The Attitudes of Citizens of the Republic of Croatia Towards Moral Issues: Conservative or Liberal?

Abstract

This article is based on the results of the third wave of the European Values Study conducted in Croatia in 2017 and 2018, on a sample of 1488 respondents, and a partial comparison with the results of the EVS research from 1999 and 2008. The article analyses attitudes towards some moral questions from the sphere of individual and social morality, and the correlation between those attitudes and religiosity, trust, political orientation (left-right), national identity and consumption of/trust in the (traditional) media and social networks, alongside the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents as an independent variable. On the basis of the results obtained in the study, we have concluded that religious people are less permissive, particularly in the field of personal morality, and in the field of soft drugs and sexuality, in terms of their attitudes to morality, than non-religious people, they have trust in institutions, they are politically more »right wing«, and they have a stronger national identity than those with a European identity. Furthermore, younger respondents, better educated male respondents, residents of larger towns and cities, residents of Istria and Primorje County, show greater permissiveness in their attitudes towards morality. We have concluded that morality in Croatia is relatively stable, with a slight shift towards permissiveness, and Croatian society is quite homogeneous in terms of its significant value foundations.