Greeks Know the Environment Is at Risk, But Their Actions Tell Another Story

A sweeping new survey of Greek citizens has put hard numbers on one of the most stubborn puzzles in environmental psychology: the gap between what people know about environmental problems and what they actually do about them. Researchers Zoe Gareiou and Efthimios Zervas of Greece measured environmental awareness and behavior using a battery of quantitative indicators applied to a nationally representative sample of 1,410 adults, and their findings, published in the journal Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, reveal a striking inversion. Citizens are most aware of air pollution, scoring it highest of four major environmental issues, yet they perform the fewest protective actions on that very front. Conversely, water pollution, the issue they know least about, is the one where their behavior is strongest. The result is a statistical portrait of a society that talks the environmental talk far more convincingly than it walks the environmental walk.

The study’s methodology was unusually rigorous for survey research of this kind. The team designed a structured questionnaire with three sections: twenty-one questions probing environmental awareness, twenty-four questions examining environmental behavior, and a third section recording demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. All attitude questions used a five-point Likert scale running from strongly disagree to strongly agree, while behavior questions ran from never to very often. Before deployment, the instrument was refined through a pilot study with twenty randomly selected citizens, whose responses were excluded from the final analysis. Data collection took place in 2024 across 160 Greek cities, spanning metropolitan areas, medium-sized and small cities, and islands, with questionnaires gathered roughly half face-to-face and half by telephone.

The sampling strategy was equally deliberate. Using stratified and simple random sampling, the researchers collected questionnaires in different parts of each city at different times of day and on different days of the week, respecting national ratios of sex, age, and education drawn from the Hellenic Statistical Authority. Although 1,440 questionnaires were collected, only the 1,410 fully completed forms were retained, yielding a margin of error of just 2.61 percent. A formal representativeness test against the 2021 Census confirmed that the sample mirrored the adult Greek population in gender, age group, marital status, number of children, education, and professional status, though the authors caution that representativeness was assessed only for these specified characteristics.

The analytical framework distinguished between indicators calculated at the level of the whole sample and indicators calculated for each individual respondent. Four specific sample-level indicators captured awareness of water pollution, air pollution, climate change, and waste management, with four matching indicators for behavior, plus two aggregate indicators averaging across all four issues. At the individual level, the team computed ten specific and aggregate indicators plus a global individual indicator combining awareness and behavior across all domains. Statistical tests, including independent-sample t-tests and one-way ANOVA with Tukey and Scheffé post-hoc comparisons, then probed how demographic and socioeconomic characteristics shaped these scores.

The headline numbers are telling. Air pollution topped the awareness ranking with a mean score of 3.68, followed by waste management at 3.49, climate change at 3.30, and water pollution at 3.26. Yet the behavior ranking flipped almost entirely: water pollution led at 3.48, followed by climate change and waste management, both at 3.30, with air pollution collapsing to 2.53, the lowest score in the entire study. In other words, the issue Greeks worry about most, driven by vehicle emissions, industry, and biomass burning in their cities, is the one where they least often take protective action such as using public transport, carpooling, or avoiding products like tobacco, insecticides, and pesticides.

Plotted against each other, the four awareness and behavior scores reveal a negative trend: the higher a population’s awareness of an issue, the lower its corresponding behavior tends to fall. This pattern echoes a well-documented phenomenon in environmental psychology known as the value-action gap, the difference between what people say and what they do. The aggregate indicators crystallize the discrepancy. The aggregate awareness indicator stood at 3.43, while aggregate behavior lagged at 3.15. Citizens, the authors conclude, largely know what should be done for the environment, but knowledge alone does not translate into intention or action, with socio-psychological and practical factors intervening at every step.

Yet the individual-level analysis complicates the picture in an intriguing way. When awareness and behavior were regressed against each other for each respondent, the relationship turned strongly positive and linear for all four issues, with coefficients of determination all exceeding 0.90. For water pollution the slope was 1.0290, for climate change 0.9775, for waste management 0.9218, and for air pollution 0.6793. This means that at the individual level, awareness is a highly reliable predictor of behavior, even though the population-level pattern shows behavior consistently trailing awareness. The two findings are not contradictory: individuals who are more aware do act more, but nearly everyone acts less than their stated concern would predict.

The frequency distributions add texture. For air pollution, 51.13 percent of respondents agreed they were aware of the issue and 30.43 percent strongly agreed, yet 29.93 percent reported acting pro-environmentally only rarely and 43.62 percent only sometimes. For waste management, nearly half of respondents reported often acting pro-environmentally, but the authors note that Greek citizens remain insufficiently informed despite recent legislation, including Law 4819/2021 introducing Pay-As-You-Throw systems and European directives targeting a reduction of municipal landfilling to 10 percent by 2035. For climate change, awareness and behavior sat at identical levels of 3.30, which the researchers interpret as a shared failure to grasp both the causes of climate change and the urgency of responding to it, possibly because Greece’s warm Mediterranean climate makes some impacts feel distant.

Demographic patterns emerged with statistical significance. Citizens without children scored higher on awareness of water pollution (3.33 versus 3.20), climate change (3.55 versus 3.43), and waste management (3.55 versus 3.43), as well as on the aggregate awareness indicator and the global indicator. Unmarried respondents outperformed married ones on both climate change awareness (4.24 versus 3.92) and climate behavior (3.33 versus 2.64). Residents outside Athens showed greater awareness of waste management and a higher global indicator than those inside the capital, where roughly a third of Greeks live. Income, education, and employment status, by contrast, showed no significant correlations, a finding that challenges assumptions about wealth and schooling as drivers of environmental engagement.

The authors are careful to situate their results within the Greek and Mediterranean context. Environmental awareness and behavior vary considerably across countries, shaped by cultural values, institutional trust, environmental education, and the visibility of local problems. Northern Europeans, for instance, generally report higher concern and more frequent sustainable behavior, partly reflecting longer-established environmental policies. Still, the researchers argue that the indicator framework itself, integrating natural and anthropogenic dimensions across social, economic, and political parameters, is likely transferable to other Mediterranean countries facing similar pressures from climate change, water scarcity, urban air pollution, tourism, and waste. Future comparative studies, they suggest, should test the external validity of these indicators across Europe and track how awareness and behavior evolve over time.

For policymakers, the message is sobering but actionable. Awareness campaigns alone, the study implies, will not close the gap, because awareness is already high where behavior is weakest. Instead, interventions should target practical barriers, strengthen personal responsibility, and promote engagement through environmental education, community initiatives, recycling programs, energy-saving incentives, and sustainable transport options. The paradox at the heart of the data, that the best-informed citizens act least on the issue they know best, suggests that information is only the first step in a much longer chain linking knowledge to habit. Bridging that chain, the authors conclude, will require mobilizing citizens not merely to understand environmental problems but to change the daily routines that sustain them.

Subject of Research: Quantitative indicators of environmental awareness and behavior among Greek citizens

Article Title: Quantification of environmental awareness and behavior using indicators

Article References: Gareiou, Z., & Zervas, E. (2026). Quantification of environmental awareness and behavior using indicators. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 32, Article 101552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101552

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.indic.2026.101552

Keywords: environmental awareness, pro-environmental behavior, value-action gap, Greece, survey indicators, air pollution, water pollution, climate change, waste management, Likert scale, demographic factors, environmental policy