Public Support for the Right to Euthanasia: The Competing Roles of Values and Religiosity Across 35 Nations

Abstract

The determination of moral views has been frequently reduced to the effects of religiosity, although the effect of human values was acknowledged. This paper attempts to answer the question whether traditional religiosity is still the major regulator of moral attitudes and whether non-religious values have an independent impact. This is studied using attitudes toward euthanasia as a representative case of moral attitudes, since it is still widely discussed. At first, four hypotheses regarding the justifiability of euthanasia are reformulated regarding traditional religiosity, the values of autonomy, their interactions and effects of vulnerability. The multilevel analysis of the data from the 5th wave of World Values Survey showed that across 35 countries both traditional religiosity and human values have significant and independent impacts on the recognition of the right to euthanasia. Multilevel path analysis demonstrated that the effect of religiosity is partially mediated by the both values of autonomy and conservative ones. In addition, as a result of the low level of general public awareness of the topic, different kinds of capital have an inconsistent impact. We conclude with a discussion of the competing and additive roles of religiosity and the values of autonomy as modern regulators of public moral attitudes