Abstract

We attempted to characterize different groups of environmental awareness and attitudes and to interpret the public’s diverse interests in the environment. Responses of a five-year public survey in South Korea were clustered by k-means algorithms into the following seven groups: environmentalists, dissatisfieds, inactivators, bystanders, honeybees, optimists, and moderates. The environmentalists, who were dissatisfied with the status of the environment, had a strong orientation toward pro-environmental attitudes and practices. The inactivators revealed a discrepancy between high orientation in pro-environmental perception and attitude and weak participation in pro-environmental practices. The optimists and dissatisfieds stood distinct against each other, while the former were satisfied with the status of the environment and the environmental protection efforts of government and enterprises, the latter were not. The honeybees, who were older than others, had little knowledge of the environment but engaged in more environmental protection practices; the younger bystanders were less interested in environmental issues and practices. The moderates gave average answers to the overall questions. Cluster analysis could help in understanding the complex landscape of the public’s environmental awareness and attitudes beyond a straightforward scale from anti- to pro-environment and support the establishment of environmental policy customized to the different groups.

Highlights

  • Public surveys play a significant role in unveiling the public opinion hidden under the surface

  • This study aimed to identify South Korean public opinion groups on environmental awareness and attitudes by using cluster analysis on data acquired from a five-year public survey with 5000 respondents

  • They had similar scores in environmental satisfaction (A1, A2) and pro-environmental attitude (B2); they differed in number of environmental protection practices (C1) and interest in environmental problems (B1) or environmental literacy (A5) and evaluation on environmental protection efforts of societal factors (D2–D6) (Table 2)

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Summary

Introduction

Eurobarometer has published reports in the series “Attitudes of European Citizens towards the Environment” (prior to 1999, “Europeans and Their Environment”) 15 times since 1982, and in the series on nuclear safety, six times from 1998 to 2009 [10], providing information on different opinions and their temporal changes among up to 28 European countries. Such surveys raise the awareness of decision makers, academics, and the public on the standards and trends concerning people’s thoughts on the environment

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