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Fig. 4.2
Correlation between concerns about green pleasant landscapes and disasters and number
of years of EU membership
Thirdly, there are in Table 4.5 also significant negative correlations. There is a
strong negative correlation (-0.62) between the score on the landscape and disaster
dimension and the number of years of EU membership. Figure 4.2 shows a more
complex negative correlation documenting a clear dominance of the public opinion
cleavage between, on the one hand, the opinion in the new Member States and, on
the other hand, the opinion in the old Member States. The scatter diagram shows
the extreme positions of Cyprus (CY) and Greece (GR) where some environmental
circumstances (earthquakes, extensive woodland fires, etc.) are obviously shaping
current perceptions of landscapes and natural disasters.
Finally, there are the correlations of the scores on the three components of opin-
ions about priorities of regional and cohesion policies with the explanatory variables
and the scores on the two environmental components. It appears that the opinion rep-
resented by the innovation component tends to be more intensive in richer countries
(correlation of 0.38) and older Member States (correlation of 0.44). Interestingly,
the opinion represented by the welfare component tends to show a number of nega-
tive correlations: with the GDP variable (-0.34), the globalisation measure (-0.42),
the post-materialism measure (-0.65), and the climate change component (-0.57).
These negative relationships suggest that this still very important opinion orienta-
tion (see the high mean levels in Table 4.4) on the maintenance of welfare-state
provision and services and the role and obligations of national and regional author-
ities in projects of EU regional policies tends to be intensive in less-rich and newer
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