Developing Sustainable Behaviors through Community-Based Social Marketing

Environmental professionals, when seeking to effect change in the behavior of individuals, most commonly utilize the "public education campaign." This form of social marketing typically consists of public information messages, brochures, posters, or other passive material aimed at raising the awareness of individuals around a given issue. The limitation of such an approach is that it necessarily treats the behavior of individuals as a product, thereby undermining the very goal it seeks to accomplish — namely, reminding individuals that they must take an active role in protecting their environment. In using social marketing, it is assumed that if a person is aware of the environmental impact of their actions, they will change their behavior. Yet, time and time again, awareness—even of economic self-interest—does not result in meaningful behavioral change. Therefore, rather than depending primarily on an informational campaign to change resident attitudes, environmental professionals have more recently looked to community-based social marketing to appeal to the individual. Community-based social marketing is a strategic process that explores and identifies the barriers to changing behavior, structures a program around those barriers, exercises this strategy on a small scale, evaluates the results, and applies the process across a given target audience. This process is applied within the target community to identify the most meaningful barriers and solutions and to provide personal interaction with individuals. These methods provide significantly higher success rates compared to social marketing campaigns. Here, case studies detailing community-based social marketing strategies that have proven successful are discussed.