COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES OF YOUTH FROM EU MEMBER AND CANDIDATE STATES: CASE STUDY CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Worldwide, great efforts are being made in order to establish sustainable development at all levels. European Union (EU) member states are obliged to meet the requirements in the area of environmental protection. In this paper, the authors conducted a comparative study of environmental attitudes among young people from both EU transition countries and EU candidate countries. The objective was to determine the differences in environmental attitudes, environmental awareness and self-efficacy of the youth from these two groups of countries and the EU environmental policy implementation level. Results indicated that the influence of EU membership exists when it comes to the environmental attitudes of youth from the analyzed countries. Average values showed the unsatisfactory situation regarding environmental awareness and self-efficacy of respondents. In order to define the relations among environmental attitudes, self-efficacy and environmental awareness, a structural model was created. This analysis showed that these three components work the same way in both groups of countries.