The following report on a new National Environmental Survey was written by Robert Cameron Mitchell of RFF's research stag who conducted the study.
IN FEBRUARY 1970, several months before Earth Day, then President Nixon presented his environmental message to Congress, in the course of which he declared that pollution "may well become the major concern of the American people in the decade of the '70s." In a recent issue of Resources, the past seven years of poll data on environmental and resource issues was reviewed, and it was concluded that while the environment may not be the major concern of the public as we approach the end of the '70s, it had definitely settled in to become an important enduring social concern. Despite some predictions that support for environmental protection would weaken once the Earth Day fad wore off and the enormous expense involved in pollution control became apparent, no sign of the expected decline was visible in any of the polls by the end of 1977.
Since that analysis was published, a survey of current public opinion on environmental and energy matters has been conducted as part of a Resources for the Future study of the environmental movement. For this comprehensive National Environmental Survey, over one thousand randomly selected respondents were interviewed by phone in July of this year. The forty-five questions covered a wide range of environmental issues as well as a full set of background questions about the respondents, making this one of the most complete studies of its kind to date.
The RFF study was designed to make as rigorous a test as possible of the hypothesis that environmentalism is an enduring concern. The interviewing took place just weeks after California voted for Proposition 13 by a 2-to-1 margin and the media declared the "tax revolt" to be spreading across the country. During the interview period, the inflation rate topped 10 percent, and the well-publicized multimillion dollar Tellico Dam stood uncompleted, thanks to the diminutive but endangered snail darter. A number of the survey questions directly posed the trade-off between environmental protection and cost, while others tapped the respondents' concern with inflation, unemployment, and taxes. To facilitate the analysis of trends, many questions were repeated from previous national polls.
The results of the survey are striking. Although the respondents are deeply concerned about inflation and taxes, their support for environmental protection is strong and unwavering, and their sympathy with the environmental movement is at a high level, with no sign of a backlash.
Seriousness of environmental problems. The public continues to consider pollution a serious problem. Respondents to the RFF survey were asked to evaluate the seriousness of five major social problems, including air and water pollution. Although the results, summarized in table 1, agree with other current polls in demonstrating the public's high level of concern about inflation, they also show that approximately one person out of three rates air and water pollution as "very serious," placing pollution at the same level as the energy shortage and slightly above unemployment in perceived seriousness. At another point in the interview, the respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement that "environmental problems are not as serious as some people would have us believe." Two out of every three persons disagreed.
Table I. "How serious do you feel [inflation, etc.] is in this country? Is it very serious, serious, or not serious?"
This question is a variant of one used in past Harris surveys
Although the public clearly does not consider environmental problems to be solved, some trends appear which suggest that people are becoming somewhat more optimistic about the state of the environment.
- When asked about the progress which "we as a nation have made in reducing air and water pollution throughout the country," 72 percent of the RFF sample said "some" or "a great deal." This is a higher level than the roughly comparable data on this topic from previous Potomac Associates' national polls, which showed an increasing belief in progress, from 50 percent in 1972 to 59 percent in 1976.
- Past Harris polls for Ebasco Services in 1975 and 1976 showed only 6 percent of the public at that time viewed air and water pollution as "not serious," significantly lower than the RFF 1978 level of 18-20 percent.
- The RFF study replicated a question frequently used over the years by the Harris Survey, which asks people to say whether they think the "quality of life" has improved, stayed the same, or grown worse compared with ten years ago. Harris has shown, and analysis of the RFF data has confirmed, that environmental issues are an important component of the public's perception of the quality of life. The trends in figure 1 reveal a steady increase since 1975 in the proportion of the public who believe that the quality of life has improved.
Figure 1. Attitudes Toward the Quality of Life
While these gleanings from trend data suggest an increase in optimism, it must be emphasized that the public is by no means sanguine about further improvement. For example, when asked to rate the quality of the environment ten years ago, today, and ten years hence, virtually as many people rated the quality of the environment lower today compared with their rating for ten years ago (19 percent), as felt that things had improved (21 percent). Of considerable interest is the high level of their pessimism about the future. Only 20 percent believe that there will be an improvement in the quality of the environment ten years from now compared with today, while the remainder think things will be the same (68 percent) or worse (13 percent).
Support for environmental protection. There seems to be a widespread assumption that public support for environmental programs will automatically weaken in the face of competing pocket-book issues such as the cost of pollution control, the energy crisis, stagflation or today's inflationary spiral, and concern about taxes. Whenever such economic issues have arisen in the past, however, environmental public support has continued to hold firm. According to the findings of the RFF survey, this continues to be the case in 1978.
The question was, "All in all, compared with ten years ago, do you feel the quality of life in this country has grown worse, improved, or stayed the same?" "Don't know" and "no response" categories are omitted. (1973-1977 data are from Harris Polls; 1978 data are from RFF survey.)
The respondents were asked five questions, repeated from previous polls, which directly raised the economic trade-offs involved in environmental protection. Every effort was made to choose questions whose wording was as neutral as possible and whose alternatives, while necessarily simplistic, would be equally plausible. In the case of one lengthy question, which posed three competing points of view and asked the respondent to choose one, the order of the three alternatives was reversed in half of the interviews in order to randomize the potential order effects (which turned out to be minimal).
The first of these questions posed the trade-off between higher prices to protect the environment, and lower prices but more pollution. Since the Opinion Research Corporation had asked this question in two of its national polls conducted in 1975 and 1977, a four-year opinion trend is available, as shown in figure 2. Within the range of sampling error, there is virtually no shift over this time period. In May 1975, 60 percent chose the environmental protection option, in January 1977 this figure had risen to 68 percent, and by July 1978 it had dropped slightly to 62 percent. Repeatedly, the public has chosen the environmental protection option over the lower-prices-but-more-pollution option by three to one.
In September 1977, a CBS News-New York Times national survey asked a number of questions about President Carter's energy program. The responses to many of the questions on individual issues revealed that the public wants both more energy and environmental protection. However, one question in that survey required the respondents to choose which they thought was more important—"producing energy, or protecting the environment." The results, which the New York Times highlighted in its article on the poll, showed 51 percent preferring environmental protection while only 30 percent chose energy protection. A year later, in the RFF survey, the responses to the same question were very similar, with "protecting the environment" continuing to be preferred by 47 percent while 31 percent favored energy.
Figure 2. Attitudes Toward Higher Prices Versus Pollution
The question was, "In order to pay for cleaning up the environment, companies may have to charge more for their products and services, and the government may have to increase taxes. Do you think that now it is more important to pay lower prices but have more air and water pollution?" (1975 and 1977 data are from surveys conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation; 1978 data are from RFF survey
The third trade-off question involves an issue which has been much debated in Congress this session, the Endangered Species Act. Respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: "An endangered species must be protected, even at the expense of commercial activity." In 1975, when this question was originally asked of a national sample by Professor Stephen Kellert of Yale University, 85 percent agreed. By 1978, the preference for endangered species over commercial activity had dropped significantly—the only one of the five trade-off questions in which this occurred—but, despite the publicity surrounding the Tellico Dam dispute it still stood at a high 67 percent.
Each year since 1973, the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC) has asked a large national sample whether they think "we're spending too much money, too little money, or about the right amount" on a set of eleven social problems. An abbreviated version of this question was included in the RFF survey and asked of half the sample, in order to test whether the environmental spending component of this question is statistically associated with the other environmental protection questions and therefore represents a valid measure of support for environmental protection. As this turned out to be the case, the data contained in figure 3—which is an updated version of a figure that appeared in the earlier Resources report—are of considerable interest. Not only is the trend uniquely long for survey data on environmental attitudes, but comparisons between environmental spending and ten other public programs can be made as well. The latest NORC poll taken in early spring 1978 shows a 5 percent increase over the 1977 poll in the number of people who said that we are spending "too little" on environmental protection. This is the largest increase in support of spending of any of the eleven programs.
Figure 3. Public Opinion Responses Indicating That the Federal Government Is Spending "Too Little" on These Federal Domestic Programs
(Data are from National Opinion Research Center, General Social Survey. Source: Kathryn Utrup, "Environmental Public Opinion: Trends and Trade-offs, 1969- 1978," forthcoming in Environment and Behavior, 1979)
The last trade-off question is one first used by the Opinion Research Corporation in 1977. It presents the respondent with three options, and asks the respondent to choose the one with which he or she most agrees. Figure 4 gives the wording of the options and the 1977 and 1978 results. In each year a majority chose a strongly worded pro environmental option which states that environmental progress should be made "regardless of cost."
Figure 4. Attitudes Toward Pollution Cost Trade-off Alternatives
(1977 data are from a national survey conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation in January 1977.)
The respondents who chose this option did not do so lightly. A lengthy debriefing of the interviewers was conducted at the conclusion of the RFF study. According to the interviewers, the respondents gave this and the other trade-off questions a great deal of thought. A number of respondents who chose the "regardless-of-cost" option spontaneously commented to the interviewers that, while they recognized that cost did have to be taken into account to some extent, they nevertheless considered that option to be closer to their views than the middle alternative, which states that because we have made sufficient progress we should now concentrate on "holding down costs."
What kind of people support this position on environmental protection? The first section of figure 5 provides a breakdown of the "regardless-of-cost" response by a number of social characteristics. Older people, especially those aged 65 or older, and conservatives are significantly less likely to choose this alternative than other age or political orientation groups. Contrary to some stereotypes of the environmental constituency, the most wealthy (those with a family income of $30,000 or more) are somewhat less likely to choose this alternative than those with middle incomes, while almost half of those with very low incomes (under $6,000) chose it. Black support equaled that of whites, and people in union families were more likely to choose the strong protection alternative than nonunion families. It appears that support for environmental protection, as measured by this question which the RFF data show to be representative, is quite broad based indeed.
Figure 5. Breakdown of Selected Questions by Social Characteristics
Unweighted data (1) For full text of the question, see Figure 4; (2) These are combined responses to the following questions: "Do you belong to any national environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the National Audubon Society, or others like these? In addition to the national groups and their local chapters, there are a number of state and local environmental groups of one kind or the other. Do you belong to any of these?"; (3) This is the percent of the sample who answered "active participant" or "sympathetic" to the following question: "In recent years the environmental movement has been very active. Do you think of yourself as: an active participant in the environmental movement, sympathetic toward the movement but not active, neutral or unsympathetic toward the environmental movement?"
In order to assess the potential impact of the "tax revolt" on support for environmental protection, the RFF study repeated a question on taxes which Lou Harris has asked regularly over the years. Seventy-two percent declared taxes in this country to be "unreasonable" or "very unreasonable"—a result which agrees with the Harris Poll's latest findings. As shown at the bottom of figure 5, 52 percent of those who felt taxes to be "very unreasonable" nevertheless chose the "regardless-of-cost" option. This accords with other findings in the RFF survey, and suggests that the tax revolt has not had a significant pact on the public's concern for a clean environment.
Support for the environmental movement. The organizations which make up the environmental movement, particularly those at the national level such as the Sierra Club, comprise the major lobbying force for enactment and enforcement of strong environmental laws. As is the case with other social movements, the percent of the public who actually belong to the environmental organizations is relatively small—8 percent of the sample claim membership at the national or local level—and the number of hardcore activists may be assumed to be smaller still.
To what extent does the movement enjoy the support of the great majority of people who are not members of any environmental groups? Is this support largely restricted to certain upper socioeconomic segments of American society, or is it spread across education, racial, and income levels? The RFF survey is the first national poll to undertake such an assessment. Its findings show that eight years after Earth Day, the movement continues to enjoy strong and quite widely dispersed support.
Figure 6. Views About Two Environmental Movements
Figure 6 reports the relative support for the environmental movement and, for comparison, the anti-nuclear movement. The 13 percent who are self-described "active participants" in the environmental movement obviously include a somewhat broader range of people than the 8 percent who actually belong to a movement organization. Some of these nonmember activists live what they consider to be an environmentally sensitive lifestyle; others hold highly pro environmental views. When these people are added to those who express sympathy for the movement, a total of six out of ten people may be counted as supporters, while fewer than one out of ten are unsympathetic. In contrast to this high level of sympathy for the environmental movement, the antinuclear movement's supporters (29 percent) are nearly balanced by those who are opposed (21 percent), with the bulk of the public expressing neutrality.
Another approach was used to assess the size of the environmental movement's constituency. A series of questions asked the sample to say how much, if at all, they felt they and their family benefited from the efforts of environmental groups to get government action on several types of environmental goals, ranging from pollution control to wilderness preservation. Figure 7 reveals that up to two-thirds of the public believe that they do benefit. The number who said they did not benefit at all varied according to the goal, but in no case was it higher than 11 percent.
Figure 7. Percentage Saying That They and Their Family Benefit From the Efforts of Environmental Groups to Get Government Action on These Environmental Goals
Public support for the environmental movement, therefore, parallels the strong support, described above, for the environmental protection goals which the movement seeks to achieve. Is it as broadly based? The data in figure 5, section two, show that whereas the membership of environmental groups is drawn disproportionately from the college-educated, higher-income segments of society, the movement's supporters are quite broad based.
For example, the left side of the figure shows that 27 percent of those in the sample with incomes of $30,000 or more are members of an environmental group. This is more than 6 times the percentage of low-income people who are members. On the right side of the figure, however, we see that the largest difference between the income groups in support of the movement is the 8 percent which separates the $30,000-and-over group from the $6,000-to-$13,999 one. At all income levels, 60 percent or more support the movement.
Similarly, even though wide disparities exist between the percentage of people in the four educational categories who are members of the groups, the range of these disparities for those who support the movement is far less. In both cases, college-educated people are especially likely to be members of the groups and supporters of the movement. Nevertheless, 50 percent of the lowest educational group count themselves as supporters of the environmental movement, and only 8 percent of this group say they are unsympathetic to the movement.
The environmental constituency. Voluntary organizations in American society tend to draw their membership from the better-educated, more affluent segments of the population, and the environmental organizations are no different in this regard. This has opened them to charges of "elitism" and to accusations that they act to protect the interests of the privileged who can afford to be concerned about open spaces, wildlife, and the mitigation of the ugly and harmful side effects of industrial development.
The findings of the RFF survey demonstrate that these concerns are not the preserve of a small segment of the population, however. Belief in the seriousness of environmental problems, support for environmental protection. and sympathy for the environmental movement, all cut across racial, sex, education, and income groups. Among the age groups, support is low only among the elderly. This remarkably broad-based constituency appears to be little affected by the recent upsurge in public concern about inflation and taxes. The survey data confirm once again what previous polls have consistently found: the public cares deeply about the quality-of-life issues, of which environmental protection is one of the most important.
A Note on Methods
A total of 1,076 adult Americans were interviewed in the Resources for the Future National Environmental Survey. The interviews were conducted by the Bureau of Social Science Research, a nonprofit Washington research organization, between July 7 and August 10, 1978.
The sample was selected using random digit dialing in such a way that every telephone number in the continental United States (excluding Alaska) had an equal chance of being selected. After the data were gathered, the characteristics of sex, age, and education were weighted to match the most recent Census Bureau figures for the nation. The basic percentages are thus generalizable to the nation as a whole and are comparable with those in other national polls. The tables showing the breakdown by background characteristics use the un-weighted data.
Surveys of this type and sample size have a theoretical margin of error of 4 percentage points in either direction 95 percent of the time.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the George Gund Foundation for partial support of the survey.
A version of this article appeared in print in the September 1978 issue of Resources magazine.
