Our Faculty Member Assoc. Prof. Ayşe Meriç Yazıcı’s Article Published in an SSCI Q1 Journal

Their article entitled “Digital Transformation as a Catalyst or Constraint? Unpacking SDG Progress in the Next-11 Economies” has been published in Sustainable Development (Wiley), a prestigious journal ranked 1st worldwide in Development Studies and 4th in Regional and Urban Planning. The journal is indexed in SSCI Q1 and has an impact factor of 8.2.

The study comprehensively examines the impact of digital transformation on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using data from 2000–2023 across the Next-11 economies, namely Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Türkiye, and Vietnam. By analyzing not only overall SDG performance but also each of the 17 individual goals, the research provides an integrated assessment of how digitalization shapes the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

The findings reveal that digital transformation significantly accelerates progress in critical areas such as poverty reduction, health, education, clean energy, and industry and infrastructure. However, negative effects were identified with respect to environmental goals, particularly Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12) and Climate Action (SDG 13), suggesting that digital infrastructure may increase environmental pressures through higher energy consumption and electronic waste generation. The study also demonstrates that digitalization alone is insufficient to address complex social objectives such as reducing inequalities and strengthening global partnerships.

The research emphasizes that the impact of digital transformation on sustainable development is not uniform across all goals and should therefore be supported by goal-specific and environmentally sustainable digital policies.

We congratulate Assoc. Prof. Ayşe Meriç Yazıcı on this remarkable achievement and wish her continued success in her academic endeavors.

The article is available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sd.71293