“Our results echo other recent poll data showing that Americans are growing more concerned about climate change,” write the authors of a recent 2008 Porter Novelli/George Mason University poll on the subject. This was a major effort: The authors surveyed 12,000 adults (most pollsters just survey 1,000) and 1,000 children (which most pollster don’t try to reach).
And in two other key areas, the results echo the findings of other studies in the Water Words collection:
#1: Global Warming Is An Issue of Relative Consensus
Analyzing the responses by gender, age, race, and other factors, the authors concluded “…on the whole, we found their demographic similarities to be more striking their differences.” This is the pattern for environmental issues generally, not just for global warming.
#2: You Must Warn AND Encourage
The report clearly validates one of the fundamental principles of the Water Words That Work method: It’s as important to convince people that their actions matter as it is to convince them that the problem is real.
The authors found that those who believe that global warming is real and dangerous, and also have confidence in their ability to make a difference participate in many conservation behaviors. However, those who believe global warming is real, but lack confidence in their ability to make a difference, participate in far fewer conservation behaviors. That’s common sense, but nature protection and pollution control experts routinely invest more effort in proving the problem rather than the solution. This report provides fresh insight into why that’s a mistake.
Here at Water Words That Work, we have an elaborate formula to convince people they can make a difference: You tell them: “You can make a difference, here’s how…”
Coming soon, I’ll blog about the findings in this research that don’t support my own deeply held beliefs! 
The market research company Umbria recently released a study of the attitudes people express online about global warming. The good news: Public opinion is generally with us. The bad news: There is a substantial minority of vocal holdouts who will be all but impossible to convince. If you follow social research as closely as I do, that’s fresh confirmation of an old story.
A variety of studies have reached this conclusion and have generally put the naysayers into two camps — people who really have a grudge against nature protection and pollution control efforts, and people who just don’t want to be inconvenienced for the greater good. Umbria calls them “rejectors” and “negators,” and describes them thus:
A key thing to understand about “rejectors,” “negators,” and everybody else for that matter, is that they don’t just feel this way about global warming – they feel this way about everything. These are personality types, not rationally thought-through positions.
When you run into these personality types, and you will, it’s better not to get drawn into an argument with them. You won’t change their mind, so why waste your breath? Focus your energy instead on the much larger number of people who are willing to be persuaded but have some inhibition they need you to overcome.
What would you have to do to achieve a 15% drop in excess fertilization? How about to save 1.8 million gallons of water? Or to protect almost all of the high priority streambanks in a farm community from overgrazing?
You might be forgiven for thinking you’d have to publish some new regulations, stir up hard feelings with a lawsuit, or pull strings in the legislature to secure a lavish subsidy. But some of your peers have secured these impressive accomplishments solely through the power of persuasion. And if they can do it, so can you.
That’s what Jack Wilbur believes. Jack works for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food is the author of the new report ““Getting Your Feet Wet With Social Marketing,” which combines case studies of successful efforts and how-to guides for those looking to undertake a similar effort. He’s today’s interview guest. 
“Anybody can do this,” Jack says about the practice of social marketing, which he describes as campaigning to persuade carefully selected groups of people to voluntarily modify their behavior. “You do not have to have a degree in marketing or public relations or psychology, you just have to have the motivation to learn some of these skill sets.”
So what does he mean by “these skill sets?” Listening, for one.
“You kind of have to release, and disconnect yourself from the idea that because we are the topic experts… that that means that we know best about what’s going to motivate people to make changes,” Jack says. “The more you talk to the people whose behavior you’re trying to influence, the better chance you’ll have of actually understanding what it takes to influence their behavior.”
And recognizing the importance of peers in persuading people to change their minds or change their habits, for another.
“We tend to trust the words of our neighbors and our peers, even a little bit more than we do the experts…If you see one recycling garbage can on your street, you may not decide to recycle, but if you start to see two or three or five… even the most resistant people are going to start doing that.”
- Download or listen to the interview with Jack Wilbur (MP3 file, 32 minutes)
- Download “Getting Your Feet Wet With Social Marketing”
- Click the comments link below to post a question for Jack.
