Public support for sustainable development and environmental policy: A case of the Czech Republic

• Published in: Sustainable development (Bradford, West Yorkshire, England) Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 110 - 126
• Main Authors: Čábelková, Inna, Smutka, Luboš, Strielkowski, Wadim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01-02-2022; Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Subjects: Change agents; Climate change; Climate effects; Czech Republic; Development policy; Education; Environmental policy; Global warming; God; Higher education; Internet; Life satisfaction; Mass media; Mass media effects; Mitigation; Older people; ordinal regression; Perceptions; Policy making; Public awareness; Public opinion; public perception; Regression analysis; Respondents; Scientific community; Social networks; Social organization; stakeholder engagement; Sustainability; Sustainable development; Czech Republic
• ISSN: 0968-0802; 1099-1719
• DOI: 10.1002/sd.2232

While the scientific community presents a relatively uniform conclusion on the ongoing global warming and the policies that are essential for sustainable development and the mitigation of the negative effects of climate change, the public opinion on the topic is far from uniform. This article studies the factors related to public awareness of climate change and environmental policy, public ideas on the supposed effects of climate change, the belief on whether climate change is caused by human activities, and the perceived possibilities to alleviate climate change by humans. We employ a set of ordinal multinomial regression analyses with spline corrections for ordinal predictors on a representative sample of 1021 respondents (aged 15–86 years, M ± SD: 47.15 ± 17.46; 19.4% with higher education, 50.60% women) from the Czech Republic. Our results suggest that life satisfaction, belief in God, interest in climate‐related issues, and the attitude to the European Union were the most relevant factors. Older people were less interested in climate, less aware of sustainable development and climate change, and less willing to take action. Women were more concerned with climate change compared to men. The effect of traditional mass media, Internet‐based social networks, and discussion forums, and personal discussions outside of the internet were less significant than expected. The article provides policy suggestions for enhanced stakeholder engagement as well as suggestions for further research on the topic.