Collaborative Projects
Since 2023 the Faculty of Business and Law has supported numerous projects with a view to fostering engagement and impact in areas of strategic priority.
Energy Transition and Gender Equality in Australia and South Africa
Team members: Hiroaki Suenaga, Helen Cabalu, Julian Inchauspe and Khuong Truong.
With the adoption of the Paris Agreement, many governments have implemented policies to foster transitions from traditional fossil fuels to cleaner, renewable energy. This project explores economic impacts of these policies across various sectors of the economy in Australia and South Africa. Specifically, we conduct economy wide analysis, such as environmentally-extended Input-Output and Computable General Equilibrium modelling, to examine how the amount and mixture of energy used in each sector of the economy change under different energy transition scenarios and how these are linked to greenhouse gas emissions and economic outputs of each sector. The analysis will explore distributional aspect of these impacts across various demographic groups including gender equality. The results from this analysis will help design public policies to foster a sustainable energy future that addresses gender inequalities.
Real World Impact: The Effects of a Student-Led Project on Changing Consumption Behaviours at Curtin
Team members: Bridget Tombleson, Katharina Wolf, Tanya Muscat and Robyn Ouschan.
The real-world impact project aims to co-design digital communication strategies to promote sustainable consumption behaviours on campus, via a collaboration between Plastic Free Places, Part of the Boomerang Alliance, and Curtin University. The focus for this research is related to UN Sustainable Development Goal 12: the reduction of single-use coffee cups and water bottles, through a multi-platform, digital storytelling approach. The outcome will inform future student-led projects aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This project showcases the potential benefits of a student-led project in changing behaviours and encouraging students to reduce waste on campus through undertaking qualitative focus groups and thematic analysis. The project aligns with Curtin’s global strategic plan and links directly to the UN Sustainability Development outcomes and encompasses People, Planet and Partnership working with industry, developing global citizens and contributing to waste reduction.
Fast-Track The Transition to Plant-Based Meat: The Roles of Effective Communication
Team members: Chien Duong, Billy Sung, Sean Lee, Felix Septianto and Denise Conroy.
Meat consumption is associated with many environmental, social and governance challenges. Meat alternative, especially plant-based meat, offers a timely and promising solution to tackle these issues. Encouraging the public adoption of plant-based meat is an important task. This project, therefore, explores different framing techniques to increase the market acceptance of plant-based meat. In this study, we look at whether different benefits (e.g., healthy vs. good taste vs. natural vs. good for animal vs. environmentally friendly) can be effectively used to drive acceptance. Additionally, we also look at how the description of plant-based meat ingredients might influence consumer perceptions. Our project is built to foster a valuable network for knowledge-sharing and improvement of research capabilities between academics and practitioners. At completion, the project will establish a theoretically driven and rigorous understanding of drivers and barriers of plant-based meat acceptance, offering actionable insight to encourage market acceptance of plant-based meat effectively.
Improve Health Promotion Campaign Impact Using Consumer Biometrics
Team members: Billy Sung, Chien Duong, Patrick Dunlop, Tin Fei Sim and Barbara Mullan.
Healthy eating contributes significantly to the well-being of the community. To encourage healthy behaviours, it is necessary to heighten individuals’ agency and responsibilities in their eating habits. As such, many promotion campaigns have been introduced to inform, educate, and promote healthy eating lifestyles (e.g., LiveLighter, Crunch & Sip, and Go for 2&5). The success of these campaigns will be pivotal to a healthier Australian population. The present project develops a multimodal advertising evaluative framework, integrating self-reported measures, in-market success metrics, and consumer biometrics to understand the general public’s cognitive and affective responses to many healthy-eating media campaigns. The research can help identify tactical and creative executions that enable health promotion campaigns to achieve desirable objectives. It will also provide a further understanding of the psychological mechanisms that govern/prevent individuals from making behavioural changes. At completion, this project can inform health practitioners in designing and implementing future health promotion campaigns.
Enhancing Transparent and Effective Use of Generative AI in the Workplace
Team members: Fangfang Zhang, Madison Kho, Sharon K. Parker, Bin Wang, Andrew Yu and Guofan Li.
The project aims to address the critical challenge of employees’ non-disclosure of generative AI (GAI) use in organizational settings. While GAI tools offer significant benefits in productivity, decision-making, and innovation, their unregulated use raises ethical concerns and limits managerial oversight. Our research investigates key factors influencing employee disclosure of GAI use, highlighting the role of managerial support, organizational policies, and employee concerns regarding judgment, job security, and workplace culture. Additionally, it examines how supervisors interpret GAI adoption and how these perceptions influence leadership support, resource allocation, and workplace trust. By uncovering the mechanisms that shape GAI disclosure and leadership responses, this project provides valuable insights for organizations seeking to integrate AI responsibly. Findings will inform the development of supportive policies that foster transparency, collaboration, and ethical AI adoption. This research contributes to shaping future work environments where AI use is effectively managed, benefiting both employees and organizations.
Green Supply Chain Management for Carbon Accountability
Team members: June Cao, Elizabeth Jackson and Millie Liew.
The emerging adoption of mandatory Scope 3 carbon reporting on the global stage underscores the need to inquire into supply chain carbon accountability determinants. We explore how the quality of firms’ green supply chain management affects their carbon accountability. Higher quality of green supply chain management is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of Scope 3 carbon disclosure and a reduction in Scope 3 carbon footprint. Green supply chain management quality also motivates carbon assurance, an enabler of carbon disclosure quality. Our research reveals that environmental inter-organizational supply chain interactions are important for achieving emerging comprehensive carbon accounting mandates and international carbon objectives under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Overall, higher green supply chain management quality improves a firm’s information environment to achieve compliance with emerging stakeholder environmental demands. This informational advantage simultaneously benefits corporate environmental and financial outcomes.
Reducing Meat Consumption Among Hotel and Restaurant Patrons
Team members: Michael Volgger, Ross Taplin, Bora Kim, Viachaslau Filimonau and Claudia Cozzio.
This study investigated effective ways of influencing the food choices of hospitality patrons. More specifically, the study compared nudging and normative approaches in persuading restaurant patrons to reduce selection of dishes with high animal-food intensity. The study makes an original contribution as no existing study has compared different approaches of behaviour change around reducing meat consumption in hospitality. This study is also original in its investigation of compensatory dynamics. Dietary choices contribute significantly to climate change (SDG 13) and to a more sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12). Diminishing the consumption of animal-based food reduces food-system related GHG emissions by 70%, and has positive implications on land and water use, food waste and health. Transitioning to a decarbonised economy is a priority area for the Australian Government, and the reduction of emissions through changing diets and food consumption patterns are crucial strategies to achieve the legislated emission targets.
Enterprises Strategies in Response to Carbon Emission Trading Scheme
Team members: June Cao, Lei Pan, Mark Harris and Zijie Huang.
We investigate important but underexplored question: Do unconstrained firms respond to environmental regulation-constrained firms’ green strategies? Previous studies have explored stringent environmental regulations can facilitate constrained firms’ green innovations. However, whether and how environmental regulation-constrained firms have a peer effect on unconstrained firms’ green innovations remains a black box. We focus on the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), which is a global environmental regulation, covering 34 jurisdictions worldwide and 17.55% of global greenhouse gas as of 2022. Using the advanced method of econometrics (Difference-in-Differences model), we find that the green innovations of peer firms subject to ETS significantly enhance unconstrained firms’ green innovations. We document the highly competitive environments served as the underlying mechanism. We further find that these peer effects significantly increase non-ETS firms’ economic and environmental performance. Our research provides ex-ante evidence for policymakers and practitioners to further develop decarbonization regulations.
Designing Better Work To Facilitate Employees’ Motivation, Learning and Performance in Future Work
Team members: Fangfang Zhang, Sharon K. Parker, Marylène Gagné, Anja H. Olafsen, Giverny De Boeck, Prich Preedeesanith and Nehar Neminathan.
The collaboration of human and autonomous machines and artificial intelligence is expected to be a dominant trend in future work. This project investigated how work design affected both younger and older workers’ attitudes towards autonomous technology, their self-efficacy, motivation, and learning performance during autonomous technological changes. Research findings from several simulation experiments highlight that high-quality jobs that provide job complexity and job autonomy enable employees to learn and better adapt to technological changes. This research connects different research fields such as work design, human-machine interaction, and technology, which can contribute to the development of new theories and frameworks. Research findings can help organizations optimize work processes and make more informed decisions on designing and managing autonomous technology, creating better experiences for employees working with new technologies. The successful human-machine collaboration can increase organizational productivity and improve organizational efficiency and profitability.
The Influence of Formal and Informal Institutional Environments on Intended and Unintended Consequences of Sustainability Disclosure in Indonesia
Team members: June Cao, Effiezal Abdul Wahab and Ari Kristanto.
This project portrays the sustainability reporting practices in Indonesia based on a new institutional accounting perspective. Despite its large population and economic importance, Indonesia suffers from threatening environmental issues. Thus, addressing sustainability reporting in Indonesia is vital to mitigate the wide-spreading economic and environmental impact risk. This project reveals distinctive characteristics that influence accounting practices in Indonesia, namely political connection, two-tier board system, weak accounting profession, information opacity, and culture. Accordingly, this knowledge helps structure a basic understanding of unravelling problematic sustainability reporting practices. We establish the potential pathway for the strategies to address severe environmental issues in Indonesia, broader Pacific regions, and beyond. Our robust theoretical foundation provides logical reasoning regarding institutional factors and the distinctive setting of future research to resolve environmental reporting issues. In addition, this project holds the potential to help structure the national-level strategies to mitigate climate change by leveraging the governance of environmental disclosure.
Profiling Well-Being Services Available to CaLD Students in Western Australia (WA)
Team members: Russel Kingshott, Jaya Dantas, Piyush Sharma, S Zaung Nau and Claire Loh.
This project aims to understand the availability, suitability, and accessibility of mental health services available to culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) students in Western Australia. This is important because (1) the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that 1 in 5 persons aged between 16-85 years has experienced a mental disorder during the last 12 months; and (2) existing studies suggest that the Mental Health services that are readily available within the broader community may not even be suitable for the needs of persons from CaLD backgrounds. Whilst an initial desktop study indicates the potential inadequacy of such services available to CaLD students in WA, our planned interviews with CaLD students will be used to empirically ascertain the extent of the problem. We anticipate that our findings will help to provide direction for future studies, ultimately aimed at improving the wellbeing of our CaLD students.
Investigating Overeating Behaviour Among Multicultural Young Individuals in Western Australia
Team members: Anwar Sadat Shimul, Isaac Cheah, Mingming Cheng, Ana Rita Sequeira and Andrew Walton.
This project investigates factors that contribute to overeating behaviours among young multicultural individuals in Western Australia. By exploring the experiences and perspectives of affected individuals, it aims to identify key drivers for the behaviours and the barriers to accessing appropriate support through mixed-method research. The outcomes of the project will improve our understanding of overeating behaviour in young multicultural individuals, inform efforts to address this important public health issue beyond stereotypical assumptions, and promote effective behavioural change interventions and management strategies.