Eurobarometer 51.1 (Apr-May 1999)

Attitudes and conduct on environmental protection.
Consumer protection institutions.
Topics:
1. environmental protection:
greatest worries, concerns and fears (rank order);
significance of environmental protection and environmental pollution;
most important fears and concerns in the area of environmental protection and
environmental protection areas in which fears have increased or decreased
in the last 5 years;
type and extent of the most important environmental pollution
in one's own residential surroundings;
most important national environmental protection problems;
most important future environmental influences on health;
perceived security from natural catastrophes and technical accidents
in other European countries compared with one's own country;
self-classification of extent to which informed about global as well as
current environmental problems;
extent to which informed about conduct in emergencies,
about scientific and technological development
to eliminate environmental problems;
classification of extent to which informed about measures of national or
European Government and of environmental protection organizations (scale);
self-assessment of personal contribution to protect the environment;
sources of information used in the area of environmental protection;
evaluation of reliability of selected sources of information;
special efforts in the search for information about the environment;
assessment of the efficiency of the effort of government offices
for the environment on local, regional, national, European and world-wide level;
percentage extent of readiness to pay additional costs
for selected environmentally compatible products;
environmentally compatible conduct through conscious product selection,
conserving water or electricity, environmentally compatible driving,
separating trash (scale);
laws, taxes, price increases or hoping for technical progress as
most effective measure to solve environmental problems;
preferred measures to reduce traffic in the centers of town;
judgement on the statement, human action leads to environmental catastrophe;
environmental protection and elimination of jobs;
economy and ecology as opposed.
2. Consumer protection:
self-assessment of extent to which informed about consumer rights;
knowledge of consumer protection organizations;
most important tasks of consumer protection associations;
reasons for the desire for more or less influence
of consumer protection associations;
most important problems of consumer associations;
membership in a consumer organization;
reasons for membership or non-membership;
knowledge of magazines of consumer associations;
reading consumer magazines;
occasions at which one would make use of consumer associations;
most important tasks of consumer protection associations;
preference for private or public responsibility
for the tasks of consumer protection;
personal utilization of a consumer protection institution and experiences made;
reasons for not making use of a consumer protection organization;
preferred information channels from consumer associations to consumers;
attitude to paying charges for use of consumer associations;
services of associations for which there ought to be charges;
amount of accepted annual fee for such services;
willingness to pay for such services;
preferred means of financing consumer associations
through member contributions, their services or the government;
influence of consumer associations in comparison to other
special interest groups as well as in comparison to politicians and the media;
assessment of the influence of consumer associations on public discussion.
Demography:
nationality;
marital status;
sex;
age;
number of persons in household;
number of children under 15 years in household;
occupational position;
head of household;
occupational position of head of household;
residential status;
household income.
Also encoded was:
date of interview;
time of start of interview;
length of interview;
number of persons present during interview;
willingness of respondent to cooperate;
city size;
regional code.