The Italian population behaviours toward environmental sustainability: A study from istat surveys

Abstract

The interest of the Scientific Community in environmental protection issues aiming at guaranteeing future sustainability is constantly increasing. For this reason, the environmental social sciences, in recent years, are treating the interrelationships between population and environment. In Italy, an informative contribution comes from both Istat traditional Multipurpose Survey “Aspects of daily life” and Istat more recent Survey “Energy Consumption of Households”. The aims of the paper are: (1) to propose synthetic measures of PECB and PEEB (respectively, Pro-Environmental Curtailment and Efficiency Behaviours), by a methodology which facilitates the replicability of the analysis over time, on the basis of the upcoming Istat surveys on these topics; (2) to analyse the determinants of pro-environmental behaviours of Italian citizens, by deepening the direction of the relationships with socio-demographic and other relevant characteristics, using a multivariate data analysis approach.