<p>The Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) communication model addresses the challenges of data transmission in environments characterised by intermittent connectivity, frequent disconnections, and limited resources. The Store, Carry, and Forward paradigm is implemented to facilitate the transfer of messages to distant destinations. The efficiency of this paradigm relies heavily on message storage and forwarding, which directly influence network throughput and protocol effectiveness. Storage policies are designed to manage buffer occupancy while forwarding mechanisms focus on transmitting messages to nodes that may only be intermittently connected. Current message forwarding protocols utilize various metrics, such as encountering patterns, social communities, and location data, to make transmission decisions. However, these protocols often overlook critical factors like bandwidth, buffer space, and energy consumption, which can deplete the already scarce network resources. The Social Resource Consumption-Based Message Forwarding (SRC-MF) protocol for DTNs in urban areas introduces a novel social metric called resource awareness. This metric integrates resource consumption metrics with social parameters, enabling a more accurate assessment of a node’s capability to forward messages. The performance of the SRC-MF protocol, along with existing protocols such as Epidemic, PRoPHET, and MaxProp, is evaluated using several key metrics, including buffer consumption, energy consumption, bandwidth consumption, delivery ratio, message loss, and forwarding accuracy, under real-time mobility conditions.</p>