{"id":2577,"date":"2020-06-17T21:07:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T21:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2577"},"modified":"2020-06-17T21:16:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T21:16:21","slug":"increasing-the-impact-of-individual-behaviour-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2577","title":{"rendered":"Increasing The Impact Of Individual Behaviour Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Long post \u2013 download as a pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This post outlines a simple \u2018three pillar\u2019 framework to help realise the often untapped potential of behaviour change.\u00a0 Pillar 1 is private personal action in the form of a new behaviour which stays in the private domain.\u00a0 Pillar 2 is where that behaviour is made available in the public domain through informal channels such as face to face in \u2018the community\u2019 or networks, and on social media, enabling escalation of the impact if it is spread to others.\u00a0 Pillar 3 is where the behaviour is taken into the domain of formal networks such as politics, campaigning, media and professional organisations.<\/h3>\n

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It\u2019s obvious that if nobody else knows about the new behaviour it has no effect on others and the change-impact goes no further than the individual action. \u00a0In reality most new behaviours (for example those that cut climate pollution, such as replacing a diesel\/petrol car with an electric one, or eating less meat) do have some<\/em> effect on others but if they are actively communicated, and especially if this is done effectively, for instance using heuristics, values and framing, the effect can be magnified.<\/h4>\n

It argues that a huge amount of ongoing and potential behaviour change by individuals is having far less impact than it could, because little effort is put into deliberately catalysing its spread to others, such as friends and family, neighbours, and others in a community or network.<\/h4>\n

Some \u2018top down\u2019 campaigns aimed at securing change through force of government regulation or the power of corporate decision-making, ignore individual behaviour change.\u00a0 Other social marketing campaigns encourage only individual action.\u00a0 Too often the \u2018middle ground\u2019 is left to look after itself.\u00a0 This can leave highly motivated individuals worrying that their individual actions have little effect (eg \u2018climate anxiety\u2019), while the potential for adopters to become \u2018champions\u2019 and convert others, goes unrealised.<\/h4>\n

Cause groups often put a lot of effort into recruiting people into a \u2018supporter journey\u2019 leading to escalating activism or donations. The large number of people who are for one reason or another, not readily convertible to donors or activists, are frequently ignored.\u00a0 Here I argue that they could make gains if more individual behaviours became more public, where these align with change goals \u2013 working to escalate behaviour visibility not just to escalate activism or donating.<\/h4>\n

The debate over whether campaigns should be top-down or bottom-up is long-running and when driven by competing ideological theories of change it probably can\u2019t be resolved.\u00a0 But for pragmatists, escalating the impact of individual behaviours so it is manifest in the \u2018middle ground\u2019 of society \u2013 the networks and communities between the individual and the \u2018public\u2019 – could make a significant difference on many issues.<\/h4>\n

The examples I give are mainly climate-related but the principles apply to many issues.<\/h4>\n

Remember The Climate Emergency ?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It may be hard to remember now but at least in some countries, in the world BC (Before Covid), the thing \u2018everyone wanted to talk about\u2019 was the Climate Emergency.<\/p>\n

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Worldwide Google Trends searches for \u2018Climate Emergency\u2019 (blue) and \u2018Coronavirus\u2019 (red) from 1 Jan 2019 to 8 June 2020, the latter copied and super-imposed. Apologies if this is an abuse of the Google Trends system \u2013 I couldn\u2019t get them to work together.<\/em><\/p>\n

In winter 2019 Bob Earll asked me to contribute to the January 2020 \u2018Coastal Futures<\/a>\u2019 conference [1] in a session on climate change and communications. This annual event mainly attracts marine environmental professionals.\u00a0 Earll worried that his audience, who were pretty well-informed about the science, had become \u2018habituated\u2019 to the issue and so not everyone was treating it as an emergency.\u00a0 And many of those increasingly seized by the need to \u2018do something\u2019 beyond dealing with climate in some aspect of their day job, were in despair about whether individual action could \u2018make a difference\u2019.<\/p>\n

The previous year an interactive session had showed that while it was not a topic presented at the conferences, his audience was already engaged with a wide range of pro-climate behaviours in their domestic\/ personal lives.<\/p>\n

That year I shared some slides about the use of \u2018Track 1 tools\u2019 of values, framing and heuristics<\/a> in translating communication from technical\/analytical (Track 2) terms used in professional and scientific communication, into intuitive terms for public communication.\u00a0 This year Earll asked me to show how this could help individual action make a \u2018bigger difference\u2019 on climate.\u00a0 (See conference presentation here<\/a>, along with others on climate and psychology by Ralph Rayner<\/a>, Sabine Pahl<\/a> and John Englander<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Track 1 and 2 explanation here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Proposed Model For Personal Action Escalation<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Personal Action Escalation (Download<\/a> bigger file) \u2013 a Three Pillar schematic <\/em><\/p>\n

After some head-scratching I came up with the simple three pillar Personal Action Escalation model (revised shareable version above). \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s based on three contexts or \u2018pillars\u2019 for action and effort to bring about change.\u00a0 The above is not exactly rocket science and social marketers will recognize many things in it that they already do.\u00a0 I\u2019d be interested to hear of other methodologies which may be better \u2013 do contact<\/a> me and please do leave a comment on this post.<\/p>\n

Pillar 1 is individual behaviour change or behaviour \u2018adoption\u2019, Pillar 2 is further adoption through informal community or networks, and Pillar 3 is involvement with organised channels of decision-making, politics or campaigns.\u00a0 These are in effect choices for an individual: you can just \u2018stay\u2019 in (1) or engage others and get into (2) or also (or only) get involved at (3).<\/p>\n

Pillar 1 \u2013 I Make A Change<\/strong><\/p>\n

Assuming a situation where you as an individual want to do something yourself, it suggests thinking about your opportunities to make a change in behaviour at home, at work or at play (Pillar 1).<\/p>\n

For example (in relation to climate): <\/em>choices for diet, holidays, recreation, gardens, transport, energy, clothing, tech, services, investments, pets, building \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

If this is not communicated to others, the change effect is contained here.\u00a0 If for instance, I switch from a petrol car to an electric one, or from a \u2018ordinary\u2019 mixed source electricity supply to a green tariff<\/a>, the beneficial climate effect is only proportional to the emissions that choice displaces, and nobody else may know about it.<\/p>\n

If it ends here, net change is proportional only to the additive effect of all individual changes.\u00a0 But if each individual change influences others, it\u2019s more than additive, and if that continues, it can even become exponential (the \u2018r\u2019 rate above 1, one of the few bits of population biology to have entered popular consciousness, thanks to Covid).\u00a0 In reality many things can stop a sustained chain of contagion from developing but it\u2019s quite easy to get a degree of contagion.<\/p>\n

Pillar 2 \u2013 Community Spread<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once a behaviour exists, we can \u2018add value\u2019 and multiply the impact by engaging others through informal channels, including face to face (F2F) and social media. \u00a0If I show my neighbour or relatives what I\u2019ve done and they do the same, the effect is increased, and so on. The \u2018Track 1\u2019 tools of values, heuristics and framing can enhance the communication.<\/p>\n

The Pillar 2 diagram above is my indicative British take on informal channels, contexts, moments or events in communities or networks, in other words the sorts of opportunities where this communication could happen:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>social media, meeting at the Primary School gate, fetes, talking to neighbours, meeting other dog walkers, local news, local council meetings, community boards in supermarkets, Christmas, the pub, a film club, a bar-b-que, the library, a gym or sports club, shops, and a party (adjust for covid lockdowns).\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

If you make your own list of such touchpoints you\u2019d of course want to take account of age, lifestage, lifestyle, disposable income and personal commitments (eg to children) to get a diverse range.<\/p>\n

Applying these \u2018Track 1 tools\u2019 to enhance contagion of behaviours (emulating\/ reproducing what someone else is doing) is more likely to work than trying to use them to get someone to adopt a new behaviour just by argument or advocacy, from a standing start.\u00a0 Indeed advocacy often does not even specify a behaviour.\u00a0Matched values<\/a>, heuristics<\/a> (cognitive biases) and framing<\/a> can act like communications enzymes, as behavioural catalysts.<\/p>\n

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Seeing something done and then doing the same yourself, is the well known \u2018social-proof\u2019 heuristic.\u00a0 A \u2018heuristic<\/a>\u2019 just means that at a population level it\u2019s likely to have that effect more than it does not (read Robert Cialdini<\/a> or How to Win Campaigns<\/a> ).\u00a0 Add a values filter and you get a more refined design.\u00a0 Settlers<\/a> are more affected by social proof than Pioneers but it will help if the example \u2018doer\u2019 is someone like them, preferably someone they know (similarity, identity).\u00a0 Prospectors<\/a> likewise but it helps if the \u2018doer\u2019 is a success-model.\u00a0 Pioneers<\/a> are also affected by social proof but less so and in four different ways.\u00a0 Framing it \u2018right\u2019 helps a lot but it needs testing on a case by case basis.<\/p>\n

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Graphics from Coastal Future talk<\/em><\/p>\n

Above – some things a new electric car owner could do with a car to communicate her example. She\u2019s already put it on twitter.\u00a0 She could also take friends for a ride, park it where the neighbours would see it, hold a new car party or use it to give someone a lift \u2013 here it suggested giving young people a lift to the School Strikes (a genuine problem where I live, leading parents to drive their children to the strikes, usually in fossil-fuel powered cars).<\/p>\n

A green tariff example might simply be if you switched to a green electricity supply and then communicated that to friends and neighbours, and they did likewise.\u00a0 There is a suggestion of how to make this largely \u2018invisible\u2019 choice more visible and \u2018transportable\u2019, below.<\/p>\n

Social Media<\/strong><\/p>\n

Social media, \u2018old media\u2019 and mediated media have considerably converged but as the lockdown experience demonstrated, human beings are social animals and so far, technologies like Zoom cannot substitute for the power of In Real Life (IRL) interactions.\u00a0 So this process of trying to escalate the effect of individual action is going to work best where social media and F2F or other \u2018community\u2019 contagion work together.<\/p>\n

If the campaign delivery mechanism is itself online \u2013 eg an online petition or purchase \u2013 then social media alone may be sufficient but in many cases, campaigns require real life action, and even an ostensibly pure-online mechanism like a petition, not only usually asks for an IRL action but will be more effective if validated by IRL communication, such as what family members say to a decision-maker, face to face.<\/p>\n

Moreover, most effective online mobilisations require a social object<\/a>, usually an IRL activity.<\/p>\n

Social media makes the transaction cost of contacting others very low compared to the effort that may be involved in F2F and other channels but it also makes it very easy to acknowledge someone\u2019s example (eg behaviour) in a positive way (invoking the liking effect, eg literally a Facebook \u2018like\u2019) without even sharing, let alone changing a substantive behaviour.\u00a0 This can have the effect of stopping a chain of contagion.\u00a0 The commitment (to act) effect generated by a personal F2F interaction is likely to be much greater, if only because of the effort involved (see this blog<\/a> on online and offline petitions).<\/p>\n

The Power of Utility<\/strong>: the Fax Dynamic<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican wedding guest: Do you actually know Oscar Wilde?\u201d Gareth: \u201cNot personally no. But I do know someone who could get you his fax number. Shall we dance?\u201d<\/p>\n

Four Weddings and A Funeral<\/a>, second wedding scene <\/em><\/p>\n

The holy grail of behaviour contagion is a new behaviour which gives you the doer more reward if others do it too, so you have an active incentive to spread it to others.\u00a0 An ancient technological example is the fax machine.\u00a0 The first one was incredibly expensive and useless in that there was nobody to send a fax to.\u00a0 The second one was \u2018better\u2019 for the users and the utility increased with every adoption leading to the \u2018fax dynamic\u2019 (\u201cyou really should get one \u2013 so we can fax each other\u201d). \u00a0Users became advocates: a free sales force. \u00a0And of course faxes got cheaper. Social media apps and messenger services can spread this way.<\/p>\n

The spread of the integrated ATM network, now being phased out as cash is used less and less,\u00a0 was driven by card-holders frustrated that they could not get money from another bank.\u00a0 Once they started to migrate to banks with bigger networks, the banks had an incentive to \u2018merge\u2019 their networks. Right now electric cars are creating a similar dynamic as users become lobbyists for more and better charging points.<\/p>\n

VISA is famously a chaordic network brand (a term coined by VISA founder, Dee Hock<\/a>) with hardly any centre, which spread because it was useful to users, both buyers and sellers.<\/p>\n

Change campaigns and movements are not usually selling technology or monetized services so what is their product utility ?\u00a0 It\u2019s not usually just the issue campaign objective but something to do with motivational values.\u00a0 To be part of something, a community, an assertion or conservation of identity, safety, security or belonging (Settlers).\u00a0 To achieve, to be part of a visible success, to have a good time socially, respected, famous or admired (Prospectors).\u00a0 To have new and additional agency in changing the world \u2018for the better\u2019, to \u2018give back\u2019 (Transcender Pioneers), to be innovative and self-expressive (Flexible Individualist Pioneers), to live ethically (Concerned Ethical Pioneers), to seek a different way (Transitional Pioneers).<\/p>\n

Pillar 3 \u2013 Engagement With Formalised Processes<\/strong><\/p>\n

To escalate personal action further, it can be taken into more formally organised channels such as associations, NGO campaigns, local politics and government, the media or affinity groups. \u00a0By formalised I mean anything which is an entity recognizably designed to take or influence decisions \u2013 from XR to a rally to local government.<\/p>\n

Taking the example of a green tariff, if we users now persuade our elected councillors to also switch to a green tariff and the Council then does the same to power its own assets, the effect of our example is escalated (an example of going from Pillar 1 to 2 to 3).<\/p>\n

In the UK the electric car charging network is already and live issue in local council discussions and councils which have signed up to declare a Climate Emergency are in a difficult position if they don\u2019t act on it.\u00a0 Due to fears about coronavirus transmission, the UK government has also advised people to avoid public transport with the consequence that (I heard) some London firms are looking at more parking to facilitate more car commuting \u2013 an opportunity for electric car ownership or maybe better rental, to resolve a dilemma.<\/p>\n

Social Validation<\/strong><\/p>\n

An advantage of Pillar 3 action is that it can utilise institutional knowledge and assets as in a Campaign Organisation, making it possible to create focused strategic campaigns, including with the collaboration and cooperation of many people.\u00a0\u00a0 A disadvantage is that it can appear \u2018tall but shrill\u2019. It may embody a case by aggregating and mobilising a narrow section of society, and might manifest this through opinion polls or other statistics but it may not \u00a0\u00a0be much evidenced through \u2018real life behaviours\u2019, necessary to create ambient community level signals.\u00a0 Such campaigns can look as if they are not \u2018real\u2019 but \u2018mainly an online phenomenon\u2019 or \u2018on tv\u2019.<\/p>\n

Being locally present is part of the case for an \u2018Organised<\/a>\u2019 base of \u2018local\u2019 groups but if all those groups do is to articulate demands, rather than adopt behaviours aligned-to or consistent-with the demands, they can appear to be purely \u2018political\u2019.\u00a0 In other words \u2018local\u2019 but still \u2018theoretical\u2019 or ideological.<\/p>\n

The out-take from that may be to signal that this is something a section <\/em>of people want but for which there is no evidence that if the demand was agreed to, it would be widely welcomed or that the intended behaviour would actually be adopted.\u00a0 Action speaks louder than words.\u00a0 Walking the talk makes it credible.\u00a0 Just aggregating the strongest \u2018believers\u2019 and showing them to other people may simply make it clear that \u2018we are not like you\u2019 (reversing the similarity heuristic).\u00a0 In contrast, organisations or movements which are socially embedded in ways that reach across differences, such as by providing community services, can avoid this problem.<\/p>\n

An example of winning the media \u2018air-war\u2019 but not the political \u2018ground-war\u2019 is the way that the British green movement failed to repel a campaign by climate-sceptic politicians intent on disabling the government onshore wind programme, which has since spent four critical years in the doldrums (see blog \u2018Killing The Wind of England\u2019<\/a>). \u00a0Opinion polling consistently showed high public support for onshore wind farms but there was no grounded community-level campaign to match the organised effort of a very small but very active and visible anti-wind campaign which presented itself as \u2018community\u2019 based and persistently lobbied local MPs face to face.\u00a0 (In 2020 the policy was again reversed<\/a> but not completely, as market access was granted but planning obstacles remained in place).<\/p>\n

In the paper \u2018Tragedy or Scandal\u2019<\/a>, I explored how Extinction Rebellion UK succeeded in raising public consciousness of the climate crisis in 2018-19.\u00a0 XR\u2019s \u2018theory of change\u2019 involved the ultimate top-down change of replacing the government, through \u2018grass-roots\u2019 mobilisation of several million \u2018rebels\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yet even by XR\u2019s own estimates, its national \u2018rebellions\u2019 only ever attracted a maximum participation of 30,000 over a week, and it deliberately eschewed any role for personal action, such as individuals buying green energy, or buying or renting electric cars.\u00a0 When in 2020 it switched to trying to \u2018decentralise\u2019 its tactics of social disruption (eg in Cambridge<\/a>), it suffered problems of community-level rejection and had little social validation to give it strength in depth.<\/p>\n

If Pillar 3 type campaigning is\u00a0 seen to grow out of Pillar 2 type social contagion, it has a legitimacy conferred by \u2018community level\u2019 action, rather than concerns of \u2018elites\u2019.<\/p>\n

If politicians see people spending their own time or money on something it demonstrates that they \u2018really care\u2019 about it in an instrumental, not just an expressive way.\u00a0 Seeing it spread in \u2018a community\u2019 shows politicians not just that it is popular but that it has the potential to grow.<\/p>\n

Politicians are well aware that what people do has an enormous effect on their opinions.\u00a0 Getting rid of fossil fuels has been hard not just because of the malign lobbying activities of the fossil fuel companies but because so many people have been using them in day to day life.\u00a0 By the same token, the more people take up alternative behaviours, such as buying or renting electric vehicles, the more \u2018political space\u2019 there is to phase out fossil fuelled cars.\u00a0 The more obvious that behaviour change becomes \u2013 the more salient it is \u2013 the more it undermines the political grip of the fossil fuel lobby, making a top-down campaign effort more likely to succeed.<\/p>\n

So when \u2018bottom-up\u2019 individual change begins to occupy \u2018the middle\u2019, being perceived as a thing \u2018the community\u2019 is doing, or \u2018the town\u2019 is doing, or a majority is thinking of doing, it triggers what public affairs expert, the late Simon Bryceson called \u201cthe law of political anticipation\u201d: politicians react, not to events, but to what they anticipate will happen.\u00a0 In this way \u2018consumer change\u2019, rather than political theory or ideology, increasingly leads and catalyses political as well as retail decision-making.<\/p>\n

Our mental model of politics may still say something like, \u2018every few years politicians write a manifesto, voters are engaged at an election the politicians get elected on the basis of that programme which is the implemented in government\u2019.\u00a0 If that was ever the reality, it isn\u2019t now.\u00a0 Politicians are engaged in a permanent campaign<\/a>, and in government they often navigate government with the two crude yardsticks of popularity (staying on the right side of what the public want, in a constant back-stage trade-off with what vested interests want) and feasibility (what can be done).\u00a0 Big behaviour signals from the public act to lower the threshold to acting on evidence of feasibility.<\/p>\n

Making The Invisible Visible<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike solar panels, green tariffs, along with ethical bank accounts and investments, are socially invisible, so just making this behaviour visible could in itself make a difference.\u00a0 Simple measures could change this, such as some sort of sign that a house is using green power.\u00a0 In the UK, homes of richer people used to have \u2018fire-marks<\/a>\u2019: plaques indicating that the owners held private fire insurance, and showing the house was subscribed to a private fire service.\u00a0 That practice died out after public fire services were introduced and in past-obsessed Britain the plaques are now a treasured part of our built heritage, and a status symbol for householders.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>House Fire Mark from Wikipedia \u2013 the Hand in Hand Fire & Insurance Society operated from 1696 to 1905<\/em><\/p>\n

Some green energy providers do send out window stickers to customers but these are not very attractive, visible or durable.\u00a0 To work, such \u2018signalling\u2019 mechanisms would need to be well designed and appealing to householders, so they actually want to have them on their home.\u00a0 This would be a straightforward thing to research and brief, or run in a design competition.<\/p>\n

Another approach could be to make statutory Home Energy Rating<\/a> schemes visible.\u00a0 These already rate buildings by stars or A B etc grades depending on their energy efficiency in countries such as Australia, the US and UK.\u00a0 The certificate may be a legally required documentation if a building is to be sold.\u00a0\u00a0 The rating could be mandated to appear on the outside of a building.<\/p>\n

In 2015 before the Paris climate talks, I suggested that we could require green pilot lights<\/a> on electric cars, to make them a more obvious signal of change.\u00a0 On 16 June Sky News reported<\/a> that the UK government is to introduce a green flash on electric car number plates to encourage the switch.\u00a0 It\u2019s great although I still like the green lights which could go on many renewable installations.<\/p>\n

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From Sky News \u2013 Green Flash Number Plates<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Catching People Doing Something Good<\/strong><\/p>\n

Drawn up for the Coastal Futures conference,\u00a0 the \u2018three pillars\u2019 discussed above are laid out as choices for an individual.\u00a0 However from a campaign organisation\u2019s perspective, the biggest potential gain is probably to engage new audiences, drawn from people who are adopting behaviours aligned with<\/u> change objectives but who are not engaged by campaigning.\u00a0 Working with these people can help diversify effective support for change as well as growing it. \u00a0Doing it successfully probably does not mean immediately trying to turn them into campaign activists or donors, but helping them become behaviour champions.<\/p>\n

What does this mean in practice?\u00a0 Locate people doing something consistent with your campaign goals.\u00a0 It might be buying or renting an electric car.\u00a0 Directly or indirectly congratulate them for doing a good thing.\u00a0 Show other people that the behaviour is a good thing. \u00a0Then encourage or enable the first group to do more by sharing their behaviour with others.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a highly sophisticated process.<\/p>\n

This approach of \u2018catching people doing something good\u2019 is quite well known in business, used in staff motivation<\/a>, in innovation<\/a>, and in politics<\/a>.\u00a0 Marketers use it by directly or indirectly making people aware that \u2018people like you\u2019 (the similarity heuristic) \u2018also did this\u2019, or \u2018surveys show people doing A are X% more likely than others to do B\u2019, and making sure the people who see that have done A, in order to prompt them to do B.<\/p>\n

Giving praise or enabling people to bask in reflected glory is also likely to make people a bit warmer towards the messenger (the liking heuristic).\u00a0 For some, probably a small minority, this might even make them candidates to convert into campaign activists but for many, the gulf between their personal lives (eating less meat) and what they often see as \u2018political\u2019 action (for example e-mail my MP about livestock farming), is far larger than many change campaigners realise.\u00a0 Those working in change organisations are surrounded by people with far higher self-agency than the great majority of the population and so overestimate the appetite for activism.\u00a0 But people are likely to be much more confident about sharing their new behaviours, especially with familiar contacts.<\/p>\n

Different levels of self-agency and dominant needs among values-group act like a social sieve in sorting people exposed to a change-campaign proposition, leaving the end-of-the-line Transcender Pioneers as the group hugely over-represented in such organisations. (A process illustrated in How Change Campaigns Get Populated By The Usual Suspects<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A bonus with this approach is that although it might take a bit of thinking through and some research, you haven\u2019t had to first put in the time and effort to get people to adopt a behaviour in the first place.\u00a0 Strangely this is also why \u2018behavers’ are often ignored by campaigns: triaged-out as \u2018that\u2019s happening anyway\u2019 and so they don\u2019t need attention.\u00a0 But with some positive feedback \u2013 a psychological reward \u2013 they are a bit more likely to do something else along the same lines (consistency \u2013 see also the VBCOP model<\/a> linking values, behaviour, opinion and politics) and possibly reach out to others.<\/p>\n

Potential Scale<\/strong><\/p>\n

On some issues the potential behaviour signal may be large.\u00a0 It may be much bigger than the number of people consciously engaged in explicit campaigns and change movements.<\/p>\n

On climate for example, the numbers of people changing diet, or buying electric cars or signing up to renewable energy, are pretty big.\u00a0 As a result of the covid-lockdown experience, cycling has been booming in Britain, at least in some cities. (up tenfold in London<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Diet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Changing diet \u2013 which has multiple motivations \u2013 is large scale.\u00a0 In May 2020 polling company IPSOS reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018In a\u00a0<\/em>global survey<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>of more than 20,000 people across 29 countries, more than two in five people (41%) say they\u2019ll eat less meat or replace it with alternatives like beans in the next year to limit their contribution to climate change.\u00a0 Another third (35%) say they\u2019ll eat fewer dairy products or replace it with alternatives like soya milk\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

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IPSOS Mori survey 7 May 2020<\/em><\/p>\n

Interestingly, the survey also found that on both eating less meat and on less dairy, it was those in developed countries who were less willing, and those in developing countries who were more willing.\u00a0 In this case the question started by asking what people would be willing to do in the coming year to make a difference to climate change.\u00a0 But if any campaign has the objective of reducing meat consumption, with whatever aim in mind, the reason an individual has for changing diet does not necessarily matter.\u00a0 If they then share this in a way that encourages others to do the same, the contagion and escalation in numbers helps achieve that objective.\u00a0 \u2018Market signals\u2019 do not just influence commercial decision-makers but also political ones.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Elsie The Cow – the large US milk producer Borden filed for bankruptcy in 2020 (image from Wikipedia)<\/em><\/p>\n

Globally the amount of milk produced and drunk is increasing each year but in the mature US market it is falling and has declined 25% since 1975<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Falling UK milk consumption<\/em><\/p>\n

In the UK, there is an even more pronounced trend of declining milk production in the UK (though not for cheese). Per capita UK milk consumption has fallen 50% since 1974<\/a>, with non-dairy alternatives increasing.<\/p>\n

Green Electricity<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Shot from animation of the spread of solar panels in a part of Colorado, from a <\/em>Vox article<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

A well known case of the social-proof heuristic is the clustering of solar power installations on domestic properties \u2013 behaviour influenced by the example of neighbours.\u00a0 Some clustering is down to social housing provision but in private housing, it\u2019s an individual decision. This contagion study<\/a> of 60,000 homes with solar pv in Switzerland found that the more visible the panels were, the greater effect they had on encouraging others to get solar pv too.\u00a0 Similar results have been reported from the United States and Germany.<\/p>\n

In the UK, as of 2018\/2019, UK government data suggests some 858,000<\/a> \u2013 930,000 <\/a>households have solar pv on their properties, close to a million.\u00a0 The UK average household is 2.4 people<\/a> meaning that perhaps 2.3m live in homes with solar pv (about 4% of the population).\u00a0 These aren\u2019t the only people with \u2018their own\u2019 renewable power \u2013 they and others can also buy \u2018green tariff\u2019 electric power from the grid.\u00a0 As of June 2018 30% of tariffs<\/a> offered to UK customers were classed as \u2018green\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From Ofgem State of the Energy Market 2018 <\/em><\/p>\n

Customer numbers are harder to come by but www.comparethemarket.com says<\/a> \u00a0its (undated) research found one in seven UK households have switched to a green tariff (14%) and 31% were thinking of doing it.\u00a0\u00a0 There are<\/a> 28.4m domestic electricity customers in the UK so 14% would be around 4m bill payers. \u00a0Chris Goodall of Carbon Commentary<\/a> says he suspects the number of \u2018green tariff\u2019 households is now over 4m, perhaps 5 or 6m. Octopus Energy<\/a> alone has over 1.5m customers and only offers green electricity.<\/p>\n

Although electricity users \u2018going green\u2019 is not socially intrusive or politically disruptive activism as XR\u2019s escalating \u2018rebellions\u2019 were intended to be, it is a redirection of power generation.\u00a0 Although many electricity suppliers run \u2018recommend-us-to-a-friend\u2019 incentives,\u00a0 so far as I know, nobody in UK civil society has tried to engage this huge number of climate-friendly householders to go a step further into other climate-saving actions.<\/p>\n

Other Behaviours<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How much more \u2018consistent\u2019 behaviour change is going on?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know but on the environment, it looks like quite a lot.\u00a0 As I noted in \u201910 Things About Covid and Campaigns<\/a>\u2019 the pandemic interruption of Business As Usual has prompted new behaviours which are more likely to last than the \u2018new ideas\u2019 it has surfaced, if these do not lead to new habits before a new normal sets in.<\/p>\n

A much discussed area is transport.\u00a0 The official UK survey of environmental attitudes and behaviours has not been updated since 2014<\/a> but a survey by a leading UK driver\u2019s association the AA, found in May<\/a> 2020 that half of 20,000 drivers sampled said they would walk more and 40% intended to drive less.\u00a0 In April the President of the AA, Edmund King, said that<\/a> anecdotal evidence on more working from home during the covid epidemic suggested that planned government spending on roads would be better spent on improving broadband, and in May he called for<\/a> a roads pricing scheme to encourage drivers to switch to cycling. That\u2019s pretty amazing stuff.<\/p>\n

In February a \u2018global\u2019 IPSOS survey (20,000 across 29 countries) found<\/a> \u201871% of adults globally agree that, in the long term, climate change is as serious a crisis as Covid-19 is\u2019.\u00a0 In June an industry analysis forecast<\/a>global electric car rentals would increase 11% a year 2020-2024 despite Covid, and in April the electric car market overall was forecast<\/a> to grow by 23% a year to 2027.<\/p>\n

My intention is not to encourage anyone to campaign for electric cars \u2013 there are all sorts of view pro and con \u2013 but only to suggest that there are huge numbers of people changing their behaviours and the potential audience this creates this should be considered by change organisations.<\/p>\n

Concluding Thoughts<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Escalating the effect of personal behaviour change could make a huge difference to many causes, campaigns and movements. It\u2019s a largely untapped potential and could have a catalytic effect on both \u2018top down\u2019 and \u2018bottom up\u2019 change efforts.<\/p>\n

Research<\/a> by Anne Owen of the University of Leeds shows that the signal of individual behaviour change in terms of household expenditure, can be detected in changing the UK\u2019s national carbon footprint.\u00a0 In other words, with a lot of statistical detective work, she confirmed the obvious truth that, at scale, individual behaviour decisions do have a big effect.\u00a0 For instance trends and fashions in consumer behaviour on the negative side, such as buying SUVs.<\/p>\n

So why is this often fiercely denied by some theorists, activists and campaigners but promoted by others?\u00a0\u00a0 It may come down to a combination of pre-existing ideological commitments and, just as important, methodological commitments to business as usual.<\/p>\n

Business As Usual<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A shift to spending time in the middle-ground of \u2018community\u2019 or \u2018network\u2019 behaviour escalation requires\u00a0looking at potential public audiences in a different way, and doing public engagement which is not about donating or supporter activism.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The default public universe of a \u2018supporter journey\u2019 strategy (left) starts with a wide funnel and narrows it as commitment to the organisation is promoted.\u00a0 A behaviour escalation strategy aims (right) to spread the behaviour across the population, so it expands.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

This may run counter to internal targets and priorities set to optimise income and take people along \u2018supporter journeys\u2019.\u00a0 An unintended effect, or at least, a rarely interrogated consequence, can be that the campaign develops and satisfices its own support and mobilisation bubble, and measures success by what can be done within that resource, rather than experimenting outside it.\u00a0 Promoting positive public behaviours beyond the bubble is often left to the market and government \u2018public information\u2019 campaigns, which may not exist.<\/p>\n

Ideology<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

At least in the UK, the idea that campaigns have to chose between a bottom up or a top down approach is so deeply entrenched as a polariser and simplifier, that it\u2019s hard to have a campaign strategy conversation without it coming up.\u00a0 \u2018Behaviour-change\u2019 campaigns, whose starting point is individual decisions, are often seen as bottom-up, and by many as not having much of an \u2018up\u2019 at all.\u00a0 But this is political not just technical.<\/p>\n

The top down\/bottom up dichotomy doesn\u2019t really capture how a lot of actual change takes place but it mirrors a dominant political axis.\u00a0 At one end libertarians espouse individualism and personal responsibility, and at the other contemporary liberalism, socialism and some other isms.\u00a0 The former promoting less government and the free-market and the latter favouring government intervention.<\/p>\n

In a country like the UK with highly centralised power, these political differences translate into \u2018right-left\u2019 party political choices.\u00a0 Without having to be explicitly acknowledged, these then colour and underpin the attitude of many campaigners to which strategies and tactics to adopt: individual behaviour change as a solution is often mapped onto the right, and government-action onto the left.\u00a0 Anti-capitalism also leads some people to reject any change which involves consumer choices.<\/p>\n

A combination of these prior and often tacit commitments can make both campaign NGOs and self-styled \u2018progressive\u2019 social movements deeply conservative about their strategies and tactics.\u00a0 In this case it may mean they ignore individual behaviour change and the scope to escalate it at a community or network level, even where it\u2019s aligned with their goals.\u00a0 So perhaps this potential will only be realised if new actors take it up?<\/p>\n

Written before the covid pandemic took hold,\u00a0 \u2018Tragedy or Scandal<\/a>?\u2019 looked at the \u2018new climate movement\u2019 of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, and suggested that we need a complementary new \u2018social movement\u2019 or campaigns to leverage household expenditure aligned to goals such as action on climate.<\/p>\n

Culture ?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Is the individual-bottom-up versus top-down dichotomy partly cultural?\u00a0 It may be. Perhaps it is not such a divide in countries which are less individualistic than \u2018western\u2019 Anglo societies, for instance in Asia where community acceptance tends to be an important norm in many walks of life, from business to family and possibly campaigns.\u00a0 I\u2019d be interested to hear from others about that.<\/p>\n

It would also be great to hear about examples of campaigns which already do try to escalate individual personal action<\/p>\n

Some change organisations already set out to send these sorts of community-level signals and to encourage individual action. Rachel Collinson<\/a> suggests the Fair Trade campaign<\/a> or movement, as an example, maybe along with Transition Towns<\/a>.\u00a0 Fair Trade supporters have long set up displays of Fair Trade products in shops or community venues and got some towns to name themselves as Fair Trade Towns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One way of making a movement locally visible<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, Bob Earll the conference organiser has also been doing his own experimentation.\u00a0 In 2019 he asked 93 delegates to the Exeter Marine Network conference \u201cwhat actions are you taking personally\u201d in relation to the climate emergency.\u00a0 His results are here<\/a>.\u00a0 The 93 individuals generated 299 responses, of which 72 concerned diet, 69 travel, 31 energy, 12 trees and gardens, 30 consumption, 23 activism (ie pillar 3) 29 plastics, 16 actions at work, 10 communications and 7, other things.<\/p>\n

Bob has also produced two documents he\u2019d appreciate comments on (please contact him<\/a> directly).\u00a0 The first is A Guide to Individual Action on the Climate Emergency<\/a> which includes a lot of information about other such guides and lists as well as his own.\u00a0 The second is a description of a very interesting idea by Maggie Bligh that he is piloting with friends, and was prompted by a desire to get rid of plastic in people\u2019s lives, and is called a Can Do Caf\u00e9<\/a>.\u00a0 Both of these are relevant to \u2018Pillar 2\u2019 behaviour escalation discussed above.<\/p>\n

Ends<\/p>\n

Thanks to Bob Earll, Chris Goodall and Rachel Collinson.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please leave a comment if you have one and share this post if you find it interesting.<\/p>\n

[1] The UK \u2018Coastal Futures Conference\u2019 was held in mid January. Organised by marine biologist Bob Earll, it\u2019s an annual event attended by about 400 people.\u00a0 The audience is mainly environmental professionals from conservation, planning, regulatory agencies and marine industries, along with some academics and and journalists.<\/p>\n

Bob asked me and others to contribute to a session \u2018The Climate Emergency and How We All Respond\u2019, saying \u201c<\/strong>There are three key messages that I would like the audience to take away from this session; 1.The Climate Emergency is just that and much more serious than people realise 2. Understanding the problem is important but now\u00a0How we respond now<\/em>\u00a0crucial \u20263. Since the societal and environmental changes will affect us all I\u2019d like the entire audience to get the message that they can’t leave this to somebody else to sort out and they need to act\u201d.<\/p>\n

Earll has been running these conferences since 1994 and describes the audience (including himself) as \u2018habituated\u2019 to climate change as an issue.\u00a0 Well informed and professionally engaged but for many, until the \u2018Climate Emergency\u2019 broke as a dominant social issue, climate change was something they dealt with in their work silos rather than through \u2018political\u2019 activism or personal lifestyle change.\u00a0 Thousands of similar gatherings take place the world over. It\u2019s not a small \u2018audience\u2019 in itself. In the UK alone the EIC<\/a> says it provides \u2018373,000 good jobs\u2019 but others say the renewables industry alone employs 250,000.\u00a0 At any event, it\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Long post \u2013 download as a pdf) This post outlines a simple \u2018three pillar\u2019 framework to help realise the often untapped potential of behaviour change.\u00a0 Pillar 1 is private personal action in the form of a new behaviour which stays … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2577"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2596,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions\/2596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}