Why have recent behaviour change campaigns not worked?
One reason is that many campaigns have dwelt on the guilt of an individual if they don’t change (“everytime you switch on a light you are helping polar bears to become extinct”). This type of message just does not work. Not only is it accusatory, it uses a metric which we can’t comprehend (polar bears). Most of all, nobody likes being told why they should be more motivated to care about something. It is better to receive sound evidence, be given tools to make sense of that information and strategies to act on it. It is thus the individual’s own choice whether to act or to ignore it.
A second reason is that modern day initiatives for changing behaviour have often, for some reason, led to the stigmatisation of those who are to be changed. For instance in 1999, when the government introduced the term ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order), and later CRASBO (Criminally related ASBO), they did not realize how quickly it would take off. The most famous example of this is of a preacher, who being banned from Oxford Circus, moved down the road to Piccadilly Circus to continue his speech. Is pinning a badge onto offenders really the way to change behaviour?
The third and most serious failure is that designers of the behaviour change products often do not anticipate unintended outcomes that they can be left with. With regard to the ASBO, the problem is that all kinds of behaviour are deemed to fall under the ‘anti-social’ umbrella – by 2004, according to an official government count, an anti-social offence was committed every two seconds. It seems to me that whereas the idea had good intent, its outcome and the means to manage it was unclear. It had no end game.
What are the challenges facing product designers such as Onzo?
Many recent products are directed at behaviour change. Here’s a favourite of mine by Publicis & Hal Riney. The Red Cross conducted a campaign to raise awareness and change thinking about the dangers of a tsunami disaster in San Francisco’s Bay Area. They handed out a water bottle that read “Try living on this for three days”.
The message was short and sweet, the effects long-lasting.
There are also a lot of ideas currently marketed that essentially work on demand response preventative measures; for example, when UK consumers use too much electricity, a government approved mechanism will automatically lower energy supply so that people notice the power reduction but don’t know why it has happened. The mechanism may be good in intent but the outcome does not have the user’s consent. Though the approach is consistent with the ideas in the book “Nudge” where people are ‘nudged’ into doing something, it is questionable whether such an approach to social intervention can claim to empower communities to engage in changing their energy consumption.
Making sense of energy will enable individuals and communities to make well-informed decisions about their consumption and ultimately, change their behaviour.