December 11th, 2023, Lesley Simeon
Perhaps some prioritize it more than others, but sustainability is the trend that won’t go away. Brands have taken note - but are they doing enough to go green? A recent YouGov survey delved into this very subject and asked consumers across 17 international markets about which industries they think are doing enough to minimize their impact on the environment. Companion pieces focus on sectors including airlines, automotive companies, hotels and financial services providers. Here, we dive into perceptions of banks.
Polling data shows that less than a quarter of consumers across all the markets we surveyed (22%) say banks are doing enough to reduce their environmental impact. More than two in five of them (46%) say banks aren’t doing enough while a third of the public (33%) are honest enough to say they don’t know whether their efforts are sufficient or not.
YouGov’s demographic data reveals that men (24%) are more likely than women (19%) to say banks are doing enough to reduce their environmental impact. However, both men and women are more or less in consensus about banks not doing enough (47% vs. 45%).
Let’s now move on to what consumers feel, by market, about the banking sector’s efforts to minimize its impact on the environment.
Indians most likely to say banks are doing enough to reduce environmental impact; Spanish most likely to say they aren’t
Doing enough
Asians are more likely than Europeans to say banks are currently doing enough to reduce their impact on the environment. Indians are most likely to say so (45%), closely followed by Indonesians and Emirates (44% each).
Italians are the least likely to agree - less than one in ten consumers in Italy (9%) say banks are doing enough. Britons and the Danes (11% each) report just a two percent lead over bottom-placed Italians. Within Europe, Swedes and Germans are most likely to say (18% each) that banks are doing enough to reduce their environmental impact.
As for Asia, less than a quarter of Singaporeans (23%) view banks’ eco-efforts favorably – the least likely in this region to do so.
Not doing enough
Spain accounts for the largest proportion of consumers across all markets (62%) to say banks are not doing enough to reduce their impact on the environment. Mexico (59%), Italy (59%) and France (57%) follow Spain.
Over a third of Americans (36%) and half of all Brits (50%) say banks are not doing enough - so do similar proportions of consumers in Nordic markets (40% in Sweden, 39% in Denmark). But what is common across many of these markets is that many consumers just aren’t sure one way or another.
Don’t know
Half of all consumers in Denmark (50%) don’t know if banks are doing enough to reduce their impact on the environment. Within Asia, Singaporeans are most likely to say the same (30%).
In the US, consumers are most likely to say they don’t know whether banks are doing enough or not (44%), while in Britain it’s 39%. These large slices of undecideds leaves the sector with an opportunity to convince consumers that banks are doing the right thing as far as the environment goes in 2024.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 509 and 2009 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in July 2023. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.
Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash