Last updated: 25 Oct 07
Strategies A-Z: Climate Change

Climate action: 'West of England' project fosters behaviour change
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The ‘West of England’ project – for a consortium of local authorities and the Centre for Sustainable Energy in Bristol – aims to foster climate-friendly behaviour in a couple of population segments that have been found to be particularly hard to reach.

An exhibition has been produced – informed by the project’s qualitative research findings – which will be appearning in shopping centres in the region from October 2007.

The project centred on 8 eight-person focus groups, made up of esteem-driven ‘Outer Directed’ people (‘Prospectors’) – who make up 40 per cent of the UK population, and are more competitive and image-conscious than the ‘Pioneers’ who often run campaigns for NGOs. Qualitative research with these focus groups helped to discern what ‘offers’ might work for ‘Prospectors’ in general. (To accurately gauge people’s values and motivations, the Abraham Maslow-based model of ‘Values Modes’ was used. (See ‘Ethical living - Smart Living - Safe Living’: how to target environmental communications; Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (+ beyond) – from ‘Tests’ section of this site).

One of the focus group activities was to look at a model home with 100 different energy-saving devices – from bulbs and insulation to the ‘Wattson’ electricity meter than shows how much electricity is used in each of your various home appliances, and even their yearly cost. (By turning off devices around the home you can instantly see the savings you would make!)
The results of the focus groups helped hone messages that work for the ‘outer directed’ Prospectors – on their home turf of the shopping centre.

Findings are written up in some detail in the 34-page report ‘Research Into Motivating Prospectors, Settlers and Pioneers To Change Behaviours That Affect Climate Emissions’ by Rose, Dade and Scott.

Here are some initial ‘Dos and Don’ts’ findings (for the flagship ‘Now People’ subset of the Prospectors):

Don't:
• Talk about the implications of climate change: too remote; they are notvery bothered
• Use messengers (voices) which lack authority or could be challenged
• Criticise behaviours (eg wrong type of car, 'wasting' energy in your home)
• Ask them to give things up
• Ask them to be the first to change (amongst their peers)
• Invoke critical judgement by others

Do:
• Refer to local, visible, negative changes involving loss or damage
• Show the significance of UK emissions and those of normal people (ie like them)
• Use interest in homes and gardens
• Deploy the nag factor of their children
• Create offers which are above all easy, cost-effective, instant and painless

The ‘Too Worthy’ Trap
Also jumping out from the qualitative research done with the focus groups were strong messages about why some of the common approaches to climate change campaigning are in fact dead-ends (other than for very narrow segments of the population).

“The Prospectors don’t like to be told they are doing anything wrong, or that they ought to give anything up,’ explain Rose, Dade and Scott.

“‘Concerned Ethicals’ [one of the ‘Pioneer’ types] are likely to do both, and particularly annoy or initimidate ‘Now People’. All in all, if an effort becomes led by Concerned Ethicals, or is versed in their terms, it is likely to appear ‘worthy’ and unattractive to the 40% who are Prospectors.”

“For the media this signals the “worthy but” frame of ineffectiveness, often reinforced by the dogged attempts of Concerned Ethicals to ‘convert’ others to their way of thinking (the ‘department of hopeless causes’). At least when it comes to population-wide behaviour change projects, there simply aren’t enough Concerned Ethicals (less than 10%) to risk basing the proposition or ask on what-works for them. Many NGO or public sector campaigns fall into this “too worthy” trap.”

Such short-sighted campaigning is on show if you visit the Prince Charles-supported Centre for Alternative Technology – where “the exhibits constantly remind you how bad you are in terms of consumption but you can’t actually pay to have a solar panel installed there and then” – a turn-off for the outer-directed Prospectors.

“The Norfolk ‘Ecotech’ centre used to have (may still have?) an interactive exhibit in which the ‘wrong’ answers included buying fashionable rather than ‘durable’ clothes and having a house which was warm when you woke up in the morning.”

“These Prospector-unfriendly examples may be extreme cases of Concerned Ethical projection but the same undercurrent of thinking runs through a lot of conventional NGO and much public sector communications on ‘climate’”, explain Rose, Dade and Scott.

“So they are missing or alienating the very people they most seem to want to reach (if that is, they are after behaviour change rather than a vanguard campaign).”

‘Carbon Footprint’ fallacy
Another approach which has shown itself to be weak when it comes to encouraging population-wide behaviour change is the ‘Carbon Footprint’ approach, which is nevertheless very popular with NGOs and some Government departments.

Population-wide behaviour change vs strategic campaigns
The ‘Psychographic’ segmentation of the population used in this project is particularly helpful when seeking population-wide behaviour change rather than seeking to engage the usual small receptive vanguard of society in the hope that this will lead to strategic change.

Chris Rose writes: “Whereas classic campaigns can be conducted by engaging a small sliver of society which then causes strategic changes to take place, once any group embarks on population-wide ‘behaviour change’, you need a population-wide model to work with” – of the type offered by Cultural Dynamics/Pad Dade’s ‘Values Modes’.

‘Settler’ lady
Thought they were not the target, the project also included one focus group of sustenance-driven ‘Settlers’ (known as the ‘Brave New World’ sub-group) and one of inner-directed Pioneers, (known as ‘Transcenders’).

Interestingly one conventional, sustenance-driven ‘Settler’ lady had chosen the typical ‘Pioneer’ behaviour of fitting her home out with solar power - “But her motivation was straight from the handbook - she wanted energy independence, safety, security, very local security. It had little or nothing to do with climate as a globally conceived 'issue'.”

Chris Rose also points out in his Campaign Strategy Newsletter (no. 33, June 2007): “because of the way most businesses operate (market-led), once products and services are available that 'work' for Prospectors (the Toyota Prius and the Wattson are perhaps examples), it's commerce which is most likely to get it right for them. That much may be rather obvious but it also implies that unless NGOs and public sector communicators break away from their Pioneer assumptions, and even worse their Concerned Ethical thinking, they are likely to be more and more marginalised as the social bandwagon for climate action rolls on.”

Pat Dade and Chris Rose have also worked with the ‘Stop Climate Chaos’ movement.

Further reading:
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (+ beyond) – from ‘Tests’ section of this site
‘Ethical living - Smart Living - Safe Living’: how to target environmental communications
Using Values Modes, by Chris Rose and Pat Dade. 14 pages.
Research Into Motivating Prospectors, Settlers and Pioneers To Change Behaviours That Affect Climate Emissions, by Chris Rose (Campaign Strategy) with Pat Dade (Cultural Dynamics) and John Scott (KSBR). 34 pages.
A tool for motivation based communication strategy, by Chris Rose. 35 pages.
Climate Change Communications – Dipping A Toe Into Public Motivation, Chris Rose, with Pat Dade, and Nick Gallie and John Scott. 20 pages.
Becalmed In The Mainstream: How Psychological Colonization Has Put The Brakes On Environmental Action, by Chris Rose. 16 pages
Painting the Town Green: How to Persuade People to be Environmentally Friendly
www.cultdyn.co.uk (Cultural Dynamics Strategy and Marketing)

Copyright © 2007 Matthew Kalman