2,234 adults surveyed online between March 12 and 17, 2014 by The Harris Poll reveal that people are concerned about the environment - but may not be doing much about it.

And over 80 percent avoid labels like “green”, “conservationist” and “environmentalist”, which shows that environmental corporations have lost a lot of credibility among the public. 

However, parents with younger kids are more concerned than childless people, though they are only slightly more likely to tell others to be more environmentally responsible. Women are more likely to indicate encouraging others to be more environmentally-friendly. 25% more women than men claim they are making more effort to be environmentally-conscious than they did a year ago.

Yet 67 percent of U.S. adults say the environment is more important than short term effects on the economy - apparently only when it is someone else's money, though. 80 percent say they look at green products but only 28 percent actually spend any extra. 15 percent will only buy green if it saves them money.

Methodology

This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States between March 12 and 17, 2014 among 2,234 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

There is no margin of error because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in Harris Poll surveys, so no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. 

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments.

All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.