Innovations to advance sustainability behaviours

Accelerated (manmade) climate change, and its accompanying waste and resource depletion are triggering an unprecedented serious human and ecological crisis. As a result, climate scientists are increasingly stressing the urgent need for human behaviours associated with consumption to significantly change before the planet reaches an ecological tipping point. Decades of research exploring how to advance sustainability behaviours are, however, having a limited effect. This is not surprising; changing behaviour is inherently difficult. Innovative research thinking is therefore needed to aid the progression of sustainability behaviours across all facets of the service industries. This focus on services is particularly pertinent given developed western economies are inherently service orientated, and this orientation is growing rapidly in emerging economies too. The environmental and human impact of services production and consumption is thus predicted to match and possibly exceed that of the manufacturing industry, where much of the negative ecological and human harm has historically been attributed. The goal of this special issue is to offer a collection of distinctive yet interconnected research articles that offer innovative theory-led thinking to advance sustainability behaviours among organisations and consumers within the service industries. From their varied cultural, conceptual and methodological perspectives the authors explore, disassemble, reconstruct and reappraise the environmental, human, societal and economic building blocks of sustainability that are needed to enable organisations, communities, individuals and ecology to thrive into the future. They have no magic answers. No quick fixes. These articles, through their converging theories across the service industries, focus on the challenges ahead, and what is necessary to advance sustainability behaviours into the future.