Social marketing and behavioral change in a systemic environment
Most people recognize that everyday life is not what it used to be: climate change, the pandemic, inequality, and more. It is a world increasingly shaped by both collective and individual choices, and both decisions and behaviors. Ultimately, in this complex world, the call to action is widespread behavioral change. In response, social marketing, with its primary guideline for said change, is expanding its expertise, evidence, theories, and tools. Social marketing critically examines the interaction between human and natural systems and their interconnected dynamic forces as a powerful means of influencing behavior for the coordinated transformation and improvement of individuals, communities, society, and the planet as a whole.
In the pursuit of “green” innovation, critical social marketing trends span systems of science, stakeholder engagement, and digital technology. Human behavior is causing global warming of 1.0°C above pre-industrial levels, and requires widespread behavior change. Since human consumption of raw natural resources is at the center of global and local “green” deals, systemic behavioral change and the rapid adoption of low-carbon lifestyles are critical enablers and therefore ideal areas for actionable interventions. However, while academics and policymakers understand that education and awareness have a role to play in creating sustainable consumption and a zero-carbon world, awareness alone does not lead people to change their behavior, individually or collectively.
Increasingly, tackling complex, multi-level, and multi-faceted issues such as climate change, healthy oceans, and green cities requires coordinated, multi-level change in the behavior of a multitude of stakeholders. These include politicians, regulators, governing bodies, the media, state agencies, scientists, corporations, public associations, social enterprises, non-governmental organizations, and average citizens. Uncovering the value and impact of “green” innovation depends on changing a multitude of individual, daily choices and decisions in a systemic environment. Therefore, empowering multiple stakeholders, from citizens to politicians, to change their behavior over time is vital for “green” innovation.
In response, social marketing, defined by its field of behavior change over the past 50 years, is expanding its expertise, evidence, theories, and toolbox. The 2013 consensus definition of social marketing by the International Social Marketing Association, the European Social Marketing Association, and the Australian Social Marketing Association states, “Social Marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviours that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. Social Marketing practice is guided by ethical principles. It seeks to integrate research, best practice, theory, audience and partnership insight, to inform the delivery of competition-sensitive and segmented social change programmes that are effective, efficient, equitable and sustainable.”
Social marketing knows that working “with” people (not “for” or “on behalf of”) to change behavior sustainably requires a deeper understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and structural dynamics that influence consumption and production decisions. This is not about a “one-size-fits-all” solution or population-based behavior change interventions or campaigns. Whether it’s adapting to climate change, protecting our oceans, living in greener cities, or providing healthy soil for more nutrient-rich food, current social marketing trends include social marketing and behavioral change in systemic environments, greater engagement of community stakeholders, and the use of digital technology beyond communication and promotion.
Social marketing for system-wide and transformative behavior change adds three more guiding principles to our understanding and implementation of behavior change:
1. Uses a dynamic systems approach to the problem (philosophical position).
2. Is a multimethod (methodological position).
3. Recognizes layering and breakdown points (action position).
To uncover the values and benefits of “green” innovation, these principles translate the conceptualization and management of behavior change interventions from a reductionist and linear paradigm to a circular causal relationship based on evolutionary dynamics and feedback in a problematic system, where the consequences can over time become reasons. It is important to note that behavior change can no longer be viewed as an event or operation limited to one single intervention at one single level at a time. Instead, change becomes a dynamic process that takes place over time at the individual, social, and macro levels. The relational and interactive nature of behavior change becomes important when individuals and diverse top-down and bottom-up stakeholders are embedded in complex social systems with social mechanisms such as collaboration, interaction, and self-organization. These processes involve multiple stakeholders in the problematic system who change, modify, and adapt their behavior for collective and collaborative impact. Together, diverse stakeholders converge on defining and articulating a problem using their collective wisdom. Highly participatory behavioral design methodologies promote this type of behavior change in social marketing.
In practice, social marketing in the systemic environment has developed as a systemic “social marketing” and “macrosocial marketing.” For example, refer to the special issues of the Journal of Macromarketing Marketing Systems (2019) and Macrosocial Marketing (2018). For “green” innovation, a significant benefit of systems-based behavior change is that it adds “social systems” and “social mechanisms” to environmental and health concerns. A second significant advantage lies in the understanding of behavioral dynamics, or whether or not one is acting for different groups or segments in the focal system. This systemic extension (both conceptual and empirical) encompasses multiple stakeholders at multiple levels of behavior and analysis: micro (individual level), meso (dyadic and communities and networks), and macro (governments, politics and societies). The dynamics of behavior change demanded by “green” innovation is not a product of individual aggregation, but depends on the continuous interaction of small, engaged groups of people and wider stakeholders.
Reflecting on this layered and systemic behavior change associated with oceans and human health, Britton et al. presents a new way of understanding the dynamics and relationship with the ocean and the humanization of environmental crises. The presence of heterogeneous subpopulations and stakeholders with different values within the problem system shows that the optimal implementation of evidence-based strategies is carried out through a targeted exchange of values for sustainable change. The study also demonstrates the value of a highly participatory collective intellectual process done through a meta-analysis of priorities and actions for sustainable ocean policies. The findings highlight priority topics and actions from expert discussions with stakeholders and citizens that provide key insights for policy and decision-making processes. The presented dynamics of soft systems (behavioral change) provides one of the methodologies for identifying circular causality and interdependent processes. For “green” innovation, understanding behavioral and structural dynamic interactions can help accelerate the progress of policies and governance that are integrated and adaptive. The value lies in building the capacity to understand current and future synergies and linkages between climate change, ocean health, and human health, and well-being.
As a demonstration, we can examine the benefits of “green” innovation from the perspective of behavioral change in social marketing systems when the focus of change extends beyond the individual to include social, economic, and political factors to explain the eating behavior of Australian military personnel. On the supply side, encouraging patronage through menu innovation, investment in premises, culinary training, and auditing have become opportunities for behavior change. On the demand side, the dominant areas of behavior change have been education and training coupled with communication that challenges cultural and normative norms, and is also linked to military values.
In the healthcare sector, a recent example is the marketing of prevention interventions in Florida and communities for systemic change — a partnership to define, adapt, implement and evaluate multi-tiered interventions to improve colorectal cancer screening in the Tampa Bay region. Their innovative strategy for collaboration between academia and society to tackle the complex issue of inequality in CRC screening used group model building (a concept at the heart of social marketing systems thinking) helps to understand the importance of connections, feedback loops, and interactions between system stakeholders over time. Group model building is a successful way to involve community members and other stakeholders in the process of problem identification, design, and implementation of an intervention. It provides behavioral design methodologies for behavior change that are highly relevant to green innovation.
Research is also progressing, as social marketing is witnessing the acceleration and normalization of digital technology for behavior change. A systematic literature review by Shawki et al. examining the use of interactive social media and engagement in various social marketing programs using interactive social media platforms indicates that the extent of digital integration in social marketing clearly goes beyond communication and promotion. Studies such as those done by Andrade et al., Ullman et al. And Shah et al. highlight the increasing use of digital technologies for research, segmentation, and targeting in social marketing. Other research, such as the development of behavior change apps, products and services, uses digital technology for delivery purposes.
Specific technologies used include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, the Internet and mobile phones/smartphones, text messaging, websites, online programs, blogs, discussion boards, apps, virtual reality, and email for segmentation, formative research, analysis of barriers and assets, augmented/online products and services, facilitation, delivery, and access and monitoring of involvement in the intervention. Such digital technologies open the way for multi-level and multi-stakeholder collaboration and collaboration that can drive systems change. These digital technologies are enabling positive behavior change results for green deal innovation in a variety of ways. Digital technologies foster diversity of self-organization, connect top-down decision-makers with bottom-up citizens and communities, change old values based on vested interests for new shared values based on reciprocity and morality, and facilitate and develop cooperation and interaction for joint impact in the context from local to global. Essentially, digital technologies in social marketing drive macro-meso-micro-micro-meso-macro social mechanisms in social systems.
There is a small but growing body of literature showing that digital technology plays a central role in supporting funders, stakeholders, and partnerships in the design and implementation of behavior change programs. Under the hood of behavior change, in addition to the digital technologies mentioned earlier, are digital tools such as Google Docs, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, which are used as indispensable tools for collaboration, coordination, communication, engagement, and self-organization of stakeholders, which, in their turn, can lead to the creation of long-term strategic and operational partnerships for behavior change. These digital platforms help stakeholders move from isolated mental models of the problem to more complex, collective mental models of problem systems. Systems dynamics and modeling software such as Stella, Venism, and Kumu can assist in mapping and modeling random loops, feedbacks, and force points in a problem system. Stakeholders can assess the complexity of a problem, differing perspectives and competing demands, find solutions never seen before, and initiate cross-sectoral partnership opportunities. From this point of view, change in behavior across the entire system becomes a process jointly created by the macro and micro process. Behavior change is coded, diagnosed and coded, encompassing citizens and stakeholders, citizens and society, and citizens and the planet.
Finally, in terms of communication and promotion, an important technological trend is the use of multi-agent systems to model influencers and interactions, showing that targeted advertising via digital social media performs better than the traditional approach to broadcasting at the population level. Moreover, such narrow and broadcast advertising shows how the environmental and/or health goals of some stakeholders in the system compete with the economic, social, political and cultural goals of other stakeholders. It is a reminder to social marketers that stakeholders have many choices or decision points and can be direct or indirect competitors actively pushing other stakeholders in the system in the opposite direction. For example, organizations focused exclusively on earthly issues ensure the status quo and continued existence of existing fossil fuel sectors, or the tobacco industry resists efforts to curb smoking habits.
The value and impact of social marketing for “green” innovation lies in its strong ability to design and implement behavioral change interventions and strategies at multiple levels, involving multiple and diverse stakeholders. This article points out that social marketing is expanding its focus beyond individual change in both health and the environment to ways that drive widespread behavioral change from a systems perspective. Interactions, processes, mechanisms and interdependencies, as opposed to facts, variables and levels, become the unit of analysis for transformational behavior change. Social marketing, using participatory systematic co-creation, community stakeholder engagement and digital technology, can help create a transformative and far-reaching framework for the sustainable development of society and the planet.
