In the past few years, different kinds of organisations and communities have competed to distribute to people information on energy conservation. The supply of information has been so great and diverse that it is not possible to explain people's continued passiveness in energy conservation due to a lack of information. Naturally, it does not mean that if there is plenty of information available it is also received, acquired or applied, but it is a prerequisite for these. One fundamental condition for the breakthrough of information is that it is considered truthful.

In addition to attitudes towards energy conservation, the current survey made a comparison of the reliability of various sources of information as suppliers of information concerning domestic energy conservation. Public opinion yields a relatively clear ranking of communicators representing various parties in society and background operators. As typical for these kinds of comparisons, different kinds of public players or those with a public background are considered the most reliable. First place goes to the consumer authorities (81% considers very or quite reliable). Next on the list is Motiva, which is a specialist in energy and material efficiency, (69%/10%) and then Työtehoseura (TTS), which is a research, development and training institute, (68%/12%). Energy sector organisations reach almost the same figures (68%/23%) but there is also some mistrust when it comes to these [Figure 32.].

Although electricity companies (58%/38%), environmental organisations (57%/38%) and the EU (54%/36%) are also considered more reliable than unreliable sources of information, opinions about them were more divided. Clearly the most unreliable (of those included in the survey) are home appliance and machine dealers (35%/58%) and oil companies (31%/59%). For these, mistrust was visibly greater than trust.

The reasonable result of electricity companies might be explained by their unique consumer contact network - millions of energy conservation instructions included in electricity bills could not have gone unnoticed. The position of electricity companies can also be considered to be good because they are not, as often happens, steamrollered by environmental organisations. It seems that conservationists, who are usually seen to be quite reliable, are considered merely 'value experts' when it comes to energy conservation; the technological expertise required for taking conservation measures is considered to be located elsewhere.

In the results concerning Motiva and Työtehoseura (TTS), the least mistrust in the survey but also quite a large share of those with no opinion are for issues that clearly draw attention; this indicates that people do not know these players. It can be assumed that these are partly assessed on the basis of name association. The poor result of the European Union - at least for a public player - might be explained in addition to the traditional EU suspicion by certain concrete solutions the EU has provided. The directive concerning energy saving lamps, according to which the traditional glow lamps must be removed from stores at stages in all EU member countries starting from 2009, has aroused plenty of public criticism.

When the results as a whole are interpreted, it must be observed that they show confidence in the correctness of shared information as such but also in the motives of its distribution. Because energy conservation contains several kinds of positive values for individuals and for society, it is believed that these can also be used hypocritically to promote other objectives. For example, the weak position of home appliance dealers might be explained by doubts as to their motives - maybe the new energy-friendly model has not been launched in order to save the environment but to cheat the consumer.

The question was also included in the 1993 survey with partly the same content. The comparison with the results from 1993 (for those survey objects that have been included in both surveys) shows general stability. Those who have somewhat increased their reliability are home appliance and machine dealers, Motiva and environmental organisations (the term used in 1993 was "nature conservation organisations"). On the other hand, a decrease can be seen among electricity utilities. Although the difference cannot be explained by conceptual matters - previous questions dealt with the credibility of electricity plants - they have a connection to the different picture of the times of surveys: at the beginning of the 1990s players in electricity supply were assessed, now they are players in the electricity markets. The electricity maintenance companies had quite low profiles in public discussions, they had partly an office-like image and were most often small organisations, while the current players are business-oriented companies grilled by the media in several ways [Figure 33.].