Free associations of citizens and scientists with economic and green growth : a computational linguistics analysis
Savin, Ivan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Drews, Stefan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Van den Bergh, Jeroen C. J. M. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Data:	2020
Resum:	The debate about the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability triggers a range of associations. Here we analyze open-ended textual responses of citizens and scientists concerning their associations with the terms "economic growth" and "green growth". We derive from the responses a number of topics and examine how associations differ across distinct opinion segments of people, namely supporters of Green growth, Agrowth and Degrowth. The results indicate that the general public is more critical of the notion of economic growth than academic researchers. Citizens stress problems of corruption, social inequality, unemployment and poverty, with less variation among the three opinion segments compared to scientists. The latter more strongly emphasize the environmental consequences of economic growth. Concerning associations of scientists with the term "green growth", we find topics questioning its feasibility to be more likely expressed by Degrowth supporters, while topics stressing the possibility of sustainable economic growth by Green growth supporters. We find that topic polarization is stronger for scientists than citizens. Our results provide further validation for opinion clusters identified in previous studies and uncover additional insights about related views on growth and sustainability.
Ajuts:	European Commission 741087
Nota:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió acceptada per publicar
Matèria:	Structural topic modelling ; Growth-vs-environment debate ; Public opinion ; Scientific opinion ; Green growth
Publicat a:	Ecological economics, Vol. 180 (Feb. 2021) , art. 106878, ISSN 0921-8009

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106878

Postprint 39 p, 837.4 KB

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Documents de recerca > Documents dels grups de recerca de la UAB > Centres i grups de recerca (producció científica) > Ciències > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) > Environmental and Climate Economics (ECE)
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