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Article History

Received: 3 July 2025

Accepted: 27 May 2026

First Online: 6 June 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: This study was conducted in accordance with EU Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and with the ethical principles standard in social science research. The author’s home institution (Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Italy) does not have a formal institutional review board for social science research. In Italy, there is no statutory requirement for independent ethical review of non-biomedical social science research. The applicable national framework is provided by Legislative Decree No. 196/2003 (Personal Data Protection Code, as amended by Legislative Decree No. 101/2018 to align with EU Regulation 2016/679/GDPR), and by the Deontological Rules for processing for archiving purposes in the public interest or for scientific or historical research or statistical purposes, adopted by the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) pursuant to Art. 20(4) of Legislative Decree No. 101/2018 (published in the Official Gazette, General Series No. 176 of 29 July 2019) (available at: ). These rules govern the lawful processing of personal data for research purposes but do not require institutional ethical approval for social science studies of this nature. Ethical oversight was instead ensured through strict adherence to GDPR principles and the deontological standards of the Italian sociological research community. All research was performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations applicable when human participants are involved. All participants were adults who took part voluntarily.

: For the online survey, submission of the completed questionnaire was considered provision of implied informed consent. For the interview component, verbal informed consent was obtained prior to each interview via video call, covering the study’s aims, voluntary participation, audio-recording for transcription purposes only, and data anonymisation. Consent was documented through the audio recording. A copy of the oral consent script is provided as Supplementary Data S .