A Social Marketing Project to Promote Water Conservation in

A Social Marketing Project
to Promote Water Conservation in
Gainesville, FL
By Kathryn Buck
Final Report for 2013 Summer Internship
developed for
Food and Resource Economics Department (FRED)
University of Florida
and
Alachua County Environmental Protection Department
Gainesville, Florida
Summer 2013
Table of Contents
BACKGROUND................................................................................................................................................... 3
PROBLEM .............................................................................................................................................................. 6
METHODS ............................................................................................................................................................. 7
RESULTS............................................................................................................................................................. 10
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................. 15
EXHIBITS ............................................................................................................................................................. 17
EXHIBIT A. PROPOSAL FOR WEEKLY AQUIFER REPORT ………………….……………………………………...………….14
EXHIBIT B. EVALUATION SURVEY FOR AQUIFER LEVELS SEGMENT ON TV 20 ........................................................ 18
EXHIBIT C. ADDITIONAL CAMPAIGN MATERIAL WEBSITE .............................................................................................. 20
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................................. 21
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A Social Marketing Project to Promote Water Conservation in Gainesville, FL
Kathryn Buck
Acknowledgement. This report is developed as a part of my Summer Internship for the
Food and Resource Economics Department (FRED), University of Florida (UF), and Alachua
County Environmental Protection Department (ACEPD), Gainesville, Florida. Internship
committee members (in alphabetical order): Tatiana Borisova, PhD, FRED, UF, and Stacie
Greco, ACEPD.
Background
Water is one of the things that people, plants, and animals need and that is a
common bond that brings people of our diverse state together. As Florida citizens, we are
not unacquainted with the presence of water. Its abundance is everywhere we look. Our
peninsula is surrounded on three sides by water and its land contains thousands of lakes,
rivers, and streams. Although it may appear that water is a plentiful resource in our state,
not all of its water is fresh and suitable for drinking or other uses. We are also customary to
long periods of wet weather followed by long periods of dry weather. As the population in
the state keeps growing, wise management of water resources is important to make sure
the water is available for various uses at the needed quantities and at the required time for
many years to come.
To achieve the goal of protecting state water resources, Florida is divided into five
water management districts (WMDs) based on hydrological boundaries. WMDs’ core goal is
to protect and ensure the sustainability of Florida’s water resources both in the aquifer and
in river and lake systems to benefit the people of their district and its environment. They
achieve this goal by monitoring environmental impacts of water usage on the aquifer,
rivers, lakes and streams, and by allocating water use permits to reasonable and beneficial
uses, as well as setting rules and restrictions for water use, and conducting research and
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educational programs. As a part of their overall water resource management, WMDs and
the Florida Department of Environmental Protection determined that conservation is a
critical strategy in meeting the current and future water supply needs of our state.
Educating the public is one of the ways to achieve greater rate of implementation of water
conservation strategies.
The policies and rules set by both the Suwannee River Water Management District
and St. John’s River Water Management District (SJRWMD) are a basis for the city of
Gainesville’s and Alachua County’s water policies. Specifically, most of the water used by
Gainesville residents is pumped from the Florida Aquifer by city-owned Gainesville
Regional Utilities (GRU), and GRU’s objective is to ensure water is used responsibly. GRU’s
most important water-related responsibility is to negotiate Consumptive Use Permits
(CUP) with the water management districts, which sets the limits on how much water GRU
is allowed to take from the aquifer for consumer use. CUP’s are usually 20-year contracts
between GRU and water management districts. GRU also funds projects that promote water
conservation and offer water conservation rebate programs. To improve conservation
efforts, educational or marketing campaigns are implemented by GRU to educate water
users, both young and old, to preserve this precious resource.1
Alachua County is also promoting water conservation. For example, in 2011, the
SJRWMD signed the Water Conservation Cost-Share Agreement with the Alachua Country
Environmental Protection Department (ACEPD), which enabled ACEPD to take a more
In addition to providing the sufficient volume of water for public water supply, GRU is also accountable for
guaranteeing water quality by adding fluoride and chlorine for health and safety measures, and removing
harsh elements such as magnesium and calcium by softening the water as it leaves the aquifer.
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hands-on method to conduct compliance inspections at selected locations in the country
and conduct targeted outreach to Alachua country citizens.
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Problem
WMDs, GRU, and the Alachua county government identified water conservation as a
top priority for their water resource programs. The agencies also recognized that
educational/marketing campaign can be an effective tool to encourage water conservation.
Specifically, Alachua County (Ms. Stacie Greco) is currently developing a project to inform
local residents about the state of groundwater (which is the source of public water supply
in the area). The goal of this project is to inform Gainesville residents where their drinking
water comes from, that the water supply is limited, and that over-usage can degrade
resources and have adverse effects on rivers and streams. The project will involve brief
Weekly Aquifer Reports delivered through media outlets (TV 20), and additional materials
about groundwater available on a supporting web-site. The report will include an indicator
variable that will give the audiences an easily understandable measure of current
groundwater levels (as compared with historical levels). The report will also include a few
tips related to residential water use and water conservation.
The goal of my internship project was to use social marketing concepts to design an
effective way to connect Gainesville residents with groundwater through a weekly segment
on WCJB-TV 20 and supplemental website.
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Methods
In the case of water conservation, we can use the idea of “social marketing” to
design an effective information campaign and change consumer’s water use behaviors.
While social marketing borrows concepts from commercial marketing, social marketers are
not trying to sell a product or increase market share to make a profit, rather, they are
trying to make a valuable behavioral change. Philip Kotler and Gerald Andreasen, both
pioneers of the concept, define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing
only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social
marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the
target audience and the general society” (Weinreich). The key point of this definition is
that social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors in a voluntary way and to achieve
something beneficial for the society as a whole.
The entire goal of marketing is to speak to the consumer and try to convince them
that they need the product or idea to better their lives. The planning process for a social
marketing campaign requires identifying the consumer’s needs and addressing them with a
“marketing mix”, which refers to the “product”, “price”, “place”, and “promotion”, and are
often called the “4 P’s”. To define social marketing, I will first need to define these
components of a marketing mix.
In social marketing, the “product” is defined both as the new behavior you are
promoting and benefits the public will gain if individuals take on the new behavior. To be
successful, the marketing program must demonstrate that practices will provide a solution
to problems consumers consider important and/or provide them with benefits consumers
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truly want. Next, the “price” is defined as the costs or barriers that may prevent the
consumer from accepting the new behavior and may be social, emotional, or monetary. The
“place” refers to where consumers are making the decision to adopt a new behavior. The
“promotion” includes guidelines for designing effective, attention-getting messages,
selecting appropriate information channels, and identifying promotional activities to
promote behavioral change including: advertising, public relations, policy changes, public
information, special events, and community-based activities.
There are also three additional “P’s” to a social marketing mix. “Publics” refers to the
external and internal groups involved in the program. “Partnership” refers to the
organizations involved in the program. Usually these organizations have similar goals.
Lastly, often, a policy change is needed to change the behaviors of consumers. “Policy”
refers to the influence that policy makers, such as local government can have on a
marketing campaign.
As stated above, the goal of my internship project was to work with Alachua County
Environmental Protection Department on designing an informational program to connect
Gainesville residents with groundwater and, ultimately, to encourage water conservation.
Several steps were taken to apply the general social marketing framework and define the
components of the proposed informational program. I read published literature and
examined existing websites pertaining to water conservation, and had several meetings to
discuss the informational program components with Stacie Greco at ACEPD and Dr. Tatiana
Borisova at FRED/ UF. I also interviewed a wastewater engineer representative from GRU
(Jennifer McCoy). In addition, an important component of any marketing campaign is
evaluation of the campaign’s effectiveness. In collaboration with Ms. Greco and Dr.
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Borisova, I also worked on designing a questionnaire to survey Gainesville residents about
the potential effect of the informational program on their awareness and behaviors.
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Results
In this section, I describe the “marketing mix” for the informational program being
developed by the ACEPD. The program will inform Gainesville residents about the state of
groundwater resources and, ultimately, encourage water conservation.
Product. In social marketing, usually the group that changes their behavior is a
specific segment of the total audience that has been targeted by the social marketing
campaign. The proposed marketing / informational program is aimed at promoting new
behavioral practices (i.e. water conservation). In other words, the “product” promoted by
the social marketing program is water conservation practices. The product is also the
benefits the individuals and the public will gain if individuals take on the new behavior.
These benefits are individuals’ feelings about being a good stewards of Florida’s
environment, saving money from reduced water consumption, being perceived as role
models for neighbors by using less water, and ultimately, more water left in the aquifer to
help “feed” the Florida springs and keep spring-site recreational opportunities.
Price. The goal of the pricing strategy is to identify the costs or barriers for the
product being marketed, i.e. the water conservation behaviors. One of the most important
behaviors is adopting water-efficient irrigation practices, such as skipping a week of
watering or watering only when it has not rained. Hence, for the price component of the
marketing mix, we must address target audience’s fear that the lawn will die if not watered
according to the current schedule, fear of being fined or sanctioned by their homeowners’
association or neighbors, and loss of pride if their lawns and landscaping fail to meet
community standards.
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Recommendations for this component of the marketing mix for the proposed ACEPD
informational program include short messages or photos as testimonials explaining how
residential lawn should look like during various time of the year. The photos can also be
used to demonstrate that lawn is dormant and not dead, to teach people how to determine
when their grass or other foliage is truly threatened by drought (as opposed to being
affected by other conditions). For example, photos can teach the target audience that some
flowers (such as impatiens) may wilt when they need water but that many plants wilt
because of heat, even when they have ample moisture. “Price” of adopting water-efficient
irrigation practices will decrease if the proposed informational program reassure the
target audience that skipping a week in the winter and watering only when it hasn’t rained
in the summer will actually strengthen their grass rather than kill it.
By distributing rain gauges and instructional material to make it easy to determine
when it is necessary to water, ACEPD and other partnering organization can also help
reduce the costs of adopting new, more water-efficient irrigation practices.
Place. For tangible assets, the “place” would be the distribution system, but in our
case, water conservation is an intangible asset, and hence the place is the location where
consumers are making the decision to adopt new water conservation behavior, i.e. their
house. “Place” can also include the distributional system. To deliver the water conservation
educational/marketing message to the Gainesville residents’ homes, mass media (WCJB-TV
20) will be used (as discussed in the “promotion” section).
To tailor the educational/marketing message to the “place” (consumer’s homes),
specific examples can be used to direct consumers to specific sites in their homes where
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they can conserve water, such as turning the faucet off when brushing their teeth or
washing dishes or turning off automatic irrigation timers when it’s raining.
Promotion. A variety of promotional activities are available for water conservation
campaign. Promoting water conservation through mass media has the potential to reach
very large number of local residents, and hence, mass media is selected as the primary
promotion channel. The ACEPD information/marketing project will focus mainly on media
i.e. WCJB-TV 20. To reach broad audiences, in the long run ACEPD anticipates developing a
strong relationship with WCJB-TV 20 to include a daily or weekly segments about
groundwater into broadcasting schedule. The goal of promotion is to create and sustain a
demand for the idea of water conservation. The segments should be informative, but short
and easy to understand, and they should be delivered at the time when majority of viewers
usually watch WCJB-TV 20 broadcasting (i.e. during morning or evening news / weather
forecast reports). The title of the segment should attract viewers’ attention and be easy to
recognize. The temporary title for the informational program is “Weekly Aquifer Report”.
Proposed alternative titles are “Water Watch”, “Healthy Hydrology”, “Glass Half Full”, “Wise
Water”, “Aquifer Awareness”, and “Know Your H2O”.
In addition to the Weekly Aquifer Report, the ACEPD will provide supplemental
material, including a website (link can be found under Exhibit C) with additional resources
and information for viewers to learn more about groundwater levels and water
conservation. ACEPD hopes to link to this website to the WCJB-TV 20 website and make
note of this website during the segment.
To supplement the TV broadcasting, it is proposed that ACEPD use newspaper flyers
in the Gainesville Sun to provide detailed educational information about the best way to be
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a good water steward while protecting lawns and landscaping. Extension and WMD
websites can also be used to promote ACEPD educational program. by distributing rain
gauges and instructional material to make it easy to determine when it is necessary to
water, we can help influence practices that policymakers are trying to place.
Partnership. The ACEPD will partner with the following organizations to make this
program possible and effective: Suwannee and St. Johns River Water Management Districts,
Gainesville Regional Utilities, The Florida Springs Institute (including Alachua, Marion and
Columbia counties), and Our Santa Fe River. Potential partners for this project also include
UF Water Institute and UF Cooperative Extension. To keep the partnership strong, it is
important that the organizations included in this project have similar water conservation
goals and objectives (i.e. educating the public about water conservation and its practices).
The more organizations take part in this social marketing campaign, the more knowledge
can be used to develop the campaign and reach out to local residents. This being said, the
more knowledge and information a campaign is comprised of, the more trust the external
public will have in the information. More resources are available to implement the
campaign, both human and monetary.
Public. The External publics include the target audience, WCJB-TV 20 viewers. The
internal publics are involved with approval and implementation of the program. These
include ACEPD, GRU, WCJB-TV 20 and the additional partners that were discussed above.
Policy. As stated above, “policy” refers to the influence that policy makers, such as
local government can have on a social marketing campaign. For example, existing policies
can increase or decrease of the “price” of the product being promoted, or influence other
components of the marketing mix. For the case of water conservation, GRU or other
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agencies can offer rebates or other reward programs for those who reduce water use such
as home improvement stores discounting low irrigation landscaping. Policymakers can
enforce district fines for residents who use more water than needed for their landscapes.
Lastly, it is important to work with HOAs to change rules and regulations that encourage
over watering.
All supplementary materials, such as the proposal for WCJB-TV 20, the evaluation
survey, and the campaign website are available in the Exhibits at the end of this report.
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Conclusion
The ACEPD and its partners for the project have high hopes that this marketing
campaign will increase Gainesville’s resident’s knowledge about water conservation and
connect the audience with the groundwater supply. It is expected that water consumers
will be more informed as to where their drinking water comes from, that the water supply
is limited, and that over usage can degrade resources and have adverse effects on rivers
and streams.
During the past two months, I have developed a draft proposal of a weekly segment
for WCJB-TV 20, a supplementary website for the campaign, and a survey to determine the
effectiveness of the campaign. Once ACEPD will lunch this marketing / informational
campaign by airing the Weekly Aquifer Report on WCJB-TV 20, the next steps for this
campaign will be to implement the remaining components of the proposed marketing mix.
To implement the “product” component of the plan, next steps will be to develop
marketing / informational campaign components to educate residents about the benefits
they will obtain from adopting water-efficient yard management and irrigation practices.
To implement “price” component, marketing / informational campaign should include
components to correct the misperception that lawns must be perfectly green all year and to
reassure homeowners that water-efficient irrigation will actually strengthen their grass.
Rain gauges can also be distributed by ACEPD or GRU to make it easy for the homeowners
to determine when it is necessary to water. To implement “place”, marketing /
informational campaign should target specific places in the home where consumers can
adopt new behaviors (like turning off faucets while brushing their teeth or washing dishes,
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and turning of automatic irrigation timers). “Promotion” component can be enhanced
through developing local newspaper inserts about groundwater and water conservation.
For “Policy” component, GRU can offer rebates or other reward programs for those who
reduce water use.
Overall, the proposed ACEPD information/marketing campaign uses all the social
marketing concepts, and I expect the campaign to be successful in educating Gainesville
residents about the importance of our groundwater and its future.
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Exhibits
Exhibit A. Proposal for Weekly Aquifer Report (developed in collaboration with
Stacie Greco, ACEPD, and Tatiana Borisova, PhD, UF/FRED/IFAS Extension)
The proposal developed as a part of this project is currently being discussed by
ACEPD and Water Management Districts, and will be submitted to TV 20. The
proposal draft is available upon request. Please, contact Stacie Greco
([email protected] ) or Tatiana Borisova ([email protected] ).
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Exhibit B. Evaluation Survey for Aquifer Levels Segment on TV 20 (developed in
collaboration with Tatiana Borisova, UF/FRED/IFAS Extension, and Stacie Greco,
ACEPD)
To be administered by ACEPD (Stacie Greco) or an independent contractor via telephone or
by mail.
1) In the past month, how often did you watch the Weekly Aquifer Report on TV 20? (if
you selected “d”, skip to question 7)
a. once
b. every other week
c. two to three times in a month
d. every week
e. did not watch
skip to question 7
2) After watching Weekly Aquifer Report, do you feel more informed about your local
water resources?
a. Yes
b. No
3) Prior to the Weekly Aquifer Report project of TV-20, how frequently had you
thought about groundwater levels:
a. Daily
b. Weekly
c. Monthly
d. Annually
e. Never
4) After the Weekly Aquifer Report project was initiated on TV-20, how frequently do
you think about groundwater levels?
a. Daily
b. Weekly
c. Monthly
d. Annual
e. Never
5) Have your household’s water use habits changed since you started watching the
Weekly Aquifer reports?
a. Yes
b. No
skip to question 7
6) How did your household’s water use habits change since you started watching the
Weekly Aquifer reports?
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7) Have you visited Weekly Aquifer Report website?
a. Yes
b. No
8) Over the past month, did you access any other websites related to water resources
and conservation? (check all that apply)
GRU
Alachua County Environmental Protection Department
Water Management District
UF/IFAS cooperative extension
Other (please, specify)________________________________
9) Over the past month, did you call Alachua County seeking more information about
water conservation?
a. Yes
b. No
*If you have not seen the Weekly Aquifer Report on WCJB-TV 20, please tune in on (day) at
(time) following the weather to learn more on how you can help preserve our drinking
water!!
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Exhibit C. Additional campaign material website
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References
McElroy, Jenn. Utility Engineer: Water/Wastewater Planning, Gainesville Regional Utilities
Kate Buck. 2013 4-June.
Monaghan, Paul. Center for Public Issues Education: UF IFAS. 2013 4-July
<http://www.centerpie.com/2012/12/04/paul-monaghan-use-marketing-to-changebehaviors-not-profits/>.
SJRWMD. St. Johns River Water Management District. 2013 17-June
<http://www.sjrwmd.com/>.
Weinreich, Nedra Kline. 2013 17-July <http://www.social-marketing.com/Whatis.html>.
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