Projects

Consumer understanding of green terms

This research, focused on understanding how consumers perceive and react to green terms, helped inform Defra’s revised guidance on the use of green claims (published in February 2011). The project involved a series of 12 focus groups (recruited in line with Defra’s environmental segmentation model) alongside an online survey of 2,000 UK adults.

The research finds that awareness and understanding of green language seems to be evolving rapidly. Previous research (e.g. Futerra, 2007) has suggested that terms like ‘carbon footprint’ and ‘energy efficiency’ are unfamiliar to most consumers and poorly understood, whereas this study – some three years later – suggests otherwise. For example, almost three quarters (74%) of survey respondents said they were either very familiar or fairly familiar with the term ‘carbon footprint’. Terms that have been in use for some time such as ‘recycling’, ‘green’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ were considered even more familiar, but the opposite was true for emerging terms that are relatively new, such as ‘zero carbon’ or ‘water footprint’.

The research also demonstrates the extent to which green terminology need to make intuitive sense to consumers. A good example of a common element of green terminology that seemed to cause confusion was the prefix ‘bio’ (which was at various times wrongly linked to washing powder, fuel, yoghurt and natural decomposition). ‘Neutral’ (as in ‘water neutral’ or ‘carbon neutral’) and zero (as in ‘zero carbon’ or ‘zero waste’) also caused problems, since consumers tended to infer from them a total absence of something. In contrast, consumers seemed to feel that ‘footprint’ was more intuitive as an indicator of impact.

The main research report is accompanied by two supplementary ‘reference’ reports – listing the key findings for each individual term and label that was explored in the research.

This was a joint project between Brook Lyndhurst, Icaro Consulting and Sauce.