IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/endesu/v22y2020i7d10.1007_s10668-019-00462-w.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public perceptions of the concept of green growth: application in Athens, Greece, during a period of economic crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Efi Drimili

    (Hellenic Open University)

  • Ζoi Gareiou

    (Hellenic Open University)

  • Efthimios Zervas

    (Hellenic Open University)

Abstract

The global world’s financial crisis of 2008–2009 caused a global recession that greatly affected the economy of Greece. Since then, Greece faces a severe financial crisis and governments announced, among other measures to tackle this crisis, the implementation of green growth strategies. The aim of this study is the investigation of public’s perceptions of green growth strategies that have been implemented so far, the investigation of the effect of the socioeconomic characteristics on these perceptions and the identification of patterns of attitudes toward the concept of green growth. For this purpose, a questionnaire was constructed and addressed to 500 inhabitants of Athens. The majority of the respondents believe that economic growth can be enhanced by green growth. On the other hand, most of the respondents, mainly younger and more educated people, express a strong prejudice for its adoption by enterprises and its implementation by the state. Overall, results reveal that despite the announcements of the political parties concerning green growth policy, the majority of the respondents accepts and applauds green growth as a theoretical concept rather than counting its benefits as an already implemented policy. These findings consist an important assessment tool for policy makers that can be used to redesign policies in order to achieve the goals of green growth and to meet the real needs of the citizens in a period of economic crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Efi Drimili & Ζoi Gareiou & Efthimios Zervas, 2020. "Public perceptions of the concept of green growth: application in Athens, Greece, during a period of economic crisis," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(7), pages 6053-6076, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:22:y:2020:i:7:d:10.1007_s10668-019-00462-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s10668-019-00462-w
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-019-00462-w
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10668-019-00462-w?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Consoli, Davide & Marin, Giovanni & Marzucchi, Alberto & Vona, Francesco, 2016. "Do green jobs differ from non-green jobs in terms of skills and human capital?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(5), pages 1046-1060.
    2. Stamatios Ntanos & Grigorios Kyriakopoulos & Miltiadis Chalikias & Garyfallos Arabatzis & Michalis Skordoulis, 2018. "Public Perceptions and Willingness to Pay for Renewable Energy: A Case Study from Greece," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-16, March.
    3. Paravantis, John A. & Stigka, Eleni & Mihalakakou, Giouli & Michalena, Evanthie & Hills, Jeremy M. & Dourmas, Vasilis, 2018. "Social acceptance of renewable energy projects: A contingent valuation investigation in Western Greece," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 639-651.
    4. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808.
    5. David W. Taylor & E.E. (Liz) Walley, 2004. "The green entrepreneur: Opportunist, Maverick or Visionary?," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 1(1/2), pages 56-69.
    6. Zhai, Pei & Williams, Eric D., 2012. "Analyzing consumer acceptance of photovoltaics (PV) using fuzzy logic model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 350-357.
    7. Sam Fankhauser & Alex Bowen & Raphael Calel & Antoine Dechezlepr�tre & David Grover & James Rydge & Misato Sato, 2012. "Who will win the green race? In search of environmental competitiveness and innovation," GRI Working Papers 94, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    8. Karasmanaki, Evangelia & Tsantopoulos, Georgios, 2019. "Exploring future scientists' awareness about and attitudes towards renewable energy sources," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 111-119.
    9. Armand Kasztelan, 2017. "Green Growth, Green Economy and Sustainable Development: Terminological and Relational Discourse," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2017(4), pages 487-499.
    10. Eltham, Douglas C. & Harrison, Gareth P. & Allen, Simon J., 2008. "Change in public attitudes towards a Cornish wind farm: Implications for planning," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 23-33, January.
    11. Stamatios Ntanos & Grigorios Kyriakopoulos & Michalis Skordoulis & Miltiadis Chalikias & Garyfallos Arabatzis, 2019. "An Application of the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale in a Greek Context," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-18, January.
    12. Stigka, Eleni K. & Paravantis, John A. & Mihalakakou, Giouli K., 2014. "Social acceptance of renewable energy sources: A review of contingent valuation applications," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 100-106.
    13. repec:prg:jnlpep:v:preprint:id:626:p:1-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Strazzera, Elisabetta & Statzu, Vania, 2017. "Fostering photovoltaic technologies in Mediterranean cities: Consumers’ demand and social acceptance," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 102(PB), pages 361-371.
    15. Stamatios Ntanos & Grigorios Kyriakopoulos & Miltiadis Chalikias & Garyfallos Arabatzis & Michalis Skordoulis & Spyros Galatsidas & Dimitrios Drosos, 2018. "A Social Assessment of the Usage of Renewable Energy Sources and Its Contribution to Life Quality: The Case of an Attica Urban Area in Greece," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-15, May.
    16. Furchtgott-Roth, Diana, 2012. "The elusive and expensive green job," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(S1), pages 43-52.
    17. Sonnberger, Marco & Ruddat, Michael, 2017. "Local and socio-political acceptance of wind farms in Germany," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 56-65.
    18. Yi, Hongtao, 2013. "Clean energy policies and green jobs: An evaluation of green jobs in U.S. metropolitan areas," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 644-652.
    19. Kaldellis, J.K. & Kapsali, M. & Kaldelli, El. & Katsanou, Ev., 2013. "Comparing recent views of public attitude on wind energy, photovoltaic and small hydro applications," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 197-208.
    20. Cai, Wenjia & Wang, Can & Chen, Jining & Wang, Siqiang, 2011. "Green economy and green jobs: Myth or reality? The case of China’s power generation sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 5994-6003.
    21. Georgia Kaplanoglou & Vassilis T. Rapanos, 2018. "Evolutions in Consumption Inequality and Poverty in Greece: The Impact of the Crisis and Austerity Policies," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(1), pages 105-126, March.
    22. Kaldellis, J.K. & Kapsali, M. & Katsanou, Ev., 2012. "Renewable energy applications in Greece—What is the public attitude?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 37-48.
    23. Kyriakopoulos, Grigorios L. & Arabatzis, Garyfallos & Tsialis, Panagiotis & Ioannou, Konstantinos, 2018. "Electricity consumption and RES plants in Greece: Typologies of regional units," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 134-144.
    24. Drews, Stefan & Antal, Miklós & van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2018. "Challenges in Assessing Public Opinion on Economic Growth Versus Environment: Considering European and US Data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 265-272.
    25. Alex Bowen & Cameron Hepburn, 2014. "Green growth: an assessment," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 30(3), pages 407-422.
    26. Tsantopoulos, Georgios & Arabatzis, Garyfallos & Tampakis, Stilianos, 2014. "Public attitudes towards photovoltaic developments: Case study from Greece," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 94-106.
    27. Proikaki, Marina & Nikolaou, Ioannis & Jones, Nikoleta & Malesios, Chrisovaladis & Dimitrakopoulos, Panayiotis G & Evangelinos, Kostantinos, 2018. "Community perceptions of local enterprises in environmentally degraded areas," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 116-124.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Konstantinos Tsimnadis & Grigorios L. Kyriakopoulos & Garyfallos Arabatzis & Stefanos Leontopoulos & Efthimios Zervas, 2023. "An Innovative and Alternative Waste Collection Recycling Program Based on Source Separation of Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) and Operating with Mobile Green Points (MGPs)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-18, February.
    2. Mohammad Rashed Hasan Polas & Ratul Kumar Saha & Mosab I. Tabash, 2022. "How does tourist perception lead to tourist hesitation? Empirical evidence from Bangladesh," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 3659-3686, March.
    3. Zoe Gareiou & Christina Chroni & Karolos Kontoleon & Makram El Bachawati & Marianne Saba & Ruth Herrero Martin & Efthimios Zervas, 2022. "Awareness of Citizens for the Single-Use Plastics: Comparison between a High-Income and an Upper-Middle-Income Economy of the Easter Mediterranean Region, Greece and Lebanon," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-35, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Theodoros Anagnostopoulos & Grigorios L. Kyriakopoulos & Stamatios Ntanos & Eleni Gkika & Sofia Asonitou, 2020. "Intelligent Predictive Analytics for Sustainable Business Investment in Renewable Energy Sources," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-11, April.
    2. Karasmanaki, Evangelia & Tsantopoulos, Georgios, 2019. "Exploring future scientists' awareness about and attitudes towards renewable energy sources," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 111-119.
    3. Sofia-Despoina Papadopoulou & Niki Kalaitzoglou & Maria Psarra & Sideri Lefkeli & Evangelia Karasmanaki & Georgios Tsantopoulos, 2019. "Addressing Energy Poverty through Transitioning to a Carbon-Free Environment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-17, May.
    4. Evangelia Karasmanaki & Spyridon Galatsidas & Georgios Tsantopoulos, 2019. "An Investigation of Factors Affecting the Willingness to Invest in Renewables among Environmental Students: A Logistic Regression Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-18, September.
    5. Ioannidis, Filippos & Kosmidou, Kyriaki & Papanastasiou, Dimitra, 2023. "Public awareness of renewable energy sources and Circular Economy in Greece," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 1086-1096.
    6. Stamatios Ntanos & Grigorios Kyriakopoulos & Miltiadis Chalikias & Garyfallos Arabatzis & Michalis Skordoulis, 2018. "Public Perceptions and Willingness to Pay for Renewable Energy: A Case Study from Greece," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-16, March.
    7. Stamatios Ntanos & Grigorios Kyriakopoulos & Miltiadis Chalikias & Garyfallos Arabatzis & Michalis Skordoulis & Spyros Galatsidas & Dimitrios Drosos, 2018. "A Social Assessment of the Usage of Renewable Energy Sources and Its Contribution to Life Quality: The Case of an Attica Urban Area in Greece," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-15, May.
    8. Fang, Xingming & Qu, Zitang & Sun, Chuanwang & Wu, Chengkuan & Wei, Jing, 2022. "Public attitude and policy selection of future energy sustainability in China: Evidence of the survey of the college students," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    9. Jean-François Ruault & Alice Dupré La Tour & André Evette & Sandrine Allain & Jean-Marc Callois, 2022. "A biodiversity-employment framework to protect biodiversity," Post-Print hal-03365820, HAL.
    10. Bowen, Alex & Kuralbayeva, Karlygash & Tipoe, Eileen L., 2018. "Characterising green employment: The impacts of ‘greening’ on workforce composition," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 263-275.
    11. Anca Vasilica Tănasie & Luiza Loredana Năstase & Luminița Lucia Vochița & Andra Maria Manda & Geanina Iulia Boțoteanu & Cătălina Soriana Sitnikov, 2022. "Green Economy—Green Jobs in the Context of Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-23, April.
    12. Damien Bazin & Emna Omri & Nouri Chtourou, 2015. "Solar Thermal Energy for Sustainable Development in Tunisia," Post-Print halshs-01070616, HAL.
    13. Croce, Antonello Ignazio & Musolino, Giuseppe & Rindone, Corrado & Vitetta, Antonino, 2019. "Sustainable mobility and energy resources: A quantitative assessment of transport services with electrical vehicles," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1-1.
    14. Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2019. "Do Consumers Want to Pay for Green Electricity? A Case Study from Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-20, March.
    15. Salak, B. & Lindberg, K. & Kienast, F. & Hunziker, M., 2021. "How landscape-technology fit affects public evaluations of renewable energy infrastructure scenarios. A hybrid choice model," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    16. Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2018. "An Empirical Analysis of Green Electricity Adoption Among Residential Consumers in Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    17. Bowen, Alex & Kuralbayeva, Karlygash & Tipoe, Eileen L., 2018. "Characterising green employment: The impacts of ‘greening’ on workforce composition," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 263-275.
    18. Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2018. "An empirical analysis of green energy adoption among residential consumers in Poland," HSC Research Reports HSC/18/01, Hugo Steinhaus Center, Wroclaw University of Technology.
    19. Karasmanaki, Evangelia & Ioannou, Konstantinos & Katsaounis, Konstantinos & Tsantopoulos, Georgios, 2020. "The attitude of the local community towards investments in lignite before transitioning to the post-lignite era: The case of Western Macedonia, Greece," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:22:y:2020:i:7:d:10.1007_s10668-019-00462-w. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.