Who Cares for Nature in Rural Areas? Exploration of Relationships between People’s Socio-Economic Characteristics and the Perception of Nature as a Value in Poland and Lithuania

Abstract

Care for nature is becoming one of the most popular topics in the scientific discourse, not only from an environmental perspective, but also in terms of strengthening people’s environmental awareness and implementing sustainable development goals. The knowledge and understanding of rural inhabitants’ attitude towards nature and their pro-environmental behaviors based on socio-economic characteristics have been less studied compared to those of urban inhabitants. The research aim is to determine the rural inhabitants’ socio-economic characteristics that influence their care for nature in Poland and Lithuania. The European Social Survey (ESS) Round 4 (2008) and Round 9 (2018) data were used in the present study. The relationships between the rural residents’ attitudes towards nature and the socio-economic variables were assessed using the chi-square test and Cramer’s V measure. The findings have suggested that the importance of nature as a value in Poland is greater than in Lithuania. Different sets of statistically significant socio-economic variables were identified in the studied countries. The research has confirmed that gender and education play an important role in the attitude towards nature, as women and more educated people tend to care more for the environment.

Environmental Identity, Connectedness with Nature, and Well-Being as Predictors of Pro-Environmental Behavior, and Their Comparison between Inhabitants of Rural and Urban Areas

“…Therefore, a new application under controlled conditions is suggested, particularly for the objective measurement of overt behaviors, the control of social desirability, and the incorporation of a representative probabilistic random sampling that provide greater rigor in the collection and quality of the data [85,86]. Another topic of interest that should be included in future research is related to the importance of new technologies in reducing the urban-rural digital divide for sustainability, given the implications that this has for approaches focused on behavioral change [87]; the influence of intergenerational differences [88]; the implications of community practices [89]; and socioeconomic, educational level, and gender [90].…”

Youth Attitudes to Nature and Climate Change: Evidence From European Social Survey

“…The research explored that youth engaging in climate action should be analysed both following local contexts and international comparisons, it effects their perceptions on climate change solutions and environmental concerns (Martyn and Dimitra, 2019;Prendergast et al, 2021). Other researchers focused on territorial differences of wellbeing and climate change interface (Vaznonienė and Vaznonis, 2021), analysed people's socioeconomic characteristics and their perception of nature as a value (Wojewódzka-Wiewiórska et al, 2022) or nature as positive factor for youth development (Gifford and Nilsson, 2014;Bowers et al (2021), etc. As it was stated by Warren (2019), youth as future generation possibly will be more affected by a failure to deal with climate change.…”