Conducted every three years by economists at the Bioeconomy Science Institute, and first administered back in 2000, the results of the 11th New Zealand Environmental Perceptions Survey are now in.
Cover: Environmental Perceptions Survey 2025
The survey is designed to measure public perceptions of the pressures on, the state of, and response to pressures across ten environmental domains: air, marine environment, coastal waters and beaches, rivers and lakes, wetlands, native bush and forests, protected natural areas, towns and cities, and marine and terrestrial plants and animals. In 2025, 2,022 people were surveyed across New Zealand, allowing robust conclusions to be drawn.
Overall, the survey shows New Zealanders perceive that the overall state of the New Zealand environment is ‘adequate’ to ‘good’.
People also think that environmental management has improved over recent years, and are more engaged in recycling household waste than they were in 2022. However, they are concerned that pests, weeds, sewage and stormwater are exerting significant environmental pressures, and also about the risk posed by flooding. Climate change has been identified by respondents as the most important issue facing the world since 2010, and New Zealanders since 2022, overtaking freshwater issues, which were top-of-mind for New Zealanders from 2010 to 2019 but are now in second place.
Led by Pamela Booth MSc, Dr Maksym Polyakov, and Dr Pike Stahlmann-Brown, the results are available at www.landcareresearch.co.nz/eps
For 2025, New Zealand’s air was considered the environmental domain thought to be in the best condition, with the lowest scores reserved for rivers and lakes, followed by wetlands. Management of rivers, lakes and wetlands was also considered to be less successful than management of other environmental domains. That said, perceptions about both the state of the environment and its management showed improvements relative to 2022. This fits with an overall increase in perceived environmental quality that has been noticeable in the data since 2016.
“Sewerage and stormwater are seen as exerting particular pressure on the environment,” explains Stahlmann-Brown, “and this survey was conducted several months before the problems at Moa Point were on the public’s radar.” Other environmental pressures perceived to be strong were dumping of solid waste, and pests and diseases. “There are also some interesting trends over time,” says Stahmann-Brown. “For example, farming is no longer perceived as a strong pressure on the environment, whereas the number of people who consider commercial fishing as a pressure has increased significantly since 2019.”
A newly published report in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, based on the 2022 survey, established that environmental perceptions align with the scientific consensus with regard to both air and freshwater. “For the other domains, public perceptions were varied, and the overall state was generally seen as better than the science suggested,” explains Booth.
That report is available at https://rsnz.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/snz2.70027
