Towards Sustainable Urban Mobility: An ESG-Based Decision Framework for Urban Air Integration

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has emerged as a promising solution to alleviate urban congestion and support low-carbon transportation by utilizing low-altitude airspace. However, its large-scale deployment requires governance mechanisms that simultaneously address environmental impacts, social acceptance, and institutional coordination. Existing studies have not yet provided an operational Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-based decision framework for UAM governance. This study develops and empirically validates an ESG-oriented governance model for UAM integration into urban development. A mixed-method approach was adopted, including literature and policy analysis to identify 22 execution-level factors, a questionnaire survey of industry practitioners and experts (N = 307), and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined with expert consultation to determine priority weights. The results show that the Governance dimension has the highest importance (38.72%), followed by Social (32.15%) and Environmental (29.13%). Laws and regulations, standard certification, and digital management constitute the core institutional foundations for UAM deployment. Privacy protection and social acceptance are the dominant social concerns, while noise pollution represents the most critical environmental constraint. Across all dimensions, standard certification, privacy, noise control, management framework, and digital management are the highest-weighted factors. The proposed framework provides a practical ESG-based decision tool to support policy prioritization and sustainable UAM implementation in rapidly urbanizing regions.