Hi all, The short answer is...they are relatively effective. 

Let’s start with what fear-based messages are. They are messages that are designed to instil strong negative emotions such as fear in a priority group in order to persuade them to change their behaviour. The assumption here is that when people feel a visceral reaction related to the consequences of their behaviour, they will take positive action to reduce that reaction. A common example of a fear-based message is a warning label on a cigarette package that says, “Smoking causes lung cancer” along with a graphic image showing what that might look like. Fear-based messages are known to be most effective in the lab where conditions are controlled. In field settings, they tend to have mixed results. There is evidence, however, that fear-based messages are effective at influencing health-related behaviours, particularly for people who are most directly affected by the message. For example, people at high risk of skin cancer are more likely to act on fear-based messages around sun exposure and wearing sunscreen. In order for fear-based messages to be most effective, people need to first feel fear due to an imminent threat to themselves (e.g. “I might actually get lung cancer if I continue smoking”), and they need to perceive that they have the ability to take action to neutralize the threat. Providing specific avenues for people to engage in desirable behaviours is therefore critical. By placing warning labels on cigarette packages, people who smoke become aware of the threats posed by cigarette smoking, but they may become desensitized to threatening messages because there are so many of them yet little to no avenues provided for taking action. Examples of providing avenues to act would be giving people the locations of smoking cessation clinics or directing them where to find an inexpensive nicotine patch.   Fear-based messages have a relative degree of effectiveness in various contexts, but with smoking specifically, regulations are known to be more effective. For example, there is evidence from the UK that banning tobacco advertising reduces smoking rates. Decreasing the availability of tobacco and increasing its cost, as well as cutting nicotine levels in tobacco products are other examples of regulations that change behaviour, according to public health experts.  In summary, if you would like to engage your priority group with fear-based messages, they will be most effective if you keep the following in mind: -       Focus your efforts on a priority group who is most directly affected -       Avoid repeating the message so many times that people become desensitized-       Provide specific, concrete actions that the priority group can take to neutralize the threat-       Consider coupling fear-based messages with advocacy for government regulations To read a brief article that highlights recent research on fear-based messaging, click here. To view an interactive website that helps smokers quit, click here. 

Hi all,  Rare’s Centre for Behavior & the Environment has published a framework that includes six behavioural levers to apply when leading behaviour change campaigns. 

They explain that traditionally, environmental program planners have used information, rules and regulations, and material incentives to affect behaviour change. We now know the limitations to these levers: information does not always lead to action, incentives sometimes backfire, and rules are not always easy to enforce. We also know that behavioural science research has led to the toolkit growing over time to include other powerful levers such as emotions, social influences, and structure/context for decision-making (i.e. choice architecture). The framework includes overarching principles and bullet-point strategies for how to implement them. This is a useful—and brief—toolkit that summarizes behavioural levers available to environmental program planners.  If you’d like to download the document, click here. To watch a half hour webinar on how to apply the behavioural levers, which includes real-life recycling case studies from Massachusetts and Ohio, click here (Scroll down to webinar series #5. To skip the intro, start at the 5:07 minute mark). 

Hi all, There are many reasons that people move towards plant-based diets, from concerns about human-caused climate change to better physical health to social influence. As sustainability and behaviour change professionals, some of you may be promoting more consumption of vegetarian and vegan options in the public sphere. I’ve found some interesting campaigns that communicate in clever ways to influence eating choices.  According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global non-profit sustainability research agency, when it comes to promoting healthy and sustainable diets, language matters. They have a fascinating initiative called Coolfood, which assists the food service industry in reducing their carbon emissions by 25% by 2030, to align with the Paris agreement goals. A few years ago, they conducted an experiment where they created a menu of eight dishes, two of which were vegetarian. They sent it to 1000 consumers online and asked them to choose a meal. They then sent the same menu to another group of consumers, but the menu items were reconfigured differently: the vegetarian options were placed in a box and labelled “vegetarian”. In this group, the number of people who ordered the vegetarian dishes was 56% less. Apparently, when meals are labelled vegetarian, vegan, or meat-free, sales are significantly reduced. This may be in part because people perceive them to be less tasty or enjoyable than meat-based options.  In another experiment that took place in Sainsburys cafés, they took the meat-free dishes and changed the names of them. They then monitored sales of those items for ten weeks in eight stores versus eight control stores. For example, Sainsburys has a ‘meat-free sausage and mash’ dish. They created an alternative name, “Cumberland spiced veggie sausage and mash”, which increased sales by 76% during that period. This is an impressive shift. In summary, if you are promoting plant-based diets, consider using less of the following language: -       Meat-free-       Vegetarian-       Vegan-       Healthy restrictive ….and more of the following: -       Provenance/origin-       Flavour-       Look and feel If you’d like to watch a video presentation about WRI’s Coolfood initiative, click here.