Sustainable production and consumption in the automotive sector: Integrated review framework and research directions

Abstract

This paper reviews previous studies on sustainable production and sustainable consumption in the automotive sector. The paper develops an integrated review framework to understand the sustainable challenges and drivers in the production and consumption stages. Our sample is based on 42 relevant articles published between 2004 and 2014 in major academic journals listed in the Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Quality Guide. The analysis indicates that most of the studies have focused on the production stage rather than the consumption stage and have mainly evaluated the economic and environmental dimensions with little or no consideration for the social dimension of sustainability. The majority of the papers discuss sustainability issues in the context of developed countries. However, there has been a growing interest in emerging nations during the last three years especially in the Chinese context. Our findings suggest preeminent future research directions with respect to integrated production and consumption stages that could be helpful for the automotive sector to develop long-term sustainable business models.