CITIZENS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENVIRONMENT IN URBAN SETTINGS OF NORTHERN SERBIA: AN EXPLORATORY EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN NOVI SAD MUNICIPALITY

Abstract

To identify priorities for urban environmental management and formulate appropriate projects and programs, it is necessary to know environmental problems and their impacts on humans and the ecosystem. Cities are not static entities and the future of urban ecology depends on understanding the ways in which humans affect environment. To fully understand it, it requires viewing humans as part of ecosystem and taking into account their attitudes, activities and behaviours. The paper reports results of an empirical research about citizens’ attitude towards environment and urban ecology. The objective was to evaluate the citizens' attitude towards ecological problems in Novi Sad and to check their links with socio-demographic characteristics. A total of 126 completed questionnaires were collected. The results indicate that respondents first recognized directly observable ecological problems such as the lack of recycling containers and illegal landfills. Five of each10 respondents acknowledge that personally take care very much of the environment (55.6 %) and almost 8 of each 10 consider that their fellow citizens in the municipality need higher environmental education (89.7 %). Results also indicate that 72 % of younger respondents (24 years and less) would cultivate the city's urban gardens in the occasion that the municipality grants the use of their unused land area. The findings of the study show that there exists willingness to change behaviours, and the emphasis should be given to bottom-up and participatory voluntary actions. Recently, citizen-based initiatives related to promotion of healthy lifestyles and sustainable development have begun to emerge.

Keywords: citizens’ attitudes, environment, environmental problems.

Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2015.013