The New Perspective on Sustainability—Lessons from Amazon’s AI Agent Strategy Towards Rational Sustainability

This paper addresses the growing sustainability fatigue in advanced economies. By analyzing Amazon’s artificial intelligence (AI) agent strategy as a model for “Rational Sustainability”, the study identifies a self-propagating growth trajectory that reconciles economic rationality with value creation. It provides a theoretical and empirical framework to overcome technological saturation and strategic homogenization in the generative AI era. To ensure methodological transparency, the analysis was conducted through two distinct stages: (i) Techno-econometric analysis (macro-level): Using an empirical dataset of 160 countries (40 advanced, 70 emerging, and 50 developing) from 2014 to 2024, the study utilized regression models to quantify the correlations and elasticities between three key proxies: GDP per capita (Y); the Human Capital Index (HCI), representing Institutional Capacity Building (ICB); and the E-Government Development Index (EGI), representing Endogenous Institutional Evolution (EIE). (ii) Hybrid AI analysis (case study): Utilizing process-tracing research, the paper examines Amazon’s R&D structure and AI agent strategy. This qualitative and structural analysis identifies how Amazon co-evolves EIE and ICB to conceptualize tacit knowledge and operationalize it into a competitive advantage. The findings reveal a marked disruption of the co-evolutionary mechanism in advanced economies, where the elasticity of EGI to GDP has declined since 2019, leading to a withdrawal state. In contrast, Amazon’s model demonstrates that the co-evolution of EIE and ICB creates a self-propagating growth engine. This research concludes that “Rational Sustainability”—grounded in evidence, economic rationality, and clear trade-offs—offers a viable pathway for revitalizing sustainability strategies in mature digital economies.