Climate News 25:20
One of the first things we do when working with a new council is to conduct a behavioural demographics analysis of their local government area.
This draws on publicly available data, including the census, renewables installation from the Clean Energy Regulator and, where available, data from state energy efficiency incentive schemes. From this, we identify areas that are under-served for renewables and energy efficiency and the types of audiences in those suburbs. The latter is important as it forms one part of our three-cornered approach to communications – audience, content and channel of communication. Once we’ve identified the audiences we want to target, we then need to think about what content they are going to find engaging and how we should reach them. We can draw on academic research but it’s always good to be grounded in local reality. Once council officer recently came up with a deceptively simple approach: ask people. In this instance, we wanted to find out more about people aged 55 and over and if they were thinking about preparing their homes for when they retire. Our officer started with colleagues at her council and just talked to them. Easy, right? This generated a rich trove of data and ideas that now inform a developing communications strategy. The emphasis should be on the word “developing”. As we proceed, we’ll refine and change content and communications channels based on feedback from the audiences we engage. It’s useful to remember that a lot of the principles of behaviour change, such as nudge, often started with small group experiments on an available audience: university students. These principles were proposed and then tested in the field. We don’t need to be perfect first time, just good enough to get started. Start talking.
|
Previous
|
