D10 - Household Behavior: GeneralReturn

The struggle toward an environmentally sustainable economy brings forward many difficult decisions and actions. Governments may confront substantial resistance from the general public as they try to promote or enforce policies that will be necessary to secure a stable natural environment and sustainable economic performance for generations to come. Understanding the current stances of the population towards environmental issues is a prerequisite for any successful implementation of environmentally concerned policies. The goal of this paper is to provide (based on primary data) structured information on generational and other socio-demographic differences in individual environmental stances and related lifestyle preferences. Given the Likert-scale based data collected from the questionnaires, we use ordered multinomial logistic regression as our main tool for quantitative analysis. Major differences in stances are identified between genders and among different age and education groups. Women and younger individuals exhibit higher levels of environmental awareness. Lifestyle preferences segmentation provides additional context for our analysis and the basis for incentivising and targeting environmental policies. Overall, our contribution brings forward fundamental and actionable information that can facilitate many of the complicated decisions and policy actions leading toward environmental sustainability.
Implications for Central European audience: Environmental protection and sustainability plans are thoroughly implemented into most of EU policies, programs, and subsidies. However, for Central European economies, the transition towards sustainable and environmentally neutral economies may be more complicated as compared to “old” member states. Weaker GDP per capita, a historically strong coal-based energy sector and prevailing energy-intensive production segments imply a slower and more costly transition. Our analysis can be used to ease some of the impediments and complications lying ahead.