The impact of recession on public attitudes towards energy and the environment

Abstract

This article presents a panhellenic social survey regarding environmental subjects in Greece. It is a well-known fact that Greece is suffering from an economic crisis among other European Union countries. This crisis coincides with the time that Greece is supposed to take measures for Environmental Protection that should aim both at Energy Saving and at energy production from Renewable Sources. The specific research presented here investigates how people's attitudes and views towards the environmental subjects and the use of renewable energy sources are affected by the economic crisis, and a rather dystopian future. Also, we investigated how serious are the environmental issues considered to be when people feel that their everyday way of life is threatened. This is researched through analysing the data gathered through questionnaires for the survey.

Keywords:

• social survey
• RES
• public attitudes
• economic crisis

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the D.U.TH. students who have helped us to collect the questionnaires, to our post-graduate students who have also helped, and most of all to the Greek people who have willingly participated in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.