Gauging public attitudes to the BBC's "Perfect Storm 2030: Public attitudes"

Mark Easton wrote a good summary yesterday of the government’s work in trying to encourage people to adopt more “pro-environmental” behaviour. He references Defra’s work, which takes a social marketing approach, segmenting the UK population by their attitude towards the environment and choosing specific behaviours (like “install insulation” or “adopt lower impact diet”) that will suit them.

Mark Easton wrote a good summary yesterday of the government’s work in trying to encourage people to adopt more “pro-environmental” behaviour. He references Defra’s work, which takes a social marketing approach, segmenting the UK population by their attitude towards the environment and choosing specific behaviours (like “install insulation” or “adopt lower impact diet”) that will suit them.

I’m glad he wrote his post, as I think Defra’s approach is novel. But what I’m particularly interested in is how people respond to knowing that central government are approaching behaviour change in this way; which might seem more redolent of an advertising company than a government department.

I’d love someone to release content analysis service for blog comments, but without having that at my disposal, I read the 31 comments that were posted by 9:31 this morning and divided them into the following groups:

• Issues about whether man-made climate change is real and the science certain
• Issues about the relationship between the state and individual
• Issues about individual human behaviour; our incentives and agency

The third section maps to about 10% of all comments which suggested, among other things, that adopting more pro-environmental behaviur was just not in human nature.

The middle section was the largest; at least a third of the comments fell into it. Comments argued that the government should set an example (Heathrow’s 3rd runway, the Department for Energy & Climate Changes’ apallingly energy-inefficient building etc.) before telling people what to do, and should treat people intelligently when it did so. Various comments also highlighted people’s willingness to change but poor existing infrastructure or policies that trapped them into environmentally damaging ways of life. This section was also the most strongly worded, with comments suggesting that the approach from government was Orwellian and could feed conspiracy theories about climate change.

What is the right way of developing effective behaviour change interventions and policies? Writing from a design perspective I immediately think of public service innovation companies like thinkpublic or Participle. Could a co-design approach to behaviour change interventions help improve the fractured relationship between the individual and the state?