(33 per cent) of them according to their mothers are "very concerned". It is in a surprising contrast to Thailand, a nation similarly developing and yet with the lowest level of concern of all countries included in the study.

Designed to investigate the influence of future citizens in China, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand the study, conducted by leading market information provider TNS, sought insight into the behaviour and opinions of children aged between 3 and 9 via exploration of a range of commercial and social issues with their mothers.

The four-country study found on average just 15 per cent of young children are very concerned about the need for action. Yet whilst the children's mothers express a near unanimous concern (95 per cent) for the environment, still four in every ten of Asia's youngsters are reportedly either not very or not at all concerned about the need for environmental protection.

Clearly the environmental message is getting through to adults; however the findings suggest that current sources of information aimed at children are not effective enough. This is despite a dramatic increase in the number of initiatives and programmes aimed at encouraging environmental awareness amongst younger children.

Level of concern for environmental protection amongst children aged 3 to 9
	China	Japan	Malaysia	Thailand	Total Asia
Very concerned	33%	7%	17%	7%	15%
Somewhat concerned	47%	34%	54%	29%	43%
Not very concerned	18%	32%	26%	53%	32%
Not at all concerned	2%	27%	3%	12%	10%

According to the study's findings, Chinese children's primary source of information about environmental issues is television (71 per cent). Schools play a very important role in educating the environment issues in China as well, closely following television by 70 per cent. It is highly possible however that this deduction by mothers is more a reflection of the number of hours their children spend each week involved in these pursuits - they were revealed by the study to watch an average of 13 hours of TV each week.

It is interesting to note that parents were not cited in the study as a source of information about environmental issues, especially as when they were asked whether children knew better about such things than they did the answer was a resounding no. With such high levels of concern expressed by the children's mothers, it is surprising that a higher level of parental influence was not found, potentially suggesting that in addition to directing awareness raising efforts at children, parents also may need to get better engaged to step up and recognise their role as models of responsible global citizenship.

The Kids Power report represents the cumulative responses of a total of 901 mothers of children aged between 3 and 9 years old in four Asian countries: China (n=201), Thailand (n=200), Malaysia (n=302) and Japan (n=198). Data was collected during August 2007 via online interviews conducted using TNS 6th Dimension Access Panels.