Civicness, social relations and environmental behaviour: a new kaleidoscope of social capital in Italy

Despite longstanding debate, research on social capital in Italy is waning. This article resumes the topic through new methodological and theoretical advances. We shed new light on the subject by combining classical social capital dimensions (civicness, social relations) with environmental attitudes. By applying an original clustering technique to individual-level data, we show that certain regions of the Mezzogiorno depart from the traditional North-South divide in social capital. The findings challenge the conventional regional cleavage by demonstrating greater pro-environment behaviours in certain Southern regions, providing fresh perspectives for sustainable development.