Sustainability
T he road to hell is paved with good intentions. And while many firms want to be seen combatting global warming, they cannot do it alone. Designing a greener product is one thing, but that effort will be wasted if nobody buys it. Companies need customers to work with them to achieve their sustainability goals. Securing that co-operation isn’t easy. One approach is educating customers, explaining how a product lowers carbon emissions or benefits workers in the supply chain. Sometimes that works. Often it doesn’t. Habits are hard to change and consumers often need more encouragement. There are many ways to try to change customer behaviour. Firms can limit choice or adjust prices; make emotional appeals; or highlight supplementary
All hands to the pumps by David Elmes
benefits, such as saving time. Another approach is to appeal to a customer’s social identity. This is a powerful option, but is often poorly understood, even among experienced marketers. The key is recognising the social goals people have, based on the groups they belong or aspire to. People will work hard to retain their status and make the group look good to others. However, social identity is not constant. The same individual may view themselves as a parent, music-lover, traveller, or business executive in different contexts. The trick is to establish which identity is the most salient and work on that. Used responsibly, this can help customers to do the right thing. Three organisations I have been working with demonstrate different ways of doing this. 1 We’re all in this together California start-up Enervee, which sells home appliances
and electronics online, is one company that successfully focuses on social identity. Rather than simply offering every conceivable fridge or TV, it tries to nudge consumers towards energy-efficient items. All products are given a ‘green’ score out of 100, highlighting how much money buyers can save on their electricity bills. The website tailors the way it presents other information to home in on the benefits that will appeal to different people. Someone browsing for a television might be told that if everyone in the US who bought a TV opted for a particular model with a high green score, it would save enough energy to power New York City for an entire year. Appealing to a consumer’s identity as an American suggests we’re all in this together and if everyone acted responsibly, we would achieve something to be proud of. Identifying a national group can work better than appealing to our status as humans on a shared planet. Generally, the smaller and more specific the group, the more motivated we are. 2 Good things in smaller packages Unilever has a fabric conditioner called Comfort One Rinse that requires less water – a useful feature in water-stressed parts of the world. It can also save time. Despite positive feedback from early trials, the company found the conditioner met resistance in parts of Asia. Further research identified that in some rural areas, women gathered to wash their household laundry using a communal water supply. The social norms of that group dictated that they use the same amount of water and time washing clothes as everyone
else. Any less might make them look like a poor homemaker. Extolling the benefits of saving water was of little use here. Instead, Unilever asked high-status homemakers to tell the women about how they used the time they saved to look after their families in other ways, appealing to their social role as homemakers. 3 Invent your own group If it’s hard to identify a relevant social identity, the alternative is to create one. Shujaaz was launched in Kenya in 2009 to improve the lives of young locals by creating a social identity imbued with the positive attributes they wanted to encourage. This centred on a monthly comic about a teenage DJ who set up a pirate radio station. Written in the local slang, ‘Sheng’, the comic now reaches seven million people, is supported by TV and radio shows, and has a vibrant social media presence. Through the choices made by characters in the comic, Shujaaz (which means ‘heroes’ in Sheng) has promoted safe sex and vaccination, and encouraged young entrepreneurs to launch businesses. The positive impact is demonstrated by the fact that readers are far more likely than non-readers to use contraception and engage in family planning. As these examples show, tapping into social identity is not always straightforward. But by homing in on the most relevant social group, it can be a powerful motivational tool.
D omestic heating and cooling account for 14 per cent of UK carbon emissions. Of that, 85 per cent comes from gas boilers. Decarbonising heat is a priority if the country is to reach its net zero target. But how do we do that if heat pumps cost more than three times as much as a gas boiler? That was the question my colleagues and I set out to answer through the Interdisciplinary Centre for Storage, Transformation, and Upgrading of Thermal Energy, a five-year programme funded by the Government’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. We found that behavioural science could nudge people towards installing heat pumps instead of gas boilers, but some messages were more effective than others. Take the problem of cost. We found that customers were more patient than expected, waiting for a return on their investment, but high upfront costs still put people off. To address this, households with traditional oil or gas boilers can now apply for a £5,000 grant for an air source heat pump and £6,000 for a ground source. We also looked at how consumers compare products. The problem is that heat pumps work very differently to gas boilers, and people tend to prefer what they know to unfamiliar products.
So we avoid comparisons when presenting the benefits. Unsurprisingly, people were more interested when heat pumps were framed as an environmental issue. More intriguing, the ‘messenger’ was less critical. We concluded that installing a heat pump was a spending decision that people thought about, rather than relying on someone else’s view. Government policies now frame heat pumps in a way that encourages uptake, but broader issues need addressing so the industry can meet the UK’s green targets. For example, who will pay for upgrading the electricity network, and have the right companies been trained to carry out all the instillation work? “Decarbonising heat is a priority if the country is to meet its net zero target” Homeowners must have approved cavity wall and loft insultation, plus a valid Energy Performance Certificate, to qualify for subsidies. Many are unaware of the extra cost and disruption, while few companies currently offer a holistic view of household energy. Joined-up thinking is required to address these system-wide issues.
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