University Students Say YES to Religious Freedom—But Under Which Conditions? Profiles of Support in Croatia and Italy

This article examines whether support for religious freedom among university students in Croatia and Italy forms distinct profiles and which factors are associated with profile membership. Drawing on questionnaire data from university students in Croatia (N = 603) and Italy (N = 714), with 1170 complete cases included in the cluster analysis, K-means cluster analysis identified three profiles: Consistent Supporters (36.0%), Conditional Supporters (39.2%), and Restrictive Supporters (24.8%). Consistent Supporters combined strong endorsement of religious freedom with support for pluralism, recognition, and accommodation. Conditional Supporters endorsed religious freedom in positive absolute terms but combined this with the strongest assimilation orientation, weaker pluralism and recognition, and more selective institutional accommodation. Restrictive Supporters displayed the weakest support across most dimensions. Multinomial logistic regression showed that dominant Church favouritism and institutional religious privileging were associated with higher odds of both Conditional and Restrictive rather than Consistent membership. Croatian respondents, those with more right-wing political orientations, and those with weaker family religious socialization were also more likely to belong to both less-consistent profiles, whereas religious affiliation and self-rated religiosity were not independently significant in the final model. The findings demonstrate that support for religious freedom is multidimensional and may remain positive while becoming conditional in its public and institutional application.