Methods in sustainability science

Yang, Ao; Lin, Ruojue; Shi, Tao; Xiao, Huijuan; Shen, Weifeng; Ren, Jingzheng

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-823987-2.00015-5

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Similar to reviews of the literature on rural development (Evans et al, 2015; Lu & de Vries, 2021) and rural resilience (Kim et al, 2020), we find the number of empirical studies on rural sustainability has grown substantially over the past three decades. This trend also reflects increased awareness about global sustainability issues and interest in quantifying, tracking, and comparing sustainability progress (Mura et al, 2018; Yang et al, 2021). Much of this growth in rural sustainability studies has been fueled by an increase in quantitative and mixed methods studies as data availability and computational methods have improved, however purely qualitative studies continue to be an important part of the literature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Nelson

Nguyen

Francois

et al. 2022

Sustainable Development

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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.

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