Community Media To Diffuse Sustainable Energy Products: Perceived Effectivenss

Abstract

The use of sustainable energy in the rural areas is one of the major solutions for the increasing local, national, and global environmental problems. However, to diffuse the use of sustainable energy products among the rural communities, the active communication channel is a key. To the countryside people, community media is the most contextualized, easily accessible, and trustworthy media. The motto of this research is to assess the perception of the rural people of how communications through the community media can change their motivation to use sustainable energy products utilizing theoretical and empirical approaches. A structured questionnaire survey derived from the constructs and items identified through focus group discussion and intensive literature review. The study is done in an underrepresented country (i.e., Bangladesh) in the broader literature on sustainable energy and community media interdisciplinary research. A structural equation modelling technique is applied to test the hypotheses. The values of the reliability and validity of the model are found perfect. This study concludes that the unique characteristics of community media can enhance the acceptance of their sustainable energy promotions to the rural people. This ease to explore the opportunities, improve the levels of abilities and motivation of the rural people, and thus quickly diffuse sustainable energy products in the rural area