Data Source and Methods of Data Collection The study is mainly descriptive in nature with some quantitative analysis by using both primary and secondary data. The researchers followed the suggestions of Mugenda (2003) who told that descriptive survey design helps a researcher to gather, summarize, present and interpret information for the purpose of clarification. For secondary data the researchers have reviewed many articles from different databases such as Sage, Taylor and Francis Online, Elsevier, Springerlink, ScienceDirect, JSTOR, Wiley Online Library, and Emerald with environmental sustainability and economic development. The primary data were collected through both face to face and online survey using a well-structured questionnaire following a 5-point Likert scales (ranging from 1- strongly disagree to 5- strongly agree), and the collected data were analysed by using IBM-SPSS 23 version.
Study Area The researchers had chosen one of the most vulnerable geographical parts of Bangladesh because frequently this area faces different types of natural disaster. The South-West coastal part consists of three districts name as Khulna, Bagerhat, and Satkhira. The UNESCO World heritage Sundarbans is located at this part. Most of the coastal people are farmer and fisherman and always fighting against natural disasters to survive.
Participants and Procedure The researchers choose sample respondents from different professions and segmented them into five broad categories like as government officials, non-government service holders, businessmen, teachers, journalists. From these segments, total 250 sample respondents were randomly selected and getting their responses. After collecting the data about 49 questions were found somewhat incomplete or inconsistent and decided to drop those questionnaires. Finally, 201 set of questionnaire were used for this study which indicates the response rate is about 80.4%. Here the authors adopt Cochran (1963) suggestion to determine sample size – ‘when there is a large population but the variability in the proportion is unknown then at 5%, 7%, and at 10% precision level the sample size should be considered at least as 400, 200, 100 accordingly’. Here, we considered 7% percent precision level and use 201 sample (suggested at least 200) for our study. Among the respondents, the highest number about 57.21% were from non-government officials (N = 115) the second large number of respondents were the mid-level government officials about 24.38% (N = 49) who are working at the different policy-making positions of the government. Other respondents were from teaching profession, businessmen, and journalists about 10.95% (N =22), 3.98% (N = 8), and businessmen about 3.48% (N = 7) accordingly.
Variables and Measures The variables considered in the proposed research model were measured by using conventional means. The researchers have used five items to measure Environment Compliance Management (ECM) which were adopted from Tweneboah (2009), and Nieblas-Ortiz, Arcos-Vega, and Sevilla-García (2017), seven items were used from Tweneboah (2009) to measure Creation of Environment Culture (CEC), nine items were used to measure Natural Capital and Ecosystem Service (NCES) and adopted from (Ehrlich, Kareiva, & Daily, 2012), seven items were used to measure the Creation of Environmental Sustainability (CES) which were developed with the help of Basiago (1998). Besides, six items for Agricultural Production Management (APM), three items for Implementation of Environmental Law (IEL), and eight items for Income Generating Process (IGP) were developed by the authors and used for this study.