What works best: involuntary or voluntary change? Like all dichotomies, a little of each is the correct answer.
Even though I’m a ‘behaviour change’ guy and I think ALL change is behavioural, I’ve come to believe that 90% of behaviour is in turn driven by physical, social and technological settings. But communication, participation and marketing are nevertheless integral because a) public participation drives political change; and b) it’s no good having great technologies if no one uses them.
This 2007 statement by 28 concerned social scientists neatly summarises a case against dismissing voluntary behaviour change in favour of an exclusive focus on policy and technology:
In part, they wrote:
“Dismissing the importance of small personal behavior choices in favor of a sole focus on policy change is a big mistake:
• Small behaviors are important not only for the direct environmental impact they have, but because they often lead to more and more pro-environmental behaviors over time.
• Numerous psychological studies have shown that people are more likely to agree to take a big action if they've previously agreed to smaller, similar actions.
• People reject scary messages like the danger of global warming if they don't think there is anything feasible they can do to fix it.
• Restrictive policies engender resentment and actions to restore threatened freedoms, such as ditching the policies themselves or creative disobedience. Witness efforts to dismantle the Endangered Species Act, and the creative efforts to skirt its requirements.
“The history of racial policy and WWII demonstrate the importance of both policy and voluntary actions. Much public debate and many small individual actions transpired to make racial discrimination less and less socially acceptable in the century and a half before LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Try telling descendents of those rescued by the underground railroad that it didn't matter. Even in the more urgent crisis of WWII, in addition to the mandatory policies, mass persuasion campaigns encouraged voluntary actions. Politicians realized they needed public support for the war effort, and for legislation.
“Remember the "We can do it!" poster encouraging women to join the labor force? The victory gardens? Voluntary actions provided direct physical support, strengthened the norm of supporting the war effort, and boosted morale. Both voluntary action and policy changes were crucial to winning the war.”
One reason we have this pathological separation between policy and the social sciences is that policy-bods and communications-bods hardly ever work together. I’ve said it lots of times, I’ll say it again: “scratch a supposedly insoluble real world problem and you’ll find an institutional failure.” Multi-disciplinary teams aren’t just fun, they might just save the world.
Walk to School programs have a checkered history. A large recent program in inner Sydney schools, for instance, focusing on educational interventions, produced ‘mixed results’ for major a 2 year effort.
Yet here is an example from Queensland that met with outstanding success.
Just check these results, for a 12 month effort.....(see graph).
I just had a look at the evaluation of this program and one thing stands out: getting the SETTING right.
Before the project began, the Travelsmart team conducted a site audit at the Tewantin school, along with officers from the Qld Transport Road Safety Office and Noosa Council. The audit resulted in an agenda of road infrastructure improvements around the school. Specifically: speed signs, road markings, threshold treatments, and intersection improvements, all focused on safety. This physical investment (amounting to $78k) “to improve the environment for walking and cycling around Tewantin School meant that there were little physical barriers to address”.
The Travelsmart program then rolled out, with a volunteer parent-teacher working group and $27k spent on activities including an access guide, a poster, a cycle skills course, teaching units, a TravelSmART competition, a staff Walk to Work day, a Walk and Ride Wednesday, an interschool class challenge and a celebration assembly.
This points to a valuable principle of behaviour change projects: a major factor that enables behaviour is THE SETTING…a principle that goes way back to the Ottawa Charter (‘Creating Supporting Environments’) – one that’s now very well recognised in health promotion projects.
Most of the Trewantin TravelSmart activities focused on ‘salience’ (bringing cycling and walking to front-of-mind) and ‘buzz’ (getting people talking). However I suspect at least two would have had a big impact on self-efficacy: the changes to the physical road setting around the school , and the cycle skills course. These would have changed the environment-of-decision-making for parents, lowering their fears of letting their little ones walk or cycle on their own. After all, it's largely mothers who make the decision about how to commute to school, and safety is a big consideration. A 2005 study in the American Journal of Health Studies noted that a "theme that emerged from all three focus groups was one of (real of perceived) personal safety issues and concerns, including recent or memorable kidnappings, crimes in the neighbourhood, and heavily trafficked streets." It concluded that distance, safety and traffic concerns were the biggest influences on travel to school choice.
Interestingly, there was little enthusiasm at Tewantin State School for formal walking, cycling or car-pooling programs because of fears that parents would be unwilling to volunteer for those duties. Informal arrangements were preferred – a useful lesson.
An nice touch was writing "TravelSmart Coordinator" into the job description of the newly appointed Deputy Principal.
The evaluation doesn’t seem to have been published, but you can probably get a copy from Graham Lunney, TravelSmart Manager, Queensland Transport.
You could ask him for a copy of the TravelSmart School Training Manual that was developed from the program.
TravelSmart Noosa’s web page gives a summary of the project.
To see it, go to http://chla.library.cornell.edu then search under "diffusion" with the author names "Ryan" and "Gross". Their article is in Rural Sociology Volume 8.
Since 2006 a unique (as far as I know) COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT climate change project has been under way in Castlemaine, Victoria. Now the results are in.
As the team included a number of facilitators, it seemed natural to make it a COMMUNITY DEVEOPMENT project…one that would work bottom-up (tho’, inevitably, it ended up being partly top-down as well). This implied handing over maximum control with the local community, and this is the shining glory of the project, as Geoff Brown’s report shows.
It illustrates a golden rule of social change: sustained change depends on shared control.
Below are some excerpts from the report summary.
See the whole report at Geoff’s web site: www.yesandspace.com.au/?p=705
And see some interviews with participants: www.youtube.com/castlemaine500
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In 2006, the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance (CVGA) secured the Victorian Government’s support to fund a behaviour change program that would test - by engaging a significant proportion of a township in household energy reduction - whether major savings could be achieved and measured at the regional level. The objective was to get 500 households to commit to a long-term process that required active participation and input to achieve a 15 to 30% reduction in energy consumption.
Both parties agreed that this process should be documented to assist other townships in their development of locally focused projects.
With active support from the Department of Sustainability and Environment, the CVGA called for expressions of interest from townships with populations of between 5,000 and 10,000 residents (with access to reticulated gas). After short-listing, Castlemaine was selected, and a program of activities including workshops, home assessments, community conferences and a local leaders program (to support activities beyond the project timeframe) began.
Castlemaine 500 also had a strong focus on building community capacity and leaving behind a legacy in the Castlemaine community after the initial funding had ceased. To this end, the project ran a number of leadership activities with a core group of participants and attempted to broker partnerships with key groups in the community. This side of the project has proved very successful, with some of the leaders going on to organise their own events, take part in a participatory evaluation and coordinate a network of interested people. Leaders have reported a range of new skills and knowledge as a result of their involvement in the project.
One leader was awarded the citizen of the year award for her work to assist households to reduce energy in her own community. Another leader has become the C500 coordinator, employed through the local Community House, completing the handover of the project to the local community.
In 2008, the efforts of the Castlemaine community were internationally recognised by a United Nations World Environment Day award.
Of significant interest in our findings is that the creation of social spaces proved to be one of the most influential aspects of the project. Participants reported that the opportunities to talk with each other and share their knowledge and experiences were vital to their capacity building processes. Events such as Energy Smart Workshops provided opportunities for participants to learn from and interact with each other.
Both the Energy Smart Workshops and Home Energy Assessments were highly useful as a way of supporting participants as they learned to change their behaviour and reduce energy use. Specific tools like the Home Energy Assessment Tool (HEAT), Home Energy Action Plan (HEAP), a free energy smart thermometer and a project letterbox sticker were also regarded as highly beneficial. This pilot project was always about much more than measuring reductions in energy consumption, and the feedback validates this.
Additionally (and unexpectedly), two new projects emerged in the project’s second year. The Kyabram (Ky Can Do Thatg) and Ararat (Ararat Energy Savers) projects were instigated by the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance (CVGA), delivered in part nership with regional partners and funded by the Department of Sustainability and Environment. The newly appointed coordinators of both the Kyabram and Ararat project workers became involved in C500 leadership activities, with their plans heavily influenced by the lessons learned during the C500’s first year.
Notably, a number of other townships (large and small) expressed an interest in developing a similar model in their local area. Valuable learnings from these projects are described on pages 26 & 45 of this report; further detailed (and useful) information is available at the CVGA’s website (www.cvga.org.au).
While the C500 project has been very successful in achieving many of our goals, it also encountered many hurdles and challenges.
The initial target of signing up 500 houses proved overly ambitious, with a final tally of 351 households formally registered to C500. At the outset, the project steering committee bounded eligibility to households within the postcode 3450 [population about 6400]. After significant community feedback this restriction was expanded to include 3451 [population around 4500], however, the project struggled to attract households from these parts of the Castlemaine community. Spin off projects at Kyabram and Ararat and a significant level of interest from other townships illustrates that the numbers were large, even if not formally based in the Castlemaine area.
Whilst the energy monitoring strategy yielded only small numbers of households with reliable, pre and post electricity and gas data, these small sample sizes still allowed us to make conclusions about overall changes in energy consumption across C500 households. However, comparisons between different sub groups of households and project interventions were not possible. Results indicate an overall reduction in gas consumption in C500 households by approximately 15%, and a reduction in electricity consumption by approximately 8%. It’s important to keep in mind that small sample sizes limit our ability to be more specific.
The results presented in this report clearly point to the complex nature of behaviour change projects and the difficulty involved with attempts to attribute project activities to influencing ‘impact level’ data such as energy consumption. In our view, the project does demonstrate tangible outcomes - despite the difficulties encountered in proving concrete reductions in energy consumption (and greenhouse gas emissions). Our findings identify the need for projects of this nature to carefully consider their approach to behaviour change and to factor in the social context in which change occurs. There is also a need for future projects to be more prepared for the unexpected, to be flexible and adaptive and to conduct monitoring at various levels, using a mixture of techniques. Above all, projects of this nature must be committed to building ownership within the community. It is hoped that this report, which has strived to tell both the good and the more difficult aspects of delivering a behaviour change program, is a useful tool for other townships across Victoria as collectively we face the challenges of a changing climate.
