engleski

Studying the Perception of the EU Membership Implications on Croatia: A Comparative Analysis

Six years after Croatia became an EU member state and despite the current positive macroeconomic indicators, the country is faced with severe social challenges, mainly expressed through the demographic exodus of mostly younger and more educated population, as well as rising social and regional economic development inequalities. Aware of the afore- mentioned developments, we have decided to perform a focused online survey about the various aspects of the perceived impact of the EU membership for Croatia, emphasizing possible perceived benefits, negative influences, missed opportunities, and potential risks. The survey was performed on students of the University North, a public university located in two cities, Koprivnica, with 30 000 inhabitants, and Varazdin, with cca 50 000 inhabitants. Both cities have work intensive food production, pharmaceutical and consumer goods industries, with mostly medium low wages. We used the CAWI method. Google form was used as a survey method, combining mainly single and multiple choices, obligatory and voluntary questions. The sample size of 174 participants can be thought as a constraint and authors plan to widen the sample size with further research. In order to test the hypotheses, we set in this paper the data were further analysed using SPSS. Kolmogorov – Smirnov normality test showed the data do not have normal distribution. After testing for normality, Kruskal – Wallis test was employed. The results indicated there is a statistically significant difference in attitudes by age, sex and enrolment status. Following this initial conclusion, a post – hoc Mann-Whitney test was used to analyse which groups have statistically significant different means.

the European Union (the EU), Croatia, online survey, CAWI method, perception

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