Abstract

A sustainable development cannot be achieved without strategies and policies aiming to preserve the natural resources and ecosystems. Along with collective actions, increasing the level of general awareness regarding environmental protection, nowadays, in the context of the actual environmental crisis, is almost mandatory also at individual
level. In our study, we analyzed the evolution of perceptions related to the priority given to environmental protection in the eight development
regions of Romania, using data from World Values Survey (waves 1994-
1998; 2005-2009; 2010-2014; 2017-2020). The entry data showed an
interesting evolution of these perceptions and highlighted two regions
with significant levels of concern towards environmental protection: West and Bucharest-Ilfov. We also attempted to identify if there are different regional patterns regarding the actions for protecting environment, i.e. the expenditures for environmental protection, the active involvement in ecological movements, the behavior towards municipal waste recycling, existence of green spaces, as indicators of the level of concrete participation in pro-environmental activities, in relation to the average personal incomes and spending. In this regard, we applied the Principal Component Analysis and the Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, as a complementary measure for the first one. The results showed major differences between the eight regions of Romania, observing that the ones with high values of medium personal income and spending also register high levels of involvement in environmental protection. The major differences were observed between Bucharest-Ilfov, on one hand, and, North-East, South-Muntenia and South-West Regions of Romania, on the other hand.