Towards a Theory of Sustainable Communication in Risk Society: Relating Issues of Sustainability to Marketing Communications

McDonagh, Pierre. "Towards a Theory of Sustainable Communication in Risk Society: Relating Issues of Sustainability to Marketing Communications." Journal of Marketing Management 14, no. 6 (July 1998): 591-622.

There is a need to clearly communicate the ecological issues of sustainable development and behavior to a wide audience, raising the importance of how the message is delivered. In this study the author attempted to transform traditional marketing communications theory by describing a new process called Sustainable Communication. This term is closely related to Social Marketing, but while social marketing can involve a wide variety of topics, sustainable communication focuses solely on the topic of how to market sustainable behaviors for businesses. The author determines that sustainable communication could be one of the processes facilitating the move to sustainable consumption, therefore making the environment culturally significant in the public domain.