Digitally enabled affordances for community‐driven environmental movement in rural Malaysia

Abstract

The immense environmental challenges facing society today have necessitated a research effort toward exploring digitally enabled solutions for environmental problems. Only limited research exists today to inform our understanding on how technology could assist groups of individuals in cultivating collective commitment and engaging in actions for environmental sustainability. By presenting an in-depth case study of a social media-enabled grassroots environmental movement in rural Malaysia, this paper aims to illuminate and understand an underresearched phenomenon of communitydriven environmental sustainability. This study makes 2 contributions: (1) we draw on the perspective of technology affordances to shed light on both the enabling power and unintended consequences of social media in the pursuit of environmental sustainability; and on that account, (2) we contribute rich, empirically informed insights toward understanding the underresearched phenomenon of digitally enabled, community-driven environmental sustainability. KEYWORDSaffordance actualization, environmental sustainability, green IS, social consequences of ICT, social media, unintended consequences | INTRODUCTIONThe rapid depletion of natural resources and the growing salience of environmental problems over the past decades have made environmental sustainability one of the most urgent challenges of the 21st century (Cooper & Molla, 2016;Dao, Langella, & Carbo, 2011;Melville, 2010). Driven by intensified concerns over environmental degradation and the recognition of potential technological implications (both positive and negative) on the environment (Corbett, 2013), Information Systems (IS) scholars have embarked on research to explore the role and impact of technologies on environmental sustainability. One particular stream of research that has emerged from this effort is green IS research. It focuses on examining how technologies could serve as the enabler of both sustainable solutions (Corbett, 2013;Dedrick, 2010) and behavioral change among individuals, organizations, and society (vom Brocke, Watson, Dwyer, Elliot, & Melville, 2012 (Loock, Staake, & Thiesse, 2013), ranging from sustainable transformation of business processes to public participation in common environmental concerns (Elliot, 2011).Most existing green IS studies have been conducted at the organizational level (Corbett, 2013;Jenkin, Webster, & McShane, 2011;Loock et al., 2013). These studies view businesses, institutions, or policymakers (eg, the government) as the drivers of change in initiating environmental actions. Taken together, this body of work explores the role of green IS from a command-and-control point of view. It discusses how decision makers make use of technology to cultivate sustainability practices among individuals within an organization. The present work, however, advocates a different focus. In this paper, we present a study of green IS with the objective of illuminating and understanding the underresearched phenomenon of digitally enabled, community-driven...

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