SOCIAL CHANGE PROCESS
- It is important to note that social change processes are difficult, requiring two critical elements: prolonged, consistent reach and frequency of messages and sustained saturation of messages through multiple outreach venues.
- In the case of changing behaviors that contribute to storm water pollution, additional barriers include the following:
- Storm drains are inherently uninteresting to residents.
- While water pollution is important, it is not the most important issue to residents and it competes for attention with other social issues, including crime, traffic and the quality of public education.
- Getting residents to accept personal responsibility for water pollution is difficult, since the consequences are seen as long-term without an immediate impact on quality of life.
- There are no inherent rewards to sustain behavior change.
- There are no credible threats/punishments for not changing.
- Los Angeles is the nation’s most cluttered radio market and the most expensive media market, weakening the campaign's ability to saturate its messages. An expensive and cluttered media market makes it less likely that residents will have an opportunity to hear key messages with sufficient frequency to absorb and remember the information.
- Initial efforts focusing limited media dollars on a number of different pollutants diluted spending efficiency.