Overview of the Social Norms Approach, Schemes and Mind Maps of Marketing

Download Overview of the Social Norms Approach and more Schemes and Mind Maps Marketing in PDF only on Docsity! Overview of the Social Norms Approach The social norms approach to behavior change combines lessons learned from a variety of fields including social marketing, sociology, behavioral psychology and evaluation research. Some foundational ideas underlying the social norms approach to behavior change are: • Our perceptions of our peers’ attitudes and behaviors have a great influence on our own attitudes and behaviors. • Unfortunately, our perceptions are often inaccurate: We tend to over-estimate the number of our peers who value and make unhealthy choices and under-estimate the number who value and make healthy choices. • If, in a given group or population of people, most people are making healthy choices but most people believe that their peers are making unhealthy choices, then a social norms marketing campaign may reduce the misperception and further encourage healthy choices. • Social norms marketing campaigns are based on current, accurate information about the intended audience and adhere, in process and content, to good social marketing principles. Some important lessons learned in the course of several decades of research include: • The effectiveness of social norms marketing interventions can be undermined if the overall environment supports and promotes unhealthy choices. • The effectiveness of social norms marketing interventions can be enhanced if the norms that are promoted reflect a group that the individuals closely identify with. • Social norms marketing campaigns are perhaps best conceptualized as culture change interventions, taking more than one year to realize the behavioral change effects. The social norms approach focuses on positive messages about healthy behaviors and attitudes that are common to most people in a group: • It does not use scare tactics or stigmatize an unhealthy behavior. • It avoids moralistic messages from authorities about how the target group “should” behave. Instead, it simply presents the healthy norms already existing in the group. • It builds on the assets already in the community, through participation by community members, and by highlighting those who make healthy choices. Logic Model for Evaluation of Social Norms Marketing Interventions Source: Keller, A., & Bauerle, J. A. (2009). Using a logic model to relate the strategic to the tactical in program planning and evaluation: An illustration based on social norms interventions.American Journal of Health Promotion, 24(2), 89-92. Extensions of the Social Norms Approach Beyond Marketing Social norms marketing campaigns are a form of health promotion and universal prevention. There are several schemes for defining the scope of preventive interventions; an overview of these definitional schemes and the associated issues and debate can be found in Chapter 3 (“Defining the scope of prevention”) of Preventing Mental, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Among Young Peoples: Progress and Possibilities. The following description of the levels of preventive intervention is abstracted from Box 3.1 of the same chapter, accessed June 2014: • Mental health promotion interventions: Usually targeted to the general public or a whole population. Interventions aim to enhance individuals’ ability to achieve developmentally appropriate tasks (competence) and a positive sense of self-esteem, mastery, well-being, and social inclusion, and strengthen their ability to cope with adversity.