Redbird Communications

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Healthy People. Healthy Places. info[at]redbirdonline.com www.Redbirdonline.com

Changing behaviour? Not without your neighbour.

Why awareness doesnt always lead to behavioral change.
How much inuence does your neighbour have on your good intentions? Saving the planet. Donating a kidney. These are important social actions. But when it comes to changing peoples behaviour, it appears that your neighbour is often the best nudge -- or stumbling block -- to that nal gap between theoretical support and practical action. Thats at least the argument in a recent article in the New York Times. In the article, Robert B. Cialdini, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University and expert in behavioural change, argues that people are much more likely to change their behaviour if they are told that all their neighbours are doing it. Seems petty doesnt it? That important issues like saving the planet might depend on whether your neighbour drives a Hummer or a hybrid? But there is a logic to this. The reason is that people are very sensitive to the normative behaviours of their community. People like to belong and often look to their peers for a model of how they should behave. This desire to belong is powerful. And it is something that awareness and behavioural change campaigns should harness.

Awareness equals behavioural change?

Not always. Raising awareness for a social issue doesnt mean that people will take practical action. A population can have complete awareness of an issue (like climate change) and oer full theoretical support for that issue, but not take any practical action.

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If you want to change behaviour, you have to be careful how you frame your request for action. Saving the planet is a meaningful and vital goal. Saving money by turning o unused electrical appliances is a concrete incentive. But just because an issue is important or you oer a nancial incentive, it doesnt guarantee any movement in the audience toward changing their behaviour. Take organ donation, for example. If you ask around, most Canadians support the idea of organ donation. Thats because there has been a massive amount of awareness around the issue. National headlines, TV awareness campaigns, CBC radio shows about low donor rates, reports, government studies, and print ads. Yet, despite all of this awareness, the organ registry tells a dierent story. There is a six year wait-list and Canada has one of the worst organ donor rates of industrialized countries. There are about 13 donors per million people, compared to 20 per million in the U.S. and 31 per million in Spain (according to a 2008 study). Logic would say that the best strategy would be to spread the word further, telling Canadians about this sad performance. Turns out, though, this is just preaching to the choir. In a recent poll, for example, 86% of BC residents plan to register, but just 17% have ocially registered. Awareness doesnt seem to be the problem. Or the solution. This gap between awareness and action isnt just a Canadian trait. In Scotland, for example, research by the NHS Blood and Transplant found that 96% of people would accept an organ, but only 36% of Scots have actually joined the registry. If people agree and believe that organ donation is a vital issue, why wont they take that last step?

The power of normative behaviour

If Cialdini is right, telling people that the majority of Canadians procrastinate registering as donors might actually prevent behavioural change. Its not that people dont feel bad or dont agree with the campaign. Its just that their guilt is a common

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one. They are like everyone else -- well-meaning, sympathetic to the cause, but also procrastinating. There is no urgency. There is no social violation. Just vague plans to change behaviour, added to a long list of things people intend to do: get in shape, eat healthier, and cut down on household energy consumption. A better strategy might be to ignore the people who havent registered (the focus of current behavioural change campaigns). And instead, celebrate the people who have registered. For example, my spouse is a registered donor. Im not. Im part of the majority of British Columbians who plan to register. Its on my list of ethical things to do. Last month, I renewed my license and received a prompt from BC Transplant, the organization responsible for increasing the organ donor registry. In that mailing, they reminded me that 86% of British Columbians plan to register but never get around to it. While this is a striking and sad statistic, it also shows that awareness is not the issue. Another strategy, one that might have a better response, would be a behavioural change campaign that uses registered donors to inuence their partners. This strategy would tap into the power of normative behaviour Cialdini talks about. We are inuenced most by our closest social group. The same could go for families. Or even communities, rewarding and publicizing the communities that have the highest number of registered donors. If you are skeptical about this, weve experienced it ourselves. In a recent behavioural change campaign for BC Hydro we were surprised to nd out that the most eective way to get people to perform simple power-saving actions wasnt to tell them about how much money they were saving or how they were helping the planet. It was simply to tell them that their peers were participating.

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For more information about behavioural change campaigns, contact info [at] redbirdonline.com About us
Redbird Communications specializes in health promotion, awareness campaigns, and behavioural change workshops.Our clients include the Heart and Stroke Foundation of BC & Yukon, BC Hydro, government ministries and other private and public-sector organizations that in one way or another work to make the world a healthier, happier place.