Measuring sustainability consciousness in Italy

The most common notion sees sustainability as an ideal and necessary state in which society, the environment and the economy can thrive without harming each other in the present, the future and the global space. In this paper, using data from a sample of respondents, we validate the Italian version of the Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire developed by a Swedish research group (Gericke et al., 2019), which aims to measure sustainability consciousness as an individual experience and awareness of sustainability. The validation process relies on the Hierarchical Confirmatory Factor Analysis model of estimation and includes both the long and short forms of the questionnaire proposed in the original study. Specifically, we propose two alternative approaches to validating the short form, one based on the same subset of items as the original proposal, and another based on a data-driven strategy, resulting in a different subset of items. After validation at the national level, the Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire represents a useful tool for researchers and policymakers to assess how aware and responsible a national or local population is regarding such an important and urgent global goal.