Environmental Conditions and Behaviour

The sectors drinking water quality, water quality of lakes and rivers, availability of premium food and green space were judged as good by more than 90% of respondents. The general environmental quality (87.0%), the air quality (86.7%), the availability of environmentally friendly products (86.3%) and the noise situation in Austria (72.3%) are rated less well. Greenhouse effect and climate change (29.8%) and an increasing traffic volume (21.1%) proportionally represent the major environmental problem for the respondents, followed by the increasing waste accumulation (19.6%) and the destruction of nature and landscape (17.4%). About 53% of Austrians estimate their living quality as very good, 45% as good. 56.4% of the Austrians are of the mind that continuous economic growth is not relevant for our well-being.

The majority of respondents (76.2% in total) stated that they pay attention to environmentally friendly products produced under social manufacturing conditions at least when buying certain goods. 71.8% of Austrians used online services for orders and purchases in 2019. 21.6% bought several times a month in this way, 6.5% once a week and 4.1% even several times a week. Information on whether the products were manufactured in an environmentally friendly manner was not always easily accessible via the online services. Only 27.2% of the respondents said they knew whether the products ordered online were produced in an environmentally friendly way or not.99.2% of respondents indicated disposing of waste paper, 97.3% waste glass separately, least often organic waste was collected (85.4%). A high environmental quality (clean air, clean water and tranquillity) as well as the range of regional products were among the most important assessment criteria for vacation trips for around 70% of those surveyed. Over 90% of the Austrian population used the car at least occasionally in everyday life, 36.4% used it daily, 31.2% drove it several times a week. More than 65% of those surveyed used public transport trains, buses, trams and underground trains at least occasionally, 17.4% used them daily. More than half of the respondents found public transport attractive, with safety (83.5%) and facilities (77.5%) cited as the main reasons. For reasons of cost, however, only 53.0% of those questioned considered public transport attractive. In between were the assessment of the driving time (60.6%), the intervals (60.2%) and the connections (58%).