Ecological Governance Model for Coastal Area: The Environmental Dynamics Factors to Sustainable Development

This paper explains the ecological crisis in rural coastal areas by reconstructing an ecological governance model integrating environmental dynamics variables with a focus on Pangandaran, West Java, which is a representative region of Indonesia's coastal challenges, including overfishing and unsustainable practices. This study investigates the new influence of the factors mentioned as: environmental dynamics, including economic-financial, physical infrastructure, social, spiritual environment, and environmental management, and their influence on sustainable development, with ecological governance as a mediator. This research uses quantitative methods with Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) tools on survey data from 178 villagers from Pananjung, Wonoharjo, Babakan, and Pangandaran villages. The study shows a significant positive influence of economic-financial (0.497) and social (1.558) environments on sustainable development. Ecological governance also positively affects sustainable development (0.205), while environmental management has a smaller positive effect on ecological governance (0.078). The direct effect of the physical infrastructure environment on sustainable development is very minimal (0.056). Particularly, the natural and spiritual environment variables did not show a significant impact. The model emphasizes the importance of synergizing sustainable infrastructure development and community awareness, advocating for multi-actor collaboration such as government, private sector, academia, and local villagers, to create effective cross-sectoral policies that address local environmental dynamics. Despite the limitations of the sample size and cross-cutting design, this study contributes theoretically to understanding ecological governance and empirically offers practical implications for integrative sustainable development planning in coastal areas. All variables showed acceptable reliability and discriminant validity. The findings highlight the need for governance models to prioritize locally relevant environmental dynamics.