Consumer Perceptions
A 2001 report to the French Parliament by one of its members, Yves Tavernier from the Socialist Party, concluded the following:
"The French feel that the rapid and poorly distributed increase in the price of water leads to new social inequities. They find it hard to accept that the water tariff weighs essentially on urban users and that, in apartment buildings, it is included in the rent. They do not understand that agricultural production is exempt from the Polluter-pays principle and that it continues to deteriorate the quality of groundwater with impunity. They wonder about the lack of transparency that prevails in the provision of public water supply. Finally, they find it very hard to understand their water bills."
A representative survey of consumers carried out in December 2007 showed that most consumers believe prices are too high. However, it also showed that they overestimate the price of water (Euro 4.80/m3 instead of the actual average price of Euro 3.02/m3). Interestingly, 55% of the French population believe that treated wastewater is directly being reused as drinking water, which is not the case. The survey also shows that 84% of French consumers trust that the quality of their tap water is good. 67% declare that they drink water from the tap at least once a week. Those who are dissatisfied about tap water quality complain mainly about high levels of chlorine and calcium carbonate.
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In France
Famous quotes containing the words consumer and/or perceptions:
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)