Community activism and sustainability: a multi-dimensional assessment

Filippo Celata () and Venere Stefania Sanna ()
Additional contact information
Filippo Celata: Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory and Finance, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)
Venere Stefania Sanna: Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory and Finance, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

No 137/14, Working Papers from Sapienza University of Rome, Metodi e Modelli per l'Economia, il Territorio e la Finanza MEMOTEF

Abstract: A growing body of research is exploring the role of community-based initiatives (CBIs) in the promotion of sustainable regional transitions. While existing research and policies acknowledge the relevant contribution of community activism in providing a soft, self-governed and bottom-up path towards sustainability, much of this work has a clear normative intent, it is based on individual case studies and rarely provides a systematic assessment of their actual effects. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap by providing an extensive review of the literature about the social, economic, political and technological impacts of CBIs, in order to define a set of indicators for the monitoring and evaluation of these initiatives. For each of the above mentioned four dimensions, a set of key variables will be proposed for assessing CBIs in a variety of domains: from food production (e.g. community gardens), to food distribution (e.g. solidarity purchasing groups), from recycling, to cohousing, bike/car-sharing, community energy.

Keywords: community-based initiatives; grassroots activism; sustainability; social innovation; monitoring and evaluation; impact assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C18 L30 O17 O35 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://web.uniroma1.it/memotef/sites/default/file ... ti/FullTextWP137.pdf 2014 (application/pdf)

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:rsq:wpaper:33/14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Sapienza University of Rome, Metodi e Modelli per l'Economia, il Territorio e la Finanza MEMOTEF Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Arezzo Maria Felice ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).