How to Change Behaviour

Mass media campaigns are just the ticket for raising awareness, but they’re not as effective when it comes to changing personal behaviour. Yes, if you’re already going to the grocery store and you’re already reaching for a food product, an ad campaign can influence your purchase decision about which brand to choose. But for behaviour like exercising, healthy eating, reducing energy consumption, quitting smoking, or other lifestyle choices, it’s a little more challenging. These behaviours require a significant amount of motivation, effort, and often inconvenience – and at 6:00 in the morning when you’re lying in bed deciding whether to get up and exercise, or turn over and go back to sleep, even the most persuasive ad campaign will lose to the pillow.

So what does work? Researchers have found effective tools that can be applied to social marketing: things like pledges, prompts, norms, incentives, starting small, finding a common enemy, and making it fun. All of these tactics can be incorporated into a behaviour change campaign for social good.