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In order to boost local consumption, the HKSAR Government will issue HK$5,000 electronic consumption vouchers to eligible residents, and plans to open the scheme for registration on 4 July. A telephone survey conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in mid-June showed that 64.2% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the government’s disbursement of electronic consumption vouchers. However, 57.0% of the respondents were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the various arrangements of the scheme, while 31.7% were satisfied or very satisfied.

According to the survey results, 64.2% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the disbursement of electronic consumption vouchers by the Government to the public, while only 29.8% disagreed or strongly disagreed. However, with regard to the various arrangements made by the Government for the current voucher scheme, 57.0% of the respondents were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, and 31.7% were satisfied or very satisfied. While 59.7% of the respondents said that it would be rather easy or very easy for them to spend an electronic voucher, 28.6% said it would be quite difficult or very difficult.

The survey also found that if the Government were to issue money to the public again in the future, 73.2% of the respondents would like to receive a cash deposit directly, while only 5.2% were in favour of electronic consumer vouchers, and 18.9% indicated that they would be indifferent to the mode of money.

After receiving the electronic consumption vouchers, some people may plan to only spend the money on regular daily consumption that they have originally planned, and overall not spend any extra money. Of the survey results, 54.0% of respondents said they would not spend more overall, while 38.5% said they were willing to consume more. If the stores that respondents normally shop at offer discounts for electronic consumption vouchers, 47.7% of the respondents said they would buy more or buy more expensive products or services in these stores, while 45.0% said they would not do so. The survey also found that 56.4% of the respondents believed that the scheme would be somewhat helpful in boosting consumption in Hong Kong, 16.0% believed it would be quite helpful, 2.0% very helpful, and only 22.0% believed it would be completely unhelpful.

The Government has provided four stored value facilities for the public to collect the electronic consumption vouchers. The survey results showed that the largest number of the respondents chose Octopus to receive them, accounting for 64.3%, followed by Tap & Go (9.1%), Alipay HK (7.5%) and WeChat Pay HK (2.6%).

A dual-frame (landline and mobile phone) sampling design was adopted for the survey, and it was conducted from 11 to 21 June 2021. A total of 703 respondents aged 18 or above (landline: 339; mobile: 364) were successfully interviewed, with response rates of 28.7% (landline) and 30.4% (mobile). The sampling error is estimated at plus or minus 3.70 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. In addition, weighting of survey data was based on the probability of the respondents being selected via dual-frame sampling design and relevant age-sex distribution of the population published by the Census and Statistics Department.