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Publication - Research and analysis

Ocean literacy survey: headline findings

Published
18 November 2022
Directorate
Marine Directorate
Part of
Environment and climate change, Marine and fisheries
ISBN
9781805250661

Headline findings from an online survey with the public in Scotland on the topic of ocean literacy - exploring the public's understanding of the marine environment. It is part of a wider project covering England and Wales.

View supporting documents Supporting documents

Marine activism

Fifty-nine percent had taken at least one of the listed actions to protect the marine environment (Figure 26). The most common action people had undertaken to protect the marine environment was making lifestyle changes (35%) followed by signing petitions (23%) and voting for political parties with strong policies to protect the marine environment (18%).

Direct action in rallies or demonstrations (2%), involvement in citizen science (3%) and contacting elected representatives (3%) were the least undertaken actions whilst 38% said they had undertaken none of the activities listed.

Figure 26: Activities undertaken to protect the marine environment (weighted %)
a bar chart that shows the actions that respondents report they have taken to protect the marine environment as reported in the previous two paragraphs.

Q15: Which of the following activities, if any, have you done to protect the marine environment in Scotland?

Unweighted base: 3,055

Dimensions

  • Activism
  • Behaviour
  • Attitudes

Where they had taken action to protect the marine environment, this was most commonly in relation to marine habitats (63%), followed by marine mammals (58%) (Figure 27).

Figure 27: Aspects of marine environment intended to protect (weighted %)
a bar chart that shows what the most common actions taken to protect the marine environment were as reported in the previous paragraph.

Q16: What aspects of the marine environment was your activity intended to protect?

Unweighted base: Where tried to protect the marine environment: 1,847

Dimensions

  • Activism
  • Behaviour
  • Attitudes

Contact

Email: socialresearch@gov.scot

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