Tuesday, November 24, 2020

How Georgians perceive environmental problems

Note: This article was co-published on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. This article was written by Dustin Gilbreath, Deputy Research Director at CRRC Georgia. The views expressed in this article represent the views of the author alone and do not reflect the views of CRRC Georgia, NDI, or any other entity.

While air pollution is dominant as the most important environmental issue for Georgians, a stark rural-urban divide exists with rural Georgians being one-third more likely to believe that there are no environmental problems in their communities.  

Georgia faces a number of environmental challenges, including air pollution, issues with invasive species such as the brown marmorated stink bug, and natural disasters

Data from the World Health Organization suggests that Georgia has a moderate problem with air pollution, ranking 70th in the world and, according to CRRC and NDI data from 2020, a little under half of Georgians perceive it as the biggest environmental issue in their community.  

At the same time, a quarter of the public does not think there are any environmental issues in their community, with people in rural areas particularly unlikely to think that their community faces environmental problems.

Both littering and food safety were named as the most problematic local environmental issue by 11% of respondents, while all remaining issues were named by less than 10% of the population. 

Respondents were allowed to name up to three different issues as ‘the most problematic’ in their community. Overall, 15% named three issues, 21% two issues, 31% one issue, and 32% reported that there was no issue or did not know which issues were most problematic. 

A regression analysis suggests that people with higher than secondary education named more issues than those with only a high school education. Similarly, respondents living in wealthier households named more issues than those in poorer households, controlling for other factors.  Older people named fewer issues than younger people generally. The largest difference between groups though was between settlement types. People in rural areas named half as many issues as people in Tbilisi. 

In rural areas, people were also significantly more likely to report there were no problematic environmental issues in their settlements. People in rural areas were 33 percentage points more likely, controlling for other factors, to think there are no environmental issues in their community compared to people in Tbilisi. Similarly, rural people are 17 percentage points more likely to report no environmental issue in their community than those in urban areas aside from Tbilisi.  

Not naming any environmental issue was also associated with education. People with tertiary education are seven percentage points less likely than those who completed only secondary school to say there are no issues. Similarly, people with a vocational education are five percentage points less likely to report there are no environmental issues compared with those with only secondary education, controlling for other factors. 

There were no significant differences between women and men, those in wealthier and poorer households, the employed and those not working, and people in different age groups in terms of naming at least one issue or reporting there are no issues.


Tuesday, November 17, 2020

How coronavirus messaging could provide a moral license to misbehave

[Note: This article was published on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Dustin Gilbreath, Deputy Research Director at CRRC Georgia. The views expressed in this article are the author's alone and do not represent the views of CRRC Georgia or any related entity.]

In Georgia, it would appear that informing people that others are acting responsibly in the pandemic could in fact lead to the opposite behaviour.

Communications have been critical to attempts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 globally, and it is unclear what the best strategy for doing so might be. In Georgia, it would appear that informing people that others are acting responsibly in the pandemic could in fact lead to the opposite behaviour.

A common tool to change behaviour through communications is the use of social norming. 

Social norming informs people of what other people are actually doing, and in turn, more people often start doing the same. This tool has been successfully used to encourage numerous forms of pro-social behaviour from paying taxes to lowering drinking among university students.  But sometimes, it does not work and can even backfire. 

The results of a survey experiment CRRC Georgia conducted in June 2020 suggest that had social norming been used towards the end of the COVID-19 lockdown to encourage people to stay at home, it might have backfired.

During the lockdown, stay at home was the motto of the day. Yet, over the course of the lockdown, the public increasingly began to go out to socialise.  Men in particular became more likely to socialise as time went on.

To test whether social norming could potentially change behaviour, CRRC Georgia ran a survey experiment. In the survey, one group of people were told that the majority of the public had stayed home the week prior. A second group was told that the majority of the people of their sex had stayed home the week prior. A third group was not told anything. Next, respondents were asked whether or not they planned on going out the following week. 

The experiment found statistically and substantially large effects on the provision of information. People who found out that most people stayed at home were 18 percentage points more likely to report they intended on going out to socialise the following week.  

The sex-specific information led to a 12 percentage point increase in people’s intention to go out and socialise.


The effects were uniform across different social and demographic groups. Women and men, old and young, people with and without a higher education, and those who did and did not leave the house the week prior to the survey were not affected in a significantly different manner by the treatments. The effect was similar across settlement types as well.

So what happened? One plausible hypothesis is that instead of the treatment inducing social norming, it enabled moral licensing. When people do something good, they often then feel like it is fine to do something not so good afterwards. This process is known as moral licensing.

The above experiment could have potentially led people to believe that, collectively, Georgia has done well. As a contributor to that success, they may have felt that next week, they should reward themself by going out to socialise. 

While plausible, further experimentation is needed to untangle exactly what happened.

What is clear is that, at least in some contexts, attempts at social norming can have adverse impacts. This underlines the point that communications campaigns need to test before they talk.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

More Georgians than ever own phones and TVs, but inequalities remain

[Note: This article was published in partnership with OC Media on the Caucasus Data Blog. The article was written by Ian Goodrich, a Policy Analyst at CRRC Georgia. The views presented in the article are the author's alone and do not represent the views of CRRC Georgia or any related entity.]

Survey data from the last decade shows that more and more Georgians own household goods like mobile phones, TVs and washing machines, but inequalities in such material wealth still remain.
The Caucasus Barometer survey shows a steady growth in ownership of durable goods across Georgia over the last eight years. 

The percentage of survey respondents reporting ownership of each of a basket of seven household items has risen since 2011, with the increase most marked in rural areas. Whilst the rural-urban divide is seen to be closing, large gaps remain between respondents with higher education and those without. 

Virtually all households now possess a mobile phone (96% of households), colour television (93%), and a refrigerator (92%). Colour television ownership has been consistently high and has grown slightly in the last eight years. The same period has also seen large increases in ownership of refrigerators (up 22 percentage points) and cell phones (up 14 percentage points).

The largest increase, however, is seen in washing machine ownership. In 2011, washing machines could be considered a luxury item, with a minority of households (40%) owning one. In 2019, washing machine ownership is now the norm, with ownership doubling to 80% of households. 

Just over half of households now possess a personal computer. This figure fell slightly between 2017 and 2019, potentially resulting from growth in mobile phone use and increased mobile internet connectivity. 

Car ownership is also up by over ten percentage points, and the number of households owning an air conditioning unit has increased by five percentage points to 12%.

Virtually all households now possess a cell phone (96% of households), color television (93%), and a refrigerator (92%). Color television ownership has been consistently high and has grown slightly in the last eight years. The same period has also seen large increases in ownership of refrigerators (up 22 percentage points) and cell phones (up 14 percentage points).

The largest increase, however, is seen in washing machine ownership. In 2011, washing machines could be considered a luxury item, with a minority of households (40%) owning one. In 2019, washing machine ownership is now the norm, with ownership doubling to 80% of households. 

Just over half of households now possess a personal computer. This figure fell slightly between 2017 and 2019, potentially resulting from growth in mobile phone use and increased mobile internet connectivity. Car ownership is also up by over ten percentage points, and the number of households owning an air conditioning unit has increased by five percentage points to 12%.
The average number of items owned by a Georgian household from within this basket of seven goods has grown steadily since 2011. In 2011, a typical household possessed 3.6 items from the basket. This has increased to an average of 4.6 items in 2019.


Growth has been most dramatic in rural areas, which have caught up rapidly with the capital and other urban settlements. In 2011, a respondent in a rural area with a secondary or technical education could be expected to have 3.2 of the items on the eight-point index compared to 4.2 for a resident of Tbilisi: a gap of one point on the basket. Today, rural households have for the most part caught up with their urban and capital counterparts, scoring just 0.2 points lower on average holding all else equal.
Nonetheless, education remains a key predictor of household asset ownership with the analysis highlighting a continued sharp divide between respondents with higher levels of education and those without. 

Holding all else equal, those with a higher education have on average 15% (or 0.67) more basic household goods than those with a technical education, and 28% (or 1.1) more than those with an incomplete secondary education and below. 


Asset ownership is a simple proxy for household wealth and fails to account for other financial characteristics of a household, such as income or debt. But, the measure does enable analysis of the extent to which some basic material requirements are being met. 

The overall trend in the last eight years has been positive: washing machines and refrigerators are now found in the majority of Georgian homes and at a household level, mobile phone coverage is nearly complete. 

When contrasting the capital and other areas of Georgia, we see that rural areas in particular have caught up rapidly with Tbilisi. But despite greater equality across settlement types, those with higher levels of education appear to enjoy a substantially more comfortable home life than those without.

Note: The above analysis is based on an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The dependent variable is a simple additive index of positive responses to questions regarding ownership of the following seven items: cell phone, color television, refrigerator, washing machine, personal computer, car, air conditioner. A score of zero on the index represents ownership of none of these items, a score of seven corresponds to ownership of all items.

The independent variables in the regression are the respondent’s sex, age, ethnic minority status, settlement type, and education level. Independent variables were interacted with the number of years since the first wave in the dataset, where zero corresponds to 2011 and eight to 2019.

Differences between rural and capital scores on the index in 2019 were statistically significant at p <= 0.05 on a univariate OLS regression.

Replication code for the above analysis is available here.

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Conservative gender mores are changing in Georgia

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint effort of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. The article was written by Otto Saladze, a junior researcher at CRRC Georgia. The views presented in the article do not represent the views of CRRC Georgia or any related entity.

Gendered norms prevail in Georgian society, which often translates into deprecation of women for smoking, drinking alcohol, having pre-marital sex, and even living with a boyfriend. However, attitudes appear to be shifting.

CRRC’s Caucasus Barometer survey asked people what they thought about several such activities. The data showed that the public are least accepting of women smoking, with 80% reporting it is never acceptable at any age. Sexual relations (63%) and cohabitating with a man before marriage were also commonly thought to be never acceptable for women (60%). 

Although there are still widespread prejudices about what is acceptable for women, some attitudes are changing. While in 2010, a slight majority (56%) said they were against women living separately from their parents before marriage at any age, this number had decreased by 18 percentage points by 2019 to 38%

In 2019, half of the respondents reported that women aged 18–25 should be able to live separately before marriage, compared to only 31% in 2010.  

In 2010, 80% said it was unacceptable for women to have sex before marriage at any age. In 2019, this number decreased by 17 percentage points, with 63% now against it. 

In 2019, 24% said it was acceptable for women aged 18–25 to have sex outside of marriage, 16 percentage points more than a decade ago (8%).  

However, people’s attitudes do not appear to have changed over the last decade towards women smoking and drinking strong alcohol.

Note: The original question text was: ‘Sometimes people are considered too young to do or experience certain things. Could you please tell me, from what age do you think it is acceptable for a woman to…’ Respondents were then asked about multiple activities. To ensure clear data visualisation, the answer options: ‘Under 18’, ‘18-25’, ‘26+’ and ‘Don’t know/Refuse to answer’, are not shown on the chart.  

There were only slight differences in the opinions of women and men on these issues, and attitudes have changed at similar paces among both sexes.

While 52% of men said it was never acceptable for women to drink strong alcohol, 59% of women reported the same in 2019. The numbers were almost the opposite a decade ago, with 59% of men saying it was never acceptable in 2010 and 55% of women. 

Both sexes’ attitudes changed regarding pre-marital sex and co-habitation at a similar rate. The share of men thinking pre-marital sex was unacceptable for women at any age decreased from 81% to 62% between 2019 and 2010, and among women the decline is similar (80% to 64%). In 2019, 58% of men and 61% of women were against cohabitation prior to marriage at any age compared with 71% of men and 73% of women in 2010. 

A similar pattern holds among people of different ages, with changes being quite similar in most age groups. One exception is attitudes towards pre-marital sex. While in 2010, 76% of 18-35-year-olds said this was never acceptable for a woman, in 2019 only 52% of young people reported the same, a 24 percentage point decline.  By comparison, the decline in disapproval among 35-54-year-olds was 17% and by 11% among those 55+.

People still judge women for a wide range of different behaviors in society, but attitudes are changing. Over the last decade, it appears that people have become more accepting of women’s choices regarding pre-marital sex and cohabiting out of wedlock.