Regional differences in subjective, institutional, and praxeological religiosity in Serbia

In this paper, we analyse the regional distribution of religiosity in Serbia based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) from 2018, observed through four NUTS regions (Belgrade, Vojvodina, Sumadija and West Serbia, South and East Serbia). We operationalize religiosity as a multidimensional phenomenon through self-assessment of religiosity (0-10), frequency of going to religious services and frequency of prayer outside of services (1-7), whereby the last two indicators are mapped to a scale of 0-10 for comparability. Indicators were constructed and derived: the gap between private and institutional practice (prayer-rituals) and the composite index of religiosity (unweighted average of three dimensions). The findings indicate that subjective religiosity in all regions exceeds institutional practice, while regional differences are more strongly manifested as differences in “styles” of religiosity. There are private-oriented profiles (Belgrade and Vojvodina) versus balanced profiles (Sumadija and West; South and East). Due to the aggregate level of the data, the conclusions are descriptive and serve as a basis for future micro-analyses.