New Conceptual Model of Social Sustainability: Review from Past Concepts and Ideas

Anh M. Ly () and Michael R. Cope
Additional contact information
Anh M. Ly: Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Michael R. Cope: Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 7, 1-20

Abstract: The social dimension of sustainability has remained relatively underdefined, despite the efforts to specify and integrate this dimension into the general sustainability conversation of scholars and practitioners. This study aims to advance the conversation of social sustainability by examining past the multi-disciplinary literature and policy documents, as well as proposing a comprehensive conceptual model of social sustainability. We present a model with five dimensions: safety and security, equity, adaptability, social inclusion and cohesion, and quality of life. Through these dimensions, we propose social sustainability as a process that strives for effective management and allocation of social capital as a constitutive resource, and the confrontation of such controllable and uncontrollable risks as natural disasters and climate change. Our model was constructed with the purpose of providing scholars, policymakers, and practitioners with a comprehensive guideline to create social sustainability policy with human beings as the priority and cultural awareness as a grounding approach to initiating disaster-related and climate-change resilience.

Keywords: social sustainability; risk; social capital; resilience to climate change; adaptation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5350/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5350/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:7:p:5350-:d:1112744

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().