Transformative Research for Sustainable Development
Published on the 27 November 2024 by UNSW Business School EDI Team
Each year, UNSW Business School proudly awards five Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Research Grants, empowering our HDR candidates to tackle pressing global challenges.
These grants support innovative research that drives progress toward the UN SDGs 2030 through transformative industry or government interventions at local, national, or international levels.
Three of the grants are funded by the UNSW Business School’s SDG Committee, while the remaining two are generously supported by the UNSW Global Water Institute.
The funding is dedicated to advancing research projects that inspire real-world impact and sustainable solutions. For the 2023-2024 cycle, a panel of expert judges selected five exceptional recipients: Giovanni Cunico, Amelia Li, Eugenia Fang, Arash Taheri, and Rita (Yuli) Li.
Their groundbreaking proposals and compelling presentations stood out for their strength, validity, and potential to create meaningful change. Congratulations to this year’s awardees—innovators leading the way for a more sustainable future!
To learn more about these expectational research projects, UNSW Business School spoke to each awardee about their research and how this will enable positive Societal impact.Ìý
Name: Giovanni Cunico
School affiliation: School of Management and Governance
Thesis title: Influence of Information and WorldviewsÌýon Decision-makingÌýunderÌýAmbiguous Goals
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What is your thesis about (elevator pitch)?
Scientific literature indicates that people are highly sensitive to the information they receive, with even subtle changes in format or colour potentially influencing their decisions.ÌýHowever, real-world observations, particularly in sustainability policymaking, suggest that the impact of information on policy outcomes is often limited.
Existing explanations for this (non)use of information point to factors such as decision-makers' personal agendas or the influence of cultural context. Yet, these explanations alone do not account for why evidence seems to have greater influence in fields like medicine than in policymaking.
I propose an additional potential explanation: certain types of decisions, such as policymaking, involve higher levels of ambiguity compared to others, like medical decisions, which affect information use. Ambiguous goals allow leeway in interpretation and occur in contexts with trade-offs. Under ambiguous conditions, the influence of evidence diminishes, and personal factors—such as individual beliefs—become more prominent.
What contemporary issue does your thesis address?
A key issue today is that, despite our efforts to provide leaders with abundant facts and data—particularly on climate change and sustainability—this information often fails to meaningfully affect policy outcomes. As a result, critical interventions are delayed, leaving the response inadequate for the scale of the challenges we face. To make the provided information more impactful, it is essential to deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanisms that drive information use in complex and ambiguous decision contexts.
What has been the significance of receiving the UNSW BUS SDG Grant on your research?
The UNSW SDG Grant was instrumental to my research in two keyways:
- First, the review panel’s feedback provided valuable methodological suggestions that helped me refine my experiments.
- Second, the grant enabled me to acquire the software platform used for the experiments and present my findings at the International System Dynamics Conference in Norway this August.
Name: Amelia Li
School affiliation: School of Information Systems and Technology Management
Thesis title: Digital Sustainability: An Affordance Theory Perspective for Addressing Societal Challenges
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What is your thesis about (elevator pitch)?
My thesis studies the role of digital technologies in addressing both environmental and social challenges for achieving sustainability. More specifically, it consists of three studies examining how digital technologies can enable societal change in different contexts using affordance theory.
Why is this relevant today?
My thesis includes three studies examining three contemporary phenomena of digital sustainability. Each one is related to different SDGs. I received the UNSW BUS SDG Grant based on my 3rd study which aims to tackle SDG 13: Climate Action and SDG 15 Life on Land, through design science research on designing a Sustainability Artificial Intelligence System for carbon stock estimation and land development.
Given the urgency of social and environmental issues, it is critical to understand how we can effectively design, deploy, and use digital technologies including social media, AI, and ICT in general as the solutions to address these societal challenges for a more sustainable future. Overall, my thesis addresses various social and environmental contemporary challenges we face through digital technologies.
What has been the significance of receiving the UNSW SDG BUS Grant on your research?
The UNSW SDG Grant has provided me with the opportunity to take my project into the next stage, as we are still developing the system. It also enables me to present it to a wider audience, receive feedback, and discuss the concept with people working on related projects, including at the graduate workshop at Santa Fe Institute and the Australasian Conference on Information Systems. Moreover, it has inspired me to continue my research journey on employing digital technologies to address sustainability issues.
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