Individual and community catalysts for Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) development.

This review examines factors catalyzing citizens' participation in Renewable Energy Communities (RECs), crucial for sustainable energy transitions. We analyze the interplay of individual and community elements promoting involvement in these collective projects. Individual drivers include pro-environmental values, economic incentives, desire for energy autonomy, and technical knowledge.

Community resilience and continuous challenges: A qualitative analysis of the functioning of communities in the aftermath of persistent and ordinary stressors.

The study aimed at investigating the functioning of communities in the aftermath of continuous challenges and identifying standards for describing resilient paths based on the perspective of community members. A qualitative investigation was carried out in 11 territorial communities of Salento, in southern Italy. Fifty-two key informants were interviewed and interview transcripts were submitted to thematic content analysis through Atlas.

What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Participation? Sense of Community and Social Representations of Participation.

The relationship between sense of community (SOC) and citizen participation has been extensively studied in community psychology. Connecting Social Representations and SOC theory, this study explored the lay meanings of citizen participation and its association with SOC. A word association task and a measure of territorial SOC were administered to 390 participants, and data analyzed to explore the contents of the social representations of citizen participation conveyed by the interviewees and their salience.