Factors affecting individual actors' preferences towards environment and economic development

This study was carried out in order to determine the effects of changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions of the countries due to economic development performance differences, on the scope of the environmental protection preferences of the individuals. As environmental problems are intensifying rapidly and environmental resource stocks are getting scarce, it is crucial to preserve and ensure the balance between society and the environmental system in the long run. Therefore, it is important to investigate and improve our understanding of socioeconomic and environmental factors that affect the country level environmental protection preferences' of individuals in particular economic development phases. Considering the fact that, in different economic development stages environmental factors and socioeconomic conditions will as well be different, 47 countries included in this study were divided into three groups according to their 10-year economic development performances. With three country groups, three analyses of the same multilevel binary logistic model, consisting of environmental (ecosystem vitality/environmental resource stock, environmental health) and socioeconomic (post-materialism, age, gender, education, income, occupation status) factors were conducted. Thus, under the assumption that the individual preferences were rational; (i) environmental and socioeconomic factors affecting individual actors' environmental protection preferences in three economic development phase and (ii) the changing factor patterns due to differences in economic development performance between three country groups were introduced. As the results of the analyses state, significant factor patterns are different in three country groups as expected. In the low economic development performance group, environmental health -an indicator of the impact of pollutants on human health- and income factors are solely significant in individual actors' environmental protection preferences. While, in the high economic development performance group post-materialism, gender and education are the factors found to affect individual actors' environmental protection preferences, ecosystem vitality -an indicator of the internal environmental stock capacity-, post-materialism, gender, education, age and occupation are factors found to be significant in the middle economic development performance group. In addition, the impact of pollutants on human health is found to be the most effective factor in low economic development performance group, whereas internal environmental stock capacity is found to be the most effective factor in the high economic development performance group; stating that effective environmental factor on environmental protection preference change with economic develeopment.