Clustering Koreans’ environmental awareness and attitudes into seven groups: Environmentalists, dissatisfieds, inactivators, bystanders, honeybees, optimists, and moderates

Abstract

We attempted to characterize different groups of environmental awareness and attitudes and to interpret the public’s diverse interests in the environment. Responses of a five-year public survey in South Korea were clustered by k-means algorithms into the following seven groups: environmentalists, dissatisfieds, inactivators, bystanders, honeybees, optimists, and moderates. The environmentalists, who were dissatisfied with the status of the environment, had a strong orientation toward pro-environmental attitudes and practices. The inactivators revealed a discrepancy between high orientation in pro-environmental perception and attitude and weak participation in pro-environmental practices. The optimists and dissatisfieds stood distinct against each other, while the former were satisfied with the status of the environment and the environmental protection efforts of government and enterprises, the latter were not. The honeybees, who were older than others, had little knowledge of the environment but engaged in more environmental protection practices; the younger bystanders were less interested in environmental issues and practices. The moderates gave average answers to the overall questions. Cluster analysis could help in understanding the complex landscape of the public’s environmental awareness and attitudes beyond a straightforward scale from anti-to pro-environment and support the establishment of environmental policy customized to the different groups.