Public interest and scholarly output on renewable energy and the shadow economy: Evidence from Google Trends and academic databases

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Type of the article: Research Article

Understanding the alignment between public interest and academic research is increasingly relevant in the context of global sustainability challenges. This study aims to investigate the relationship between societal attention, as measured by Google Trends, and scholarly output on renewable energy and the shadow economy. Using bibliometric data from Scopus and Web of Science alongside global Google Trends data from 2004 to 2025, the analysis employed Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients, Granger causality, and distance correlation to assess the strength, direction, and form of association between public search trends and academic activity. The results reveal a significant Granger-causal relationship from public searches on “renewable energy” to academic publications, with F-statistics above 5.2 (p < 0.01), and strong positive correlations (Pearson r = 0.72; Spearman ρ = 0.69; distance correlation = 0.63). In contrast, the terms “informal economy” and “feed-in tariff” demonstrated weak or inconsistent associations, with correlations below 0.25 and statistically insignificant causality tests (p > 0.1). Cross-country comparisons further highlighted uneven alignment, with India showing high search intensity (Google Trends index > 75) but relatively low publication volume (< 2% of global output). At the same time, South Africa displayed closer coherence, with both indicators moving in tandem (r ≈ 0.61). These findings underscore scholarly research’s partial and asymmetric responsiveness to public demand, varying significantly by topic and geographic context. Moreover, while Google Trends offers robust signals of societal interest, disparities in digital access and literacy reduce its universality, pointing to critical underexplored research gaps with direct policy relevance.

Acknowledgment
This study was prepared as part of the project supported by the National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic, the project 101127491-EnergyS4UA-ERASMUS-JMO2023-HEI-TCH-RSCH. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This research was funded by the grants VEGA 1/0689/23 “Sustainable growth and the geopolitics of resilience in the context of crisis prevention” and VEGA 1/0254/25 “Artificial Intelligence and FDI-invested Business Service Centers: Selected Macroeconomic and Corporate Aspects”.

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    • Figure 1. The levels of academic publication activity on renewable energy and the shadow economy over time (1984–2024), and search interest for the informal economy, renewable energy, and feed-in tariffs over the period 2004–2024
    • Figure 2. Correlation plot
    • Figure 3. Comparing the scientific publication activity (number of articles) with the public interest*
    • Figure 4. Scatterplots with smooth LOESS curves to visualize the relationships between public search interest (Google Trends) and the number of scientific articles on the interrelations of renewable energy and the shadow economy
    • Table 1. Outputs of the Granger causality tests for article count for each variable of the three Google search interest terms
    • Table 2. Outputs of the Pearson correlation test between article counts and the three Google search interest terms
    • Table 3. Outputs of Spearman’s rank correlation tests between article counts and the three Google search interest terms
    • Table 4. Outputs of Distance Correlation (dCor) between article counts and Google search interests
    • Conceptualization
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Ruslan Serhiienko, Elena Kašťáková, Vladyslav Bato, Anabela Luptáková, Vahan Avetikyan, Artsrun Avetikyan
    • Data curation
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Anabela Luptáková, Artsrun Avetikyan
    • Formal Analysis
      Serhiy Lyeonov
    • Investigation
      Serhiy Lyeonov
    • Methodology
      Serhiy Lyeonov
    • Project administration
      Serhiy Lyeonov
    • Supervision
      Serhiy Lyeonov
    • Software
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Ruslan Serhiienko, Elena Kašťáková
    • Validation
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Vladyslav Bato, Vahan Avetikyan
    • Visualization
      Serhiy Lyeonov
    • Writing – original draft
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Ruslan Serhiienko, Elena Kašťáková, Vladyslav Bato, Anabela Luptáková, Vahan Avetikyan, Artsrun Avetikyan
    • Writing – review & editing
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Ruslan Serhiienko, Elena Kašťáková, Vladyslav Bato, Anabela Luptáková, Vahan Avetikyan, Artsrun Avetikyan
    • Resources
      Elena Kašťáková, Vladyslav Bato, Anabela Luptáková
    • Funding acquisition
      Vladyslav Bato, Anabela Luptáková