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Changing Public Behavior > BEPs > Class or Group

142 Total Findings

To craft a water outreach program, determine public interests in advance by gathering information about the following, and how those opinions might be influenced by age, sex, length of residence in the state, community size:

  • opinion of local groundwater quality;
  • personal efforts to enhance groundwater quality or quantity (by reducing chemical usage in yards, recycling used motor oil, correctly disposing of household chemicals, use of water-saving applicances, reduced household water use, reduced water use in yards, reduced water use in car washing);
  • who should be responsible for protecting water quality in communitites (federal government, state government, county/city/town, individual citizen);
  • how rural residents prefer to be informed about water; where residents have gotten information; and
  • what sources of information might have changed their behavior.
ED

To craft a water outreach program, determine public interests in advance by gathering information about the following, and how those opinions might be influenced by age, sex, length of residence in the state, community size:

A participatory workshop using pollution modeling, satellite images, maps, and discussion, enables farmers to identify pollution prevention efforts that are considered to be within their own control.  Farmers may not be willing to adopt measures that lead to lost income, even when they consider the measure to be effective.

Acknowledge landowner interest and concern for the quality of their land.

Adapt course design over time using multiple feedback methods.

Adapt language and appearance of notification materials to reflect the diversity of those being notified and the literacy level of the group.

Address economic benefits:

Address economic benefits: Show that profits will increase as a result of adoption of the practice

Allow enough time for wide spread adoption of the demonstrated BMPs. A nine to ten year time frame may be necessary to move from initial implementation of BMP demonstration projects to adoption.

An effective stormwater public education program focuses on building an understanding of wet weather flow issues and garnering support for all facets of the implementation, particularly on-site source controls using targeted communication tactics that promote action and commitment to the implementation of various controls. On-site controls messages can address reduction of pesticide and fertilizer use, promoting source controls such as downspout disconnection, reducing impervious surfaces, importance of stoop and scoop of pet waste, vehicle maintenance, and the connection between roadside catch basins and lake water quality.

Apply an evaluation strategy which helps educator to identify reasons and consequences for training outcomes.

Assess audience concerns and preferred method for receiving information prior to developing outreach or education initiatives.

Assess the democracy merits of collaborative public management by watershed partnerships in terms of: inclusiveness, representativeness, impartiality, transparency, deliberativeness, lawfulness, and empowerment.

Assure that intervention programs are relevant to perceived needs of farmers, relevant to cultural milieu of subgroups, and relevant to specific environmental needs:

Assure that intervention programs are relevant to the cultural milieu of the subgroup, such as ethnic or culturally-related farm-structure differences.

Base the outreach or education process on mutual understanding, trust, and respect that leads landowners to choose to comply because they see it in their best interest.

Base your program design on specifically identified needs.

Be aware of the boundary between education and advocacy.

Build student environmental stewardship motivation and competencies by focusing on the characteristics of environmentally responsible behavior:

Capture the social dynamics of grounds maintenance operations units including social, physical, and environmental responses to watershed management concerns to reveal key decision-making points in the system. Develop a framework of these dynamics, to illustrate activities needed to implement sustainable watershed and environmental management at large institutions.

Carefully tailor the water conservation message to address the specific circumstances of the target audience.

Collaborate with local and county health officials, environmental and fishing group representatives, and interested local leaders in planning, conducting, and evaluating community outreach efforts.

Collect and assess data about the following, prior to developing the outreach program:

Collect and assess data about the following, prior to developing the outreach program:

Collect and assess data about the following, prior to developing the outreach program:

Couple general outreach, information, and communication techniques with financial incentives

Design communication and professional development opportunities for outreach educators that will motivate them to implement a priority program because:

Design communication and professional development opportunities for outreach educators that will motivate them to implement a priority program because:

Design communication and professional development opportunities for outreach educators that will motivate them to implement a priority program because:

Design outreach to address farmer preferred learning style:

Design outreach to address farmer preferred learning style

Design programs to: Target outcomes for specific audiences.

Determine whether teachers can implement topics. Check if:

Develop a strategy that reflects the fact that effectiveness of new educational programs may be hindered by insular nature of communities in which producers live. NOTE: This finding is not generalizable due to small sample

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education (Fedler, 2001). The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education (Siemer, 2001). The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program

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.

Educate teachers about innovations in curricula to ensure that they are implemented

Emphasize one-on-one contact.

Emphasize one-on-one contact. This strategy correlates with farmer willingness to change practices, but adoption of a new technology requires more than a personal conversation and data about the specific situation

Encourage and support use of a community-based curriculum based on water monitoring. (This type of curriculum has been shown to be highly acceptable among teachers and to provide professional satisfaction.)

Encourage teachers to include the following elements in their environmental education programs:

Engage audience in planning.

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

Evaluate program success by following up with household to check if problems have been corrected.

Facilitate farmer-led program design and implementation that leads to:

Field test new education materials with a lead community-based organization.

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

For rangeland owners and managers, evaluation surveys of training outcomes are an alternative to formal reporting about implementation of nonpoint source water programs that protects confidentiality while documenting program success.

Gather data about policy maker skills and preferences prior to designing training

Generate local information:

Grassroots community-based education efforts are effective in reaching at-risk urban anglers with fish consumption advisory information, as members of this group tend not to have access to traditional government communication networks such as press releases, brochures, flyers, and legal notices.

Identify locally-specific or culturally-specific needs or problems related to water conservation and quality. These may not be what an expert would typically expect due to unique cultural or situational needs. For example, in a person-to-person outreach initiative about toxic substances in fish, African-Americans were most interested in risks to their health from eating contaminated fish. Caucasians were most interested in the levels of contamination in the fish.

Identify specific education needs, for example the percent of households with drinking water that does not meet public health standards.

Identify specific locally-defined problems related to water conservation. These may not be what an expert would typically expect due to unique cultural or situational needs.

Identify the need for education or outreach based on audience characteristics (e.g. understanding of the problem, socio-economic characteristics) and/or details about the specific local environmental concern (Varlamoff, 2001).

Identify the need for education or outreach based on audience characteristics (such as what they know and understand) and/or characteristics of the local environment

Implement a program design survey to

Implement a program design survey to

In designing outreach programs that strive to link environmental concern with recreational behaviors

In designing outreach to encourage participation in outdoor recreation programs, attend to:

In designing outreach to encourage participation in outdoor recreation programs, attend to:

In developing conservation programs, planners should not assume homogeneity of landowners. Uniform solutions might not apply. Motivation variables differ according to the specific conservation practice. In Oregon, those who adopted conservation practices in watersheds were characterized by several variables:

In facilitating development of a watershed group, consider these potential indicators of success:

In landowner or renter situations:

In social marketing projects, focus communication messages on sources of water pollution and actions that must be taken, when the public is already aware that they should care about water quality.

In stormwater communication efforts, focus on TV media time during local news; and use radio to target specific markets.

In stormwater communication efforts, focus the media buy on specific regions where action is most needed, rather than statewide, and provide local programs events and activities that encourage public behavior change.

In water-related organizations, include stakeholders as Board members

Incorporate field-based experiences and service-learning as significant components of environmental stewardship programs that focus on building environmentally responsible behavior among students

Involve citizens in a watershed planning group by facilitating their understanding of the problem/situation.

Involve target audience in choosing and testing preferred technical approaches to solving a problem

Involve target audience in:

Involve target audience in:

Involve target audience in:

Look to these conditions for opportunities to provide education that is more likely to be effective:

Make sure that participants know about the initiative and know how to participate.

Make time for continuous evaluation in order to best determine next steps (Ransley, 2003).

Make time for continuous evaluation in order to best determine next steps (Voege, 1998).

Match the information technology delivery mechanism to the computer work style of the landowner. How does the landowner already use the computer?

Pay attention to unique factors of cultural groups, but programs that focus on efficiency and productivity in decision-making are likely to succeed, whatever the social characteristics of the farm group

Present nutrient application simulations to farmers in a group, to give farmers an opportunity to learn what practices others are using and how they weigh aspects when making decisions about nutrient management.

Provide agriculture landowners with written materials in addition to whatever other communication methods are selected.

Provide clear information about goals and plans for land parcels. Provide regular feedback about how well goals and plans have been achieved.

Provide information that is high quality, explains risks; and is:

Provide information through field days, pamphlets, farm journals, media and books. These can contribute to:

Provide landowners with hands-on, practical training about individual property management choices. Describe choices in the context of information about broader ecosystem science and impacts.

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 strategies and practice for differentiating objective information sources from biased information sources

Provide teacher training that is hands-on, intense, comprehensive, and includes work in the field. A successful training could:

Provide teachers with substantial support, to better enable them to build water supply and management topics into their curricula, by:

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

Recognize that issues and context for different geographic regions impact educator and natural resource manager priorities for the relative importance of selected concepts, skills, and values. Tie water and water resource education to local values and needs of:

Recognize the role of economic factors in behavior change:

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

Rely on a targeted approach when developing an outreach strategy.

Segment information content, to address differences in target audience interests.

Social learning refers to the growing capacity of a social network to develop and perform collective actions. In promoting social learning in watershed management, it is important to frame information in such a way that a convergence of views becomes possible through interaction and collective learning processes, e.g. maps illustrating the impacts of water releases, as perceived by the users; graphs showing flow/time relationship and details of the hydrological regime; and field trips and video sessions to allow participants to see the impact of water releases on fish reproduction. Other useful tools include, for example, tools to communicate a vision about water management such as might be accomplished with a 3D model of a hydro-electric dam, a3D chart localizing all the dams on the river, video cassettes and measuring instruments, which testify that the water management authority cares about people’s safety, and stakeholder involvement in data gathering.

Social learning refers to the growing capacity of a social network to develop and perform collective actions. In promoting social learning in watershed management, use technical information in a way that supports local actors to explore and clarify their own understanding of the river basin. Beware of information or communication tools that are either poorly designed or used inadequately, for example with too much technical content. Those can act as a barrier by overwhelming actors with technical information which is not relevant or understandable for them.

Target outcomes for specific audiences

Test effectiveness of education program delivery through comparison of changes in nitrate, nutrients and bacteria in runoff.

Test new educational materials:

Test the audience at the beginning of the workshop to improve instructor ability to enhance subsequent learning

The choice of type of visual, spatial information to use in an education program depends on the audience. Some prefer pollution modeling, others prefer satellite images and maps or simply the discussion generated by showing models and maps.

There is a need for the government to reach beyond traditional means of communication and design programs that recognize the unique features of a local community. This can only be done by being interested in the citizens themselves - by learning who the affected citizens are, by listening and responding to citizen concerns and by offering real alternatives to those citizens who may be negatively impacted in some way by government action.

To address the complexity of water resource management problems, combine the technological dimension with the social dimension, based on stakeholders involvement; use decision-support tools in a shared platform through which the debate is organised and the different sources of knowledge are integrated.

To address the complexity of water resource management problems, engage stakeholders in structuring, i.e. systematizing the knowledge which emerges during the participative process, in order to make it comprehensible for the other participants and functional for the decision process. Cognitive mapping (concepts linked to form chains of action-oriented argumentation) and analysis is an example of a system that can be used to produce different points of view and information, in order to enrich a collective ‘‘knowledge base’’ with creative ideas and concepts around the problem.

To assure that watershed groups can play a valuable substantive role in states’ watershed management programs, encourage active recruiting to include a variety of perspectives. As collaborative policies are developed, sponsors must strike a balance to achieve an appropriate balance of participants to address each concern.

To encourage sustainable practices in application of fertilizers and pesticides on lawns

To enhance participation in water resource and watershed management, assess small landholder water related needs to orientate the public participation process.

To enhance participation in water resource and watershed management, create small-scale user forums to improve the internal organization among small landholders and give them a voice.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, engage teachers in learning how to develop appropriate assessment materials. For example, model use of preassessment to assess students’ groundwater understandings using various types of multiplechoice items, open-ended questions, and drawing prompts. Ask teachers to analyze what types of information each item provides and construct an appropriate instructional plan based on the responses.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, measure understandings of the concepts using: drawings, concept maps, and open-ended questions.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, teach instructors the fundamentals of assessing for conceptual understanding of science concepts. For example, the teacher can identify what language the students are using to describe groundwater and consequently what possible alternative conceptions may need to be explicitly addressed.

To gauge landowner willingness to engage in riparian zone management, assess identified predictors of landowner intentions: willingness to consider the recommendations of groups such as governmental agencies and watershed associations, beliefs that riparian management would be beneficial, and past and current riparian management behavior.

To increase US public acceptance of water reuse, such as high awareness of treatment technology, trust in local government; and of the challenges and opportunities of water reuse in the US:

To increase ownership and empowerment, design programs to:

To increase resident interest in water conservation, three urban case studies (Phoenix, Copenhagen, Singapore) highlight the following successful strategies:

To increase understanding of complex concepts related to groundwater:

Train the person who serves as the agency interface with the public to assure that citizens are fully informed about options.

Understand "opportunity costs" and social norms relative to the content or practice focus of the outreach.

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 a "water demand" mathematical model to provide feedback to citizens and to demonstrate the effect of community water conservation outreach programs. Maintain records describing which specific outreach programs were initiated to address which specific community environmental concerns and/or audiences in order to have sufficient data to interpret evaluation results.

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.

Use farmer-preferred sources of information and strategies for outreach about making decisions.

Use key informant interviews of local leaders to aid understanding for how to engage leaders in planning for conservation of open space.  Consider attitudes, issues, and obstacles.

Visual, spatial information is effective in stimulating group discussion when presented as part of a participatory approach.

Water and water resource education has a distinct body of knowledge described by topics categorized as concepts, skills, and values or emotions. Water science and management knowledge has been organized by Brody (1995) and others.

When implementing provide education programs focused on general community awareness programs (to build public support) as well as programs targeted to potential groundwater contamination contributors.

When involving the public in green space planning: use survey responses to group residents according to their interest in recreation, in planning participation, or no interest.

When involving the public in green space planning:

When persuading farmers to reduce chemical use:

When providing information related to sustainable farming, use conventional sources of information to convey new ideas rather than start a new newsletter or organization or other new source of information.

With Latino youth programs, use place-based pedagogies so that the education of citizens might have direct bearing on the well-being of the social and ecological places people actually inhabit.

Work with consultants:


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