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Who cares for the environment? Pro-environmental and political opinions in relation to basic psychological needs. A person-centered approach

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Abstract

Effective educational activities aimed at shaping pro-environmental behavior require knowledge of the characteristics of the group to which they are to be addressed and should therefore be preceded by a diagnosis of their needs. Apart from the characteristics of the individuals, the geo-political context in which we function also plays a role in human–environmental interactions. Therefore, to better understand their role, we conducted a study aimed at examining whether three basic psychological needs and political views were related to pro-environmental opinions in a unique geopolitical situation that took place in Poland in December 2021. A representative sample of 1241 adult Polish respondents, 52.7% of whom were female, took part in an anonymous quantitative survey, based on a survey questionnaire and conducted in a research panel. We found weak correlations between the basic psychological needs satisfaction and pro-environmental opinions, as well as a moderate positive correlation between left-wing political views and pro-environmental opinions. Moreover, a cluster analysis revealed a cluster of “needs satisfaction” and “needs frustration,” and these two clusters differed, given the higher pro-environmental opinions and left-wing political views in the “needs satisfaction” group. We discuss the results in the light of the basic psychological needs theory and implications for educational and sustainable development promotion practice. The beneficiaries of this study may include not only psychologists interested in the issues of human–environment relations in the context of basic needs but also people involved in the creation and implementation of educational pro-environmental policies or adult educators.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author E.D., upon reasonable request.

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Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the EEA/Norway Grants 2014-2021 through the National Centre for Research and Development. Grant agreement NOR/IdeaLab/GREENHEAT/0006/2020.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Maria Grzegorzewska University, Institute of Education, Szczęśliwicka 40, 02-353, Warsaw, Poland

    Ewa Duda

  2. Maria Grzegorzewska University, Institute of Psychology, Szczęśliwicka 40, 02-353, Warsaw, Poland

    Michał Szulawski & Iwona Nowakowska

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  1. Ewa Duda
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  2. Michał Szulawski
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  3. Iwona Nowakowska
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Contributions

Ewa Duda: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing—original draft; Writing—review & editing.

Michał Szulawski: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Resources; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing—original draft; Writing—review & editing.

Iwona Nowakowska: Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Resources; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing—original draft; Writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Ewa Duda.

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Ethics statement

The study was approved by The Maria Grzegorzewska University Research Ethics Committee. Research was conducted in accordance with the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki and in accordance with local statutory requirements. The current study was part of an anonymous survey that was designed and conducted using Qualtrics software (version: December 2021; Copyright © 2020, Qualtrics. Qualtrics and all other Qualtrics product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of Qualtrics, Provo, UT, USA, https://www.qualtrics.com) and executed online using Ariadna (panelariadna.pl). The participants (previously registered members of the Ariadna panel) provided implied informed consent and received a remuneration – points which they could later exchange for rewards offered by the panel.

Conflict of interest

Iwona Nowakowska is an Editorial Board Member of Current Psychology.

All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Duda, E., Szulawski, M. & Nowakowska, I. Who cares for the environment? Pro-environmental and political opinions in relation to basic psychological needs. A person-centered approach. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05767-2

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