"Marketing” climate change, and other thoughts on how to engage people in the climate change challenge

by Lorena Pasquini

Research Coordinator

Over the past couple of decades thankfully we’ve moved away from the traditional (and very academically named) “knowledge-deficit model”, according to which, people who are more knowledgeable about science tend to be more concerned with science-related issues. From this concept came the idea that changing people’s behaviour could be achieved by providing people with more information – the “pamphlet approach”.

We now know that the pamphlet approach alone won’t necessarily lead to behaviour change. While providing information can influence people’s attitudes, the link between attitudes and behaviour is often weak, i.e. you might say you believe in saving electricity, but you still leave on all the lights in the house all of the time, and you have those nice incandescent light bulbs because energy-saving bulbs just don’t give out the same glow. Plus, external influences on behaviour can often prevent people from changing their behaviour even when they have strong intentions to do so (e.g. no supermarket in a 50 km radius from your home sells energy-saving light bulbs).

A lot of work in recent decades has gone into understanding how to engage the public, policy-makers and organizations (but particularly the public) on climate change, to promote more pro-environmental behaviour. Social marketing is one strategy that has gained increasing popularity. Basically, it applies traditional marketing concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals relevant to the social good. In other words, instead of using marketing principles to get you to do something bad (e.g. smoke), it uses them to get you to do something good (e.g. quit smoking). Traditionally it has been used in the health field, but it has been applied to a range of domains including the climate change one (take a look at www.toolsofchange.com as just one place to check out some examples).

An example I particularly like about social marketing and its effectiveness relates to a social marketing programme that took place in the southern part of the US, which aimed to increase the percentage of people using car safety seats for their children when driving. The most powerful reason for not using safety seats was the mothers’ firm belief that “if God wants to take my child, then there is nothing I can do about this. I would rather hold my child in my arms when it has to die”. In this context, it is highly unlikely that providing information about the usefulness of car seats (e.g. with statistics) – which would likely have been the traditional approach – would have an effect on behaviour. Instead, the social marketing programme used this knowledge to contact the local priests and convince them about the safety benefits of the car seats for children. In the sermons that followed, the priests gave their blessing to the car seats and framed them as being embraced by God. The marketers then only provided further information about how to acquire and correctly use the seats.

What this example also brings out is the importance of “framing”. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, all information is framed by the context in which it appears. For example, a 20% chance of death can equally be portrayed as an 80% chance of life, shifting the focus to a positive rather than negative outcome. Frames can be used to connect to people’s deeper values: using images of polar bears in the climate change debate frames the problem as an issue of animal welfare, while messages about increasing violence, crime and/or conflict as a result of climate change impacts frame the issue around security. Subtle changes in how an outcome is framed can profoundly influence responses, and research has shown the importance that framing choices can have on climate change communication.

While social science research on climate change perceptions, behaviour and communication has grown, and draws together insights from numerous disciplines, there remain two areas where much additional work is required. One, far less work on climate change perceptions, behaviour and communication exists in developing countries, in comparison to the amount of research undertaken in the developed world. At the same time, these are generally the countries considered to be most vulnerable to climate change impacts, where less capacity to respond exists. Further, there is greater societal focus on pressing socio-economic development and poverty-alleviation issues in the global South, and yet the climate change challenge will further complicate the achievement of its development goals. Quite simply, our research on climate change perceptions, behaviour and communication in the developing world is lagging behind that of the developed world, even though the impacts will hit us harder. Therefore, the challenge of finding appropriate behaviour change strategies within the developing world context, and figuring out the how and why of different communication strategies within them, is critical.

The second area of research deserving greater enquiry – and this is both across the global North and South - is in critically and systematically evaluating the role of the arts in climate change communication: it is generally the arts (stories, pictures, dance, plays, etc.) that capture people’s attention, not necessarily policy briefs (for example). We know this, and there is increasing engagement by artists in climate change communication. But we still know little about what forms of communication (including mixed forms) work best across different contexts and audiences, and very often I still see natural scientists attempting to design climate change information without recourse to artists or communication specialists – even when they are trying to develop more innovative forms of communication.

In closing, I’d like to suggest that with further research we may well discover that the days for outputs such as policy briefs – on their own at least – are over. Nine times out of ten, what’s a policy brief other than an over-long pamphlet anyway? I think the time has come to conduct some research evaluating the relative effectiveness of different forms of communication (including new ones) in engaging our audiences, whether these consist of the wider public, private businesses or public policy-makers.

Image: http://www.climate-change-guide.com/