Examining the Relationship between Renewable Energy and Environmental Awareness

András Szeberényi, Tomasz Rokicki and Árpád Papp-Váry
Additional contact information
András Szeberényi: Institute of Marketing, Budapest Metropolitan University, 1148 Budapest, Hungary
Tomasz Rokicki: Institute of Economics and Finance, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, 02-787 Warsaw, Poland
Árpád Papp-Váry: Alexandre Lamfalussy Faculty of Economics, Sopron University, 9400 Sopron, Hungary

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 19, 1-25

Abstract: The use of green and renewable energies undeniably plays an essential role in today’s society. Energy from these sources plays a key role in transforming the energy sector and significantly impacts the way of life and the quality of life of different social groups. The main aspects of this study are to briefly describe the situation of clean and renewable energy in Hungary and to investigate the extent to which the younger generation of different social groups is involved in using renewable energy sources in their everyday lives and their attitudes towards environmental awareness. In our research, we also investigate whether there is a strong statistical correlation between environmental awareness, environmentally damaging activities and the perceptions of different environmental problems among the target groups and, if so, how these affect the research topic. Our primary research can be considered representative, as we surveyed all primary and secondary school students in the Gyöngyös micro-region of the North-Hungarian region and also included the opinion of university students in the mentioned micro-region. The questionnaire was asked in person, and 2180 students completed it. The research was carried out in several phases, the first occurring between 2017 and 2019 and the second between 2020 and 2021. Three research questions were formulated, and the main findings show that the students’ main goal in the research was not to protect or support the environment but to prefer material well-being and related factors. On the results of statistical correlation analyses, overall, the examination by educational level (primary, secondary and higher) does not show significant differences between student groups, i.e., students with higher education do not have higher levels of environmental awareness and attitudes. Another important finding is that using renewable energy sources is considered too expensive for low-income families to take advantage of this kind of energy.

Keywords: renewable energy; environmental awareness; environmental protection; young generation; environmental behaviour; online communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/7082/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/7082/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:19:p:7082-:d:926265

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().