This section report covers some key quantitative metrics concerning the effectiveness of organizations and marketing campaigns in relation to communicating climate change to the public. Specifically, it considers the reach and influence of organizations, and how much each is thought wrong-thinking/annoying. It demonstrates the leading roles of organizations such as the David Suzuki Foundation in Canada, the BBC in England, National Geographic in the US, and Greenpeace internationally. The TURF analysis shows how the Carbon Trust contributes to ‘total reach’. The reach and influence of specific marketing devices and campaigns such as the ‘A to G scale’, ‘Energy Star’, ‘Carbon Labelling’ and ‘Earth Hour’ are also measured.


This is one of 14 reports from the Environmental Choices study conducted in Canada, England and the US. The original research was conducted in late 2008, and the reports have had a major upgrade for the '2013 edition' – complete with new analyses, easier navigation, better distribution through books and via iPad, and new pricing.


With Environmental Choices, our general goal has been about understanding how much ‘concern about climate change’ makes a difference to people in the choices they make and the policies they would support. We can see from this research that there are great divisions in the public’s attitudes towards climate change; from the most concerned ‘Climate Citizens’, to the moderately concerned ‘Mild Greens’, to the dismissive and/or unconcerned ‘Sceptics & Uninvolved’. Throughout the reports we examine how these different viewpoints correlate with, and predict other attitudes, interests and behaviours. By creating this robust, international categorical variable to describe ‘climate change concern’ we have a way of measuring the consumer value of low-carbon products, across multiple product categories.