Rural sustainability methods, drivers, and outcomes: A systematic review

Katherine S. Nelson, Tuan D. Nguyen, Jean R. Francois and Shreya Ojha

Sustainable Development, 2023, vol. 31, issue 3, 1226-1249

Abstract: In the past three decades, sustainability science has taken on new importance as interest groups investigate better ways to tackle global challenges—environmental degradation, climate change, and human well‐being—that pose risks to communities, particularly in rural areas. Designs for sustainability require empirical evidence of what works and under what human and environmental conditions. Despite the amount of research that exists, the broad variety of research approaches and contexts makes generalizing knowledge about sustainability in rural areas challenging. This work addresses calls to consolidate the field's knowledge about rural sustainability by examining how rural sustainability has been evaluated, identifying drivers of rural sustainability and associated outcome indicators used to operationalize rural sustainability, and determining common trends in how drivers and outcomes are related. We synthesize this diverse literature to identify common themes in evaluation of rural sustainability across disciplines, global regions, and methodological approaches. Our findings indicate many methods have been used to evaluate rural sustainability, that factors derived from the Triple Bottom Line (social, economic, and environmental) are frequently used to operationalize rural sustainability, and that both direct human interventions and underlying socioeconomic drivers of sustainability are routinely examined in the literature. Overall, we find the majority of studies report positive impacts to rural sustainability, suggesting there are many avenues for creating positive change in sustainability in rural areas. However, we also find greater attention to study conceptualization, design and reporting is needed to provide greater confidence in results that inform policy and decision‐making.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2471

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:31:y:2023:i:3:p:1226-1249

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainable Development is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Sustainable Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().