Knowledge and opinions about the Common Agricultural Policy: an analysis from citizens' view

Nowadays, in the European Union (EU) the social legitimacy has become a fundamental requirement for the support of the community policies. However, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has transformed into a social break point, due to its higher budget. Therefore, two questions arise: Which is the citizens' real knowledge of the CAP? Which is the citizens' view and opinion about the CAP budget? In this research, the social knowledge, interest on the CAP and the perception on its budget, together with the socio-demographic variables and opinion traits, are analised by econometric models and the cluster technique. The findings show that the citizens have a very scarce knowledge of the CAP, its budget is not a social controversial issue and its capacity to design the agriculture, which provides us with commercial and non-commercial outputs, is underestimate.