Part I. Developing an Outreach Campaign Plan
Step 2: Identify & analyze the target audience

Barriers to action: Why do they do what they do?

There are many reasons why people do not choose sustainable behaviors. First, many are simply unaware of the impact their behavior has on water quality. But even when people become aware, they might believe that doing the right thing is too expensive, takes too much time, is inconvenient, or is socially unacceptable. And unfortunately, when it comes to the environment, most people simply do not believe that a change in the personal routines and habitats of just one person will make a difference. These reasons are called barriers. Barriers prevent people from taking positive steps toward improving the environment. Barriers can be physical (such as the lack of facilities to collect household hazardous waste), economic (high cost), cultural (bias toward grass lawns, even in arid cities), or knowledge-based (lack of understanding of how to conduct a soil test). These obstacles must be minimized or removed so that the target audience ("customer") perceives that the benefit outweighs the cost or effort of the action.

To address these barriers, you need to think about what motivates people not to engage in environmentally friendly behavior. For example, many people do not pick up after their pets. Many cannot get past the "yuck factor." Still others reason that pet waste is a part of nature and there's no reason to pick it up. Some even view it as fertilizer. They don't realize that dog droppings are one of the leading causes of pathogen contamination in streams; each gram of dog poop has more than 20 million E. coli bacteria colonies in it (not to mention the nitrogen and phosphorus it contains). Some would just rather not take the time to stop and scoop. Quite a few either don't think about it at all or have multiple objections to it. The important thing is that as people are confronted with reasons and motivations for changing, a great many do. Researching your audience to understand the barriers to getting people to pick up pet waste in their yards, on the beach, or wherever they walk their pets, will help you craft your message to change their perceptions. Your message might include a photo of someone walking their dog on a beach where children are playing in the sand or show someone walking his dog over a body of water to help your target audience make the connection. Overcoming the perceived barriers to scooping the poop will result in more people changing their behavior.

For a series of more than 70 case studies that describe how some communities have overcome various behavior barriers, visit www.toolsofchange.com, a Canadian community-based social marketing Web site. For additional help on overcoming barriers, download the worksheet Identifying and Removing Barrier to Behavior Change (587K, 6 pages, about PDF) from the Getting in Step guide.

Social norms: Everyone's doing it

Social norms are the standards of attitude and behavior perceived as normal, acceptable, and expected among the members of a particular community or subculture. For example, because most people buy red, white, black, or green cars, it becomes socially unacceptable to buy a hot pink car, even if hot pink is your favorite color. Car manufacturers don't even make cars in hot pink because they know people won't buy them. Social norms change over time. Our leaders no longer wear powdered wigs as our founding fathers did, and people no longer smoke in elevators as was common through the 1960s.

Social norms affect environmental issues in much the same way. If everyone else on your street maintains a bright green lawn by applying lots of fertilizer four times a year, you're likely to follow suit whether your lawn needs the extra fertilizer or not, because you may feel judged by your neighbors if do not "keep up with the Joneses."

So how can social norms be changed? Outreach campaigns should be structured so that they give people new norms that are appealing and easy to adopt. The campaigns should inform people of the new acceptable behaviors. Agricultural communities often do this through farm demonstration projects. Farmers are more likely to adopt a new practice if they've seen that a neighbor is doing it and is benefiting from it. In addition, many manufacturers have become partners in a growing effort to reward sustainable behaviors through eco-labeling. Buying products labeled as ozone-friendly or recyclable makes people feel good about themselves and shows other buyers that they are environmentally savvy. Bumper stickers, T-shirts, and other rewards for environmental behavior are often great ways to establish new environmental social norms in your community. The goal is to make it no longer socially acceptable to continue the behavior that has negative effects on water quality.