In work on municipal projects, nature conservation and sustainability, the behavior of people can be positively influenced. For example, when it comes to the collection of valuable substances, the economical use of drinking water and energy, the use of public transport, the observation of paths in parks and protected areas, the laying on of dogs and the collection of their belongings. The good news in advance: the promotion of a certain behavior is quite possible, and it is not even very complex.
However, it is usually not enough to work with reconnaissance if the actual behavior of people is to be positively influenced. A widespread error is that the knowledge about certain causative relationships (eg mineral oil polluted drinking water) in combination with certain attitudes (we estimate clean drinking water) would already control the behavior of people. We prevent our own vehicles from losing oil because of that. Numerous research reveals that the combination of knowledge and attitudes has no significant impact on the actual behavior of individuals and groups. This is the reason why many well-intentioned information campaigns have been shown to promote attention, but they do not have any effect on behavior.
A promising approach to influencing behavior is so-called social marketing programs. They rely directly on findings from psychological and sociological research. First, a desired behavior is defined, then a bunch of measures to promote this behavior are tested. To this end, barriers that hinder the desired behavior are reduced and at the same time incentives that promote it are used. The measures designed are subjected to a test run. With this test run, the effectiveness of the instruments used can be checked and, if necessary, improved once again. Only when they have proved their effectiveness in a test run, these measures are fully implemented. This makes social marketing programs very effective.
If you want to influence the behavior of users or fellow citizens, we can help with the planning, implementation and control of social marketing programs.