How can we change consumer behaviour to benefit the environment?

The concept of of social labelling could lead to a subconscious change in behaviour, Guy Champniss writes

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More and more it seems the conversation around sustainable business and lifestyles is focusing on these three words: consumer behaviour change. More specifically, we're increasingly interested in how to bring about constructive changes that mean the demand side of the sustainability equation is working alongside the supply side. As you'd expect, almost all communication and advertising agencies are sure they can play a part – after all, isn't consumer behaviour change what they do?

But reading the comments and questions that are popping up, both on Guardian Sustainable Business and elsewhere, two schools of thought seem to be emerging. On the one hand, there are those who argue we must educate and drive awareness, and that this will be enough to engage consumers in more environmentally friendly behaviour. In other words, it's primarily a question of consumers not knowing the score: if they knew, of course, they'd act. This assumption sits underneath many of the conceptual models of consumer decision making that have been adapted in an attempt to model consumer behaviour in a pro-environmental context. So it's a case of educate and make aware, attitudes will change and behaviour will follow.

But then maybe this is not the case. Because, on the other hand, there are those who say that no matter how aware we make individuals, it is the very "otherness" of the issues that will halt any intention and action, that at the end of the day, we act in our own, short-term interests, no matter what the wider consequences are. Recent work by the WWF adopts this position, arguing that it is our collective obsession with materialism and consumerism that has pushed us to hold extrinsic, egoistic values over more transcendental values.

In this school, one approach to drive behaviour change is either to try and reframe the issues as having a personal impact (such as on the health and wellbeing of you and your family), or to adopt choice editing or influencing strategies on the supply side (this is not the position of the WWF, that is instead calling for us to "rebalance" our values systems).

There are certainly complexities within both of these schools that need further investigation. For example, in the former, the models rely on high-involvement cognitive processing, which we know is not how most of us go about everyday decision making. And, in the latter, there are questions around levels of abstraction and whether generalising behaviour to the lofty level of "sustainable" renders the development of any effective approach almost impossible.

But maybe there is something more basic that is not included in either of these approaches.

To try and make the case, I'd like to talk briefly about a new online venture in the US that could well end up having a very interesting position in this debate. The venture is called Green Decisions and has been set up by two digital-savvy entrepreneurs from the advertising and marketing worlds (I've also been involved in a small way, as an adviser). In one sentence, the site allows consumers to source any appliance for their home, where they can find not only the cheapest purchase price, but can also see the total cost of ownership over a number of years, via energy consumption figures, combined with local energy tariffs. This additional cost allows them to explore the energy efficiency of the product once it is set-up and plugged in. In a natural next step, the site also tells you the amount of carbon that the appliance will create over that period, and the number of trees required to absorb that output. It may sound basic, but stay with it, if you can – it may be that being this basic is a key.

When the idea was being developed, the founders agreed that the site would not take a pro-environmental stance, but would allow consumers to factor-in these considerations if they wanted to. In other words, they could decide whether it was important to them as an individual. Either way, it was fine by Green Decisions. As a result, when searches come back, users see purchase price, total cost and carbon cost across a single row, with the environmental data appearing last.

But what would happen if, in a confirmation email or any follow-up exchange, the data were rearranged? What if the environmental data then appeared first? Might this change the way the consumer interprets their behaviour? Might the original, "genuine" motivations for the decision be pushed out of the way by this apparent environmental motivation? Basic as it may sound, the answer could well be yes. Changing the delivery order of the data could create an alternative label with which to explain that particular action.

Research around this concept of social subconscious points us towards a compelling alternative to the schools of thought presented above. By social labelling, we're referring to the tag society gives a particular behaviour in order to make sense of it. In other words, society interprets the action and tags it with a motivation – for all to see – that it considers consistent with the behaviour. This means your individual behaviour can carry a social tag independently of the internal tag you may assign it. The big difference is that the social tag is visible to everyone.

Where this gets interesting is that these social tags can be applied to make sense of the behaviour, but they don't need to reflect the original motivation. So choosing to take the train rather than the car could be driven at the individual level by a desire to be able to read and make phone calls on the way. But society can publicly tag this behaviour as being pro-environmental in motivation. And society can applaud that motivation.

Where this research gets even more interesting, is that when a behaviour is tagged – or labelled – in this way, then the consumer is likely to behave next time in keeping with this label. So, with our person taking the train – even if their initial motivation was being able to read the paper – with the social label of being pro-environmental for leaving the car at home – they'll be more likely to approach subsequent decisions with a stronger pro-environmental stance.

This growing body of consumer psychology research is pretty big news and has a hefty impact on the two schools of thought sketched out earlier. The impact on the awareness and education approach is that we don't necessarily need to deliver that hammer blow of bad news, hoping that levels of concern will rise to the point of intervention. Instead, it's a more intuitionist approach to decision making. And the impact on the second "command and control" school is that it would appear that our environmental values (or, more broadly, "transcendental" values) are far from flatlining in the modern world. Instead, it would appear they just need a little jolt and some gentle support. It seems we do care about the wider issues after all, or rather we care about showing others that we do.

So back to Green Decisions. If consumers make decisions about any of the criteria featured but are then recognised for having made decisions on an environmental criterion, will that criterion rise in importance from that point on? With an army of caveats attached, it would appear highly plausible. What's more, this could be done as simply as re-ordering the data from the search to highlight this detail, once a decision has been made.

Of course, it wouldn't be quite so straightforward, but the evidence so far points to the practice of social labelling as having considerable potential in driving behaviour change that is pro-social, but without the associated requirements for empathy and concern as a result of values. Yes, there may well be ethical concerns over the manipulation of what people consider to be their motivations for behaving in certain ways, but I don't think we should take social labelling and other more basic concepts off the table for those alone, or at least not yet. In a world where we need pragmatic solutions, the potential seems too great.

It's ironic because in almost all communication firms the mantra is that behaviour is a product of attitude and intention, so to change volitional behaviour, you have to re-programme attitudes. Yet here, we've a model that argues for a 180-degree flip, with attitudes forming as a result of behaviour.

It's also ironic that despite being built as purposely non-judgmental when it comes to environmental decision making, Green Decisions and its peers may end up being highly instrumental in untangling at least some of the knotty conundrum that is consumer behaviour change. We secretly hope it does.

Guy Champniss is an independent brand strategy consultant, and co-author of Brand Valued: How socially valued brands hold the key to business success and a sustainable future