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Knowledge and Attitudes towards NAFTA
by Paul Herbig and Alain Genestre
Abstract of Knowledge and Attitudes towards NAFTA
The report was conducted on the knowledge of and attitudes towards the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The main purpose of this survey was to determine the influential factors that determine attitudes and knowledge of Mexican and United States citizens regarding the potential impact of NAFTA. Attitudes about economic impact, job opportunities, and quality of life were evaluated. This report indicates that the major differentiating factor towards knowledge of and attitudes towards NAFTA is education level. Recommendations are made for public policy officials who wish to influence public opinion on NAFTA and to better disseminate information on NAFTA.
BACKGROUND
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement to eliminate barriers to trade, and to facilitate movement of goods and services. The United Sates, Canada and Mexico are the three countries involved in this agreement. Negotiations of NAFTA were completed by the United States, Mexico and Canada in August 1992. On December 17, 1992 all three countries signed the historic trade accord. NAFTA is the most comprehensive free trade agreement that has ever been negotiated between regional trading partners. NAFTA has been in force since January 1,1994 and will be fully implemented by the year 2009.
NAFTA's primary objectives are to eliminate barriers to trade within the territories of the signatories, and facilitate the cross border movements of goods and services between them. Other objectives are to promote conditions of fair competition, increase investment opportunities, and to create an expanded and secured market for the goods and services produced in their territories. Another very important goal is to create new employment opportunities and improve working conditions and living standards in their respective territories. NAFTA will also enhance and enforce basic employee rights. NAFTA will create more jobs and will promote employment security and career opportunities for all workers through employment services. This agreement will achieve an innovated market with high levels of productivity and quality.
The United States, Canada, and Mexico will equally benefit from NAFTA. The immediate benefits to each country are opportunities for expanding markets and sales. For the United States, NAFTA reforms will improve in value an important export market. For Canada, NAFTA will open the doors to the Mexican Market. It will also expand export opportunities for Canadian firms. NAFTA will help stabilize the Mexican economy. The long-term benefit for all three countries is the opportunity for each country to draw upon the strengths of its trading partners through a synergistic effort.
Purpose
Despite all the media hype regarding the NAFTA agreement, what really is NAFTA? Few have truly read all of the over 1,000 pages of the complete text of the treaty. Was the information provided by the media accurate and absorbed correctly by the viewers? Does the average citizen really know or understand what the agreement actually is? This report examines 3 issues regarding NAFTA:
1) What is the knowledge of the average citizen re the actual NAFTA agreement?
2) Are the attitudes and opinions held by the citizenry of NAFTA correlated with their knowledge and understanding of the agreement?
3) Are there differences in knowledge and attitudes about NAFTA between demographic elements of the population?
METHODOLOGY
To determine knowledge, it would have been unwise to merely ask the respondents if they knew or understood NAFTA; multitudes of errors would have occurred. Instead, four simple questions with multiple choice answers were created. Correctly answering three of the four questions constituted "knowing and understanding" NAFTA. The first asked the respondent to correctly identify what does the acronym NAFTA stand for. The second question asked what countries were involved. The third question asked what was the stated purpose of the NAFTA agreement. The last question asked the respondent for the duration of the phase-in of the NAFTA agreement.
Next, simple questions on attitudes of NAFTA regarding the respondent's own job, the perceived effect on the residence of the respondent, the effect on the quality of life in the future, and the respondent's own opinion of NAFTA and the expansion/contraction of NAFTA were asked to provide a base for attitudinal comparison. Finally, a series of demographic questions were asked. The survey was conducted by bilingual interviewers and answering it took 2-3 minutes. The survey was thoroughly pretested and modified as a result prior to the major research effort.
The survey was conducted on both sides of a U.S.-Mexico border town. Time, location, and interviewer were randomized by use of a Latin Square. Surveys were conducted at the local university, by neighborhood polling, at the town's largest shopping mall, and downtown retail and business establishments; in all 250 respondents were queried. Appropriate statistical tests were used to analyze the data: T-Test, Chi-Square, Regression, and (M)Anova. A copy of the survey is included in the appendix.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Tables 1 through 9 provide a view of the demographic composition of the respondents. Three columns are provided for most categories: the sample percentage, the knowledge percentage, and the census percentage. The sample percentage reflects the percentage of the total sample of 250. The knowledge percentage shows the percentage of the total sample which correctly at least three of the NAFTA knowledge questions. The census percentage is the percentage of the population (over 18 years of age) reported in the 1990 census for the local community. Not all categories have census percentages since some categories were not included in the latest census. An examination of sample percentage versus census report percentage shows that the sample was extremely representative of the local population in the area.
Out of 250 respondents that answered the survey, 47 percent were males and 53 percent were females (See Table 1). Gender was not a determinant of knowledge with both males and females scoring nearly the same on knowledge. However, males had a more positive outlook than females. Age breakdowns can be seen in Table 2. As can be seen, very little variance exists between the sample percentage and the knowledge percentage; no significant difference in knowledge exists between age groups. The younger the population, the more positive the attitude towards NAFTA. Table 3 shows the breakdown of marital status; no difference in knowledge or attitude was noted. Table 4 shows ethnicity: 91 percent of the respondents were Hispanics, while 9 percent were Anglos with no differences in knowledge between the two groups. Table 5 shows citizenship and Table 6 shows language used; both are representative of the local population and both show no differences in knowledge. Interestingly, Mexican citizens, Spanish speakers, and Hispanic ethnicity indicated significantly higher level of positive attitudes towards the NAFTA agreement. This could be explained by the high levels of hope placed upon the agreement by Mexicans and Hispanic as a means to increase their economic well-being and towards economic development.
Table 7 shows income breakdown while Table 8 shows job breakdown and Table 9 yields years of schooling. Although not significant, a trend could be seen from both tables. Lower income, blue collar or unemployed labor scored lower in knowledge while higher income white-collar professionals scored higher proportionally in their knowledge of the NAFTA agreement. The years of schooling breakdown provided significant results: the more formally educated (in years of schooling) a respondent was, the greater was his/her knowledge of NAFTA. A discriminant analysis of all the demographic factors confirmed that the only significant demographic factor was years of education. Therefore, it is education, which is reflected in income and job status, that is the major determinant of whether or not a respondent was knowledgeable of NAFTA and its true contents. Greater positive attitudes and opinions towards the agreement were significantly observable for higher educated respondents with professional or white-collar positions and greater incomes.
Results.
KNOWLEDGE
Tables 10 and 11 provide the results of the knowledge questions. Few respondents missed the first while not many provided the correct answer to the last and most difficult question. Overall, only 23 percent provided the correct response to all four questions while 62 percent answered three out of four correctly; 4 percent simply did not know any of the answers.
Table 12 provides a breakdown of sources from which the respondents gained their information on NAFTA: most of the respondents received their information on NAFTA from newspaper, magazines and radio. Television was not a good conduit for knowledge; newspapers turned out disproportionately less knowledgeable respondents than the sample would indicate it should have. Significantly, magazines provided higher knowledgeable respondents. We can surmise that this is so because TV's soundbites do not provide adequate time to discuss the issue in depth. The newspaper difference could possibly be explained by a lack of competence of the newspaper staff in understanding and reporting the actual true issues. The conclusion of the knowledge question indicates that magazines, by providing more complete, in-depth coverage of the issue, appear to be the best source for providing accurate information on NAFTA and its details.
IMPACTS
65 percent responded positively to the question of whether they were in favor of NAFTA. However, 11 percent answered that they did not believe it would benefit them personally, and 24 percent of the respondents remained neutral in stating that they did not have enough information to form an opinion on NAFTA.
QUALITY OF LIFE
When asked to rate the quality of life that would result from NAFTA as compared from today such as improved, stay the same or deteriorate, 59 percent of the respondents with better knowledge predicted improvements, 30 percent indicated that it would stay the same, and 11 percent answered that it would get worse.
IMPACT ON JOB OPPORTUNITIES
With regard to employment generation to workers, results were different among those who thought positively, negatively, neutral, or did not even know. Although 47 percent believed that NAFTA would create job opportunities, 14 percent thought job opportunities would decrease, while 17 percent were neutral towards NAFTA affect and 23 percent did not know if the enactment of NAFTA would affect their job opportunities.
IMPACT ON THE BORDER AREA
As might be expected, given the intensity of the concerns of citizens on both sides of the border town, 53 percent expressed a positive response. Furthermore, when asked how NAFTA will economically affect the border area, 28 percent of the respondents answered negatively, while 12 percent responded they did not know and 8 percent remained neutral on the question.
IMPLICATIONS
The major finding is the relationship between knowledge, attitude and opinion. Those respondents most knowledgeable of the contents of the NAFTA agreement were rated highest on attitude, opinions, and impacts of NAFTA. Those most knowledgeable were also the highest educated, had the higher incomes, and held professional or white-collar positions. Those respondents that believed that NAFTA should be expanded, believed in a high quality of life and were in favor of NAFTA. Those who believed that NAFTA will have a favorable impact on job opportunities are those who also supported NAFTA. Most of the respondents that support and have a positive attitude toward NAFTA are expecting positive benefits regarding their future opportunities. A definite significant relationship exists. But what is the causality? Do positive attitudes result from knowing about NAFTA (that is, more knowledge creates the positive attitudes) or does knowing about NAFTA come from having a positive attitude about the future (that is, do previously formed positive attitudes create the condition to know more about NAFTA?) which is derived from one's income and profession? This is not clear and should be the basis for further study.
One of the objectives of this study was to determine the knowledge level of the citizenry with regard to NAFTA, and the relationship between knowledge and attitudes. This we have established. For public servants who wish to increase the common citizen's knowledge and attitudes of NAFTA, both good news and bad news exist. The bad news is that the only significant demographic determinant is education, which is beyond the scope of public officials to affect. However, since attitude and opinion are directly related to knowledge (although can not with any certainty indicate causality), the more knowledge that can be imparted, the higher the projected positive attitude that should result. For best results, this knowledge should be disseminated from magazines rather than other mass media to allow in depth treatment of the agreement.
TABLE 1
GENDER OF RESPONDENTS
_______________________________________________________
SEX SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE CENSUS
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
Female 53% 54% 53%
Male 47% 46% 47%
------ ------ ------
100% 100% 100%
_______________________________________________________
TABLE 2
AGE OF RESPONDENTS
_______________________________________________________
AGE SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE CENSUS*
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
25 and Under 22% 21% 18%
26 -- 39 40% 42% 38%
40 -- 55 16% 16% 22%
55 and Over 22% 20% 22%
------ ------ ------
100% 100% 100%
_______________________________________________________
*Percentage is calculated based upon number of people eighteen and over.
TABLE 3
MARITAL STATUS OF RESPONDENTS
_______________________________________________________
MARITAL STATUS SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE CENSUS
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
Single 40% 41% 38%
Married 60% 59% 62%
------ ------ ------
100% 100% 100%
_______________________________________________________
Table 4:
ETHNICITY OF RESPONDENTS
_______________________________________________________
ETHNICITY SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE CENSUS
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
Anglo 9% 9% 8%
Hispanic 91% 91% 92%
------ ------ -------
100% 100% 100%
_______________________________________________________
TABLE 5:
Citizenship of Respondents
_______________________________________________________
ETHNICITY SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE CENSUS
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
U.S. 80% 79%
Mexican 20% 21%
------ ------ -------
100% 100% 100%
_______________________________________________________
Table 6:
Primary Language spoken by respondents
_______________________________________________________
Language SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE CENSUS
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
English 39% 38%
Spanish 61% 62%
------ ------ -------
100% 100% 100%
_______________________________________________________
Table 7:
HOUSEHOLD INCOME OF RESPONDENTS
_______________________________________________________
LEVEL SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
UNDER $15,000 47% 42%
$15,000 -- $25,000 29% 28%
$26,000 -- $40,000 12% 13%
$41,000 -- $65,000 6% 8%
$66,000 and OVER 6% 9%
------ ------
100% 100%
_______________________________________________________
*Note: no census information available for income.
TABLE 8
JOB CLASSIFICATION OF RESPONDENTS
_______________________________________________________
CATEGORIES SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
Unemployed 14% 10%
Blue Collar 13% 10%
White Collar 51% 56%
Professional 12% 12%
Business Owners 11% 12%
------ ------
101%* 100%
_______________________________________________________
* Total not equal to 100% due to rounding error.
TABLE 9:
Years of Schooling by respondents
_______________________________________________________
EDUCATION LEVEL SAMPLE Knowledge
PERCENTAGE Percentage
Under 8 years 18% 8%
8-11 but not completed high school 15% 10%
12 Years (High School) 28% 18%
Some college (13-15 yrs) 11% 20%
16 Years (College Degree) 15% 25%
Graduate work (17+ Years) 7% 19%
-------- -------
101%* 100%
_______________________________________________________
* Total not equal to 100% due to rounding error.
Table 10:
Knowledge Distribution
Frequency of Responses
Correct Incorrect
Question 1 226 24
Question 2 191 58
Question 3 177 73
Question 4 77 177
Table 11:
Distributions of Correct Questions
Number Correct Percentage
0 9 3.6
1 28 11.2
2 58 23.2
3 97 38.8
4 58 23.2
Table 12:
Source of KNOWLEDGE OF INFORMATION
_______________________________________________________
SOURCES OF DATA SAMPLE KNOWLEDGE
PERCENTAGE PERCENTAGE
Newspaper 29% 22%
Television 1% 0%
Personal Experience (Work) 8% 10%
Magazine 26% 31%
School 7% 8%
Radio 29% 30%
------ ------
100% 101%*
_______________________________________________________
* Total not equal to 100% due to rounding error.
APPENDIX: SURVEY FORM
1. Which one of these does NAFTA stand for?
(1) New American For Trade Association
(2) North American Foreign Treatment Association
(3) North American Free Trade Agreement
(4) North American Free Trade Area
2. Which countries are involved in NAFTA?
(1) U.S. & Mexico
(2) All of the American countries
(3) Laredo, Nuevo Laredo & Monterey
(4) Canada, U.S., & Mexico
3. Where do you usually get your information on NAFTA? (circle only one)
(1) T.V. (4) Personal Experience (work)
(2) Radio (5) School
(3) Magazine (6) Newspaper
4. What is NAFTA supposed to do?
(1) Raise import/export taxes
(2) Eliminate barriers to trade
(3) Facilitate movement of goods & services
(4) Both 2 & 3
5. When is the impact of NAFTA supposed to be fully implemented?
(1) Next year
(2) 2 years
(3) 5 years
(4) 15 years
6. Do you think NAFTA should be:
(1) Expanded to limited countries
(2) Remain as is with current countries
(3) Be withdrawn
(4) Expanded to the entire hemisphere
7. How will the enactment of NAFTA affect your job opportunity?
(1) Positive
(2) Negative
(3) Neutral
(4) Don't know
8. How will NAFTA economically affect our border area?
(1) Positively
(2) Negatively
(3) Neutral; neither positive nor negative
(4) Don't know
9. Please rate the quality of life that will result from NAFTA as compared from today? 1-------------2-------------3-------------4-------------5
Worse Same Better
10. Which one of these represents your opinion on NAFTA? (circle one)
1-------------2-------------3-------------4-------------5
Totally Against Neither Support Totally
Against Support
11. Age:
(1) 25 and under
(2) 26 -- 39
(3) 40 -- 54
(4) 55 and over
12. Are you married?
(1) Yes
(2) No
13. Years of formal schooling: __________
High school = 12 (diploma/GED) College = 16 Masters = 18
14. Citizenship:
(1) U.S.
(2) Mexican
(3) Other: ____________
15. Language predominantly spoken at home:
(1) English
(2) Spanish
(3) Other: ____________
16. Which one of these classifications describes your job status?
(1) Unemployed
(2) Blue collar (Physical labor)
(3) White collar (Clerical)
(4) Professional (Doctor, Lawyer, etc.)
(5) Business Owner
17. Income:
(1) Under $15,000
(2) $15,000 -- $25,000
(3) $26,000 -- $40,000
(4) $41,000 -- $65,000
(5) $66,000 and over
18. Ethnicity:
(1) Anglo
(2) Hispanic
(3) Other: ____________
19. Sex:
(1) Male(2) Female