Introductory Workshop Discussion Forum

Questions and Discussion from Workshop Day 1
Q: I’m curious to know if we have data to know if this has changed over time (knowledge affecting behavior, or not)?

A: typically having more knowledge, even if this knowledge accumulates over time, is not sufficient to motivate behavior change.  This is because knowledge really represents only one of the barriers to behavior change.

Q: Thanks, let me clarify! I was wondering if this is different now than say in the 1920s or 1970s.

A: I am not aware of any research that has looked at a change in this relationship over time.  Many of the studies that we cite that show the weak relationship between knowledge and behavior go back decades and we see this same pattern today.  There are certainly cases where knowledge is sufficient to change behavior -- for example if it is a new program or change to an existing program.

Q: Can you remind me what the first and second take-home messages were? Thanks!

A: You will find the take-home messages in the Fostering Sustainable Behavior book noted with an "house" icon.  

You can find the Six Americas work and related research here: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/topic/

Q: Curious if there is data on “information overload” and the possible effect on behavior/behavior modification in the modern age, post-internet existence vs. in earlier times? And concretely, has work to change behavior in outreach changed as well?

A: There is a fairly recent meta-analysis on choice overload that looks at the various factors influencing information overload and choice/behavior change. I don't recall that they looked at historical patterns, but this is the most comprehensive review that I am aware of:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265170803_Choice_Overload_A_Conceptual_Review_and_Meta-Analysis

Q: Does positive messaging ( e.g verified businesses that Raised their Blade for lawnmowing) such as providing visibility for businesses that change behavior help?

A: Yes.   Providing badges, signs, certificates, etc. that publicly highlight that a business is engaged in a particular behavior can foster social diffusion and convey social norms (that others are engaged in the behavior).  One caution with this approach, however, is to make sure that you have a mechanism for maintaining the certification (e.g., ongoing verification).

Q: Re: 5-6 behaviors. But aren't we competing with all the other things people are being asked to do in other ways too? (Such as we're asking them to raise the blade, and reduce salt use, while someone else is asking them to get a vaccine, and someone else is asking them to pack out what they pack in…is that not decision fatigue too?

A: Absolutely it is! This is exactly why we need to be strategic about which behaviors to focus on rather than trying to focus on everything.  Our audiences have limited capacity (due to all of these other asks). In our work, we typically narrow down to 3 or fewer related behaviors.

Comment: One point to be careful about with the pie chart in the Lake Champlain Basin as related to phosphorus…urban areas make up only 6% of the watershed area, BUT, we know that acre for acre urban areas are contributing more phosphorus that ag.

A: Definitely a consideration.  The pie charts are a useful way to find the most important behaviors.  However, the charts will look very different by the outcome of interest. The point is to use the best data available to make strategic decisions about where to focus. Essentially you are answering the question -- who (or where) is most connected to the problem?

Q: What are end state behaviors?

A: End state behaviors refer to the last behavior that an individual engages in that is directly connected to the outcome. For example, purchasing a programmable thermostat is not an end state behavior, but installing it and setting it to energy efficient temperature is.

Q: Can you remind what are non divisible behaviors

A: Non divisible behaviors are those that cannot be broken down into smaller actions.  For example, reduce water usage can be broken down into several discrete actions -- reduce shower time to 10 minutes, install a low flow shower head, etc.

Q: if goal is trying to mitigate dog poop on trials Are these end-state and non divisible?

              1 Take full dog poop bags home

              2 Keep dogs on leash so you know when they poop

A:  I would actually take it one step further to get to the end state.  1) Take full dog poop bags home and dispose in the trash can.; 2)Keep dogs on leash, pick up their waste, and throw in the trash.

 

Q: I’m wondering how to integrate environmental justice considerations into the approach. What populations might potentially most benefit or be left out? 

A:  Wegenerally layer this over top after the weighting process.  Considerations of equity, inclusion, etc. are a qualitative discussion that we have as we prioritize the list. Even if a behavior comes to the top of the list, we may choose not to proceed with it if it adversely affects another group, for example. 

New Resource for Stream Stewardship Activities - Stream Wise
Hi All - I wanted to share a new program that recently launched (about two weeks ago!) whose goal is to bring neighbors together to protect and restore healthy waterways across the Lake Champlain region. https://streamwisechamplain.org/
Now that the program foundation is set and will be piloted this summer, we hope to bring in CBSM practices to engage landowners in maintaining and enhancing wide buffers of native plants along the sections of rivers and streams that they own at the local watershed/community level. 

Q: What is the name of the conference Doug mentioned?

A:  Behavior Energy Climate Change (BECC) https://beccconference.org/

Q:  For doing audience research, we often try to identify what might be barriers or motivations to doing the behavior based on lit review and brainstorming. However, it feels as if barrier and motivation questions should be open-ended to turn up other things that might be driving action. Or is it "sufficient" to offer an "other" category when asking to what extent are each of the following barriers (or benefits) to you doing X behavior? 

A: We typically start with a literature review and then, if possible, focus groups or in-depth interviews or brief intercept surveys to get a sense of the range of barriers that might come up.  We use these to build a good survey.  This helps prevent building bias about what we believe to be barriers and motivations into the survey.  We do often still include an other response to capture things we may have missed. 

Q: Do you know if the "I voted" stickers were driven by social science research?

A: I know of no studies that tested the impact of the stickers on voter turnout. It also appears unclear where the stickers started.  Seems they emerged in the early 80s, but the intention is unclear.  There are many examples of people using social science strategies "by accident."  For example, Robert Cialdini, a widely known researcher and academic in the area of persuasion often observed practices in industry (e.g., car sales, door-to-door sales) that were effective at making the sale.  He then took these observed techniques back into the lab to study them and identify why they work and under what contexts they work most effectively.

Q: Do you think that these conversations could be considered knowledge and awareness? Educating people about their behaviors and then they changed their behaviors based on the personal conversations?

A:  If knowledge and awareness were sufficient, more than likely the signs by themselves would have been sufficient.  Based on what we know about the impact of knowledge and awareness, it is more likely that elements of the personal conversation -- making a commitment and a desire for consistency -- underlie the behavior change that was observed.

Q: My question was to ask if you could share a little more on not pairing incentives with commitment. 

A: …the short answer is that when we provide an incentive, we have now assigned an extrinsic motivation to the behavior (i.e., I'm committing to this to get the gift, prize, reward, etc.) which undermines intrinsic motivation and the self perception associated with commitments (i.e., I'm committing to this because I am the kind of person who X).

Q: Incentives being seen as coercive seems to be key to avoid for buy-in of commitments?

A: Potentially.  The important takeaway for me is that we should be cautious about the potential implications when choosing whether to use incentives in our programs.  Many of our clients jump to incentives, contests, rebates, etc. because they are familiar and without careful thought about their need or their long-term impacts and costs.

Q: I'm worried about trying to engage a group and having an influential member bash the idea.

A: This is a valid concern. I always recommend conducting a bit of a landscape/stakeholder analysis before implementing any strategy so you can anticipate these issues ahead of time and think through solutions.  For example, a few years back I ran a CBSM program to promote computer shutdown by municipal employees.  We knew that there were those in the IT departments that could potentially "bash" the behavioral ask.  Therefore, we included this group in our research so that we could separately understand and address any concerns that they had.

COMMENT: Just to clarify... the "Contagious" book that Doug mentioned is by Jonah Berger

COMMENT: Did you hear about the National Parks in the US phasing out single use plastics (https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103880432/interior-department-plastic-straws-recycling-waste-oceans) and CA disallowing watering on nonfunction grass (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-24/california-bans-watering-of-non-functional-grass)? CBSM has potential to be everywhere!

Q: It seems that most of the strategies talked about yesterday involve some face to face interaction, which can be time intensive and costly. I believe Doug mentioned is that is usually an important piece of a strategy, correct? Can you talk more about that?

A: We are often trying to get as close as possible to personal contact as this is a very strong form of communication.  That said, you are right that there is often cost associated with that.  Often we can still achieve this at low cost by using things such as retail partnerships where conversations happen at point of sale, block leaders, or other existing mechanisms.  When that is not the case, then we defer to other traditional types of media....direct mail is usually the next step as it can be personalized more than broad media messages such as those on a billboard, radio, TV etc.

RESOURCE: Book on ethics in social marketing -  http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/ethics-social-marketing

Q: How do you see, or do you see, this as being related to ncreases in "individualism" as societal norms? ("this" meaning social norms often push against sustainability)

A: I would expect that there could be a relationship between increases in such values as individualism and push against sustainability goals.  However, other values fit well with sustainability goals (e.g., avoiding waste).  One thing I often see organizations doing is trying to reach people with the values that are important to them or the program rather than values important for the individual.  This can exacerbate psychological reactance where people push against the messages. My recommendation would be to find ways to demonstrate how the behavioral ask fits with values around individualism.  For example, I recently worked on a campaign in Orange County, California that aimed to get people to prevent irrigation runoff from their lawns to prevent polluted water from entering storm drains. The behaviors included checking for and repairing broken and misaligned sprinklers, reducing watering times, and watering. The pilot was conducted in a very conservative area and during the height of the pandemic when people were being asked to give up a lot of things.  Rather than focus on pollution prevention, the outreach focused on keeping water on your lawn, as in, keeping what is yours as well as improving the look and health of their lawns. The materials still included education around pollution prevention, but spoke to people in a way that met their needs for individualism.  The program also highlighted that every lawn is unique and has special needs.  We provided information and tools for conducting an Irrigation Tune Up.  In other words, we recognized their need for individualism (my lawn is different and special) and aligned it with the needs of the program.

 

Q: How do you go from blank board to board full of commitments to provide motivation of social norms? 

A: We often gather some commitments during a pre-pilot phase, from early adopters, etc. to "seed" the board ahead of time.  No one wants to be the first one on the board. 

Q: Could you provide a definition for "injunctive" please? I looked it up, but all I found was injunction and that doesn't seem to align with how injunctive is being use. Thanks!

A: Injunctive norms refer to the extent to which most others would approve or disapprove of a given behavior See Cialdini et al., 1990 "A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct"

Q: Tips for implementing CBSM when capacity (staff time and/or budget) is limited? How can we most effectively and efficiently determine (1) the most "bang for the buck" (apologies for that crass phrase!) and also (2) how to ensure we are being equitable in balancing most predominately recognized communities (which may in some senses have a broader reach) with also not leaving other communities behind?

A: Tips for implementing CBSM when capacity (staff time and/or budget) is limited....How can we most effectively and efficiently determine (1) the most "bang for the buck"....Best way, in my opinion, is to make sure that your strategies are carefully tied to your barrier/benefit research findings. Ask yourself how each program element addresses a barrier or benefit.  What function does it serve.  This helps to ensure that you have a lean design (i.e., that the program does not include a lot of extra frills that are not necessary).  Additionally, pilot test the strategies so that you implement the most cost-effective (2) how to ensure we are being equitable in balancing most predominately recognized communities (which may in some senses have a broader reach) with also not leaving other communities behind? -- This is an important question and one that we need to be asking ourselves as we move through the steps of the process. At each step, we need to be cognizant of how certain behavior changes/program asks may have different implications for various groups based on race, gender, SES, etc...Additionally, when choosing audiences to focus on, segment at the level of barriers. If you go to broad with your program, you will often waste resources on asking people to do things that they do not have the means to do. For example, asking an entire community to put in a rain garden...this would be better focused on home owners as renters would not have the ability to do this.  You'd waste program resources by putting the message out to the entire community.

Q: Can't an inundation of fearful messages also cause the opposite effect of what we want? Ex: fearful climate change messaging can make people feel hopeless or get annoyed at hearing it so much

A: Yes. It can lead to emotional numbing if not paired with something they can do to alleviate the discomfort.

Q: Could you share some of the research/data related to loss vs gain and extreme and fearful messages?

A:  Here is just one article (there are many - most are in the health literature) - Gallagher, Kristel & Updegraff, John. (2012). Health Message Framing Effects on Attitudes, Intentions, and Behavior: A Meta-analytic Review. Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. 43. 101-16. 10.1007/s12160-011-9308-7.

Q: In some of the other examples you've offered, there has also been a control group. How important is that? testing strategies against each other and the control?

A:  VERY important.  If you don't have a control group, it is impossible to know if the effects you observe are due to your program or to other outside factors  - weather, other policies, news stories, etc.  When you have a control group, all of those outside factors are experienced by all groups.  Therefore any difference you see above and beyond the control group is likely due to your program. Ssometimes we use an "information only" control.  That is the testing a strategy group against a group that gets only informational materials.

 

Q: Can you use a survey for this, measuring the pilot effectiveness? 

A: While we prefer direct observation whenever possible, there are cases when a survey is our only option.  In this case, we would use a post-test survey of both the control and treatment group.