Community
Social Marketing
Transportation Behavior Program
Randy Salzman
TDM Research and Consulting
salz@rocketmail.com
Why America Must Address Driving Behavior
• Drive 2.9 trillion miles/year in 411
billion trips, 87 % alone
• Produce 45 percent of entire
world’s automotive CO2
• Transport creates more greenhouse
than other economic sectors
• And uses 70 percent of U.S. daily
19 million barrels of oil
• Two-thirds imported
• Creating national oil spill,
congestion, pollution externalities
• While our nation gets fatter and
less healthy
• And the world believes we will spill
“blood for oil”
USDOT, Texas Transportation Institute,
U-Mass Center for Transportation, Pew Charitable Trust
But Our Culture Supports Driving
• Advertisers seek the child market
because, once hooked, he or she rarely
changes behavior
• ‘Engravings on brain’
• The ‘license’ is a right of passage
• Car perceived of as ‘freedom’
• The film hero always drives a ‘hot’ car
• Media is supported by car advertising
dollars and product placement
• Media editors, bloggers, writers,
designers, actors are all drivers
• Politicians cater to driving voters
To hold annual congestion loss at $87 billion, 4.2 billion hours,
must build over 16,000 highway miles annually
Global Warming, Peak Oil, Health,
Congestion, Foreign Policy, Parking,
Space, Safety and Land Use
Need individual transport behavioral change…
…in the short term
…on a massive scale
…with little institutional power
…in a culture prizing individuality
…with generally poor substitutions
…which often require decades to build
Paradoxes
• Drivers underestimate time/cost of car. Overestimate
time/cost of alternatives
• Congestion caused by habitual, local driving. Complex,
multi-jurisdictional results
• Building roadways to fight congestion induces more
traffic
• Voters react primarily to congestion. Politicians can’t
be seen to be ‘attacking’ driving voters
• Alternative transportation ‘stated preference’
unreliable. Yet seek ‘stated prefer’ data for funding
Alternative Mitigation
“Soft” Transportation Demand
Management
• “Hard” – make people pay to drive
• “Soft” – incentivize & educate them w/Why &
How to use alternatives
• TravelSmart worldwide successfully getting
drivers out of single occupancy vehicles
• Bottom Line: Soft TDM is best approach to altering
driving behavior in wide-open-space democracy
How America does TDM today
• Commute-oriented, “benefits day” handouts,
CDs, web pages – Must “drive to” media
• But commute trip hardest to change
• Generally, promoted by employer’s low-level,
human resource personnel
• With scant public backing, usually youngest
planner on regional planning district staff
• Emphasis on time and dollar savings of using
alternative commute modes
Better TDM
Community Social Marketing
• Still employer based – tied to existing American
TDM
1. Save on parking, long-term health costs
3. Connect well-known problems like global warming, oil dependency
4. Doesn’t “threaten” potential voters or employees
• Underscored by Psychology, Marketing,
Leadership and Consumer Behavior data
• Utilize consistent, simple corporate message
• Best: “Carrots, Sticks AND Tambourines”
Community Social Marketing
TDM
Discuss auto ‘externality’ issues w/staff at monthly
department/division meetings. Socially market driving issues in
short, five-minute segments (one issue/externality each meeting) led
by “know-nothing” upper management
1.
Illustrates organization leaders behind “right thing”
• Upper management follows short basic script
2.
Allows “framing” discussion
• Max 10 slides keeps upper management directing info flow
3.
Eliminates off-message questions
• “Keep meeting short for department’s benefit”
4.
Allows monthly reiteration of same, simple “right thing” message
• “The organization cares. Hope you do too”
5.
Reinforces “changers”
• Assures them they made right decision
Social Marketing
Health Externality Discussion
Greatest potential for organizational
health benefits accrue if sedentary adults
begin regular, moderate activity
• Like walk to transit stop daily
• Or daily active transportation
• Doctors prescribe walks today
• Business: Every $ spent on fitness returns
$3.15 in health benefits
• Fit: Average 3-5 less sick days
• Some employers pay bonus for fitness -$7 to $14 per percentage/#pounds lost
Community Dialogue Marketing
TDM
Monthly ask employees after social marketing/externality
discussion if want more info or consider another
transportation mode
Sign each individual up for dialogue marketing
•
•
•
•
•
Allows work with only employees most likely to address habit
while reminding mass of behavioral change need
Allows bypass/isolation of advocates for auto lobby
Builds towards individual and corporate “tipping point”
Similar to ‘TravelSmart’ but employer-solution focus
No one is coerced
Dialogue Marketing
TDM
Have knowledgeable advocate individually market that employee
with data and rewards for attempting other commute styles
Akin to Australia’s “TravelSmart” program
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Western Australia: 135,000 families targeted in 2008, as many as 12 personal
contacts each, total of 418,000 households since 2000
Leadership support, from a distance
All demographics – especially professionals – utilize alternative transportation
In Brisbane, undergoing $22.6 million project to market 324,000 households
About $70 per household
With social marketing, nudges the mass as well as quickly
gathers “low hanging fruit”
Dialogue Marketing
In every Aussie city except Sydney
• Perth: Have annual 13-percent reduction in car-miles driven
30 million less car trips with 88,000 tons less greenhouse gas annually
• 27-percent increase active/muscle-powered transport
7 million more hours of physical activity annually from 9 million more walking trips & 4 million more cycling
trips (up 58 percent)
• Stronger neighborhoods (Norman Rockwell effect)
• Perth: Transit boardings up 4.2 million annually. 48 percent return on
investment annually.
• 67:1 benefit-cost ratio – (auto projects 4:1)
• Adelaide: GPS study found 18 percent reduction in KM driven.
• Brisbane: Seeking diffusion, duration, carryover research in 324,000
home project – no health or political effect data – after 70,000 home
project found 60 percent diffusion rate.
Perth opened new commuter rail in December 2007
90% approval ratings, 67,000 first-day riders.
Brisbane building huge bike/ped and busway system.
Dialogue Marketing Western Australia
Decade later
Perth – a city of suburbs and freeways -- expanded
TravelSmart concept
to individually, dialogue market citizens
Energy, Water, Recycling
Originally, ¾ citizens didn’t want marketing. Today, 80 percent
desire hearing how to change own behavior.
“People want to be part of the solution. They just
don’t know how.”
Brög, TravelSmart founder, 2007
Long Term Results
• Adelaide, 3-year GPS project. Drivers traveling average 12.4
FEWER miles per day after TS marketing
• TS credited with re-vitalizing transit in Western Australia,
Queensland and Victoria
• Both Conservative and Liberal politicians love “tax dollars at
work” letters marketed to solely people who care
• Brisbane built two, $6.5 million “end of road” cycle centers,
budgeted $100 million in bike-ped trails, considering downtown
lanes for Bus Rapid Transit, opened fourth busway in 2009
• Several communities placed political ban on road building
• Fed 2010 budget: 55% to transit -- 80% to highways in US
Australia Expanding Rapidly
“Given the findings to date, the number of evaluations undertaken, and their
consistency, Australia is now in a position to move beyond piloting TravelSmart
to engage in large-scale interventions in all major metropolitan and large regional
centres.
“There is little further need to undertake major evaluations of household projects,
as the Australian and international data is in broad agreement, and there is little
need to demonstrate the effectiveness of methods used.”
Report to the Department of Environment:
Evaluation of Australian TravelSmart Projects in the ACT, South Australia, Queensland,
Victoria and Western Australia: 2001–2005
Dialogue Marketing
TDM
• Discover transportation/commute needs
Constantly tailor substitutions and adapt due to on-going “action”
research
• Solve disincentives; Create incentives to mode change
• Show options: Hike, bike, car-van pool, transit, telecommute
Bus schedule from nearest stop; Perhaps free pass
Bike shop discounts
Walk/bike maps, discounts for walking shoes
Actively connect employees working similar hours
• Emphasize guaranteed ride home program
• Emphasize “occasional parker” programs
• Emphasize flex car possibilities
Present Opportunity
• Administration seeking “Livable Communities”
projects which tie transportation to global warming, oil
vulnerability and neighborhood development
• Research dollars available, as well, from CDC, Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation
• FHWA now seeking unique concepts in its “Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program”
• EPA now seeking “Climate Showcase Communities”
w/dollar grants and technical support
Human Behavior Concepts
Nudge
Thaler & Sunstein, 2008
The Tipping Point
Gladwell, 2000
Fostering Sustainable Behavior
Mackenzie-Mohr & Smith, 1999
Changing Minds
Gardner, 2004
Psychological Needs and the Facilitation of Integrative Processes
Ryan, 1995
Why We Do What We Do
Deci & Flaste, 1996
Randy Salzman
salz@rocketmail.com
Community
Social Marketing
Transportation Behavior Program
Randy Salzman
TDM Research and Consulting
salz@rocketmail.com
Community-based Marketing
Change inevitable but most resist change
Self-Determination, Autonomous Decision Success
“Autonomous choice requires a decision that is
accompanied by the experience of endorsement and
willingness.”
Deci, Why We Do What We Do
Seven Tools to Change Minds
Reason: Research: Resonance: Representational ReDescriptions: Resources and Rewards: Real World Events:
Addressing Resistances
Gardner, Changing Minds