Center for Social Innovation

Published: July 21, 2012 Download  32 minutes, 14.7mb, recorded 2012-03-30

Most observers agree that human consumption is on a crash course with the environment. Although recycling programs have been implemented in many cities around the world, people do not participate as often as they could. In this university podcast, Canadian scholar Kate White shares research examining the effectiveness of messages that highlight the negative consequences of not recycling (loss frames) versus those that emphasize the positive consequences of recycling (gain frames) in influencing people’s behavior. The report finds that the effectiveness of one type of messaging over another depends on whether interventions activate concrete thinking, which focuses on behaviors (such as how one might go about recycling), or abstract thinking (such as why one might go about recycling). White spoke at The Science of Getting People to Do Good briefing held at Stanford University.

Kate White is associate professor of marketing at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her current teaching interests include principles of marketing, undergraduate buyer behavior, and MBA buyer behavior. White previously held teaching positions at both Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. She completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia, her MA at the University of Waterloo, and her BA at Simon Fraser University.

Resources

• The Science of Getting People to Do Good Briefing
• Second Chances and a Third Bottom Line (Stanford Social Innovation Review article)
• Garden-Variety Revolution (Stanford Social Innovation Review article)