Steps for Choosing Effective Outreach Techniques
1. Describe the environmental concern or opportunity.
2. Identify preliminary target audience(s).
3. Determine specific actions citizens need to take to accomplish your management goal.
4. Collect audience information relevant to the environmental practices and specific behaviors.
5. Assess potential for adoption of single behaviors and the environmental practice.
6. Select single behaviors for intervention focus.
7. Select intervention technique(s).
Step 7. Select intervention technique(s)
Choosing an intervention technique
As you develop the outreach strategy, check to make sure that the techniques you select will address any skill or performance deficits you identified in Step 3 and confirmed in Step 4.
Create an outreach strategy that provides:
- information about the preferred skill, or
- opportunities to practice and improve implementation of the skill.
Craft the outreach message to show:
- how the new behavior avoids any barriers identified in Step 4 (e.g. see how easy this is; see how affordable this is; see, your friends do this too), and
- how implementation will result in a positive consequence (e.g. for every pound of fertilizer you keep out of the lake, you reduce the need for a chemical application to kill lake weeds by x%)
Refer to page 2 of the Track Your Progress Worksheet for specific examples of tested outreach techniques related to water conservation, energy conservation and waste reduction. Or search the Target Audience database for tested outreach design or outreach implementation ideas on a number of topics.
Research indicates several additional approaches that have positive results in changing behaviors in relevant situations:
- Ask for a commitment
- Provide a specific prompt, near behavior
- Communicate the norm
- Engage participants in a problem-solving activity
