Information Systems Scholars Urged to Move Beyond Incremental Fixes for the Climate Crisis

A sweeping survey of 554 information systems scholars around the world has delivered an unusually blunt verdict on how the academic community that studies digital technology responds to the environmental crisis: it is thinking far too small. The study, published in Information Systems Frontiers by Onook Oh and Dawn Greayer Gregg of the University of Colorado Denver and Navid Aghakhani of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, argues that most proposed solutions within the field represent incremental adjustments inside an economic paradigm of perpetual growth, rather than the transformative shift that the scale and urgency of planetary degradation demands. Drawing on the literature of ecological economics, the authors contend that ecological perspectives should become a guiding meta-framework for the entire discipline, not a niche topic reserved for a handful of specialists.

The empirical core of the paper is a state-of-the-practice survey, reviewed and approved by the Internal Review Board at the University of Colorado Denver, that asked scholars about the research methods they have used over the past decade, the dependent variables that anchor their studies, the economic theories embedded in doctoral training, and the institutional incentives that shape career decisions. Respondents also answered open-ended questions about the barriers that keep the information systems community from engaging with climate and environmental challenges, and about alternative pathways for doing better. The researchers coded these responses using established qualitative content analysis techniques, with generative AI tools used only to summarize pre-coded themes and select representative quotes, all of which the authors independently verified against the original data.

The picture that emerges is one of a field that is aware of the problem but structurally unprepared to address it. Scholars overwhelmingly recognize the importance of environmental issues, yet the survey reveals that research agendas remain dominated by revenue, innovation, customer, and performance outcomes, while explicit incentives to pursue climate-related work are rare in departments and doctoral programs. Doctoral curricula lean heavily on free-market and mixed economics, leaving graduates with little exposure to the ecological, political, or critical economic traditions that question growth itself. The authors argue that this training pipeline reproduces a narrow view of what information technology is for, treating it primarily as an engine of productivity and profit rather than as a force embedded in biophysical systems.

The technical backdrop to this critique is stark. The information and communication technology sector’s energy and emissions footprint is growing as data volumes soar, and the rise of generative artificial intelligence is accelerating demand for power-hungry data centers, a trend documented in industry analyses from Deloitte and the World Economic Forum. Local communities are beginning to push back, as in the reported rejection of an Amazon-linked data center project amid fears over water use. The authors also cite material flow research showing that the volume of man-made stocks increased twelvefold between 1900 and 2015, with roughly 35 percent of that material now solid waste and 25 percent emitted into the environment. Consumption-based accounting of material footprint shows a consistent rise alongside GDP, raw material extraction, and carbon dioxide emissions since 1970.

Against this backdrop, the paper’s theoretical move is to import the frameworks of ecological economics into information systems research. The field’s intellectual foundations, the authors argue, rest on assumptions inherited from neoclassical economics: that economies can grow indefinitely, that technology will decouple output from resource use, and that market mechanisms will price environmental damage appropriately. Ecological economics starts from a different premise. The Earth is effectively a closed system for materials, open only to incoming solar energy, so no amount of digital innovation can conjure new resources or make waste disappear. Economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen argued as early as 1975 that the transition from fossil fuels to solar energy is not merely a policy option but an ultimate necessity for economies to operate within biophysical limits, a point the authors treat as foundational for any credible theory of sustainable computing.

Central to the proposed transformation is Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, whose dual focus on ecological ceilings and social foundations the authors adopt as a template for reorienting the discipline. In this framing, humanity must live below planetary boundaries, such as climate stability and intact ecosystems, while ensuring that everyone has access to the social essentials of a dignified life. The authors suggest that information systems research should be evaluated not by whether it increases firm performance or adoption rates, but by whether it helps societies stay within the doughnut. Alternative indicators already exist to support such a shift: the Genuine Progress Indicator adjusts personal consumption for inequality, household labor, and environmental costs, and long-term data show that GDP and GPI moved together until the late 1970s before diverging, with GDP rising while genuine progress declined.

The survey respondents themselves offered a set of alternative pathways, which the authors organized into four aggregate dimensions: institutional change, leadership, research approach, and other measures. On the institutional front, scholars called for departments to provide explicit financial rewards and promotion criteria for climate-related research, and for doctoral programs to broaden the economic theories taught alongside methodological training. On the research front, respondents pointed toward studying green information systems in organizations, circular economy practices enabled by digital technologies, carbon management systems that promote ecologically responsible behavior, energy informatics, and the detection and reduction of data waste through machine learning. Others emphasized the need to distinguish between artificial intelligence for sustainability and the sustainability of artificial intelligence itself, given the technology’s own growing resource demands.

The authors are careful to note that the barriers are not primarily attitudinal. Information systems scholars already perceive the community as having reasonable awareness of climate and environmental challenges; what is missing, they argue, is domain knowledge, relevant theories, and data sources for measuring climate impacts within the field’s traditional research domains. This gap between awareness and capability is compounded by incentive structures: ranking systems that track publications in the field’s leading journals reward conventional topics, and junior researchers rationally follow the path of least resistance. Without changes to what gets rewarded, the authors warn, individual goodwill will continue to produce only marginal, incremental contributions while the window for meaningful action narrows.

The paper’s recommendations extend to journal editors and institutional leaders, not just individual researchers. Editors are encouraged to welcome work that measures ecological and social outcomes alongside economic ones, and to treat ecological framing as legitimate across the full range of information systems topics rather than confining it to special issues. Institutions are urged to align hiring, promotion, and doctoral education with the reality of the environmental crisis. The authors also acknowledge the practical grounds for optimism: the International Renewable Energy Agency reported in 2025 that solar photovoltaic projects were on average 41 percent cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternatives, and onshore wind 53 percent cheaper, meaning that the technological economics increasingly favor the transition that ecological theory demands.

What makes the study notable is its willingness to question the discipline’s own growth-oriented foundations at a moment when the digital sector’s material consequences are becoming impossible to ignore. The authors conclude that, given the urgency of the crisis, ecological perspectives should serve as a guiding meta-framework for designing and conducting general information systems research, shaping research priorities, institutional structures, collaborative practices, and methodological approaches alike. Whether the community takes up that challenge will depend less on the persuasiveness of any single paper than on whether the incentives that govern academic careers can be redesigned to reward work that treats the planet’s limits as a first-order research constraint rather than an afterthought.

Subject of Research: Environmental sustainability and ecological economics in information systems research

Article Title: [State-of-the-Practice-Survey] Environmental Sustainability in Information Systems Research: Beyond Incrementalism Toward a Transformative Path Forward

Article References: Oh, O., Gregg, D. G., & Aghakhani, N. (2026). [State-of-the-Practice-Survey] Environmental Sustainability in Information Systems Research: Beyond Incrementalism Toward a Transformative Path Forward. Information Systems Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-026-10825-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-026-10825-0

Keywords: environmental sustainability, information systems, ecological economics, Doughnut Economics, climate crisis, green information systems, survey research, data centers, generative AI energy use, circular economy, Genuine Progress Indicator, academic incentives