Beyond Awareness:What It Takes to Change Behavior

The key to successful outreach is targeting your message to a specific audience and having it respond to your message.

Why do they do what they do?

How can you get them to change?

Through Social Marketing

What is Social Marketing?

Applying commercial marketing principles to social issues to achieve a change in behavior.

Social marketing means selling ideas, attitudes, and behaviors in the same ways that marketers sell products like cars and computers.

Why Social Marketing?

Most people aren’t interested in environmental issues

It works

Knowledge Is Not Enough

Should we eat a balanced diet? Should we exercise regularly? Are cigarettes bad for our health? Should we recycle our household

garbage? Should we turn the faucet off when

we brush our teeth?

Thinking Like a Marketer

Focus on the audience

Thinking Like a Marketer (cont.)

Beneficial exchange– Real Benefits

Save money Save time Protect health

– Perceived Benefits Fit in with others (It’s cool) People expect it Everyone else is doing it I’ll get rewarded

Audience Categories Innovators (risk takers)

– They are often venturesome and are well educated, high social status, upwardly mobile.

Early Adopters (decisive)– They are right behind the innovators.

Early Majority (cautious)– They are deliberate, information seekers.– They want to see results first. Audience

categories continued Late Majority (skeptical)

– Largest segment, resist change, conservative Laggards (good luck)

– Most resistant to change– Very set in their ways--not as reasonable

What Barriers Prevent Behavior Change? Physical Barriers

– Too hard to do – Too far to drive– Not safe– Takes too long– Not convenient

Economic Barriers– Added costs– No cost savings

Barriers, cont.

Education Barriers– Don’t know how to do it– Need training

Social/Psychological Barriers– Against social norms – Fear of doing something different– I don’t have the skills to do this– Tried it once and it didn’t work

Overcoming Barriers

Everyone else is doing it (or not doing it)

We’ll teach you how to do it

Save money/get money It takes 5 minutes or less It’s the cool thing to do You’ll get a reward if you do it

In Pennsylvania, the Natural Resources Conservation Service learned that in Amish country, a lack of access to traditional outreach methods such as TV or radio was a barrier to convincing Amish dairymen to keep the cows out of the stream. One-on-one farmside chats were used to overcome this technology barrier.

Vermont’s SW Campaign Uses Social Marketing Techniques

Chittenden County Regional Stormwater Education Program

Collaboration of all MS4s in the state Hired a local marketing firm to craft a social

marketing strategy. Stormwater survey results were used to

identify barriers to behavior change and ways to overcome them

Respondents believed the following activities had little or no impact on water quality:– household construction projects (41%)– hosing sediment off of driveways (47%)– runoff from lawns and gardens (39%)– parking lot/road runoff (28%).

http://www.smartwaterways.org/

Tools for Changing Behaviors

Social norms Commitments Prompts Incentives

Social Norms Techniques

Social norms are the standards of acceptable behavior or beliefs in a community.

Eco-labelingRecycling bins at curb (public)Yard or home signageFarm or construction

demonstration sites/fields

Commitments

Pledges (verbal or written) Sign-ups Petitions Donations (time/money)

A watershed pledge is a social marketing tool to obtain a commitment to follow through with behavior change.

Individuals, families, groups, and even businesses can participate through pledge programs.

Whatcom County, WA Watershed Pledgewww.watershedpledge.org

– The Whatcom Watershed Pledge provides citizens & businesses with information about how they can protect and improve rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater.

Prompts

Behavior reminders Use at “point-of-sale” Target specific

behaviors

Photo Credit: S. Groner Associates, http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/HHW/Events/AnnualConf/2004/Presentation/SGroner.pdf

Incentives

Money, money, money, money

Free stuff Recognition Reward positive behavior Disincentives: punish

negative behavior (e.g., user fees)

Prioritizing Behaviors

Think about:– Project goals – Ease of adoption– Consequences of each behavior– Barriers for each behavior– Cost of promotion– Technical soundness of behavior

Social Marketing Case Studies

Los Angeles HHW Campaign

Educated customers at Home Depot and Lowes about household hazardous waste (paint, oil, fertilizer, pesticide)– Trained employees to hold clinics– Posted point-of-sale advertising and shelf

talkers Results:

– Used oil collection increased 9%– Information requests on oil recycling

increased 120%– 36% of those surveyed heard info. through

point-of-sale advertising VS only 15% heard through mass media

Toronto’s Roach Coach Project

Barriers:– Limited knowledge of IPM– Lack of faith in IPM– Belief that it costs more– Unreal expectations– Lack of education on health risks

Toronto Overcame Barriers

Verbal commitment to complete the 8-month pilot

Participants received $25 as incentive

Shown vivid photo slides (communication)

Asked them to monitor for signs of roaches, and to check the traps

Results

Behaviors Pre-pilot Post-pilot

Use of paste/gel 38% 90%

Use of spray 62% 11%

Las Vegas Ad Campaign

Problem: Pollution of Lake Mead, their primary drinking water source

Key issues:– Lawn care– Dumping down storm drains– Pet waste

Techniques– Prompts (storm drain markers), vivid

communication (posters, PSAs, pet food lids), build motivation over time (events, school curriculum)

Bus shelter posters– 25 posters for 4

months– $8,000– Sent out similar

ads in utility bills 1 month before bus ads appeared

Las Vegas Ad Campaign

EXERCISE:

OVERCOMING BEHAVIOR BARRIERS

Identifying and Overcoming Barriers

Objective: Increase hazardous waste recycling by 5% over the next year.

Desired Behavior: Bring toxic materials to recycling center instead of throwing them in the trash or down the drain.

Audience: public works employees

BARRIERS TO BEHAVIOR CHANGE:

• It’s inconvenient to take these materials to the recycling center.

• We don’t understand which materials are toxic and which are not.

• We don’t have time. We are too busy.