Radar is a global public opinion research program of evidence and insights that is a vital part of GlobeScan’s contribution to helping influential organizations understand material issues, societal trends and the expectations people have of them. In uncertain times, leadership organizations need to build trust with their stakeholders and society and better engage with their external context.
Since 1997, GlobeScan Radar has explored questions such as how concerns about several economic, environmental and social issues are changing, how people’s preferences and behaviors are evolving over time, and how well different sectors are seen to be fulfilling their responsibilities to society.
Based on representative surveys of 1,000 people in each of 25 countries, Radar draws upon GlobeScan’s unique database of over two decades of polling public opinion about their outlook toward societal actors and the issues affecting them.
We hope these insights help us all to better understand and navigate the present, and to collectively build a more sustainable and equitable future.
Our new report reveals the following trends:
1. Declining legitimacy of established power:
Popular trust in institutions has become more differentiated. National governments, global companies, and the press are all losing credibility, while NGOs, the UN, and the scientific/academic community are gaining it.
2. Erosion of business’ social license to operate:
In parallel with their loss of trust in government, people are also losing trust in large global companies. Trust in big business has dropped particularly sharply in recent years in North America and Europe.
3. A growing wave of environmental concern:
Globally, concern about the environment and pollution is on par with concern about terrorism, with worries about specific environmental issues on the rise on average across the countries studied over time. In 21 of the 25 countries surveyed, over 50 percent of people now say that climate change is a “very serious” global problem.
4. Growing faith in science and technology:
The technology sector is seen as fulfilling its responsibilities to society better than other sectors. Not only are technology companies rated highest in terms of their fulfillment of responsibilities to society, 88 percent of respondents believe that technology will help create a better future, while 90 percent believe science will do the same.
5. The Global South: engaged and optimistic:
Consumers in emerging markets are increasingly driving ethical consumption, as people in emerging markets are now more likely than those in OECD countries to claim to have rewarded, as well as considered rewarding, responsible companies.
For more information please contact:
- Stacy Rowland, Director Public Relations and Communications: stacy.rowland@globescan.com, +1 416-992-2705
