Archive for the ‘Family & Water’ Category

This bumper sticker neatly expresses some conventional wisdom of the conservation elite: Hunting and fishing aren’t just pastimes, they are “traditions.” Unfortunately, that seems to be a minority view, even among those who hunt and fish.

In the Anglers’ and Boaters’ Attitudes Toward Various Messages that Communicate the Benefits of Fishing and Boating: Results of a Series of Nationwide Focus Groups study, conducted by Responsive Management a number of years back, the researchers found that for many anglers, the word “tradition” was too strong. One of the focus group participants was quoted this way:

…it is not a tradition. To me a tradition is something that continues on, it is something that the past family members have done and you have done and future generations will do. That is not always the case. My parents were never real big on boating or fishing and things like that, but I am… and my daughter is not real big on fishing and boating like we are. It just depends on the individual and what they like.

Now – some of the anglers interviewed did buy the notion of these family activities amounted to family traditions, but as messages go, “tradition” is not a slam dunk. For a healthy number of people, it just comes across an overstatement.

In the Water Words That Work Message Method, “tradition” falls somewhere in the grey zone between the words that work and the words that don’t.

With all things recreation, the word to emphasize is family. That is the word that elevates the sentiments expressed in the sticker below into something important.

California’s budget crisis is boiling over and putting family experiences in natural areas at risk. In May, Governor Schwarzenegger proposed to close 220 parks. Responding to the threat, the California State Parks Foundation grew their Facebook constituency from 517 fans to over 45,000. How did they do it? They’re happy to tell you! They’ve posted a blow-by-blow of their Facebook environmental communications campaign, complete with screenshots detailing what they said and how their supporters responded.

And what did the group accomplish for all this effort — so far, quite a bit. The number of California parks slated for closure has been cut in half — from 220 to just about 100.

Congrats to the Foundation and its vendors and allies!

Photo courtesy ricardodiaz11 via Flickr

The Alliance for Sustainable Fisheries has released the results of an environmental poll, conducted by Responsive Management, which finds “the public strongly wants the ocean to be protected, but not with total marine closures.”

The sponsors are upset about the establishment of some new protected ocean areas where all fishing — both recreational and commercial — is banned. It’s a quality poll, but there are no real surprises — the main findings in the research echo other environmental polls and surveys:

“An overwhelming majority of U.S. residents support (90%) legal recreational fishing in general, with most of that being strong support. Additionally, large majorities of U.S. residents support legal recreational fishing in National Forests (80%), National Parks (78%), and Wilderness Areas (72%).”

And also…

“Among U.S. residents, support for protecting U.S. ocean waters and ocean life is nearly unanimous: 78% strongly support doing so, and another 17% moderately support it, for a sum of 95% in support.”

The finding worth discussing is this:

Disagreement is particularly high (86%) with the statement, “All U.S. ocean waters should be fully protected with no human use allowed.”

In market research, the public routinely rejects absolute statements of any kind, from any side of the issue, about any nature protection or pollution control topic. By honing in a the complete closure aspect of the marine protected areas, the Alliance has found the one aspect of the marine protected areas plan that a significant majority of individuals would object to. That’s another poll that goes on the pile in support of this word that works: balance.

Also noteworthy, there is some shoptalk in some of the questions — and this degrades the reliability of some of the findings. For example…

The survey asked respondents if they agree or disagree that some change to the natural
biodiversity in U.S. ocean waters is acceptable to guarantee a continued food supply through fishing and shellfishing: agreement (71%) far exceeds disagreement (20%).

Given the substantial number of people who don’t understand what biodiversity is, I’m not sure if this particular finding (in an otherwise solid environmental poll) can be trusted.

Using environmental polls and surveys to evaluate the attitudes, language, and behaviors of the citizens you work with is a very smart thing to do, and it gets cheaper and easier all the time. But like any form of research, there are shortcomings. Here’s one: Sometimes people lie to pollsters.

I recently played the Ipsos Poll Predictor game, and missed a question about canoe paddling skills by a MILE.

I knew 33% was higher than the actual number of men who can truly paddle a canoe when I guessed it, but I seem to have seriously underestimated the misreporting factor. According to the Active Outdoor Recreation Economy study, published in 2008, less than 10% of the population (300 million of us) actually paddle with any frequency:

Conventional wisdom among us poll watchers is that the survey participants aren’t really lying to the pollsters per se — they’re lying to themselves. The answers we get are wishful thinking. The Ipsos poll result tells us that a lot of men wish they knew how to paddle a canoe.

So if environmental surveys and polls are often inaccurate about self-reported behavior, why do them? Because they are still WAY MORE ACCURATE than you just guessing, that’s why.

Want to play the poll predictor game? Want to get an insiders perspective on how polls and surveys work? Click the banner below to join the Ipsos panel. Disclosure: They will pay me $3 if you do.