The journey towards sustainability has become paramount to industry, government and research. To date, the main contributions have proposed valuable theoretical models to study the transitions to sustainability. However, a quantitative examination of the phenomenon is still limited. In this paper, we exploit a multilevel-growth model to empirically explore the relevance of different geographical scales in studying sustainability transitions. By analysing a novel, 9-year longitudinal dataset that covers European carbon emission intensity data on four different scales (from specific districts to whole states), we show whether and how multiple geographical scales support the study of sustainability transition pathways. Drawing on our analysis, we contribute to the debate on economic geography, sustainability transition and carbon emission intensity, as well as discuss implications for sustainability policy, strategy and research.

可持续发展之路已成为行业，政府和研究的重中之重。迄今为止，主要贡献已经提出了有价值的理论模型来研究向可持续性的转变。但是，对该现象的定量检查仍然有限。在本文中，我们利用多层次增长模型来实证研究不同地理尺度在研究可持续性转变中的相关性。通过分析一个新颖的为期9年的纵向数据集，该数据集涵盖了四个不同规模（从特定地区到整个州）的欧洲碳排放强度数据，我们显示了是否以及如何通过多个地理规模来支持可持续性转型路径的研究。根据我们的分析，我们为有关经济地理，可持续发展过渡和碳排放强度的辩论做出了贡献，