Changing Behaviors to Increase
Utah's Water Supply

UDAF Releases Behavior Change Guidebook for Water Educators/Watershed Groups

A new guidebook recently released by the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) will help watershed managers and other water education professionals improve the state’s natural resources by urging citizens to adopt more natural resource-friendly practices.

“Getting Your Feet Wet with Social Marketing: A Social Marketing Guide for Watershed Programs,” is designed to teach individuals or groups how to successfully promote behavior changes in their local area to targeted groups of people. Though this guide specifically addresses soil and water conservation and water quality efforts, it is based on principles that can be used in any aspect of society.

“Making people aware of a problem and the solutions that are available is only part of the battle,” said Jack Wilbur, UDAF public information specialist and principle author of the guide. “If you want to change people’s behavior, you have to make it worth their while. You have to make the new behavior seem more attractive than not changing.”

Social marketing is the use of marketing principles to influence human behavior in order to improve health or benefit society. Social marketing programs combine public education, interpersonal communication, media relations, marketing and advertising techniques to create a comprehensive outreach campaign.

While social marketing has been around as a discipline for 35 years, it has not been widely used locally in conservation and natural resource protection projects until recently.

Watershed social marketers promote practices that conserve water and protect or improve water quality. In urban and suburban areas such practices include picking up after your pet and properly disposing of the waste, sweeping grass clippings and fertilizers back onto the lawn rather than into the gutter and properly disposing of used motor oils. On the farm, social marketing campaigns may promote proper use of agricultural chemicals, fencing animals away from the creek or limiting their access, or planting willows and other plants on raw stream banks.

Those that can benefit from this publication include water quality educators and managers, park and public land managers, wildlife managers, and groups who work directly with agricultural producers or residential citizens to protect and conserve natural resources.

The 143-page publication is available as a free electronic (pdf format) download from the Department’s website.

Posted February 22, 2007