This research advances our understanding of sustainable community development in relation to complex economic phenomena and psychological processes. The last decade has seen regional and global communities transition through unprecedented economic change. Community resilience offers a framework to guide regional development and explore the sustainability of social, economic and environmental systems to manage change. However, the fundamental constructs of community resilience are still not well known, such as the critical role of emotional stability and residents’ perceptions of change. This research explores this relationship in economies undergoing transformations by presenting the results of a survey administered to 663 Mackay and Whitsunday residents in Queensland, Australia. The findings add substantial depth to community resilience theory by demonstrating a positive relationship between emotional stability and resilience and a negative relationship between resilience and perceptions of change. The results also provide insight into the sustainable characteristics of communities to build resilience and manage the transformation process. Future research should focus on further testing the relationship between resilience, emotional stability and perceptions of change within communities at different stages of the transformation process.