In the current ecological context, advertising and communication emerge as valuable tools for raising awareness and encouraging sustainable behavior. For this communication to be effective, it is necessary to understand the process through which a green message translates into sustainable decisions and how it interacts with individuals’ pro-environmental predispositions and intrinsic motivations. From this perspective, we conducted a systematic review of the literature linking two bodies of research related to the effectiveness of green advertising, on the one hand, and the determinants of pro-environmental behavior, on the other. The main contribution of this article is the development of a conceptual framework that is specific to green advertising. This framework combines the stages of cognitive processing of persuasive messages and the value-belief-norm theory of environmentalism, as well as other internal and external factors (e.g. personal capabilities, contextual factors, and affective variables). Based on our results, we identify gaps and opportunities for future research.

This paper identifies, through a literature review, how 53 circular economy (CE) practices are related to the capability approach (CA) proposed by Sen. The main goal was to identify how a virtuous cycle between CE and CA can be developed. Five instrumental freedoms (IF) were analysed: economic facilities, social opportunities, protective security, political freedoms, and transparency guarantees. These relationships were analysed in three flows: CE practices positively impacting IF, CE practices negatively impacting IF, and the feedback influence of IF on CE practices. The results show that 32 of the 53 practices previously mentioned have not yet been studied from the CA context, which indicates that there are several research opportunities. From the practices considered, 72 articles were analysed in the final sample. The results suggest that several CE practices are aligned with the CA, considering that all five IF were identified as positive outcomes of CE practices. However, in some contexts, certain practices can have negative outcomes, which indicates that CE, at least in some cases, may not be considered as sustainable, as it decreases IF and, therefore, the social aspect of sustainability. The results also highlight that there is a feedback from IF to CE, in such a way that investing in the expansion of IF can facilitate the development of CE practices. Therefore, this study concludes that CE is indeed a way to fully operationalize sustainable development.

The development of indexes for human development and environmental sustainability issues are an emerging topic in the current literature. However, the literature has put less emphasis on municipal indexes, which is the focus of this research. In this paper, we considered municipal environmental management as the adoption of environmental activities and the development of infrastructural and technical capacities in municipalities. This article aims to create a sustainable human development index with municipal data from the state of São Paulo in Brazil. Using information from the Municipal Human Development Index (IDHm) and the GreenBlue Municipal Program (PMVA), we applied the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique to connect human development and environmental sustainability in 645 Brazilian municipalities. Our findings show that regions with higher human development present better DEA scores on the Sustainable Human Development Index. In contrast, regions with a low or a middle level of human development do not present significant change considering both dimensions. Moreover, our findings reveal that PMVA certification has a different and statistically significant impact on the DEA score considering certified, qualified, or not qualified regions. We found similar results for urbanized and service-oriented municipalities. Our indicator is an essential and straightforward tool for regional policymakers, helping to allocate resources and to find human development and environmental sustainability benchmarks among developing regions.