Reducing food waste through persuasive communication design: how data visualisation principles reinforce behaviour change social marketing messages
ISSN: 2042-6763
Article publication date: 26 August 2024
Issue publication date: 18 November 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to demonstrate how the design of data visualisations can act as a tool to support social marketing messages in prompting behaviour change to reduce food waste using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) as a theoretical framework. It also responds to a lack of consumer-led insight to develop campaigns in reducing food waste.
Design/methodology/approach
The research uses data collected by the End Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre (EFW CRC) in Australia to determine which text-based campaign messages are most likely to prompt people toward reducing food waste. Behaviour change messages were first identified through workshops with 11 food waste experts, then explored through online focus group discussions with 18 participants from three food-wasting market segments. The messages were further tested via a quantitative survey among 1,000 decision makers in Australian households in their own homes, with the top three performing messages examined using summative content analysis.
Findings
The significant findings were that participants want to see 1) evidence of how adopting new behaviours would lead to financial savings and benefit the environment, and 2) concrete steps to reduce food waste. When examined through the ELM, the findings suggest that tools that encourage both cognitive and peripheral processing as a means of persuasion, like data visualisations, may be useful for changing food-wasting behaviours.
Research limitations/implications
Applying principles from the field of communication design to the ELM has uncovered the potential for a cross-disciplinary approach to enhance theoretical frameworks for understanding consumer engagement with messages. This process in turn, may lead to the development of more effective behaviour change marketing strategies.
Practical implications
Six principles for using data visualisations in a social marketing campaign are proposed: personal relevance, ease of use, emotional storytelling, context, prioritising the message itself and long-term usage.
Originality/value
This study proposes that data visualisations could enhance the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns by leveraging consumer-derived insights and the persuasive capacity inherent in their theoretical underpinnings.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the participants for their time in this study. The authors also acknowledge the contribution and previous research that the End Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre have undertaken.
Funding: The work has been supported by the End Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre whose activities are funded by the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Program.
Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest that might have influenced the performance or presentation of the work described in the manuscript was reported by the authors.
Citation
Abos, R.M., Taffe, S., Connory, J., Karunasena, G.G. and Pearson, D. (2024), "Reducing food waste through persuasive communication design: how data visualisation principles reinforce behaviour change social marketing messages", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 3/4, pp. 398-431. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-07-2023-0156
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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