At the turn of May and June 2025, the Public Opinion Research Centre of the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences focused on the attitudes of Czech citizens towards various groups of people in its regular survey using the probabilistic panel Naše společnost (Our Society). We measured the degree of social distance by asking whether the respondent would like to have the people in question as neighbours.
The lowest tolerance is for drug addicts, with nine-tenths of respondents (87%) saying they would not want them as neighbors. The next most frequently rejected are alcoholics and people with a criminal past – 73% and 63% of respondents, respectively, reject them as neighbors.
On the other hand, neither the poor nor the rich, neither the old nor the young are unwelcome neighbors – only a negligible 3% of respondents reject them.
People also do not reject neighbors with different political beliefs or Christians (3%), but half (48%) would be afraid of Muslim neighbors.
People with mental illness are perceived as problematic (48% do not want them as neighbors), as are smokers (23%), but not homosexuals or people of a different skin color (8%).
The degree of tolerance towards certain groups is influenced by age, education, declared standard of living, and life satisfaction. It is worth noting that smokers are significantly more rejected by the youngest generation.
On average, people would not want to have four of the above-mentioned groups as neighbors. Only 4% of respondents did not mention any group, while 5% of respondents mentioned 8 or more groups.
Due to a change in the CVVM survey methodology, the results of the present survey are not directly comparable to the results of previous surveys. More information about the new methodology can be found in this press release.
>> Full text is available in Czech only <<
- Download the full press release here: ov250819.pdf
- All reports from this survey: PNS_2505_2
PRINCIPAL WEBDEV