Introducing…The Behavior Change Trio.
About a decade ago, I provided social marketing support to international teams addressing community-based fishing practices.
I will never forget the moment when a colleague mentioned that their program included 27 different behavior changes. (I don’t remember the exact number they shared, but it’s lodged in my brain as 27 for some reason).
27 different behaviors?!?!?!
I asked them to share examples of the behaviors they were addressing. The list included items like:
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Get a fishing license and renew it annually.
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Register their fishing boat.
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Only fish in approved fishing zones, avoiding the no-take zone.
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Fish using approved, legal fishing gear.
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Record the fish they caught in their logbook and share it with the catch monitoring team.
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Participate in quarterly fisher association meetings.
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Attend fish catch monitoring training workshops.
And the list went on.
While reviewing this list, I started to feel that not all the behaviors were the same.
Take registering a fishing boat with the local government unit, for example. Yes, we need people to do that, but it didn’t feel like behavior to me the way “fish using approved gear” did.
We know from experience that encouraging an entire community of fishers to only use hook-and-line gear was a long-term, complex undertaking. Getting those same fishers to register their boats felt more straightforward.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand the mixed, swirling thoughts this conversation sparked in me.
The best I could offer my colleague was to consider some of the behaviors one-offs (i.e., “It’s something we need them to do”), whereas the other items required more support and resources throughout the entire timeline.
Fast-forward to late 2018, when I decided to develop my methodology for designing behavior change programs (after SCB’s first Conservation Marketing conference, for those who were there). I knew I needed to answer the question, “What is a behavior?”
The idea that not all behaviors are the same continued to nag at me.
I got as far as distinguishing actions from behaviors in the first two Making Moves courses I delivered in 2019. This simplified approach was helpful as it separated items like “registering your fishing boat” from “fish using approved gear.”
But it still felt incomplete. Thankfully, I stumbled across Nir Eyal’s blog post about habits and routines, and the light bulbs finally clicked on.
Today, I teach Making Moves participants about three different types of behaviors: actions, routines, and habits.
Some behavior change programs have all three behaviors, like the community-based fishing project, while other projects have primarily actions or are chock full of habits.
Regardless of a program’s behavior combination, the critical element is tailoring the outreach messages and engagement strategies to each type. Our choice of messages and frequency of outreach must adjust per behavior type to ensure we’re providing audiences with the support and motivation needed to continue moving forward.
We’ll officially start the series with Actions. In each post, I’ll define the behavior type and describe how we should tailor our messaging and engagement strategies accordingly.
Enjoy!