Fostering Synergies for Implementing Sustainability Actions in Local Government: The Role of Coordination Commitment and Resource Capacity

Sustainability has become “a fundamental guiding principle” for local government policymaking and management. However, implementing sustainability actions remains challenging for the need to reconcile diverse goals across environmental, economic, and social domains in an integrated and balanced manner. This study introduces coordination commitment, local governments’ underlying willingness to prioritize and sustain alignment across departments to tackle complex problems, as a key yet underexplored driver of sustainability action-taking. Drawing on a nationwide survey of U.S. local governments, the study examines how coordination commitment, in combination with human and financial resource capacity, influences both holistic and domain-specific (environmental, economic, social) sustainability action-taking. Findings reveal that coordination commitment independently promotes broader and more balanced sustainability efforts. However, its effectiveness is contingent on resource conditions and varies across sustainability domains. These results highlight domain-specific mechanisms and offer practical guidance for public managers to strategically align coordination efforts with available resources, fostering integrated sustainability advancement.