ATTITUDES TO CLIMATE CHANGE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC, HUNGARY AND POLAND

Successful climate change mitigation and adaptation depend on several factors that are crucial for the effective implementation of the environmental policy tools in a country. One of these is the people´s attitudes to this issue, their awareness about it, and their willingness to change their behaviour in a way that will contribute to a cleaner environment. In this paper, we present the results of analysis that examines the public attitudes to climate change in three selected countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, in comparison with other countries which participated in the survey. The analysis is based on data from the European Social Survey Round 8 collected from 2016-2017, on a sample of 44, 387 respondents from 23 countries. We analyse the attitudes related to climate change beliefs, concerns about climate change and energy security and energy preferences. The analysis confirmed the relationship between concerns about the energy affordability and energy dependency and energy supply. The final part of analysis refers to attitudes to the environmental policy tools. Financial incentives, taxation and other economic instruments are effective and efficient ways to meet environmental policy objectives and have to be set in a way that will contribute to successful climate change. The analysis confirmed the popularity of subsidised renewable energy in reducing climate change.