When my wife and I moved to Fredericton in 1993, we bought a composter for our backyard. During our first summer and fall in our new home we fed the composter diligently. However, by January a snow drift three feet deep stretched from our back door to the composter. I started off the month with good intentions, shoveling a pathway or trampling down the snow with a pair of winter boots that reached nearly to my knees. But by late January, when the temperature dropped to minus 30ºF, I had had enough, and despite my good intentions, the organics ended up in the garbage can at the curbside. My environmental transgressions extend beyond seasonal composting. During the spring, summer and fall I bike to work. However, in the winter, which in Fredericton stretches from November through to early April, I take the taxi. I know that automobiles are a principal source of the carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming, so why don't I walk to work or take the bus?To walk to work takes approximately 30 minutes. While the exercise would be good for me, I would rather spend that time with my family. As for the bus, there is no direct bus route from our house to the university - making it slower to take the bus than it is to walk. Finally, the taxi costs only marginally more than bus fare, making it an even easier choice to take the taxi. While I am concerned about the possibility of global warming, my behavior for six months of the year is inconsistent with my concern.

These two anecdotes illustrate the challenges faced in making our communities more sustainable. Composting can significantly reduce the municipal solid waste stream, but only if people elect to compost. Mass transit can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and urban air pollution, but only if people leave their cars at home and take the bus or train instead. People play an equally critical role in many other sustainable activities. Programmable thermostats can reduce home heating costs and also carbon dioxide emissions, but only if people install and program them. Water efficient toilets and low-flow shower heads can significantly reduce residential water use, but only if people have them installed. The purchase of environmentally friendly products can significantly affect our environment, but once again, only if people elect to alter their purchase habits.

Information-Based Campaigns
Most programs to foster sustainable behavior rely upon large-scale information campaigns. These campaigns are usually based on one of two perspectives regarding changing behavior. The first perspective assumes that changes in behavior are brought about by increasing public knowledge about an issue, such as decreasing landfill capacity, and by fostering attitudes that are supportive of a desired activity, such as recycling. Accordingly, programs based on this perspective attempt to alter behavior by providing information, through media advertising, and frequently the distribution of brochures, flyers and newsletters.

Attitude-Behavior Approach
Is it warranted to believe that by enhancing knowledge, or altering attitudes, behavior will change? Apparently not. Numerous studies document that education alone often has little or no effect upon sustainable behavior. Here are several examples:

• In response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, Scott Geller and his colleagues studied the impact that intensive workshops have upon residential energy conservation.(1) In these workshops, participants were exposed to three hours of educational material in a variety of formats (slide shows, lectures, etc.). All of the material had been designed to impress upon participants that it was possible to significantly reduce home energy use. Geller measured the impact of the workshops by testing participants' attitudes and beliefs prior to, and following, the workshops. Upon completing a workshop, attendees indicated greater awareness of energy issues, more appreciation for what could be done in their homes to reduce energy use, and a willingness to implement the changes that were advocated in the workshop. Despite these changes in awareness and attitudes, behavior did not change. In follow-up visits to the homes of 40 workshop participants, only 1 had followed through on the recommendation to lower the hot water thermostat. Two participants had put insulating blankets around their hot water heaters, but they had done so prior to attending the workshop. In fact, the only difference between the 40 workshop participants and an equal number of non-participants was in the installation of low-flow shower heads. Eight of the 40 participants had installed them, while 2 of the non-participants had. However, the installation of the low-flow shower heads was not due to education alone. Each of the workshop participants had been given a free low-flow shower head to install.
  
• A study conducted in the Netherlands revealed that providing households with information about energy conservation did not reduce energy use.(2)
  
• High school students who received a six-day workshop that focused on creating awareness of environmental issues were found in a two-month follow-up to be no more likely to have engaged in pro-environmental actions.(3)
  
• Households who volunteered to participate in a ten-week study of water use received a state-of-the-art handbook on water efficiency. The handbook described wasteful water use, explained the relationship between water use and energy consumption, and detailed methods for conserving water in the home. Despite great attention being paid to the preparation of the handbook, it was found to have no impact upon consumption.(4)

The above studies document that information campaigns that emphasize enhancing knowledge or altering attitudes frequently have little or no effect upon behavior. The following studies provide further evidence of the ineffectiveness of this approach. If increasing knowledge and altering attitudes result in behavior change, we should expect measures of attitudes and knowledge to be closely associated with behavior. As shown below, however, there is often little or no relationship between attitudes and/or knowledge, and behavior.

• A survey of participants in a voluntary auto emissions inspection revealed that they did not differ in their attitudes toward, or knowledge regarding, air pollution compared to a random sample of individuals who had not had their car inspected.(5)
  
• When some 500 people were interviewed and asked about personal responsibility for picking up litter, 94% acknowledged that individuals bore a responsibility for picking up litter. However, when leaving the interview only 2% picked up litter that had been "planted" by the researcher.(6)
  
• Two large surveys of Swiss respondents found that environmental information, knowledge and awareness were poorly associated with environmental behavior.(7)
  
• In one study, individuals who hold attitudes that are strongly supportive of energy conservation were found to be no more likely to conserve energy.(8)
  
• An investigation of differences between recyclers and non-recyclers found that they did not differ in their attitudes toward recycling.(9)

While environmental attitudes and knowledge have been found to be related to behavior, frequently the relationship is weak or nonexistent.Why would attitudes and knowledge not be more strongly related to behavior? Consider the two anecdotes with which I began this chapter. I have attitudes that are supportive of both composting and alternative transportation. Further, I am relatively knowledgeable on both of these topics. Nonetheless, in both cases another factor, inconvenience brought on by winter, moderated whether my attitudes and knowledge were predictive of my behavior. In short, a variety of barriers can deter individuals from engaging in a sustainable behavior. Lack of knowledge and unsupportive attitudes are only two of these barriers.

Economic Self-Interest Approach
The second perspective assumes that individuals systematically evaluate choices, such as whether to install additional insulation to an attic or purchase a low-flow showerhead, and then act in accordance with their economic self-interest. This perspective suggests that in order to affect these decisions, an organization, such as a utility, need only provide information to the public that something is in their financial best interest and consequently the public will behave accordingly. As with information campaigns that focus on altering knowledge and attitudes, efforts that have concentrated on pointing out the financial advantages of a sustainable activity, such as installing a low-flow shower head or adding insulation, have also been largely unsuccessful. Here are two examples:

• Annually, California utilities spend 200 million dollars on media advertising to encourage energy conservation. These advertisements encourage householders to install energy conserving devices and adopt habits, such as closing the blinds during the day, that will decrease energy use. Despite massive expenditures, these campaigns have had little effect on energy use.(10)
  
• In 1978, an act passed by the United States Congress brought into being the Residential Conservation Service (RCS). The RCS mandated that major gas and electric utilities in the United States provide homeowners with on-site assessments in order to enhance energy efficiency. In addition, homeowners had access to interest-free or low-cost loans and a listing of local contractors and suppliers. In total, 5.6% of eligible households requested that an RCS assessor evaluate their home.(11) Of those who had their home evaluated, 50% took steps to enhance the energy efficiency of their dwelling, compared with 30% for non-participants (the non-participants were households who were on the waiting list to have their homes assessed).(12) What types of actions were taken? In general, the actions were inexpensive and did not involve a contractor. Frequent energy efficiency actions included caulking, weather-stripping, installing clock thermostats, turning down the hot water heater, and installing a hot water heater blanket. These actions reduced energy use per household between 2% and 3%.(13) Given that millions of dollars were spent on the RCS, and that it is possible to reduce residential energy use by more than 50%, an initiative that produces annual savings of 2-3% can only be seen as a failure.

Why did such a comprehensive program fail? In large part the RCS failed because it did not pay adequate attention to the human side of promoting more sustainable energy use. Those who designed this massive initiative assumed that homeowners would retrofit their homes if it was clear that it was in their financial best interest to do so. While this economic perspective does consider the "human" side of sustainable behavior, it does so in a very simplistic way. As a United States National Research Council study concluded, this view of human behavior overlooks ". . . the rich mixture of cultural practices, social interactions, and human feelings that influence the behavior of individuals, social groups, and institutions."(15)

Information campaigns proliferate because it is relatively easy to distribute printed materials or air radio or television advertising.(16) Advertising, however, is often an extremely expensive way of reaching people. In one distressing case, a California utility spent more money on advertising the benefits of installing insulation in low-income housing than it would have cost to upgrade the insulation in the targeted houses.(17) As Mark Costanzo points out, "Although advertising is an important tool for creating awareness, it is wasteful to invest most of our efforts in an influence strategy that has such a low probability of success."(18) The failure of mass media campaigns to foster sustainable behavior is due in part to the poor design of the messages, but more importantly to an underestimation of the difficulty of changing behavior.(19) Costanzo and his colleagues note that most mass media efforts to promote sustainable behavior are based on traditional marketing techniques in which the sustainable activity is viewed as a "product" to be sold. Advertising, they note, is effective in altering our preference to purchase one brand over another. But altering consumer preferences is not creating new behavior, rather it involves altering an existing behavior. As they indicate "These small changes in behavior generally require little expense or effort and no dramatic change in lifestyle (p. 526)." In contrast, encouraging individuals to engage in a new activity, such as walking or biking to work, is much more complex. A variety of barriers to walking or biking to work exist, such as concerns over time, safety, weather, and convenience. The diversity of barriers which exist for any sustainable activity means that information campaigns alone will rarely bring about behavior change.

To date, too little attention has been paid to ensuring that the programs we implement have a high likelihood of actually changing behavior. The cornerstone of sustainability is delivering programs that are effective in changing people's behavior. If we are to make the transition to a sustainable future, we must concern ourselves with what leads individuals to engage in behavior that collectively is sustainable, and design our programs accordingly.

An Alternative: Community-Based Social Marketing
Community-based social marketing is an attractive alternative to information intensive campaigns. In contrast to conventional approaches, community-based social marketing has been shown to be very effective at bringing about behavior change. Its effectiveness is due to its pragmatic approach. This approach involves: identifying barriers to a sustainable behavior, designing a strategy that utilizes behavior change tools, piloting the strategy with a small segment of a community, and finally, evaluating the impact of the program once it has been implemented across a community.

Identifying Barriers: If any form of sustainable behavior is to be widely adopted by the public, barriers to engaging in the activity must first be identified. Community-based social marketers begin, then, by identifying these barriers. They do so using a combination of literature reviews, focus groups, and survey research. The barriers they identify may be internal to the individual, such as lack of knowledge regarding how to carry out an activity (e.g., composting), or external, as in structural changes that need to be made in order for the behavior to be more convenient (e.g., providing curbside organic collection).(20) Community-based social marketers recognize that there may be multiple internal and external barriers to widespread public participation in any form of sustainable behavior and that these barriers will vary for different individuals. For example, personal safety is more likely to be a concern to women as they consider using mass transit than it is for men. In contrast to the two perspectives just discussed, community-based social marketers attempt to remove as many of these barriers as possible. Practitioners of community-based social marketing further appreciate that a different constellation of barriers will exist for different activities (e.g., recycling, composting, alternative transportation). Social science research indicates that the barriers that prevent individuals from engaging in one form of sustainable behavior, such as adding insulation to an attic, often have little in common with the barriers that keep individuals from engaging in other forms of sustainable behavior, such as recycling.(21) Further, this research demonstrates that even within a class of sustainable activities, such as waste reduction, very different barriers emerge as being important.(22) That is, different barriers exist for recycling, composting, or source reduction. Since the barriers that prevent individuals from engaging in sustainable behavior are activity specific, community-based social marketers begin to develop a strategy only after they have identified a particular activity's barriers. Once these barriers have been identified, they develop a social marketing strategy to remove them.

Behavior Change Tools: Social science research has identified a variety of "tools" that are effective in changing behavior. These tools include such approaches as gaining a commitment from an individual that they will try a new activity, such as taking household hazardous waste to a collection depot, or developing community norms that encourage people to behave more sustainably. The techniques that are used by community-based social marketers are carried out at the community level and frequently involve direct personal contact. Personal contact is emphasized because social science research indicates that we are most likely to change our behavior in response to direct appeals from others.

Piloting: Prior to implementing a community-based social marketing strategy it is piloted in a small portion of a community. Given the high cost of implementing many programs, it is essential to know that a strategy will work before it is implemented on a large scale. Conducting a pilot allows a program to be refined until it is effective. Further, a pilot allows alternative methods for carrying out a project to be tested against one another and the most cost-effective method to be determined. Finally, conducting a pilot can be a crucial step in demonstrating to funders the worthiness of implementing a program on a broad scale.

Evaluation: The final step of community-based social marketing involves ongoing evaluation of a program once it has been implemented in a community. In conducting an evaluation, community-based social marketers emphasize the direct measurement of behavior change over less direct measures such as self reports or increases in awareness. The information gleaned from evaluation can be used to further refine the marketing strategy as well as provide evidence that a project should receive further funding.The following chapters detail these four steps of community-based social marketing. Chapter 2 presents how to identify barriers to an activity. Chapters 3 through 8 introduce a variety of behavior change tools and provide advice on how to incorporate them into a program. Chapter 9 explains how to design a strategy and conduct a pilot, as well as how to evaluate a program in a cost-effective way once it has been implemented across a community. After reading these chapters, you will have the information you need to create programs that can have a substantial impact on the adoption of sustainable behavior in your community.