Exploring Social Attitudes Toward the Green Infrastructure Plan of the Drama City in Greece

Abstract

A complex Green Infrastructure (GI) plan has been recently put into operation in the city of Drama located in the northeastern part of Greece, aiming at the upgrading of the environmental, bioclimatic, and economic conditions of the city downtown area. Within the project, a governance network has been established to promote active social participation and increase the project’s social acceptability. This work presents the preliminary results of the first of a series of social surveys carried out within the governance network’s function to explore the attitudes of the entrepreneurs of the area, who are expected to be heavily affected by the GI plan. A total of 117 responses were collected using a questionnaire and joint dimension reduction, and clustering of the data was conducted to identify the main factors comprising the entrepreneurs’ attitudes patterns toward the GI plan. These factors involve the perceived negative impacts during the project implementation phase, the potential usefulness of the GI infrastructure, and the perceived benefits after the project completion. Three groups of entrepreneurs were identified in terms of their attitudes toward the GI plan: (a) negative to change, (b) utilitarians, and (c) positive to change. Each group was profiled according to its sociodemographic characteristics.