Read the results for a survey experiment on carbon footprints.
California’s Central Valley is home to the largest and most productive agricultural land in the world. Its centered location makes it a hub for 6.5 million people across a wide variety of cities. Stockton, a city in the heart of the Central Valley, has a population of 300 million people and is bustling with people, cars, and productive work. Lincoln Village, a popular place for the youth of Stockton to explore, is the main target area for surveying the sample of carbon footprints shown above.
Survey/Experiment Design
Using Google Forms, a three-question survey was created that includes the following questions:
What is your total footprint? (tons)
How many trees does it take to offset your annual footprint?
What actions do you plan to take to reduce your carbon footprint? (Optional)
At the top of the survey was a link to a third-party website to calculate the footprint of the recipient. The survey does not specify whether a family footprint is being calculated, but all recipients had inferred that their carbon footprint was measured simply for themselves.
Here is the survey.
Data and Outliers
With a relatively small sample size of roughly 30 students in the Lincoln Village, the average amount of carbon dioxide released per capita was 15.38 tons. The average United States citizen has a carbon footprint of 24.83 tons, making the students of Lincoln Village significantly lower than the national average by about 61.44%. Furthermore, the amount of trees needed to offset the average carbon footprint per capita is 221 trees for Lincoln Village students. On the other hand, the amount of trees needed to offset the average carbon footprint for the average United States citizen is 358 trees, sharing a similar 61% increase from the student sample.
The highest carbon footprint for a student in Lincoln Village is 29.47 tons with 421 trees needed to offset their carbon footprint. However, this student sample is an outlier in the overall data trend depicted in the graph above. Most students in Lincoln Village fall in a carbon footprint range between 8-20 tons and require about 150 to 300 trees to offset their footprint.
In terms of preferences, over 55% of students did not answer an optional question proposed at the end of the survey which questions if any actions will be taken to reduce a given student’s carbon footprint. Despite the optionality of the question, 27.6% of students expressed a need to decrease their carbon footprint by improving their transportation choices. Lastly, 17.2% of students described a solution that derives from improving efficiency in housing appliances, food diets, and other methods.
Analysis and Conclusions
Students in Lincoln Village have carbon footprints that are less than the national average for United States citizens. The age range surveyed included 16-18 year olds, with some students containing better awareness of environmental issues than others. A general assumption can be made that students tend to have lower carbon footprints than adults due to a lower amount of driving, consumption, and travel. Income range may also be a factor that makes the carbon footprints of Lincoln Village students slightly higher than other areas with more recorded poverty.
Moreover, students in Lincoln Village collectively share a higher concern for lowering their footprint as the optionally proposed question yielded slightly lower than a majority of answered solutions. Lincoln Village students also have a good awareness of how their carbon footprint can be lowered as all students that responded to the optional question included solutions that can be effective if implemented. More specifically, the highest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions are from transportation methods in which 61.1% of students that proposed solutions included words relating to transportation in their response.
Errors and Biases
The survey contains limitations such as relying on a third-party formula for calculating carbon footprints and tree offset values. The validity of the separate survey may be skewed, incorrect in some regards, and must be refined for more recent data released. In addition, the optional question proposed at the end of the survey has bias for implying that the recipient desires to reduce their carbon footprint. The optionality of the last question in the survey was best used to determine the level of concern by students and awareness of the issue. However, if the question had been mandatory, the results would have shown a different level of knowledge and awareness as higher confident individuals had answered the optional question.
The purpose of the survey was to determine trends of Lincoln Village students’ carbon footprint in comparison to the national average in the United States. In addition, the survey was designed to make general assumptions from the data collected. For a higher level of accuracy, a large sample size may have been used to reinforce the conclusions made.
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