Comparative Study : Environmental Attitudes and Beliefs Among Men and Women in Czechia and Sweden

Sammanfattning: Within this thesis, the diversity of environmental attitudes and their predictors among men and women in Czechia and Sweden is elaborated on based on ISSP 2010 Environment III data. Measuring the level of environmental attitudes and beliefs is quite complex, however the New Ecological Paradigm was used as a well-established measuring tool indicating the relationship and opinions of people concerning environment. Gender, or sex in this case, is one of the predictors that are often being mentioned impacting environmental attitudes. This thesis compares two similarly sized countries, Czechia and Sweden, and explores the character of the relationship subsisting between their environmental attitudes and gender in/equality with the use of statistical tools and gender lenses application. The thesis was inspired by the lack of studies connecting both mentioned countries being analysed in an intersectional manner. In the analysis, significant differences were found between both Czechia and Sweden, and men and women in what influences predictors for environmental attitude. The hypothesis assuming there would be notably lesser differences within Swedish men and women than Czech men and women was not confirmed. This study combining statistical methods and gender lenses illustrates that in understanding complex phenomena like environmental attitudes and beliefs, it is important to look at the issue from an intersectional perspective, and therefore, it should be emphasized gender (or sex in this case) explains only an infinitesimal proportion of environmental attitudes and beliefs, other variables such as country affiliation, age, education, religious affiliation, environmental knowledge, household income and in some instances also environmental behaviour seem to influence environmental attitudes and beliefs to a higher extent than gender and sex.