The Need for Sustainability, Equity, and International Exchange: Perspectives of Early Career Environmental Psychologists on the Future of Conferences.

At the 2019 and 2021 International Conference on Environmental Psychology, discussions were held on the future of conferences in light of the enormous greenhouse gas emissions and inequities associated with conference travel. In this manuscript, we provide an early career researcher (ECR) perspective on this discussion. We argue that travel-intensive conference practices damage both the environment and our credibility as a discipline, conflict with the intrinsic values and motivations of our discipline, and are inequitable. As such, they must change. This change can be achieved by moving toward virtual and hybrid conferences, which can reduce researchers' carbon footprints and promote equity, if employed carefully and with informal exchange as a priority. By acting collectively and with the support of institutional change, we can adapt conference travel norms in our field. To investigate whether our arguments correspond to views in the wider community of ECRs within environmental psychology, we conducted a community case study. By leveraging our professional networks and directly contacting researchers in countries underrepresented in those networks, we recruited 117 ECRs in 32 countries for an online survey in February 2022. The surveyed ECRs supported a change in conference travel practices, including flying less, and perceived the number of researchers wanting to reduce their travel emissions to be growing. Thirteen percent of respondents had even considered leaving academia due to travel requirements. Concerning alternative conference formats, a mixed picture emerged. Overall, participants had slightly negative evaluations of virtual conferences, but expected them to improve within the next 5 years. However, ECRs with health issues, facing visa challenges, on low funding, living in remote areas, with caretaking obligations or facing travel restrictions due to COVID-19 expected a switch toward virtual or hybrid conferences to positively affect their groups. Participants were divided about their ability to build professional relationships in virtual settings, but believed that maintaining relationships virtually is possible. We conclude by arguing that the concerns of ECRs in environmental psychology about current and alternative conference practices must be taken seriously. We call on our community to work on collective solutions and less travel-intensive conference designs using participatory methods. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2022 Köhler, Kreil, Wenger, Darmandieu, Graves, Haugestad, Holzen, Keller, Lloyd, Marczak, Međugorac and Rosa.

Mladi u Hrvatskoj i populizam: analiza »plodnog tla« za razvoj populizma među mladima u gradu Zagrebu primjenom mješovite metode

Recentne međunarodne studije izvještavaju o porastu izbornog uspjeha populističkih političkih stranaka među mlađom populacijom. U ovom je radu istraženo postoji li »plodno tlo« za prihvaćanje populizma među mladima u Zagrebu na temelju hrvatskih rezultata projekta Memory, Youth, Political Legacy and Civic Engagement (MYPLACE). Korištena je mješovita metoda – tematska analiza 61 polustrukturiranog intervjua i regresijska analiza provedena na anketnim podacima prikupljenim na uzorku od 1.216 mladih u dobi od 16 do 25 godina. Kvalitativna je analiza indicirala postojanje analogija u političkim stavovima intervjuiranih mladih s trima idejama koje su u temelju modela populizma Casa Muddea (»narod je dobar i pravedan«, »politička elita je pokvarena« i »treba se provoditi opća volja naroda«). Također, dio je sugovornika zastupao neke od uobičajenih ideoloških komponenti populizma – nacionalizam i radikalni egalitarizam. U kvantitativnom dijelu rada analiza je sužena na samo jednu dimenziju populizma – radikalnu desnu varijantu. S obzirom na to da u vrijeme istraživanja u Hrvatskoj nisu postojale utjecajnije populističke stranke, analiza je s podržavanja političkih stranaka usmjerena na podržavanje ideja. Za kriterijsku varijablu regresijske analize izabrana je preferencija političkog sustava s jakim vođom koji nije pod kontrolom parlamenta. Ta preferencija, uz autoritarna svojstva, sadržava i jak populistički potencijal u suvremenim demokracijama. Analize su pokazale da su stavovi protiv elita i protiv sustava institucija kod mladih povezani s preferencijom nedemokratskoga jakog vođe, kao i autoritarnost te nekoliko radikalnijih desnih stavova. I kvalitativni i kvantitativni nalazi upućuju na to da postoji plodno tlo za razvoj populizma među mladima u Zagrebu, no potrebne su daljnje studije kako bi se istražio taj kompleksan i u Hrvatskoj dosad gotovo neistražen fenomen