Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

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Applied Ergonomics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo

Ergonomics and sustainable development in the past two decades

(1992e2011): Research trends and how ergonomics can contribute to
sustainable development
Ayubkhon Radjiyev 1, Hai Qiu 1, Shuping Xiong*, KyungHyun Nam
Department of Human and Systems Engineering, School of Design and Human Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan
Metropolitan City 689e798, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 24 November 2012
Accepted 7 July 2014
Available online 29 July 2014

The need for sustainable development has been widely recognized and sustainable development has
become a hot topic of various disciplines even though the role of ergonomics in it is seldom reported or
considered. This study conducts a systematic survey of research publications in the elds of ergonomics
and sustainable development over the past two decades (1992e2011), in order to identify their research
trends and convergent areas where ergonomics can play an important role in sustainable development.
The results show that methods and techniques, human characteristics, work design and organization,
health and safety and workplace and equipment design are the top ve frequently researched areas in
ergonomics. Ergonomics has an opportunity to contribute its knowledge especially to industrial and
product design, architecture, health and safety and HCI (especially for energy reduction issues)
categories of sustainable development. Typical methodologies and general guidance on how to
contribute the expertise of ergonomist to sustainable development are also discussed.
2014 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Ergonomics
Sustainable development
Literature survey

1. Introduction
Dened as meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs (WCED, 1987), sustainable development has been becoming
the center of attention and concerns for researchers as well as
practitioners in various elds such as design, engineering and
business over the past few decades (Barbier, 1987; Lele, 1991;
Palmer et al., 1997; Wise, 2001; McLennan, 2004; IISD, 2013).
Sustainable development is usually considered to have environmental, economic and social dimensions which should be balanced
and jointly optimized (Blevis, 2007; Hanson, 2013; Zink, 2014).
Ergonomics (or its synonym human factors) is the scientic
discipline concerned with the understanding of the interactions
among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession
that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order
to optimize human wellbeing and overall system performance
(IEA, 2010) and it considers both a social goal (human wellbeing)

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 82 (0)52 217 2716; fax: 82 (0)52 217 2708.
E-mail
addresses:
shupingx@gmail.com,
maverickhkust@unist.ac.kr,
maverickhkust@hotmail.com (S. Xiong).
1
Both authors contributed equally to this work.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2014.07.006
0003-6870/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.

and an economic goal (overall system performance) (Dul and

Neumann, 2009), these two goals are corresponding to aforementioned two dimensions of sustainability.
Statements above indicate both ergonomics and sustainable
development are human centered and concerned with the joint
optimization of the elements of complex socio-technical systems
(Legg and Brown, 2010; Zink, 2014), implying that ergonomics
could play an important role in assisting the transition to sustainable development (Moray, 1995; Dekker et al., 2013; Martin et al.,
2013; Zink and Fischer, 2013; Bolis et al., 2014). Even though a
few case studies on how ergonomics can help in achieving transition to sustainability have been reported (Wise, 2001; Rodriguez,
2004; Legg and Brown, 2010; Miller et al., 2012; Ryan and
Wilson, 2013), a recent literature review conducted by Martin
et al. (2013) reported that only seven articles on ergonomics,
design and sustainability were in ergonomics journals and thus
there is a lack of clear published contributions from ergonomics to
sustainable development, showing still very weak sign of ergonomists tacking sustainability issues.
Since the demands in dealing with the issues related to sustainable development are increasing (IISD, 2013) and the goals of
ergonomics and sustainable development are somewhat
congruent, integrating ergonomics into the eld of sustainable

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A. Radjiyev et al. / Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

development might offer promising solutions to solve sustainability related problems (Moray, 1995; Ryan and Wilson, 2013; Zink
and Fischer, 2013) and open a window of opportunity for the
discipline of ergonomics to devote attention to global problems
(Haslam and Waterson, 2013; Martin et al., 2013). A number of
efforts have been initiated in recent years to call for ergonomics to
become more involved with sustainability. Steimle and Zink (2006)
initially applied the term sustainable development to ergonomics
(or human factors), and special IEA technical group on Human
Factors and Sustainable Development (chaired by Professor Klaus
J. Zink and Professor Colin G. Drury) has been established afterward
in 2008. A special issue titled Ergonomics and Sustainability was
also recently published in Ergonomics in 2013. However, since the
perspective on sustainable development is relatively new for ergonomists, very few publications are available on where and how
ergonomics can contribute well to the sustainable development
(Thatcher, 2009; Haslam and Waterson, 2013). Following, the main
goal of this study is to identify the research trends and the
convergent areas of ergonomics and sustainable development
through a systematic survey of the relevant research publications
over the past two decades (1992e2011). The ndings from this
study are expected to provide some preliminary answers to the
basic question: where and how can ergonomics contribute to sustainable development?
2. Methodology
2.1. Literature searching strategy and inclusion criteria
All 24 ergonomics journals in the Ergonomics List 2004 developed by Dul and Karwowski (2004) were initially considered to
search peer-reviewed English language publications in the eld of
ergonomics. Among 24 journals, 5 (Ergonomia-Italy, ErgonomiaPoland,
Ergonomics-Australia,
Ergonomics-New
Zealand,
Ergonomics-South Africa) are regional/national journals, 3 (Le
Travail Humain, Tijdschrift voor Ergonomie, Zentralblatt fr
Arveitsmedizin Arbeitsschutz und Ergonomie) are non-English
language journals, 2 (Ergonomics International, Workplace Ergonomics) are not included and accessible in the major online databases of Web of Science, Scopus and Ergonomics Abstract, 2
(Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Bulletin, Ergonomist)
serve as the forum for Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
members to exchange society news and events, 1 (International
Journal of Cognitive Ergonomics) has ceased publication since
2002. These 13 journals were further excluded and thus 11 journals
listed in Table 1 were selected to study the research trend in ergonomics. From 1992 to 2011, in total 9717 papers were published,
1551 were excluded based on the following ltering rules, thus,
8166 papers were further reviewed and analyzed.
(1) Review, comments, erratum and advertisement papers;
(2) Papers being judged without substantial contents in
ergonomics.
Since the meaning of the term sustainable has shifted and
evolved over the years (Haslam and Waterson, 2013) and sustainable development covers a wide range of topics across many disciplines in natural sciences, professional and applied sciences, and
social sciences (Rodriguez, 2004), it is difcult to use a list of a few
journals to represent the entire research eld of sustainable
development. Thus, a general keyword search was conducted on
online databases through a commonly used reference management
software package-EndNote X5(Thomson Reuters). In this study,
three very general keywords sustainable development or sustainable design or eco design were used to retrieve peer-reviewed

Table 1
Journal titles and the corresponding numbers of papers during the investigated
period in the eld of ergonomics.
Journal title

Investigated Number of Number of

papers after
period
initially
exclusion
retrieved
papers

Applied Ergonomics
Ergonomics
Ergonomics in Design
Human Factors
Human Factors and
Ergonomics in
Manufacturing
International Journal of
Industrial Ergonomics
International Journal of
Occupational Safety and Ergonomics
Occupational Ergonomics
The Japanese Journal of
Ergonomicsa
Theoretical Issues in
Ergonomics Science
Zeitschrift Fr Arbeitswissena
Total

1992e2011
1992e2011
1995e2011
1992e2011
1996e2011

1522
2484
396
1208
473

1352
2227
242
1012
355

1992e2011

1786

1490

1995e2011

534

497

1998e2011
1992e2011

175
501

172
291

2000e2011

348

309

1999e2011
1992e2011

290
9717

219
8166

a
These two non-English language journals are also reviewed since they provide
enough information (title, keywords, abstract) in English for most papers.

English language publications from 1992 to 2011 from three online

databases-Web of Science (WoS), EBSCO and PubMed. The Boolean
operators or among those general keywords were used to ensure
the inclusion of publications as broad as possible at the beginning
and then to lter out articles judged to be outside of scope of
sustainable development. The databases were chosen for their
coverage of literature relating to sustainable development and their
accessibilities through EndNote and our university libraries. Overall
5648 papers were retrieved in the initial searches, 3015 were
excluded if they are duplicated or can't pass through the similar
ltering rules applied to ergonomics, and thus 2633 papers were
left for further review.
2.2. Classication scheme and trend analysis
The retrieved and ltered research publications in ergonomics
and sustainable development were classied into 11 and 9 categories (Table 2) respectively based on an established classication
owchart (Fig. 1). The 11 ergonomics categories were adopted from
classication scheme for ergonomics proposed by the Ergonomics

Table 2
Categories used to classify publications in ergonomics and sustainable development.
Ergonomics categories
(N1 11)a

Sustainable development
categories (N2 9)

Human characteristics
Workplace and equipment
design
Social and economic impact
of the system
Environment
Information presentation
and communication
Display and control design
Work design and organization
Health and safety
System characteristics

Agriculture
Architecture
Economy
Environment and social issues
Education
Industrial and product design
Human-computer interface (HCI)
Health and safety
Renewable energy and
technology

Methods and techniques

General
a

Adopted from Ergonomics Abstracts (2004) and Karwowski (2005).

A. Radjiyev et al. / Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

69

Fig. 1. A owchart for classifying publications in ergonomics and sustainable development.

Abstracts (2004) and Karwowski (2005). All 9 sustainable development categories except humanecomputer interface (HCI) had
been widely mentioned in published books and review papers
(Lele, 1991; Holmberg and Sandbrook, 1992; Adams, 2006;
Atkinson et al., 2007). The only category created by the authors
was HCI.
Fig. 1 shows the established classifying process for research
publications in ergonomics and sustainable development. Each
paper was reviewed and then classied into corresponding category by the authors in the order of title-keywords-abstract-full text.
For most papers, the combined information from title, keywords
and abstract was sufcient to classify them into the corresponding
categories. Otherwise, the content analysis of the full text will be
further conducted. Considering one single paper sometimes could

cover more than one primary category, it is allowed to give

maximum two categories for a paper. Additionally, to minimize the
possible bias in the classication and ensure the obtained results
are reliable, all papers were reviewed and classied by two authors
independently at the rst stage. If there are discrepancies between
rst two authors' classications for some papers, the third or fourth
author is involved to resolve the discrepancies at the second stage.
After the publications were classied, the trend analysis was
performed: (1) to identify what are the key domains and research
trends of ergonomics and sustainable development; and (2) to
discover the possible convergent areas between ergonomics and
sustainable development. By doing so, we expect to know where
and how ergonomics can possibly contribute to sustainable
development.

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A. Radjiyev et al. / Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

3. Results
Time trends in the percentages of papers published each year in
total publications of ergonomics and sustainable development
during the past two decades are shown in Fig. 2. Even though the
trends exhibit remarkable inter-annual uctuations, the general
trends to increase are well pronounced, especially steadily growing
for ergonomics since 2002 and for sustainable development since
2004. Further analysis on percentages of ergonomics and sustainable development publications in total scientic publishing output
in Web of Science (WoS) reveals that ergonomics has had a relatively constant publication rate (~1%) in WoS in the period of
1992e2007 and after that, the publication rate gradually declines to
0.6% in year 2011, while sustainable development has seen an increase in publication rate (from less than 0.1% in year 1992 to 0.4%
in year 2011), indicating sustainability issues are currently attracting more and more attention from the scientic community. All
related publications are further classied into aforementioned
categories (Table 2).
3.1. Classication results and research trends of publications in
ergonomics
Fig. 3 shows the spectrum of research areas in ergonomics based
on the classication scheme. It was found that there are four
leading areas (percentage >10%) in the ergonomics eld during the
past 2 decades: methods and techniques (19.2%), human characteristics (16.6%), work design and organization (14.8%), and
health and safety (10.1%). Results in Fig. 4 further demonstrate that
although those 4 areas have been consistently ranked top 4 in the
eld of ergonomics in each 5-year period, methods and techniques
and human characteristics are now less dominating than they
were in the past. methods and techniques and human characteristics contributed to a share of 21.0% and 17.2% respectively of
the total number of publications in the rst 5-year period
(1992e1996), but the relative shares decreased to 17.7% and 16.0%
over the last 5-year period (2007e2011). On the other hand, the
shares of work design and organization (from 13.7% to 15.7%) and
health and safety (from 9.6% to 10.8%) are steadily increasing. All
other categories except workplace and equipment design (from
7.5% to 9.0%) hold a similar share of the total number of publications
since their relative changes are less than 1%.

Fig. 3. Overall contributions (%) from each category to ergonomics during the past 2
decades (1992e2011).

3.2. Classication results and research trends of publications in

sustainable development
Figs. 5 and 6 show the overall (from 1992 to 2011) and periodic
(each 5-year period) contributions of 9 categories to the eld of
sustainable development respectively. Fig. 5 illustrates that overall
contributions from each category of sustainable development are
somewhat uniform when compared with the contributions in ergonomics. There are 6 out of a total of 9 categories that contributed
more than a share of 10% to the total number of publications:
environment and social (16.1%), industrial and product design
(13.2%), education (12.6%), health and safety (12.2%), renewable
energy and technology (12.1%) and architecture (11.4%), thus they
are relatively leading domains of sustainable development in the
past 2 decades.
Some noticeable changing trends of the declines and developments on shares of sustainable development categories

Fig. 2. Time trends in percentages of publications each year in total publications of ergonomics and sustainable development during the past two decades (1992e2011).

A. Radjiyev et al. / Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

71

Fig. 4. Periodic contributions (%) from each category to ergonomics in each 5-year period.

during the past 2 decades can be observed from Fig. 6. As time goes
by, there are dramatic declines in the shares of both environment/
social and agriculture, the domains which periodic contributions
were ranked rst and second during the rst 5-year period
(1992e1996). More specially, during the period of 1992e1996
environment/social issues of sustainable development covers
26.4%, and agriculture alone made up 20.3% of the entire sustainable development eld. However, agriculture has dropped by
62.6% and only accounts for 7.6% of the total share in the last 5-year
period (2007e2011), ranking the second-to-last place (8th) among
9 categories. Additionally, environment/social has dropped by
43.9% and accounts for 14.8% of the total share in the last 5-year

period. The rapid declines in the shares of agriculture and environment/social domains are counterbalanced by the steady developments in industrial and product design (from 3.4% to 14.8%),
architecture (from 4.7% to 11.4%), renewable energy and technology (from 7.4% to 12.3%) and partially economy (from 4.7% to
7.9%). The shares of other three categories including education,
HCI, health and safety remain unchanged. In the last 5-year
period, environment/social (14.8%), industrial and product design
(14.8%), health and safety (12.6%), renewable energy and technology (12.3%), education (12.3%) and architecture (11.4%), are the
top 6 areas in sustainable development.
3.3. Convergent research areas between ergonomics and
sustainable development

Fig. 5. Overall contributions (%) from each category to sustainable development in the
past 2 decades (1992e2011).

Since categories used in ergonomics eld are not the same as

those in sustainable development, and a category in ergonomics
eld is often intertwined with more than one category in sustainable development eld, and vice versa, it is difcult to dene the
exact one-to-one matching between ergonomics and sustainable
development. Thus, the commonality and overlapping areas between these two elds are inspected to nd the convergent areas or
the directions of ergonomics having high potential to make contributions to sustainable development. According to the trend
analysis, methods and techniques, human characteristics, work
design and organization, health and safety, and workplace and
equipment design were the most dominating research areas in
ergonomics. In the case of sustainable development, environment/
social, industrial and product design, education, health and
safety, renewable technology and energy and architecture were
the most frequently researched areas.
Since human characteristics and methods and techniques
cover broad issues related to physiological and anatomical aspects,
psychology, individual differences, general methods and techniques, and measures on human performance etc (Salvendy, 1997;
Karwowski, 2005) towards products and work systems, industrial
and product design in sustainable development can be signicantly overlapped with them. In the eld of design for

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A. Radjiyev et al. / Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

Fig. 6. Periodic contributions (%) from each category to sustainable development in each 5-year period.

sustainability, ergonomic design (User-Centered Design) is

becoming an important design strategy for design culture innovation, providing designers with the necessary knowledge regarding
human characteristics (especially capabilities and limitations, behaviors, needs and desires) during use and interaction with products and systems (Tosi, 2012). Several methodological approaches
in ergonomics such as direct observation, survey, trial tests,
experimental measuring of physical and mental workloads can be
further applied in assessing the appropriateness and effectiveness
of the user-product/system interaction. Additionally, health and
safety should be important for both ergonomics and sustainable
development since it is the common classifying category in both
elds.
Workplace and equipment design and environmental ergonomics in ergonomics eld can be connected to sustainability
features of architecture that promote the wellbeing of the occupants and protect the environment through energy conservation
and green buildings (Hendrick, 2000; Wise, 2001; Remijn, 2006;
Miller et al., 2012; Hanson, 2013; Hedge and Dorsey, 2013;
Thatcher, 2013). Similarly, health and safety along with work
design and organization can also be the promising areas of ergonomics to attain business sustainability in that it can contribute
to the development of corporate social responsibility on considering occupational health and welfare of workers in sustainable
work systems (Genaidy et al., 2009, 2010; Bolis et al., 2014; Zink,
2014). In general, work design is from relevant microergonomics approach and organizational design is from macro~es
ergonomics principles (Hendrick, 2000; Zink, 2008; Guimara
et al., 2012). Some practice examples demonstrate that work
design and organization has great potential to be developed for
social sustainability in conjunction with economic sustainability
(GAO, 1997; Baxter and Harrison, 2000; Docherty et al., 2009;
Guimar~
aes et al., 2012).

Social and economic impact of the system in ergonomics starts

to grow and it is closely connected to sustainable development.
Especially nowadays, ergonomics discipline aims to improve the
contribution to the global society. To achieve this goal, collaborative
approach among federated ergonomics societies, NGO, enterprises,
and governmental authorities is required (Caple, 2010). Approaches
dealing with global problems, such as improving labor standards of
industrially developing countries (Locke and Romis, 2006),
changing operational decision toward environmentally friendly by
implementing new design of feedback (Flemming et al., 2008),
reducing behavioral and cultural barrier toward sustainable
development can be good references for sustainable development
strategy.
Fig. 7 summarizes the possible interconnections between sorted
categories in the elds of ergonomics and sustainable development. It indicated that the ergonomics expertise and knowledge
(especially from the top ve frequently researched areas) could be
incorporated into industrial and product design, architecture,
health and safety, and HCI for more contribution to sustainable
development.
4. Discussion and conclusions
Even though sustainability has stimulated considerable
changes in design, engineering and business professions over the
past decades, ergonomics has remained relatively absent from
this paradigmatic revolution (Wise, 2001). In this study, instead
of providing a complete list of contributions on sustainable
development which have been made from ergonomics, we focus
on identifying the potential directions for better incorporating
ergonomics to the sustainable development in the future
through literature survey, paper classication and the trend
analysis.

A. Radjiyev et al. / Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

73

Fig. 7. Interconnection map between sorted categories (from the highest share to the lowest) in the elds of ergonomics and sustainable development.

The results from the trend analysis have shown where the potential areas in ergonomics can contribute to sustainable development (Fig. 7), another part of the question on how to contribute still
remains unanswered. There have been several attempts by scholars
and practitioners in the ergonomics eld to come up with an
appropriate methodology or framework that can possibly
contribute to sustainable development (Marsot, 2005; Bucchianico
et al., 2012; Marano et al., 2012; Nadadur and Parkinson, 2013;
Neumann and Village, 2012; Ryan and Wilson, 2013; Carayon
et al., 2014; Davis et al., 2014; Norros, 2014; Zink, 2014).
To integrate ergonomics at the industrial and product design
stage for sustainability, Marsot (2005) has suggested using quality
function deployment (QFD), a method to transform user demands
(including ergonomic demands) and sustainability requirements
(such as the use of materials friendly to environment and with long
life cycles) into engineering design characteristics for a product or
system as a general tool. The effectiveness of the QFD for linking
ergonomics and product design has been demonstrated by many
studies (Tsuda, 1995; Terninko, 1997; Wu, 1997; Haapalainen et al.,
2000). Tosi (2012) recently applied User-Centered Design (UCD)
approach into the design of everyday use products for environmental sustainability in terms of energy saving and resource conservation. Two examples were introduced in Tosi's study to
demonstrate the applicability of UCD approach. The rst example
involves innovative design solutions for household kitchens
regarding the preparation and consumption of food, especially in
relation to energy saving and waste reduction; while the second
example is related to the design of an easily transportable, folding
and ultra-lightweight bicycle (intermodal bike) for sustainable
mobility and intermodality. Furthermore, Nadadur and Parkinson
(2013) highlighted the role of anthropometry from ergonomics in
sustainable development and proposed three ways in which its
consideration is relevant to sustainability: reducing raw material
consumption, increasing usage lifetimes and ethical human
resource considerations. They reported a global case study on
workstation seat design, with detail considerations of human
anthropometry variability. Aside from the integration of ergonomics with industrial and product design for sustainability, Wise
(2001) showed that principles of environmental ergonomics for
building occupant benets can be applied into sustainable building

design. The potential of having a magic integration of ergonomics

and sustainable design for buildings have been demonstrated
through architecture related projects with ergonomic inputs
(Cardoso et al., 2006; Remijn, 2006; Hignett and Lu, 2009; Miller
et al., 2012).
Aside from being applied into industrial and product design
and architecture for sustainability, ergonomics can also be applied
into HCI for sustainability (Abrahamse et al., 2005; Darby, 2006;
Flemming et al., 2008), especially for environmental issues such
as energy reduction. Abrahamse et al. (2005) and Darby (2006)
showed that feedback about energy usage, a consequence intervention, is successfully encouraging conservation behavior and
reducing energy consumption in the developed world. Flemming
et al. (2008) reviewed the literature on how reductions in energy
consumption can be achieved through behavioral interventions
and they demonstrated a need for ergonomics in the sustainability
domain. Since ergonomist have the theory and technical expertise
to approach the feedback design problem systematically, ergonomics has an opportunity to contribute to better human-machine
systems for sustainable development on energy reduction (Harvey
et al., 2013; Peffer et al., 2013). Recently, Lockton et al. (2010)
developed an innovation tool-Design with Intent (DWI) method
to inuence the user behavior so that the environmental impact of
the products can be reduced efciently.
Health and safety along with work design and organization
can contribute to social sustainability by the sustainability of human resources, the most important asset in enterprises and our
society. Sustainability of human resources is based on enduring
workability and employability, which have been dominant elements in ergonomics ever since (Zink, 2008; IEA, 2010). In this
sense, ergonomics can contribute to designing sustainable work
systems which not only have to be able to function in their environment and to achieve economic or operational objectives, but
also have to preserve or enlarge human and social capital (Maguire,
2001; Neumann and Village, 2012; Zink, 2014). In fact, the sustainability of human and social capital is one of the foundations of
economic sustainability and it is needed to secure environmental
sustainability (Docherty et al., 2009). A conceptual framework for
integrating ergonomics into designing sustainable work systems
effectively to eliminate the health hazards at source was recently

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A. Radjiyev et al. / Applied Ergonomics 46 (2015) 67e75

proposed by Neumann and Village (2012). Broad stakeholder

participation (Vink et al., 2008), link between performance and
health goals (Dul and Neumann, 2009), and process focused change
tools are three essential elements of the proposed framework. The
general strategies of ergonomic design for sustainability were discussed by Marano et al. (2012) and Ryan and Wilson (2013). It
should be noted that in order for ergonomics to successfully
contribute to sustainable development, an interdisciplinary designdriven and systems approach should play very important roles
(Bucchianico et al., 2012; Carayon et al., 2014; Norros, 2014; Wilson,
2014; Zink, 2014).
This study has some limitations. Firstly, even though more than
8100 articles from ergonomics and over 2600 articles from sustainable development were selected for classication, we can't
exhaust all related publications due to the interdisciplinary nature
of the ergonomics and sustainable development. For example, the
keywords used to describe work in sustainable development may
vary across disciplines, and the popularity of using different keywords to describe similar work may change over time, thus three
keywords used in this study may bias the search and the ndings
may not be fully representative for the research publications in the
eld of sustainable development. Secondly, the classication of an
article depends on not only each rater's professional knowledge,
but also his/her personal judgments of substantial contribution to
each category, thus, subjectivity is unavoidable in this classifying
process. More rigorous criterion on article classication should be
further studied. Furthermore, most of identied areas for ergonomics contribution to sustainable development should be
considered as areas of somewhat mature contribution only, they
are not necessarily the most promising areas of research since the
most promising areas could be those that are not yet popular.
Finally, regarding how to contribute ergonomics expertise and
knowledge to sustainable development, this study only suggested
typical methodologies and general guidance based on the surveyed
literature, the systematic implementation steps remain unknown
and should be further studied. Nevertheless, the ndings from this
study could offer some hints on where and how ergonomics can
better contribute to the eld of sustainable development.
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by Basic Science Research Program
through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF 20110022185). The authors would like to thank the reviewers and the
editor for their constructive comments and suggestions, which
helped to improve the quality of this paper.
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