Communicating Sustainability: History Edit

Sustainable development is a big challenge to the developing countries due to lack of effective communication about sustainability to the rural population. This paper aims at building a theoretically and statistically sound model to communicate sustainability more effectively in the rural areas in order to achieve sustainable development. To this end, the constructs and items of the hypothesised model are identified based on a focus group discussion and backed up by the literature reviewed. Both partial least square and covariance-based structured equation modelling approaches are used to test the hypotheses and validate the model against multiple indices after analysing survey data collected from 300 community radio listeners in Bangladesh. It was found that the unique media characteristics of community radio positively increase the acceptability of the sustainability communications, which in turn affect the behavioural determinants (popular theory: attitudes, self-efficacy belief and social norms) and change the intention to adopt sustainable behaviour. Example cases from around the world also support the hypotheses. The paper also provides implications and directions for future research.