4 Strategies for marketers to encourage sustainable behaviour change

By now, we are well aware that our daily behaviours have an impact on our environment, and that this needs to change. However, details on what exactly those behaviours are, which ones have the biggest environmental impact, and how much we need to reduce our carbon footprint are often less clear.

Our new article It’s not easy being green, published by WARC, takes a closer look at the barriers that hinder people from effectively changing their behaviour to become more sustainable and dives into the Behavioural Science concepts on a more applied level, that offer marketers solutions to how to encourage sustainable behaviour change.

Marketers have a critical role to play in helping to tackle these issues and are well situated to enable consumers to change in ways that feel low effort yet rewarding at the same time. Our article lays out four key strategies for marketers to help build understanding and motivate consumers:

• Reducing cognitive strain and making use of framing can improve carbon numeracy and help build understanding.

• Defaults are low effort and can build behaviour change quickly.

• Using peer effects – we tend to be motivated to change our behaviour more if we know others are too.

• Starting with a small, but attainable first goal to build momentum for the larger goal.

These behavioural-science-based strategies can help encourage real change with a lasting impact on building sustainable behaviours.

For more detail on the strategies, read our article here.