Changing Public Behavior – Project Summary

 

Water Outreach:

Changing Public Behavior

Increase Citizen Involvement Using Target Audience Information

 

PROJECT SUMMARY

Changing Public Behavior – Increase Citizen Involvement Using Target Audience Information is designed to help water resource professionals apply education and social science research in new and creative ways that encourage people to adopt environmentally-friendly habits. Project workshops train water educators to focus on local interests and conditions when engaging individuals and groups as they learn to take environmentally appropriate actions in their home, business, organization, or community.

Workshop materials feature resources designed to help water professionals understand the needs and habits of specific audiences (farmers, homeowners, landowners, etc.). Water professionals develop skills to engage individuals or groups in an environmental decision process. 

 

Situation

Community involvement is the key to successfully implementing plans for clean and safe water across the nation. But implementing outreach techniques that lead to measurable impacts is not a simple or straight-forward process.

Extension and other government and non-government water professionals want to improve their understanding of target audiences and want to be able to use social science tools. But relatively few water resource professionals have backgrounds that enable them to use social science tools successfully.

Project assessment tools and training help educators to analyze the social components of a particular environmental situation, and to choose which indicators to use to measure change. Information from assessments improves educator abilities to select one or more “interventions” that are most likely to lead to desired short and/or long-term outcomes.

To implement the Changing Public Behavior Project, and the related Water Outreach Education Project – the University of Wisconsin partnered with seven Land-Grant Universities, three federal agencies, and seven national and regional non-government organizations and national facilitation projects.

 

Increase Citizen Involvement – Tools

Through training, peer support, and practice, water resource professionals can learn:

  • What questions to ask.
  • What tools to use to gather social science information.
  • How to use the tools and how to analyze results.
  • How to use results to select outreach techniques that satisfy audience needs.

Resources developed for the project include:

BEP Decision Tree [flowchart] – helps natural resource professionals to select outreach strategies most likely to lead to desired impacts, and to find related practices, tools, and information that will help them meet the need they identified. (Developed as part of the Water Outreach project.)

Changing Public Behavior Basics – includes introductory materials on topics such as: What type of action can citizens take?; What types of behavior can make a difference?; What is a social assessment tool?; Why should I use social assessment tools: purpose, use, selection, application; What are the ranges and variations of potential techniques?; How do we know what is successful or promising for social assessment strategies?; Educator Assessment Rubric [sample questionnaire].  

Changing Public Behavior Course [sample workshop materials] – this Self-Study Module offers 7 units and a variety of planning and tracking guides for learning about and accessing social science tools. 

Changing Public Behavior information content – includes research and technique summaries on topics such as Behavior Change Theories and Techniques [factsheet]; Community-Based Research and Outreach – Ethics Considerations [factsheet]; and workshop factsheets on a variety of topics such as how to employ participatory action learning (for example Participatory Tools for Forest Communities).

Database of target audience findings [summary tables for each audience] – is a collection of research-based findings about specific audiences organized by topic. The Database highlights findings from 250 research studies published 1988 – 2007 of interest to water scientists and managers . 

 

Impacts

Project impacts were measured using pilot workshop evaluations, requests from professional audiences for training, and groups that built the principles of our work into published resources for their members and others.

Training requests included 7 national nongovernment organizations; Extension programs in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Washington; the USDA Great Lakes Regional Water Program; the national USDA water conferences, multiple years; and the National EPA Conferences for Nonpoint Source and Stormwater Outreach, multiple years.

Workshop evaluations from 5 Changing Public Behavior workshops, where participants were educators who worked with about 20 different target audiences, indicated that participants:

  • increased their confidence and abilities in using planning steps
  • increased confidence in applying educator skills
  • increased their awareness of sources of information about educator skills
  • increased confidence in applying social assessment skills
  • increased their awareness of sources of information about social assessment skills.

 

Publications

Changing Public Behavior references — all references  

Project recommendations are reflected in:

  • US EPA 2009 and 2010 revisions of its publications: Getting In Step: A Guide for Conducting Watershed Outreach Campaigns and Getting in Step: Engaging and Involving Stakeholders in Your Watershed (E. Andrews, invited reviewer);
  • Frontiers in Ecology, Journal of The Ecological Society of America, 2010 issue on science communication;
  • Free-Choice Environmental Learning and the Environment (2009, Alta Mira Press, Chapter 11); 
  • Commissioned paper for National Research Council Workshop proceedings, Climate Change Education: Goals, Audiences, and Strategies, https://www.nationalacademies.org/publications/13224 ;
  • Andrews, E. L. 2011 Workshop paper: National Academies Board on Science Education Workshop on Climate Change Education for the Public and Decision-Makers. Implications of audience segmentation strategies/reports. Also available as a PDF at, http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/documents/webpage/dbasse_072572.pdf