the identified factors. This paper concludes that a holistic approach is needed for clarifying the relationship and causality between sociopsychological determinants on Urban Sustainability and Smartness context. A framework with six dimensions is presented to initiate future studies to develop a consistent; coherent and comprehensive methodology to assess an individuals’ USSU.

Exploring Urban Sustainability Understanding and Behaviour: A Systematic Review towards a Conceptual Framework

“…Although it is not fully possible to comprehend the entire list of external factors, several studies would give some intuition [12] and, therefore, it is possible to embed a preliminary set of factors within our model. For example, Topal et al [93] proposed a theoretical framework about urban sustainability understanding, which consists of a wide range of influencing factors grouped under six main and 15 secondary broad categories [93]. For more in-depth examination, this framework could be considered.…”

“…(1) Demographics are found to have a varying but prominent relationship with sustainable behaviour in the literature [36,94]. The main demographic factors that have been found to affect behaviour according to Topal et al [93] are:…”

Sustainability Understanding and Behaviors across Urban Areas: A Case Study on Istanbul City

“…Based on the literature review conducted previously by Topal et al [31], it was revealed that the complexity of the urban sustainability behavior context required specification of variables that influence sustainability understanding and behavior. Moreover, it was necessary to specify the relationship between socio-psychological determinants of urban behavior in order to evaluate and analyze the individual practices (a determinant is defined herein as a factor that decisively affects the nature or outcome of something).…”

“…To analyze the relationship between this urban sustainability understanding and behavior and both influencing factors and personality traits The development process of the conceptual framework consists of four stages, which are presented in Figure 2. Topal et al [31] provided a systematic review of the influencing factors of urban sustainability behavior(s), fulfilling the requirements of stage 1. Topal et al [35] thereafter examined prominent environmental and sustainability behavior theories (stage 2), investigated socio-psychological determinants of urban sustainability understanding and behavior (stage 3), and synthesized these findings into a newly developed conceptual framework (stage 4), which has formed the basis for this current study.…”

“…As stated earlier, the questions were based on the findings of an in-depth literature review [31] and conceptual framework [35] created by the current authors. The details of the questionnaire are given in Appendix A.…”