Brand tracker survey

Zero Waste Scotland plays a crucial role in educating, motivating and encouraging lifestyle changes to minimise impact to the environment. Oversight of where we are on the journey towards a circular economy, alongside an understanding of the factors that may help to influence attitudes and behaviour, plays a crucial part in how Zero Waste Scotland acts to rally the public around the goal of a circular economy. 

Union Insight designed and delivered the first phase of a tracking survey to provide insight to inform campaigns, strategic prioritisation and other proactive activity. When repeated on a regular basis, this will allow them to learn, refine and build their approach, and measure the impact of their activity in the market. 

An online panel survey to consumers across Scotland was designed to provide insight into the attitudes and behaviours around environmental topics as well as provide a quantifiable benchmark against which ZWS longer term goals can be measured. This was designed to be replicable for future waves and robust enough to measure changes over time at an overall population level and key sub-groups of particular interest. 

Quota sampling techniques were employed to ensure representation across Scotland, with individual quotas set for age, gender and region of Scotland. We collected postcodes in the survey, on a voluntary basis, to allow us to enrich the primary data with other secondary sources such as the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation and the Scottish Government Urban Rural classification. 

The data was weighted to ensure representation of the Scottish population and household base. Four sampling regions (North, South, East West of Scotland) formed the strata, and within each strata the data was weighted by age, SIMD, rurality, tenure, gender and household type (where applicable). 

Our Insight team, comprising a senior analyst and a researcher, worked closely together to understand the results, propose new analysis, and produce an initial report. Work on the report continued, with our design team converting the raw version into a more visually appealing version. This comprehensive report was then deployed online here and used to raise the awareness of the ZWS message.