Citizens’ jury on advertising high-carbon products and services
We have recently completed a project investigating citizen views on climate change and advertising, and specifically, the advertising of high-carbon products and services.
Advertising is influential both in shaping people’s choices, and in contributing to overall cultural understandings and norms. Previously, restrictions on advertising, including bans, mandatory warnings, codes of practice and so on, have been introduced to achieve societal aims such as reducing smoking or alcohol consumption. This project worked with a Citizens’ Jury to ask whether such approaches may have support, to address the issue of advertising and climate change.
Previous citizens’ initiatives, such as the UK-wide Climate Assembly UK, recommended measures to restrict advertising. This Jury looked in detail at the issue and developed a series of proposals to regulate advertising of high carbon products and services.
The Jury showed that people want changes to the current way adverts of high-carbon products and services are managed. They developed three proposals:
- Introduce a traffic light labelling system on adverts to show the true carbon emissions of the product or service being advertised.
- Introduce a levy on adverts of high-carbon products and services.
- Restrict advertising of high carbon products and services to children and introduce informative advertising and education on climate change.
We tested these proposals with a nationwide poll. This polling confirmed that many people want to see additional regulation around the advertisement of high-carbon products and services. Both in the Jury, and in the polling, the traffic light labelling system was the most popular proposal.
A report summarising the findings of the research can be found here, with an appendix document detailing the methodology here.
You can watch a recording of the launch event here.
The project was run by Professor Rebecca Willis and Dr Jacob Ainscough.