An evidence review of existing polling and wider research was conducted, identifying gaps in the relevant literature. On this basis, the survey was drafted by Diffley Partnership, with support from a steering group comprising experts from various environmental charities and organisations.
The fieldwork was conducted online between 25th-31st August, with sample of 4,227 members the British adult (16+) population. This included 2,140 responses in England, 1,075 in Scotland, and 1,012 in Wales, allowing for meaningful and robust regional disaggregation and analysis. Responses were weighted to the British population by age, sex, and region, with corresponding targets derived from the Office for National Statistics’ data
A recent research project for People’s Postcode Lottery sought to assess how accurately people understand and estimate the impacts of certain environmental actions, and what would make people more likely to adopt these positive behaviours.
We found a tendency to overestimate the impact of day-to-day behaviours (such as recycling or active travel), and to underestimate the relative impacts of larger, high-impact lifestyle shifts (such as switching to an electric vehicle, flying less, or cutting down on meat and dairy). Despite these misconceptions, people were more likely to undertake an action when they perceived it to be more impactful.
We also identified a number of barriers to uptake of certain behaviours, and especially those which were more impactful. These largely fell into four categories: financial barriers, policy-related barriers, knowledge barriers, and lifestyle barriers.
This project spanned all of Great Britain, weighted to allow for both GB-wide analysis, and disaggregation for each constituent country and region.