“People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must.†–Michael Mandelbaum, via Thomas Friedman
In his Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business, Joel Makower bemoans the studies on American consumers’ attitudes about purchasing green products: for decades research has shown consumers want green but are not actually buying it. Makower lists two main reasons for the gap between concern and consumerism:
1. the communication of what difference consumers are making when purchasing green products; and
2. the perception that beyond their environmental attributes green products deliver inferior benefits.
In other words, sustainability has a marketing problem. I’ve identified a few additional, and very much inter-related, marketing barriers to the adoption of sustainability. Each of these opens new opportunities for more successful communication and adoption of sustainability.
- Push. Sustainability gets pushed to consumers by impersonal brands trying to capitalize on the new market. Green- or rainbow-colored ads, commercials, pop-outs, and other interruptions overwhelm consumers, as does the multitude of claims. There’s too much selling and not enough storytelling and conversation. It’s lazy, ineffective, and ‘old’ marketing, which treats people like wallets not the individuals they are.
- Social proof, or, rather, lack thereof. If people don’t see other people like them engaging in sustainable consumption, they won’t do it. Keeping up with the Joneses is a powerful instinct, but people need to know how the Joneses are doing. A hybrid in the driveway is one thing, knowing the neighbor’s energy or water consumption (or savings) is another.
- Messaging. Sustainability often comes in a holier-than-thou, self-righteous mantle, seemingly ignorant of people’s dislike of being preached at or be told what to do. Similarly, guilt tripping or fear mongering to induce consumption of sustainable products will fail in the long-run.
- Complex product. Sustainability is complicated, what with its systems thinking and triple bottom line and closed loops. When you try to sell the triple bottom line to single-bottom line consumers, it’s a tough bottleneck to overcome. What’s more, human mind is not designed for thinking; thinking takes energy away from other capacities, which are more important for survival, like memory, sight, or movement.
- Curse of knowledge. The more you know about something, the more difficult it becomes for you to communicate it to anyone who doesn’t. You think everyone knows what you do, so it’s hard to imagine they don’t, and your language reflects your vantage point. Sustainability speaks like that.
- Confirmation bias and idea acceptance. People are more accepting of ideas that align with what they already know and believe, and resist or suppress those that conflict with their views. The barrier is particularly high when people digest information in an analytical, as opposed to story, mindset. Ironically, conflicting information can also reinforce the original views.
- Adoption of innovation. The adoption of innovation starts with innovators and early adopters; further adoption by the early and late majorities is a numbers game whose success partly depends on overcoming other barriers to adoption. Marketing to the middle of the market is, of course, attractive, but in order for a new product to be mass-adopted, the snowball of adoption must be rolling first.
- Saturation. Or, too much green. Sustainability has become so ubiquitous consumers no longer see it or even choose to ignore it. Green – sustainability is supposed to be green…or is it? – has blended into the background. It’s all green noise.
- Backlash. To people on the outside, sustainability looks like a major bandwagon, with all sorts of companies jumping on to make a buck. Every bandwagon creates a backlash, it’s almost natural. Post-greenwashing, trust disappears easily and is tough to regain.
What other barriers to the adoption of sustainability can you think of? Please share in Comments.
***
What are the barriers to mass adoption of sustainability? – Part 2
{ 1 trackback }
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the thoughtful post, Peter. I’d add one other obstacle to the list: meaning. To the degree sustainability is about less consumption or more mindful consumption among the planet’s most affluent, we need to recognize that materialism is how so many of us make or express meaning in our lives. (See Rob Walker’s fine book, Buying In.) That makes our work in the sustainability movement not just urging and cajoling others to consume less or differently; it is also helping others find less-materialistic, more-fulfilling ways to find and share what gives their life meaning.
@Rich Bruer: Absolutely, a change on the scope of sustainability is cultural, and cultural change goes deeper than marketing barriers. If it’s difficult for people to accept sustainability’s simpler ideas, the acceptance of a new idea that affects their identity will take much more and much longer. Perhaps starting small and taking things step by step is the way?
I think its important to show sustainability as not just a cultural idea, but also highlight its ability to save money/make money. exmaple: highlight ideas like how it takes 100x more energy to produce an aluminum can then it does to use recycled aluminum. this concept applies to many other aspects of sustainability, check out e3bank.com they show multiple other ways how sustainability is still lucrative.
@Cr12: The money saving argument ranks high on the list of sustainable consumption advantages. The problem is it’s a rational argument and, especially if posed in general terms, it’s removed from individual people’s everyday experience. People don’t care a green product takes less energy to make, they care ho much it will save them. Rational arguments like savings must be made directly relevant to people’s lives. Comparisons to friends’ or neighbors’ savings can also motivate well.
Hi Peter,
I enjoyed your post and found it be a very thoughtful analysis of why people might not embrace sustainability.
I would add two additional barriers, which are both inter-related as you mentioned: relevance and short-term thinking. First, the idea of sustainability just doesn’t seem relevant to some people in their day-to-day lives, and second, our cultural habit of engaging in short-term thinking makes it difficult to take the long-term perspective that sustainability (and systems thinking) require.
The interesting part about your post is that within each of the barriers you’ve identified lies a clue about how we can actually overcome that barrier, e.g., in messaging, drop the holier-than-thou approach; in idea acceptance, focus on telling the story rather than leaving people bleary-eyed with statistics, etc.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this important topic.
Carolina
P.S. @Rich Bruer – Check out the recent article in Good about conspicuous consumption vs. conspicuous expression – it relates directly to your comment. http://www.good.is/post/conspicuous-but-not-consuming/
@Carolina: Thanks for your additions to the list, and I agree on both points. I did, indeed, intend to word the barriers in terms of opportunity rather than doom-and-gloom.
Comment from Sustainability Forum.
libertyrequiresvigilance said: “I would agree there is a bit of a marketing challenge to achieve a more mainstream following of sustianiable living practices. I think Green is a superficial, shallow tag that has little depth. It is actually rather telling of how abstracted our connection with the living-world is. We cant find anything more emotionally resonant? Sorry, I’m getting off topic.
In my opinion, the larger obstacles come from our cultural narratives and fixated associations that connect us to western concepts/ideals like success and healthy living. Fixation? If you look at a sock, you see a sock… but if you really were forced to look beyond the sock (in a survival situation persay), you would see fabric stitched together to make a sort of foot covering. You might also see you could cut the fabric apart and make a rag, or something else of use. If you looked beyond the sock, you would no longer be fixated by its one common use.
If we can show that sustainability actually fits into our cultural narratives (how might a sustainable community revitalize the American Dream?), and expand the number of associations with certain ideas like success (that it can be other conditions apart from working in a job you don’t appreciate so you can consume stuff), then I think we’ll be on our way. We may also need to look at the way we set ourselves apart from other living things, especially in how we build our cities. Humans follow the same patterns we see in other living beings, why are we separated? How safe are we being removed from other animals?
Take a look at this video showing the green roof on the Vancouver Convention Center:
http://vimeo.com/5889280
Maybe we should ask ourselves why we were interested in sustainability. What tipped the scales one way or another? What kind of narrative does this fit in for me that it may fit into a similar narrative for someone intellectually different?
What do you all think?”