Storytelling for sustainability: A preliminary conclusion

The epilogue of the book looks back at what was learned about the three broad questions in the introduction, regarding the understanding of storytelling in sustainability communication, the effects of sustainability-related storytelling, and how sustainability-related storytelling can be taught, learned, and practiced. The second part of the epilogue describes essential insights that can be taken away for further work on SusTelling in communication practice and research, in the form of three theses, each relating to a more conceptual, empirical, or programmatic level. They include the ideas that sustainability can support the goals of sustainability communication in a variety of ways and should not be reduced to persuasion, that SusTelling can be educational if learning does not come at the expense of entertainment, and that stories allow the audience to identify with its protagonist and the idea that sustainability communication can not only use storytelling but also generate new forms of storytelling.