In 2010, Dentsu Inc. and Dentsu Institute conducted an awareness survey regarding sustainable lifestyles in 14 countries. More than a decade later, we have less than ten years before 2030, the year stipulate to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In 2021, we conducted a second survey of awareness regarding sustainable lifestyles in 16 countries, in order to discover the “now” and “hereafter” of awareness among people.

The world has been transformed in this ten years. With advances in digitalization and technology, we can use social media and other tools to enjoy enriched global networks. Yet at the same time, people around the globe are faced with large-scale natural disasters and the threat of COVID-19. In this survey, we used some of the same questions from the 2010 survey, while updating others to reflect changes from the past decade. We also made some changes to our target countries. This report presents a portion of the results, based on the 12 countries where our survey was completed in July 2021. The results of the remaining 4 countries, where the survey was conducted in October, will be announced in 2022.

The survey questions were wide-ranging, including awareness and actions towards the global environment and society, and awareness, lifestyles, and consumption behavior regarding sustainability and the future. The reason for this range was because we have a broad-based concept of what “sustainable lifestyles” means. In other words, “lifestyles” does not merely refer to things like consumption or daily habits, but whether, in the various decisions and choices we make each day, we are aware of passing on our current environmental, social, and economic prosperity to future generations: we wanted to clarify people’s awareness and values.

This report has two chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on people’s awareness and actions regarding society and the environment, while Chapter 2 takes an overview of people’s awareness and actions regarding consumption. We clarify each country’s characteristics and common trends, and consider what these mean for the future.

◎The survey report can be accessed here:
Sustainable Lifestyle Report 2021.pdf