Pro-environmental intentions encourage individuals to make conscious decisions that help protect the environment, reduce waste, conserve resources, and preserve natural habitats. This study aims to assess the predictive power of environmental concern, perceived behavioral control and social norms in determining the pro-environmental intentions in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework. Methodologically we rely on Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), applied to the survey study among 2,702 university students majoring in economics, finance, management, or marketing from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Spain. The results show that the model explained 51% of the total variance of pro-environmental intentions, with the predictive power of environmental concern and perceived behavioral control at 42% and 45%, respectively, and social norms at only 6% (out of total 51% of explanatory power). The implications of our results suggest a major focus on increasing environmental concern and perceived behavioral control in behavioral interventions to support pro-environmental behavior. The effectiveness of social pressure produced by injunctive social norms proved limited. The cross-country differences were not statistically significant. More research must be done to study the relative effect of injunctive and descriptive social norms on pro-environmental behavior.

Environmental protection is often seen in conflict with individual freedom and economic growth. The proponents of environmental protection suggest that the environment is a global resource that must be protected for future generations, even at the expense of economic growth and individual freedoms. The opponents claim that environmental protection should not come at the expense of individual rights and liberties, economic growth included. This paper studies the associations between public preferences for environmental protection, economic growth, and individual freedoms in eleven post-soviet countries on a representative dataset (N = 20006, age 18+, M ± SD: 46,04 ± 17,07; 58% women, 46,8% upper education). Methodologically we rely on correlations, principal component analysis, and ordinal regression analyses. The results suggest that preferences for most personal freedoms studied predict environmental protection and economic growth preferences. In addition, preferences for civil rights, rights for democracy, gender equality, income inequality, and the low role of the army in politics predicted higher preferences for environmental protection and economic growth. Interestingly, the government’s right to video surveillance in public areas, though diminishing personal freedoms in terms of anonymity, predicted higher preferences for environmental protection and economic growth. The importance of God in lives proved to increase preferences for environmental protection but was negatively related to preferences for economic growth. We suggest the government communicate the need for environmental protection as a part of the rights for individual freedom to live in a clean environment.

The substitution of traditional energy production with renewable energy sources (RES) in the European Union (EU) represents a multidimensional issue with its pros and cons viewed differently by governments, technology companies, markets, as well as the general public. There are significant public doubts in expediency of investments in renewables in place. Our paper studies the factors related to the public opinion on renewables using a reasonable and representative sample of respondents (N = 1026) from one of the EU Member States, the Czech Republic, via a set of ordinal regression analyses with spline correction for ordinal predictors. Our results suggest that the population of the Czech Republic is split in half in its trust in renewables as a substitute to traditional energy sources. In addition, our results show that the opinions on renewables in the Czech Republic are significantly related to personal concerns on environmental protection and worries about use of nuclear energy. Moreover, we find that traditional mass media is not statistically significant, even though internet news channels and social media were statistically related to the opinions (negatively and positively, respectively). The comparison of the responses with respect to the frequency of following social media support the hypothesis of the media bubble. The empirical results indicate that public opinions on renewables are likely to be built on the information sources vulnerable to hoaxes, bubbles, and misinformation. We conclude that more media presentation on RES is needed and make some practical suggestions for the stakeholders, journalists, and relevant policymakers.

Wild mushroom foraging has a long tradition in Central European countries. Protein from wild mushrooms is an important part of Central European diets and has served historically as a meat protein substitute. In view of climate change, this protein source may become scarce. This study investigated the effects of temperature and precipitation on wild mushrooms using the Dickey–Fuller test and ordinary least squares method. The results from the Czech Republic show that when the precipitation change was increased by one unit, the change in the amount of foraged mushrooms went up by twenty-seven tons, while the factor of temperature was found to be statistically insignificant. This indicates that with a decline in precipitation, possibly due to climate change, there will be a decline in the amount of wild mushrooms foraged.

Emotional creativity (EC), which constitutes a main aspect of the general creativity concept, is often shown to be substantially related to positive emotional experiences, effective motivation, and innovation at the workplace as well as at school. However, little is known about the relationship between emotional creativity and the time people tend to spend playing video games. Nowadays, video games and virtual reality have become an important aspect of public health and psychological research. They constitute a key element of popular culture and generate considerable economic profit as part of the public entertainment industry. Our study is based on the results of an emotional creativity inventory (ECI) survey that was administered at a snowball and convenient sample of 453 respondents (aged 18–60 years, M ± SD: 23.68 ± 6.36; 66.40% women, 20.00% with higher education) from the Czech Republic who were questioned about their habits and the time they devote to playing video games. The sample country was selected as one with a long tradition of homebrew video gaming going back to the 1980s. We employed a set of multinomial regression analyses, which revealed that more time devoted to playing video games is associated with lower emotional creativity, in general, as well as with lower novelty, preparedness, and effectiveness components of emotional creativity. The negative association above was less pronounced for women than for men. Moreover, in a sample containing only women, a longer time devoted to playing video games was associated with the higher novelty component of emotional creativity (the associations with the other two components were not statistically significant for women only). Our findings might considerably contribute to the study of the general overall long-term effect of video games and the use of digital technologies in general on public health.