Dentsu Inc. (President: Yutaka Narita; Head Office: Tokyo; Capital 58,967.1 million yen) announced today the results of the 2002 Consumer Environmental Awareness and Behavior Survey, conducted as an investigation into people's understanding of environmental issues. Although an increasing number of measures to alleviate environmental problems — such as the development of environmentally sound technologies by corporations and environmentally related legislation by the government — are in place, the successful penetration of such technologies and proper functioning of new laws depend ultimately on consumers' behavior. For this reason, the need to increase people's consciousness regarding the environment and to urge them to take actions through the use of "environmental communications" is on the rise. The survey was taken to better understand the level of environmental awareness and types of behavioral patterns exhibited by consumers, i.e., the recipients of "environmental communications," to make them more effective.

Aside from the questions needed to compare results with those of 1998, this year's survey contained an additional set of questions to determine the kind of environmental actions respondents typically take on a daily basis and to measure the degree of their understanding vis-a-vis environmental terminology.

The gap between "environmental awareness" and "environmentally conscious behavior" that ensues remains wide.
Of those surveyed, 84.3% replied that they are "currently interested" in environmental issues. Though the percentage appears virtually unchanged from the 1998 level of 86.9%, the ratio of people who claimed to be highly interested in environmental issues rose by about 10%, suggesting that the overall level of people interested in environment is becoming constant.

In their actual purchasing decisions for both daily consumables and durables, however, only about 15% of consumers place importance on the environmental impact of the merchandise. Furthermore, only 9.5% of consumers typically "check the environmental-friendliness of the products to be purchased." These low numbers imply that the wide gap between "awareness" and "behavior" exhibited has not been filled.

Environmental issues of major interest
In the Tokyo metropolitan area, two issues that have direct impact on health — namely, air pollution (63.3%) and contamination by dioxin and other hazardous chemical substances (61.1%) — are the two largest areas of concern, followed by the escalation of global warming (59.8%).

Knowledge and understanding of environmental terms
Over 90% of consumers understand the principles of "energy conservation," "recycling" and "dioxin." In contrast, only 7.5% know the meaning of "reduce," which takes high priority within the government's environmental initiative on the reduction of waste.

Conscious intentions and actions
As for environmentally conscious actions people actually take or would like to take, those such as "turning off room lights when not in use" (76.8%), "proper sorting of garbage for collection" (66%), "turning off faucets completely (57.1%)" and "the selection of home appliances with energy-saving features" (54.8%) are cited most often, suggesting that consumers are inclined to take steps relating to the sorting of garbage or that offer an added benefit of cutting their cost of living.

Major factors considered when consumables and durables are selected for purchase
Of those surveyed, 15.6% said they place importance on the environmental impact of merchandise when purchasing daily consumables. This rate is mostly unchanged from the 1998 level of 16.5%. In the category of durables, 15.1% said they consider the environmental impact of the products to be purchased, which compares favorably with the 10.5% recorded in 1998.

Percentage of consumers who have bought or plan to buy environmentally friendly products and their recognition channels
Those who have purchased or plan to purchase environmentally friendly products amount to 60.2%.

The most popular recognition channel for merchandise is TV commercials, through which 49.3% of the respondents said they learn about the products.

Evaluation of corporate efforts to disseminate environmentally related information and recognition channels for consumers
Of those surveyed, 23.2% believe corporations are performing satisfactorily in the dissemination of environmentally related information, as opposed to only 16.8% in 1998. Of all the channels, advertising scored the highest (66.3%). By media, TV received 60.6%, while newspapers were rated 31.4%.

Differences in environmental awareness and behavior by gender and marital status
When respondents were classified into four groups by gender and their respective marital status, both the married male and married female segments exhibited stronger interest in environmental issues than their unmarried counterparts. In particular, 29.0% of unmarried males said they were not and had never been interested in environmental problems. The only issue in which more than 50% of all four groups showed interest was global warming.

Detailed data on the research is available in Japanese only, and can be downloaded from Dentsu's Japanese website.