Slovakia and its environmental transformation: measuring environmental attitudes using the new ecological paradigm

Lenka Marcineková; Martina Štěrbová; Jozef Výbošťok; Iveta Hajdúchová; Blanka Giertliová; Rastislav Šulek; Zuzana Sarvašová; Jaroslav Šálka

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1320451

Slovakia and its environmental transformation: measuring environmental attitudes using the new ecological paradigm

Front Psychol. 2024 Apr 3:15:1320451. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1320451. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Lenka Marcineková¹, Martina Štěrbová², Jozef Výbošťok^{1

3}, Iveta Hajdúchová¹, Blanka Giertliová¹, Rastislav Šulek¹, Zuzana Sarvašová², Jaroslav Šálka¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Forest Economics and Policy, Faculty of Forestry, Technical University in Zvolen, Zvolen, Slovakia.
² Department of Forest Management, National Forest Centre - Forest Research Institute, Zvolen, Slovakia.
³ Department of Forest Harvesting, Logistics and Ameliorations, Faculty of Forestry, Technical University in Zvolen, Zvolen, Slovakia.

Abstract

Many scientists have studied the relationship between society and the environment. The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) has been repeatedly used for the analysis of public environmental attitudes, as the public pays increased attention to the environmental issues, sustainability, or the climate crisis. Our paper deals with the use of the NEP to study and identify public environmental attitudes in the Slovak Republic. We discovered a deviation of our results from the NEP, as we identified altered environmental attitudes, which we find acceptable, as environmental attitudes are a delicate set of values encompassing different, yet interrelated facets. According to our results, we were able to classify our respondents into those with technocentric, ecocentric, and resiliocentric attitudes, while up to 70% of respondents hold the ecocentric attitude. These findings could be influenced by the fact that no significant changes in the population's lifestyle have been required up to now. The NEP has proven to be an important predictive tool in assessing public environmental attitudes to determine readiness for environmental transformation. Nevertheless, we recommend using a combination of analysis that includes evaluating the impact of demographic factors to achieve higher-quality results.

Keywords: attitude; environment; environmental transformation; new ecological paradigm; public perception.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. We are grateful to the Sumforest ERA-Net Project “POLYFORES”. The paper was supported by a project of the European Regional Development Fund FORRES – ITMS 313011T678, and by the Ministry of Education of Slovak Republic grant project VEGA 1/0376/23 “Economic and legal conditions of management of non-state forests within the Slovak protected areas,” and by the Development Agency project APVV-20-0408 “Innovation of forest management plans to support participatory decision-making in the provision of forest ecosystem services.” The paper was also created with the support of the Slovak Research and Development Agency project APVV-18-0520 “Innovative methods for analyzing the performance of wood and forestry complex using the principles of green growth,” project APVV-17-0232 “Testing of new policies and business models for ensuring selected forest ecosystem services,” project APVV-20-0429 “Efficient state administration of forestry”, and project APVV-21-0290 “Spatial analyses of forest ecosystem services provision in Slovakia”.