WP22/18: Australians' Aspirations for a Greener Post-COVID World

Working Paper 22/18

University of Auckland
Komathi Kolandai
Barry Milne
Jennifer Curtin

Queensland University of Technology
Katie Woolaston

While discussions on “post-COVID reset” have become a norm in most policy settings, very few have examined post-COVID environmental policies, and even fewer have considered public perceptions in this regard. In 2020/21, we designed and tested a 5-item measure (termed, Greener post-COVID World) which gauged the public’s aspirations for a more environmentally friendly future in New Zealand.

The measure asked respondents to rate their level of agreement to:

1. remote working to reduce carbon emission,
2. increasing locally produced consumer goods for sustainability,
3. banning wildlife trade/consumption
4. ending factory farming, and
5. moving towards plant-based agriculture to prevent zoonoses.

In the current study, we retest the Greener Post-COVID World measure in a sample of 1,055 Australians. We incorporate the measure in the 2022 Australian Cooperative Election Survey, implemented by the YouGov online panel, 2–18 May 2022.

We propose the following hypotheses based on past observations:

• H1: Over 50% would provide a high-end agreement (Mean ≥8 on a 1–10 agreement scale) to working from home to minimise travel-related carbon emission. We expect this response considering that most Australians are concerned about climate change impacts (Patrick, et al. 2021). Furthermore, cleaner air was among positive COVID-19 outcomes identified by Australians in a June 2020 survey (Cornell, et al. 2022). In Sydney, this perception was possibly influenced by the reduced road traffic and industrial activity during the lockdown in 2020 (Cobbold, et al. 2022). Hence, it may be possible that respondents would have in mind several environmental benefits of remote working.
• H2: Over 50% would provide a high-end agreement (Mean ≥8 on a 1–10 agreement scale) to having more ‘Made in Australia’ products for environmental, social and economic sustainability. This is considering signs of public desire for locally-made products following the pandemic in Australia (Bailey 2022). An open-ended survey in Tasmania (May–June 2020) reported consumer support for local growers and manufacturers and preference for strategies such as labelling that aids consumer ability to buy local (Kent, et al. 2022). Furthermore, purchasing Australian-made products is regarded as ‘the right thing to do’ and an expression of nationalism by both migrants and locals (Fozdar 2021).
• H3: Over 50% would provide a high-end agreement (Mean ≥8 on a 1–10 agreement scale) to banning wildlife trade/consumption to prevent animal-to-human disease transmission. We expected this response based on the assumption that the public will likely associate COVID-19 origin with the wildlife market in Wuhan, China. The initial media coverage that associated COVID-19 with bats saw a corresponding increase in Google searches about bats associated with the pandemic (Cerri, et al. 2022). In the UK, banning wildlife markets received more endorsement as a measure for preventing zoonoses than banning factory farms, particularly among meat consumers (Dhont, et al. 2021).
• H4: The public will be less supportive of ending factory farming to prevent animal-to-human disease transmission; more than 50% would indicate a low-end agreement (Mean <3 on a 1–10 agreement scale) to this action. It is possible that such public views would reflect past negative stereotyping of Animals Australia’s campaigns regarding factory farming, i.e. that the campaign reflects hostile extremism with a hidden vegan agenda and is anti-farming and anti-meat-eating (Rodan & Mummery 2019). Australian meat consumers tend to disregard animal welfare activism on social media due to perceptions of misrepresented content and associations with vegetarianism or veganism (Buddle, et al. 2018).
• H5: Over 50% would provide a high-end agreement (Mean ≥8 on a 1–10 agreement scale) to moving towards plant-based agriculture to prevent animal-to-human disease transmission. Despite a majority (79%) of Australians identifying as omnivores, there was an exponential growth from 2019 to 2020 in plant-based meat production in Australia to meet increased demand (Clemons 2021).
• H6: The level of agreement to the recommendation for a move toward plant-based agriculture post-COVID would be lower among men than women. We expected this discrepancy considering that a shift to plant-based agriculture implies a shift to a plant-based diet. Sydney-based qualitative studies reported that men held a negative view of vegetarian diets and were unlikely to make plant-based alternatives a permanent component of their diets (Bogueva, et al. 2022; Bogueva, et al. 2020). Furthermore, past studies have shown that more women than men are vegetarians in Western societies (Pfeiler & Egloff 2018; Ruby 2012).
• H7: Assuming their pre-existing pro-environmental dispositions, Green Party voters would consistently be associated with significantly stronger support for greener COVID-19 recovery actions.

Additionally, we will explore which demographic variables influence ratings without prior hypotheses.

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