Understanding people’s positive or negative attitudes towards protecting the Waikato region’s environment helps councils to focus their activities aimed at achieving this. Monitoring people’s environmental attitudes means we can also find out how much support there is for our proposed actions, policies and rules related to protecting the environment. People’s comments may also reveal which areas in our region are experiencing the most pressures.
This helps us to set goals and target our planning, to ensure we give people the information they need. We also factor their attitudes into the design of our environmental education programmes. Creating a shared understanding of how people’s actions and decisions impact on our region’s environment can encourage people to have a positive attitude towards protecting it. They may become more likely to consider the impact of their own actions and may also become motivated to work together with councils and other people in their community to keep the Waikato region’s environment protected now and in the future.