Public attitudes to welfare, climate change and energy in the EU and Russia

METHODS

Cross-national analyses of survey and contextual data were used to examine discrepancies and similarities, as well as diverging and converging trends between public attitudes to these topics, thus unraveling the sources and patterns of mutual understanding and cooperation and of potential conflicts in and between EU countries and Russia. The research was based on the collection of survey data and the analyses of both existing and new data sets. Data were collected through the European Social Survey. The ESS is an academically driven biennial cross-national survey, measuring the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of diverse populations. It has been awarded European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) status in December 2013. PAWCER allowed Russia to join ESS Round 8, for which fieldwork started in September 2016 and so created a basis for long-term cooperation. PAWCER delivered innovative and relevant knowledge on attitudes towards solidarity and energy issues by:

1. delivering high quality, comprehensive and cross-culturally comparable data on two important issues for today’s societies in Europe and Russia integrated in a broad survey including other important public attitudes like political trust or basic human values;
2. building on current state-of-the-art research in the two topics but expanding it to the Russian context;
3. disclosing similarities and differences between attitudes towards solidarity and energy issues within and between countries in Europe and Russia, thus pointing towards areas of mutual understanding as well as potential conflict using the ESS data.

The European Centre was involved in WP 3 that focuses on “Public Attitudes towards the Welfare State”. The aim was to explore similarities and differences of attitudes and values towards solidarity and welfare states within and between countries in Europe and Russia.