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Active citizenship and grassroots participation: barriers, main determinants and enabling factors
We examine scope and drivers of different actions of grassroots participation (such as willingness to
pay for environmentally and socially responsible features of products, and purchase of certified green
products) in a representative sample of Italian citizens. We discuss limiting and enabling factors and
find that education and gender positively and significantly affect care for socially responsible
products. We also show that generative and cooperative attitudes have a significant and positive effect
on both social and environmental care and the purchase of green-certified products. Among policy
suggestions stemming from our findings, innovation such as the digital product passport can provide
enabling infrastructure to reduce informational asymmetries, increase participation and life
satisfaction, life sense and expected return from cooperative and generative behaviors.
Lorenzo Semplici
Leonardo Becchetti, Demetrio M. Bova
Year of publication 2025