Abdul Waheed Siyal

In addition to technological innovation, sustainability challenges increasingly require changes in everyday awareness, decision-making and behavior. The United Nations 2030 Agenda specifically calls for changes in unsustainable consumption and production patterns (United Nations, 2015). But turning environmental knowledge into sustained action continues to be a challenge. Extended reality (XR), the umbrella term for virtual, augmented and mixed reality, offers a distinctive opportunity here, as immersive environments can make otherwise distant, abstract, or inaccessible environmental conditions experientially tangible. In this Editorial, we use XR for this broader category and VR specifically for fully immersive virtual environments, reflecting the mix of technologies represented in the collection. Recent reviews suggest XR is a promising but developing approach for sustainability-oriented behavioral change but also highlights uncertainty about which intervention characteristics and mechanisms lead to durable effects (Mendoza et al., 2025;Mosca et al., 2024). This Research Topic was therefore timely in bringing together empirical, methodological and review contributions to understand how immersive technologies can shape environmental perception, engagement, psychological responses and behavior. Recent research suggests that immersive experiences can affect feelings, environmental attitudes, connection with nature and intentions to engage with physical nature, but there is less consistent evidence for their translation into sustained environmental involvement (Chan et al., 2023;Zhang et al., 2025). A recent systematic review with meta-analysis and a set of preregistered meta-analyses also indicate that immersive media can lower psychological distance to environmental risks, but that reductions in psychological distance do not consistently translate into downstream pro-environmental engagement (Georgiou et al., 2026;Langlais et al., 2026). These findings underscore the need for research that goes beyond immediate experiential responses to provide stronger evidence of behavioral mechanisms, contextual conditions, and longer-term outcomes. We use this distinction between immediate experiential responses and sustained behavior to structure our discussion of the contributions below.The seven contributions differ considerably in how closely they address the central question of this Research Topic, namely whether and how VR and XR can support sustainable environmental behavior. To avoid overstating what the collection shows, we group them by their relevance to that question and note the type of outcome, each examines distinguishing physiological or affective responses, perceptions, attitudes and other psychological constructs, behavioral intentions, and observed real-world behavior.Two contributions engage directly in environmental sustainability. Chen and Chen (2026a) examine immersive experience scene quality in digitally mediated tourism settings and trace psychological pathways, through ecological presence, awe, psychological ownership and selfefficacy, to support environmental resilience. The outcome is an attitudinal one, stated support rather than observed behavior, but this is the closest contribution to the focal question of the Research Topic. Dossena et al. (2026) review 24 publications on XR applications for the circular economy, distinguishing between public-and industry-oriented applications and pointing out underexplored areas. As a scoping review, it maps where XR is being applied in this domain rather than testing its behavioral effects.Two further studies use VR to examine how people respond to environments, without measuring sustainability-related intentions or behavior. Zhu et al. (2026) combines participatory preference refinement with VR to study how spatial features affect older adults' short-term psychophysiological and affective responses, showing how user-informed VR experimentation can link environmental design to measurable responses. Phillips and Farrow (2026) pair immersive VR with continuous biometric sensing to assess public perception of urban biodiversity, illustrating the value of temporally resolved physiological data alongside post-experience evaluations. Both studies are relevant to environmental design and to how people experience urban nature, but their endpoints are physiological, effective and perceptual.The remaining three contributions relate to the Research Topic less directly, either because they mainly advance VR methods or because their outcomes are not environmental. Parra Vargas and Alcañiz (2026) report an exploratory feasibility study on the automated assessment of communication skills in VR, showing how AI-supported measurement can extend the analytical capacity of immersive environments; its relevance here is methodological. Ou et al. (2026) show that immersive VR experience mediates the relationship between cultural familiarity and cultural dissemination intention. This points to the potential of immersive experience for cross-cultural understanding, but the outcome is a cultural rather than an environmental intention. Chen and Chen (2026b) explore psychological mechanisms and happiness generation in AI-enabled neighborhoods, discussing how reliability, usefulness, participation and digital engagement shape residents' experience. VR is not the technology under study, and the bearing of this work on sustainable environmental practice is indirect, mainly through the implications the authors draw for community practices and for VR-enabled interventions. Taken together, the collection offers evidence on immediate physiological, effective and perceptual responses, on psychological constructs and on behavioral intentions, but none of the contribution's measures observed realworld environmental behavior.Within these limits, the collection advances knowledge in three more modest ways. First, several contributions show how designed and...

This study extends existing literature by exploring the impact of institutional pressures on green transformational leadership in a way that triggers green thinking and creative process engagement among employees. This research enhances the understanding that leveraging employees to express their concerns over environmental issues would contribute to sustainable solutions that foster enterprise green development. Data was collected from China’s manufacturing industry executives and non-executives and analyzed in SmartPLS. This study responds to environmental concerns through the lens of institutional pressure that motivates leaders to engage their subordinates in green thinking and creative processes, and work together to boost the financial and environmental performance of the organizations. This research study highlighted the nexus between IP, GTL, CPE, GT, and enterprise green development. The study revealed direct and indirect relations of IP and GTL on the cognitive aspects of subordinates and enterprise green development. The findings offer significant insights and mechanisms for managers to translate institutional pressures into GT and CPE to achieve EGD.

As artificial intelligence reshapes work, organizations face the challenge of helping employees move beyond routine technological adaptation toward innovation. Although prior research has shown that leader AI crafting facilitates employees’ adaptation to AI, whether and how it promotes employees’ innovative behavior remains unclear. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study examines how leader AI crafting relates to employees’ innovative behavior through AI self-efficacy and when this relationship becomes stronger. We conducted two studies. Study 1 used a two-wave field survey to examine the moderated mediation model linking leader AI crafting, AI self-efficacy, AI task dependence, and innovative behavior. Across the two studies, the results indicate that leader AI crafting enhances employees’ AI self-efficacy, which in turn is associated with higher innovative behavior. The positive effect of leader AI crafting on AI self-efficacy is stronger when AI task dependence is high, and moderated mediation effect is also supported. Study 2 used a vignette-based experiment to test the first-stage moderating role of AI task dependence in the relationship between leader AI crafting and AI self-efficacy. These findings extend the leader AI crafting literature by clarifying how employees move from adapting to AI toward innovating in AI-enabled work contexts, and by identifying AI self-efficacy and AI task dependence as key psychological and contextual mechanisms. Given the technology-industry sample in Study 1 the broader generalizability of these findings remains to be examined in future research.

This study examines how customer green psychology and attribution of responsibility influence green purchase intention, green purchase behavior, and customer green citizenship behavior. The data comprises 385 university employees analyzed through SmartPLS-4. The findings present that customer green psychology significantly affects green purchase intentions and behavior. When customers begin to realize responsibility to the environment and a sense of guilt for not doing enough to protect the environment their green purchase behavior is triggered which leads to customer green citizenship behavior. The partial mediation, and moderation effects reflected in the model significantly supported both theory and practice. The customer reluctance to accept green products and services is a key issue that has furthered the green purchasing gap, and despite pro-environmental claims, may hinder in materializing value co-creation benefits. The discretionary behavior could leverage customers to report errors, suggestions for improvements, or give positive feedback about products to attract potential customers.

Digital transformation, on one end, has made life more compatible in the ultra-fast-growing world but, on the other end, has caused many complexities in the form of technology interruption and distraction. During the technology consumption experience, individuals receive multiple communications from personal and professional counterparts, which trigger their instinct to respond in between the original task. Consequently, distractions divert users' focus and waste valuable time portion. Current research addresses the call to contribute to the literature about the disruptive roles of communication technologies underlining technology consumption experiences. We used SmartPLS to perform data analysis. For study 1, we examined the impact of parallel communications in putting people under time constraints, which incapacitated individuals from appropriate technology consumption experience. In study 2, we investigated the possible effects of parallel communication in distracting people from the original task and deteriorating the technology consumption experience. Results revealed that parallel communications triggered distractions and time pressure. In either situational behavior, individuals experience technology differently, which might occur due to time constraints or being distracted from the original task. In both cases, it becomes difficult for people to get back to the original task with the same flow, pace, or cognitive understanding, which deteriorates the technology consumption experience. The findings provide insights for theory and practice. In general, the research on adverse effects of communication technologies is scarce and specifically rare on behavioral aspects of parallel communications impacting technology consumption experience. Current research addresses the call to contribute to the literature on the disruptive roles of communication technologies in the context of technology consumption experiences.

Existing research has confirmed that amoral management can induce employees to engage in unethical behavior. However, its influence on a specific form of misconduct that involves creativity—namely, creative unethicality—remains unclear. Based on social information processing theory, this study constructs a theoretical model examining the influence of amoral management on employees’ creative unethicality. Through a three-stage investigation of 249 R&D employees from three intelligent manufacturing companies in eastern China, the results reveal that amoral management positively influences employee moral decoupling. Moral decoupling leads to creative unethicality under high job creativity requirements. Job creativity requirements moderates the indirect effect among amoral management, moral decoupling, and creative unethicality. Specifically, when jobs require high creativity, amoral management positively influences moral decoupling, thereby inducing creative unethicality. This study combines amoral management and creative unethicality, broadening the understanding of creative unethicality origins from the viewpoint of leaders’ moral conduct. It also provides empirical insights for organizations to manage creative unethicality through job stressors and leadership development.

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an important role in promoting energy transformation and achieving global green and low-carbon goals. Based on the panel data of 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2022, this paper empirically examines the impact of AI on carbon emission (CE) and its internal mechanism. It is found that the impact of AI on CE in general shows an “inverted U-shaped” relationship, which is first promoted and then suppressed, and this result still holds after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism test shows that AI affects CE in three main ways: improving energy efficiency, optimizing factor market allocation, and industrial structure. The heterogeneity results show that the “inverted U-shape” relationship of AI on CE is significant in resource cities insignificant in non-resource cities, significant in low-carbon pilot cities, and insignificant in non-low-carbon pilot cities, significant in areas with a high level of industrialization, and insignificant in areas with a low level of industrialization. This study provides valuable insights for the application of AI and the formulation of energy conservation and emission reduction policies.

Purpose: The present study attempts to extend our understanding of the application of self-determination theory. The study examines the mediating role of self-efficacy and self-esteem in the relationship between family motivation and academic performance. Design/methodology/approach: Through adopting a survey questionnaire, we collected 329 responses from management educators (faculty members teaching in business schools) from various universities. Findings: The data were analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling technique. All the hypothesized relationships found empirical support, indicating that family motivation is directly related to academic performance. Furthermore, self-efficacy and self-esteem mediate this direct relationship. Originality/value: The paper forwards robust theoretical and practical implications and underlines important directions for future researchers. The study makes novel contributions to relationships inviting for empirical attention.

Transferring the using right of the dual-use defense technology in China is that the military licensors license the dual-use defense technology to two or more civilian manufacturers which are usually the military licensor's shareholding manufacturers. We study a military research institute's discriminatory licensing pricing strategies when the civilian licensees are asymmetric with different allocative efficiencies under a military shareholding contract. We show that, (ⅰ) the discriminatory licensing pricing strategy can increase the overall profits of the military research institute and the civilian manufacturers by realizing the civilian-military integration; (ⅱ) the military licensor will charge a higher royalty to the efficient civilian manufacturer when the military licensor holds a significantly higher shareholding equity to the inefficient manufacturer than the efficient civilian manufacturer, or when the military licensor holds a slightly higher shareholding equity to the inefficient manufacturer than the efficient civilian manufacturer and the market competition is fierce, which decreases the social allocative efficiency, otherwise, the military licensor will charge a lower royalty to the efficient civilian manufacturer, which improves the social allocative efficiency. Moreover, we show that the military licensor's shareholding equities have a more significant impact on the discriminatory licensing pricing strategy and the social allocative efficiency than the market competition intensity; (ⅲ) the military shareholding contract provides a rational explanation for the sustainability of the discriminatory licensing pricing contract, and the military research institute can reduce the licensing pricing gap by adjusting the shareholding equity ratio to the efficient manufacturer to avoid violating the "Anti-monopoly" Laws.