Perceptions of Resilience in Critical Infrastructure and Essential Services in Romania: Evidence from a Gen Z Sample

Critical infrastructure and essential services are very important for ensuring economic stability, well-being of the population and effective response to crises. As resilience is analyzed and usually addressed through different indicators, while the perception-based evaluations have been less explored, especially generations-related, this study comes towards this gap and examines perceptions of resilience in critical infrastructure and essential services in Romania from a sample predominantly composed of Generation Z respondents. The research is performed based on data collected through a structured survey, distributed via online channels. It involves quantitative statistical methods appropriate for ordinal and related sample data. There are used descriptive statistics, combined with reliability and consistency tests (Kendall’s tau-b and McNemar’s test), as well as repeated-measures analysis combined with sphericity corrections, and nonparametric procedures (Friedman and Durbin-Conover tests). The analyses were performed using R statistical software. The results show significant differences in perceived resilience across the essential service sectors: water distribution and sewage services are perceived as the most resilient, followed by telecommunications and transport, while energy distribution and healthcare are perceived as being less resilient. Moreover, significant differences are identified in the perceived importance of the measures to enhance resilience, with contingency planning and public outreach ranked as top priorities. In parallel, perceived weaknesses are dominated by systemic and governance-related factors, namely underfunding, bureaucracy and poor inter-institutional collaboration. Considering management and applied economics perspectives, the findings of the analysis demonstrate the fact that the perception-based indicators are valuable complementary tools for resilience assessment, offering relevant insights for policymakers and managers seeking to align resilience strategies with the expectations of younger generations.