Empirical investigation of community empowerment and sustainable development: quantitatively improving qualitative model

Abstract

Community empowerment and sustainable development reforms, with its emphasis on rewarding quality and cutting costs, could change the landscape of how rural communities can achieve the quality of life in the developing countries like Pakistan. The paper explores the relationship between community empowerment, sense of community and sustainability of community-driven (CD) projects. Starting from the experience of CD organizations (i.e. the Citizen Community Boards in Pakistan), the paper attempts to answer two questions: (i) is there a relationship between community empowerment and project sustainability; (ii) is this relationship between community empowerment and project sustainability mitigated by the sense of community? and (iii) to determine the impact of community empowerment through the moderating role of sense of community on sustainability of CD projects. Furthermore, paper elaborates on the concepts of "community empowerment", "sustainability" and "sense of community". A hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the relationship between community empowerment and sustainability of CD projects. This analysis highlights the central role of the sense of community in mitigating the relationship between community empowerment and sustainability. Community empowerment is significantly related to the sense of community and helping communities in improving the quality of their lives.