ABSTRACT
The subject of the chapter is the link between the modernization processes and the environmental attitudes in the city of Split, Croatia. Recent work in environmental sociology suggests that ecological attitudes are a product of the wider matrix of the social relations. Risk Society theory and Ronald Inglehart’s version of modernization theory are often used to inform the explanation of the interrelations between wealth, postmaterialist values and environmental attitudes. Among the numerous studies based on these approaches, most of them were centred either on the macro-level of the nation states or the micro-level of the individuals. This chapter has been motivated by the need to study urban environmental quality, as it is expected to have a moderating effect in the link between the socio-cultural factors and environmental attitudes. Research results based on the population sample of citizens of Split indicate that there is no empirical support for the hypothesis of socio-cultural factors being the most important predictor of environmental attitudes in developed societies. Variations in environmental orientations are better explained with particular modernization elements such as political participation than with a broad postmaterialism concept. This association is moderated by environmental quality, which was analysed via multilevel analysis at the city zones level. Study results show that markedly different patterns of association among the environmental quality perception and the environmental attitudes, implying that differences in environmental quality fundamentally change the structure of environmental attitudes.
