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Changing Public Behavior > Audiences > Business/Industry water users

26 Total Findings

A model of the change process required for sustainability, involves 3 conditions: (1) Awareness of the agenda, scale, urgency and structure of the issues, (2) Identifying effective roles for individuals or groups, where meaningful activities can be undertaken in parallel to raising awareness, (3) Association or cooperation with others to mobilize towards empowerment.

Be patient in your efforts to reach small businesses.

Document information and outreach work to help improve ability to assess the relationship between outreach and outcomes and to exchange materials and knowledge with others. Evaluate progress toward clearly defined objectives.

Emphasize "place", by creating a local Board for example, has potential for broad impacts on locally identified environmental problems.

Emphasize company commitment to pollution prevention activities and investment of adequate time and money.

Emphasize effective leadership when encouraging or facilitating watershed group formation. Watershed groups rate leadership as more important to effective group formation than support factors such as staff assistance or financial support.

Emphasize how easy it is to do the right thing and the impacts of not engaging in pollution prevention.

Encourage businesses to take advantage of external relationships such as those offered by trade associations and courses.

Encourage water utilities to adopt a risk management strategy and to identify strategic risks, such as risks to a safe, acceptable, and reliable water supply.  Risks for this category, for example, can include failure to meet requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act; inappropriate catchment management; and failure to plan for growth and changes in demand.  [NOTE: Finding based on one case study.]

Engage golf course conservation superintendents in developing a course on turf grass management

Focus the content for outreach materials on cost savings, such as when and where pollution prevention is as cheap as or cheaper than traditional techniques. Include facts and figures.

For auto repair shops, provide a direct visit from an educator who provides an audit activity and information materials.

Generate ongoing environmental change by initiating and coordinating pollution prevention activities through regional networks or consortia.

How a watershed group is formed may influence its effectiveness.

Make turf grass management courses readily accessible to golf course managers and provide instructor support for completing assignments and application to their own golf course

Provide outreach through external relationships chosen by the business, such as suppliers, trade shows, other companies, and publications to which businesses subscribe (Boiarsky, 1999).

Provide outreach through external relationships chosen by the business, such as suppliers, trade shows, other companies, and publications to which businesses subscribe (Lowrie, 1997).

Provide staff training, and/or provide access to environmental experts for businesses not already engaged in pollution prevention activities. Aim to increase concern about liability.

Recognize that audiences are often already aware of important issues. Outreach materials should:

Reduce emphasis on information from the government except for information about tax deductions and other incentives.

Stress benefits such as efficiency or better relations with government, for businesses not primarily concerned with public image.

Understand the roots of the environmental management problem and select your target audience based on a specific need. For example, if economic activity is most closely associated with the environmental problem, outreach initiatives should relate to the needs and interests of the target audience engaged in the economic activity

Use audience assessment strategies to identify which, if any, water and watershed governance strategies interest households and landowners. Build participatory opportunities around specific topics of interest. Consider household and landowner response to strategies such as: pollution control, lowering prices, protecting flood plains, improving storage facilities, improving repairs and maintenance and introducing enforced metering.

When encouraging or facilitating the activities of a watershed group, consider group purpose and needs.  Distinguish whether the group wants to focus on educational and social benefits, the ability to influence policy, or create on-the-ground improvements.

When water utilities are developing a risk management strategy, encourage them to communicate with stakeholder groups, such as employees, customers, suppliers, lenders, investors, regulators, communiites, and the public.  [NOTE: Finding based on one case study.]

Work in collaboration with the professional association to publicize a course for golf course managers


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