This post is a summary of work and ideas developed for a foundation in Southeastern Pennsylvania while I was employed at Message Agency in 2019. Part of my role was to conduct secondary research on models of behavior change to use in our strategy for engaging the local community.
How does behavior change happen?
One of the most considered questions of philosophy is that of free will. Do you choose how you move through your day? Or is it all predetermined? Or, are others determining things for you? With the amount of external influence on you through media, the internet, and your peers there are endless stimuli able to nudge you in a new direction.
“I’m convinced that ideas and behaviors and new products move through a population very much like a disease does. This isn’t just a metaphor, in other words. I’m talking about a very literal analogy. . . . Ideas can be contagious in exactly the same way that a virus is.”
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Research shows that the information that sticks with us most does not simply hang in the air like a virus. Instead, it is very deliberately passed to us by those we interact with on a regular basis and those we hold in high esteem. In this post I’ll attempt to provide an overview of some evidence-based models related to behavior change and how they can be operationalized in campaigns.
Dr. Damon Centola’s Models for Behavior Change
In his latest book, How Behavior Spreads, Dr. Centola uses a combination of research and narrative to help the reader understand the means by which information leads to behavior change. To illustrate the basic premise of his research Dr. Centola uses the example of Korea in the early 1960s when they were attempting to increase adoption of contraceptives among rural populations. Instead of buying billboards and radio ads, the Korean campaign provided a menu of contraceptive options to each village in the nation. At the local level, Koreans were able to select the methods that they were most comfortable using – not the one pushed on them by a spokesperson. Peer-to-peer discussion of the options led to further adoption by those with overlapping social ties. Eventually Korea surpassed all of its policy goals for the initiative, and the theory of social influence was born. Instead of a network effect of loose ties leading to a “viral diffusion,” it was instead spatial interactions that emerged as the most successful pathways.
While the viral model suggests that radiating networks
Dr. Damon Centola, How Behavior Spreads
of weak ties would lead to successful dissemination, it was instead
overlapping patterns of spatial interaction that were the key to widespread adoption.
Another line of Dr. Centola’s research involves “tipping points” for adoption of behaviors and ideas. Using online chatrooms, Dr. Centola and his team were able to measure how much of a group needed to agree with a non-mainstream idea before more and more of the participants flipped to embrace it. They found that once about 25% of a group have adopted the more extreme view, adoption accelerates among the rest of the group until it reaches a saturation point.
What does this mean for your campaign to change behaviors? It helps to give you a more realistic goal. Imagine a County in your state and how the residents might feel about a certain policy. You might estimate that 20% are strongly in favor, 20% are strongly against, and the other 60% undecided. If you are leading a campaign to get the policy passed in the legislature, you need to increase your number of residents in favor. But by how much? In order to get and keep the momentum, you can target 25% of the undecided population. Once your polling indicates you’ve moved roughly that many residents towards your side, you can be more confident that the tide is truly turning.
How can I leverage spatial patterns in my campaign?
In the case of our campaign in Southeastern Pennsylvania, we relied on what we called an “opportunity map” to help guide our decisions. We used the free Google MyMaps software to build our initial map. Many jurisdictions with Open Data platforms offer file types that are easy to upload directly, which saves time. If you are building your data set manually, it is very easy to add new locations, but cant take quite a bit of time to add everything you’d like to track. This map should include several layers depending on your goals – some we included were non-profit organizations, faith-based organizations, public housing developments, and schools, libraries, and recreation centers.
Once your map is built, you should immediately begin to notice patterns in where the points fall in relation to one another. Remember, space is the key here, so if you see certain points “out on an island”, do some research or engage your community in that area to find out what you might be missing. The goal is to find the clusters of organizations and individuals who might or might not talk to one another because of proximity, and get them to be on the same page and engaged in your work. For example, the librarian and the fire chief might be next door to one another, but not have much need to speak on a regular basis. However, if the county receives a grant that could fund joint public safety work by both groups, you’d find it very valuable that they could be easily brought together in a physical location.
The map can also be used as both a communication and organizing tool. You can share access easily among your peer group, and encourage them to add points to the map they think would be relevant to your goals. It can also be used in organizing to divide responsibility for certain areas of a larger county or city. For example, the Census (in addition to tracts at the micro level) often uses larger divisions to break down counties in the US. These can be valuable in identifying demographic trends, deputizing others to lead outreach efforts, and help limit travel over longer distances for meetings or other activity.
Conclusion
Behavior change doesn’t just happen by having a celebrity record a PSA. The most effective models for change involve social influence, and are driven by overlapping spatial relationships. The “tipping point” means you can more effectively target ambivalent people in your geography. You can use GIS and mapping tools to create a clear picture of your target geography and the assets available to you. Use the map to guide your strategic interventions and gain adoption of your campaign messages.
Joe Buckshon 