Promoting Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 2000 by Doug McKenzie-Mohr

Although identifying barriers is a critical step in deciding whether it is wise to attempt to promote a specific behavior as well as craft a social marketing strategy, significant pressures exist to skip this step. Indeed, in a recent review of Canadian environmental programs, most programs were found not to identify barriers prior to developing strategies (Kassirer & McKenzie-Mohr, 1998). A variety of reasons exist for not identifying barriers. Three of the most common include

* Program planners are likely to believe that the barriers to an activity are already well known.

* Most programs must be delivered within a short period of time, which makes conducting barrier research a challenge.

* The organizations that deliver these programs suffer from financial constraints that make additional work difficult to justify.

Social psychological research suggests that we readily form personal theories regarding the behavior of others and then search selectively for information that confirms our beliefs. This suggests that program planners are apt to believe that they already fully understand the barriers to an activity, independent of whether they actually do. Although as psychologists we may not be able easily to persuade them that their personal theories may be in error (particularly when programs are not evaluated and, therefore, do not provide feedback on their efficacy to their designer), we are more likely to be effective if we can provide research findings on the barriers to an activity that they are interested in promoting. To date, psychological research on barriers primarily has been confined to energy efficiency and waste reduction. We quickly need to develop knowledge regarding the barriers to a much broader set of activities. Further, we need to participate in interdisciplinary efforts to identify the most important activities to research.

Conducting barrier research will add significantly to the length of time required to deliver a project. In many cases, it is reasonable to assume that collecting this information can add 4 to 8 weeks to the length of a project. Further, obtaining this information can add substantially to the cost of delivering a program. This additional time and cost are likely to pale, however, compared to the time and cost of redelivering a program because the first attempt failed to change behavior. It would be useful if we could provide return-on-investment (ROI) information that compared the relative success of projects in which barriers were first identified with those in which they were not.

As with identifying barriers, time and financial constraints also limit the likelihood that programs will be piloted or evaluated. Given that psychological research has revealed that many programs do not change behavior, adopting pilots and evaluations is particularly important.

Over the last several years, I have been attempting to make psychological knowledge more accessible to program planners through delivering workshops and writing specifically for them and by developing a Web site (www.cbsm.com) that allows easier access to relevant information. For example, the Web site provides a guide to fostering sustainable behavior and searchable databases of relevant articles, case studies, and graphics. Further, the site provides the opportunity for program planners to share information with one another and with psychologists through a discussion forum. The feedback that I have received on these attempts to make psychological knowledge more visible suggests that program planners are willing recipients of this information and are anxious to have a dialogue with psychologists regarding program delivery. To ensure that this happens, we need to make certain that attempts by psychologists to work more actively with program planners are not an impediment to tenure and promotion.