If you are marketing green, consider this. In a July/August, 2009 Atlantic article entitled “Greening with Envy: How Knowing Your Neighbor’s Electric Bill Can Help You to Cut Yours,” Bonnie Tsui explains that “Keeping up with the Joneses” is a marketing strategy that can successfully motivate people to take action to create a cleaner environment.

 

Tsui reports that Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist who studies what motivates people to be better stewards of the environment, has learned that people tend to adhere to what they perceive to be the social norm when it comes to environmental action. For example, when hotels encouraging people to reuse towels posted messages that informed guests that the majority of people who had stayed in their room had reused their towels, this was 33% more effective than a simple “do it for the environment” message. Positive Energy has used this strategy to get people to reduce their electricity usage, informing people on behalf of their local utility how much electricity they are using in comparison to their neighbors, giving smiley faces to those who use less. In their Sacramento pilot program, people who received these comparisons reduced their energy use by more than 2% over a year.

This suggests that finding and sharing good news about changing environmental social norms may be a successful strategy for bringing more green consumers on board. Here are some examples of information from recent polling data that green marketers might consider sharing.

According to a March, 2009 Gallup poll, 59% of Americans said that they worry a great deal about pollution in drinking water and 52% worry a great deal about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs as well as contamination of soil and water by toxic waste.

According to a June, 2009 ABC/Washington Post poll, 80% of Americans indicated that they believe the federal government should regulate greenhouse emissions even if that raises the prices of things they buy.

According to a July, 2008 ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford University poll, 71% of Americans said that they are doing something to reduce their carbon footprint, and 67% said they are trying products that companies say “help the environment because they're made using recycled materials, don't use chemicals or will decompose naturally after being used.”

According to an April, 2009 Harris poll, last year, 53% of Americans said they had made changes to their lifestyle to be more environmentally sustainable. Of these people, 85% said they are recycling, 71% are paying bills online and/or receiving paperless statements, 53% are buying more locally produced food and/or goods, 51% said they are bringing their own bags to stores instead of using paper or plastic ones, and 50% said they are buying green household products.

If you are trying to sell people on adopting a greener lifestyle, you might consider using this information to convince them that environmental responsibility is the new social norm.