Citizen dynamics and structural constraints: What behavioral and organizational levers enable the emergence and sustainability of energy communities in Wallonia?
Files
Guiot_5834200_2025.pdf
Open access - Adobe PDF
- 2.18 MB
Details
- Supervisors
- Faculty
- Degree label
- Abstract
- This thesis analyses the behavioural and organisational conditions that enable the emergence and sustainability of citizen energy communities in Wallonia. Although the European legal framework supports these initiatives, their practical implementation remains limited in the region. The study seeks to understand why these projects are struggling to develop despite the availability of a legal framework, and identifies the non-economic levers that may explain citizen engagement. The analysis is based on a qualitative survey conducted through semi-structured interviews with citizens involved in local communities, project coordinators and institutional actors. These field experiences are compared with several theoretical frameworks from the social sciences and environmental psychology, including the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the Values-Beliefs-Norms (VBN) model, the warm glow and social recognition. The results reveal several structural barriers, but also driving factors such as environmental commitment, community trust and symbolic anchoring. Organisational conditions such as territorial anchoring, the role of third-party facilitators and the reproducibility of models appear to be decisive in promoting a truly participatory energy transition in Wallonia.