The citizens’ perspective : awareness, feelings and acceptance of surveillance and surveillance systems for fighting crime in Bulgaria. A quantitative study

Abstract

This document presents the results for Bulgaria within the framework of a larger study undertaken as part of the RESPECT project – “Rules, Expectations and Security through Privacy-enhanced Convenient Technologies” (RESPECT; G.A. 285582) – which was co-financed by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme (2007-2013). Analyses are based on a survey regarding the perceptions, feelings, attitudes and behaviours of citizens towards surveillance for the purpose of fighting crime, carried out amongst a quota sample that is representative of the population in Bulgaria for age and gender. Responses were gathered, predominantly, through an online survey supplemented by a number of questionnaires administered in face to face interviews, in order to fulfil the quota and also reach those citizens who do not use the internet. The questionnaire consisted of 50 questions and was available online in all languages of the European Union between November 2013 and March 2014. The face to face interviews were carried out between December 2013 and January 2014. The sample is based on the responses from 200 individuals who indicated Bulgaria as their country of residence in the online survey or were administered the questionnaire face to face. As a result, the Bulgarian respondents indicated overall a strongly felt lack of trust in the protection of, and control over, personal information gathered via surveillance. The majority of respondents feel more unhappy than happy with the different types of surveillance (except CCTV), and they feel also unhappy about surveillance taking place without them knowing about it, but there is only a weak link between feeling happy, or unhappy, about surveillance and feeling secure or insecure through the presence of surveillance. At the same time, and despite the respondents’ general perception of surveillance measures being useful, surveillance measures currently appear not to reduce their feelings of insecurity. Although analyses also indicate that increasing the perceived effectiveness of CCTV may increase citizens’ feelings of security in the presence of surveillance to a certain extent, increasing the perceived effectiveness of the other measures of surveillance may not have the same effect. More research is needed to disentangle the relationships and effects between surveillance measures, feelings of security or insecurity, and citizens’ general quality of life feelings.