What’s for Dinner? Sociologists Ask…

At what point can one say one’s addicted to reading a website? I contemplated this last night while paging through Sociological Images, a site which published an article on food deserts six days ago. The article opens with a blotchy map of the United States (shown below). The red and brown spots show locations where over five percent of the population is living without a car and is more than a mile away from the nearest supermarket.

This graphic shows lack of access to supermarkets impacts large numbers of people, especially in southern states. In contrast, Wyoming – a state which I drove through twice without seeing a single supermarket – is in much better shape. Is this because people in Wyoming are more likely to own cars than people in Tennessee are? It’s hard to say without more information.

When we do have access to groceries, what are we buying? An earlier article from the same website shows regional differences in meat, vegetable, fruit, soda and fast food purchases. California is especially interesting; areas of high meat consumption alternate with areas of almost no meat consumption. In Texas, there’s an area near the border where people are buying large amounts of produce.

The graphic also shows people in eastern Massachusetts, where I live, aren’t shopping for any of these products very often. Maybe we are eating pasta, fish or cheese instead. It’s a mystery.

Why Doing Environmental Outreach Is like Selling Pomegranate Juice

Environmentalists often question the ethics of marketing and advertising. Given that advertising usually increases consumption – and that environmentalists often try to shift our course of action on that front – it’s understandable that environmentalists often steer clear of marketing classes.

The course I’ve taken that made the strongest impression on me was a class in promotional materials design. A few years later, I attended a workshop on Community-Based Social Marketing which had an even greater impact.

Why? Well, from taking science classes, I already knew how to justify things rationally. I knew how to analyze long-term trends and tell people they should give up short-term benefits for “the seventh generation.” In other words, I knew how to do what environmentalist science majors already do well.

But, like many other people, I did not know how to communicate, advertise and promote environmental change in a way that would get results. It took marketing and environmental psychology to teach me that.

It might seem paradoxical that environmentalists should hire marketing professionals. After all, what we’re doing is the right thing, isn’t it? But that type of conviction doesn’t necessarily translate into a successful social movement. To reach people, one has to talk with them. One has to ask them about their experiences, rather than just saying they should hang their laundry to dry even if their communities prohibit using clotheslines.

There are many health, environmental and economic benefits to bicycle commuting. Why don’t people bike more often? When I applied environmental psychology to my own life, I realized I wasn’t doing this because my bike (a heavy hybrid) was in the basement. I moved the bike to the front fence and solved the problem.

This is an example of how marketing and psychology can help environmentalism rather than holding it back. We should pay attention to the human side of environmental issues, listen to our audiences, and think creatively about ways to make it easier and more fun to take eco-friendly actions. As diet failure statistics show, telling people to “do the right thing” doesn’t necessarily deliver results.

Let’s make sure environmental choices get advertised as well as pomegranate juice has been over the past couple years. Pomegranate juice is sour, but people drink it all the time now. Compared to that, many eco-friendly actions are relatively sweet alternatives.

Pomegranates may be sour, but they're still popular with health-conscious shoppers.

Workshop: “A Recipe for Eco-Friendly Habits”

This month, I used my recent research on environmental outreach and media campaigns to put together a 15-minute workshop for the Urban Homesteaders’ League, a local group which is very interested in healthy and sustainable lifestyles.

The workshop, “A Recipe for Eco-Friendly Habits,” will be at the market stand at Union Square in Somerville at 10 AM. This is the first time I’ve designed an interactive workshop on this topic for a community group. I am interested in offering other workshops like this in the future.

The research project which inspired me to develop this idea will also be presented at the Behavior, Energy & Climate Change Conference in California later this year.