Journal of the Geographical Institute "Jovan Cvijic", SASA 2021 Volume 71, Issue 1, Pages: 43-58
https://doi.org/10.2298/IJGI2101043C
Full text ( 368 KB)
Cited by
Public perception of climate change and its impact on natural disasters
Cvetković Vladimir M. (University of Belgrade, Faculty of Security Studies, Belgrade, Serbia), vmc@fb.bg.ac.rs
Grbić Lazar (Scientific-Professional Society for Disaster Risk Management, Belgrade, Serbia), grbicbee2@gmail.com
The aim of the research is the examination of the factors influencing the
public perception of climate change and its impact on natural disasters.
This paper presents the results of quantitative research regarding testing
the central hypothesis where education is the predicting variable of public
perception of climate change and its impact on natural disasters. A
multivariate regression analysis was used, identifying the extent of the
total scores of the main dependent variables (perception of vulnerability to
climate change, perception of the climate change impact on natural
disasters, knowledge and fear scores) were associated with five demographic
and socio‐economic variables: gender, age, marital status, education level,
and employment status. A series of 208 face‐to‐face interviews were
conducted during the beginning of 2020 on the central squares in the
selected cities in Serbia, Belgrade (76.92%) and Sremska Mitrovica (23.08%).
The results showed that education level was the most effective predictor of
the mentioned research variables. Besides, employment status has been found
to affect perceptions of vulnerability, while age affects the perceptions of
climate change. Based on the obtained results, policies and strategies to
improve people's awareness of climate change must take into account a
comprehensive understanding of behavioral dispositions.
Keywords: climate change, natural disaster, public, perception