Introduction: Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) represent a crucial mechanism for citizen participation in the energy transition yet understanding the psychological and social factors driving community engagement remains limited. Drawing from ecological systems theory, this study examined individual, community, and contextual factors influencing citizen involvement in RECs.
Purpose: To identify latent profiles of citizen engagement toward RECs using a person-centered approach and examine how these profiles relate to participation intentions, addressing the complexity of motivational patterns beyond traditional variable-centered analyses.
Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 894 Italian adults (M_age = 50.6, SD = 14.3; 51.7% female). Participants completed standardized measures assessing 11 psychosocial constructs across three theoretical levels: individual (acceptability, pro-environmental values, civic engagement, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation), community (sense of community, local trust, common good orientation, responsible togetherness, subjective norms), and contextual (communication clarity regarding RECs). Latent Profile Analysis was performed using equal variances model to identify distinct engagement patterns.
Results: Model comparison indicated an optimal three-profile solution (entropy = .897, classification accuracy = 90.5%). Profile 1 "High Engagement" (35.5%) showed elevated scores across all dimensions, particularly civic engagement (+0.98 SD) and pro-environmental values (+0.61 SD). Profile 2 "Moderate/Neutral" (56.4%) displayed near-average levels on all variables. Profile 3 "Low Engagement" (8.1%) exhibited consistently low scores, especially on civic engagement (-1.22 SD) and intrinsic motivation (-1.34 SD). Counterintuitively, external validation revealed Profile 3 had the highest proportion willing to participate in RECs (74.5% vs 57.3% for Profile 1, p = .125).
Conclusions: Results demonstrate heterogeneous patterns of citizen engagement with RECs, challenging assumptions about the relationship between psychosocial engagement and behavioral intentions. The unexpected finding that low-engagement citizens showed highest participation willingness suggests complex motivational mechanisms potentially driven by economic pragmatism rather than environmental idealism. Implications for targeted community engagement strategies are discussed.