Fostering Sustainable Behavior
Community Based Social Marketing
Most sustainable behavior campaigns, such as recycling or alternative transportation efforts, rely on education and/or advertising to encourage new behaviors. While education and advertising can be effective in creating public awareness, studies show that these campaigns have less than a two percent efficacy rate in changing behavior. Community-based social marketing (CBSM) is an alternative to information-based campaigns. Based in the social sciences, CBSM shows that behavior change is most effectively achieved through initiatives delivered at the community level that focus on removing barriers to new behaviors while simultaneously promoting the benefits of those new behaviors.
CBSM involves four steps:
- Identifying your audience’s perceived barriers and benefits to an activity
- Developing a strategy that employs “tools” that have been shown to be effective in changing behavior
- Piloting the strategy
- Evaluating the strategy once it has been implemented with your audience
