Eurobarometer 93.2 (2020)

Since the early 1970s the European Commission´s Standard & Special Eurobarometer are regularly monitoring the public opinion in the European Union member countries. Principal investigators are the Directorate-General Communication and on occasion other departments of the European Commission or the European Parliament. Over time, candidate and accession countries were included in the Standard Eurobarometer Series. Selected questions or modules may not have been surveyed in each sample. Please consult the basic questionnaire for more information on country filter instructions or other questionnaire routing filters. In this study the following modules are included: 1. Europeans, agriculture and the CAP, 2. Making our food fit for the future – Citizens’ expectations, 3. Attitudes of Europeans towards tobacco and electronic cigarettes.<br>Topics: 1. Europeans, agriculture and the CAP: future importance of agriculture and rural areas in the EU; awareness of the support given to farmers by the EU through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); Common Agricultural Policy benefits all EU citizens and not only farmers; preferred main objectives of EU agriculture and rural development policy; assessment of selected EU activities in the context of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as appropriate: ensuring a fair standard of living for farmers, economic growth in rural areas, ensuring reasonable food prices, guaranteeing food supply in the EU, ensuring sustainable food production, environmental protection and tackling climate change, ensuring quality of agricultural products; main responsibilities of farmers in society; importance of each of the following CAP priorities: developing research and innovation in the agri-food sector, strengthening the role of farmers in the food chain, encouraging young people to enter in agricultural sector, boosting investment and growth in the agriculture or food sector, help tackle climate change, guaranteeing food supply, ensuring sustainable management of natural resources, reducing disparities in the development of different regions and territories of the EU; attitude towards the contribution of the CAP to the aforementioned issues; assessment of the amount of financial support from combined national public expenditure and from the EU budget to farmers as appropriate; assumed reasons for spending 35 % of EU budget on Common Agricultural Policy; desired development of financial support to farmers over the next ten years; importance of selected factors in purchasing decisions of food: provenance, respect of local tradition and know-how, quality ensuring label, short supply chain; awareness of selected logos; attitude towards the following aspects of food products from organic agriculture: safer, better quality, more expensive, better taste, produced under better environmental practices, produced with restricted use of pesticides or antibiotics, respect higher animal welfare standards, difficult to find in shops; attitude towards EU subsidies for farmers that carry out agricultural practices beneficial to climate and environment; attitude towards the following statements on trade barriers to imports of agricultural products: refusal of trade barriers, trade barriers with exception of imports from developing countries, imports only under the precondition of compliance to EU standards; assessment of trade agreements between the European Union and other countries as positive for: EU agriculture, consumers of food products; assessment of each of the following issues with regard to rural areas in the own country: job opportunities, education facilities, health services, access to high-speed internet connections, access to leisure and cultural activities, environment and landscape, transport infrastructure; development with regard to the aforementioned issues compared to ten years ago; development of the area covered by forests compared with ten years ago: in the own country, across the EU as a whole; most important benefits provided by forests; attitude towards the following statements on agriculture and climate change: agriculture is one of the major causes of climate change, EU farmers need to change the way they work in order to fight climate change even if that means that EU agriculture will be less competitive, agriculture has already made a major contribution in fighting climate change, respondent is willing to pay 10 % more for agricultural products that are produced in a way that limits their carbon footprint.

2. Making our food fit for the future – Citizens’ expectations: most important aspects with regard to buying food: personal ethics and beliefs, food safety, cost, nutrient content, taste, origin, convenience, minimally processed, amount of shelf-life available, impact on environment and climate, other; most important characteristics of sustainable food; most important aspects of a sustainable diet; most important characteristics of a healthy and sustainable diet; most important actors with regard to making our food systems sustainable; frequency of eating a healthy and sustainable diet; most important factors that would help respondent to adopt a healthy and sustainable diet; attitude towards the following statements: regulations should force farmers, fishers, food manufacturers etc. to meet more stringent sustainability standards, producers and food companies should themselves take action to raise their products’ sustainability standards, EU should be more proactive in promoting food sustainability worldwide, food prices should reflect costs for society, public authorities are doing enough to encourage and promote food sustainability, marketing and advertising of foods that do not contribute to healthy, sustainable diets should be restricted, food offered in public institutions should be sustainable, moving to stricter sustainability standards could mean that we do not produce enough food to feed people, moving to stricter sustainability standards could increase food prices, respondent is ready to spend more money for food which protects health and the planet, there should be one logo to help choose healthy and sustainable foods, information on food sustainability should be compulsory on food labels; main concerns with regard to food fraud: respondent does not want to be misled about the true qualities of a food, respondent wants to feel as confident in food imported into the EU as in that produced in the EU, respondent wants to be certain that food with specific characteristics meets EU standards, respondent does not want to put own health at risk.

3. Attitudes of Europeans towards tobacco and electronic cigarettes: smoking status; age at starting smoking regularly; smoking experiences; current and past consumption frequency of selected tobacco products: e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products; current and past consumption frequency of selected tobacco products: boxed cigarettes, hand-rolled cigarettes, cigarillos, cigars, pipe, e-cigarettes with nicotine, e-cigarettes without nicotine, heated tobacco products; daily consumption of cigarettes; daily consumption of heated tobacco sticks or units; consumption frequency of water pipe and oral tobacco; consumption frequency of products containing cannabis in the last twelve months; assessment of the harmfulness of: e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products; types of e-cigarettes used: reusable device that can be recharged with a single-use cartridge that is thrown away after use (pod-system), refillable device which contains a tank that is refilled with an e-liquid from a separate container, disposable device which is thrown away after use, other; attractiveness of the following products: e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products; e-cigarette liquid flavours used at least on a monthly basis: tobacco, menthol or mint, fruit, candy, alcohol, nicotine salts based liquid, other; helpfulness of the following products to help tobacco smokers to quit: e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products; most important factors with regard to start using e-cigarettes; most important factors in the decision to start using heated tobacco products; attitude towards a regulation as strict as cigarettes of: e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products; helpfulness of electronic cigarettes or similar device to stop or reduce own tobacco consumption; attitude towards keeping the following tobacco products in shops out of sight: e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products; first used smoking product; presence of tobacco smokers at the last visit in a bar or a restaurant; presence of tobacco smokers at the last visit: on an outdoor terrace of a drinking or eating establishment, at outdoor events, in outdoor spaces intended for use by children or adolescents; presence of people using e-cigarettes or heated tobacco products at the last visit inside: a bar, a restaurant, another public space; attempt to quit smoking; attempt to stop using e-cigarettes or heated tobacco products; measures taken in order to quit smoking: nicotine replacement medications, electronic smoking device, heated tobacco products, oral tobacco, chewing or nasal tobacco, medical support or quit line services, no assistance; measures taken in order to stop using e-cigarettes or heated tobacco products; attitude towards selected measures: packets without colours, logos, and advertising elements (plain packaging), banning the use of e-cigarettes or heated tobacco products in environments where smoking is prohibited, banning flavours in e-cigarettes; frequency of the perception of advertisements for the following products in the past twelve months in the own country: smoking tobacco products, e-cigarettes (incl. liquids and refill cartridges), heated tobacco products; places of advertisements for smoking tobacco products: newspapers or magazines, online social networks or blogs, retailers’ websites, other websites, mobile phone applications, billboards, posters or other types of advertising in public spaces, sales points, in or around cafés or bars, through e-cigarettes appearing in TV shows or movies (incl. streaming services), events sponsored or organised by e-cigarette companies, through sales of other products, through free distribution of e-cigarettes samples or their components, through distribution of promotional items by tobacco and e-cigarette companies, railway stations or airports, cinemas, other; places of advertisements for electronic cigarettes, e-liquids or refill cartridges; places of advertisements for heated tobacco products.

Demography: age; nationality; left-right self-placement; marital status; age at end of education; highest completed level of full time education; sex; occupation; professional position; type of community; household composition and household size; own a mobile phone and fixed (landline) phone; financial difficulties during the last year; internet use (at home, at work, at school); self-reported belonging to the working class, the middle class or the upper class of society; life satisfaction; frequency of discussions about political matters on national, European, and local level; general direction things are going in: own country, EU, USA; EU image; optimism about the future of the EU; satisfaction with the democracy in the own country; own voice counts in the own country and in the EU.

Additionally coded was: respondent ID; country; date of interview; size of locality; region; weighting factor.