Last year will be remember-ed as the time when the great British public finally woke up to the harsh realities of climate change. Almost nine in 10 people now say they are worried about it, and 75% disagree that too much fuss is being made about it. But only one in 20 – 4% – thinks they, personally, can do something about it, and 59% admit to doing nothing.
One of the greatest challenges councils face, as community leaders, is how they persuade the public it is only by them changing their behaviour that we can avoid irreversible and potentially-disastrous change.
Faced with the enormity of the challenge, what can the public sector do? The good news is that the public see government as the sector which can really make a difference – and 70% say they support the Government using the law to make people change their behaviour.
Anyone in a leadership role in any organisation – and if you’re in local government and don’t think you’re in a leadership role, you may need to consider a new career – needs to think hard about what works in behaviour change.
As well as careful targeting, the need to use a mix of informing (the impact of not doing anything), enabling (making it easy to switch to energy-saving devices, or polluting less), incentivising (making it cheaper to be greener), and enforcing (fining or taxing damaging behaviour) are all needed. And local government is seen as a key sector.
In all this, communications have a huge role to play. We must also be smarter. We need to put aside notions that people act rationally once the facts are revealed to them. They don’t!
Instead, clever communications build on people’s innate behavioural biases to get them to do the right thing without thinking too hard, to make behavioural change campaigns significantly more likely to succeed.
Protecting the public realm without shutting it down
As Martyn's Law approaches, this free special report from LocalGov and Hill & Smith sets out how councils can protect public spaces without shutting them down.
