Objective: The objective was to determine how governance explains sustainable development, mediated by attitude, in high Andean communities in Peru.
Theoretical Framework: Few theories help to measure the levels of sustainable development at the community level, with little literature and evidence existing. The studies suggest applying transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, incorporating uncertainty, adaptive governance processes.
Method: Applying the quantitative approach, surveying 385 rural community members, with a 51-item Likert-type questionnaire. The results are presented in frequency tables, ordinal regression and simple mediation model in SPSS.
Results and Discussion: The results for governance are perceived as high in 68.1% of cases, attitude to development at a medium level in 49.9% and sustainable development at a medium level by 80.3%. Governance explains 52.6% of sustainable development and 41.6% of attitude to development, and attitude to development explains 65.7% of sustainable development, all significant, values calculated with Nagelkerke's Pseudo R box. The mediating effect of attitude to development is 10.13% between governance and sustainable development.
Research Implications: The research provides results that can be applied to the governance of rural communities, so that they achieve higher levels of development. Likewise, it allows investigators to continue deepening their understanding of sustainable development, a complex issue at the community level, as they are areas little addressed by the state.
Originality/Value: It is a first work that measures the relationship of the three variables in communities, thus contributing to the sustainable development literature with empirical evidence for the implementation of development policies at the community level.