Behaviour Changing Campaigns: Success and Failure Factors

This resource from the A4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre's U4 Expert Answer explores communication strategies to address corruption, defined here as a challenge that is multi-faceted and culturally specific and, therefore, difficult to package into a single message. "At present, the number and quality of campaign evaluations in the area of societal value change, including those related to anti-corruption, is limited. However, lessons learned indicate that critical success factors include understanding the target audience, generating a sense of community responsibility and increasing sense of agency. Factors that can limit the impact include the use of fear-based messaging, lack of authentic experience and voice, and the use of unclear messaging that can be misinterpreted."

The opening section provides an introduction to behaviour change communication (BCC), noting that social norms exert a strong influence on people's attitudes and behaviour. Next, the author examines critical success factors - providing a series of case studies which demonstrate the effective implementation of campaigns at a local, national, and international level. She suggests that successful campaigns should:

• Be tailored to a specific audience - for example: "Campaign messages need to be relevant to the local community and resonate within culturally accepted norms and existing values"
• Generate a sense of community-wide responsibility - for example: "Demonstrating the impact of individual behaviour on other groups in society, in particular powerless groups can help make certain behaviour become socially unacceptable."
• Use clear messages to increase human agency - for example: "Increasing people's sense of control can cause people to take action against an issue which they previous felt they could do nothing about."

The next section explores critical failure factors in BCC programmes. It features a series of case studies suggesting that the use of fear-based messages, which are commonplace in health and drink-driving campaigns, can often cause people to dismiss an issue. "Messages produced in the wrong context can also be ineffective, perhaps acting to reinforce the precise behaviour or attitude a campaign is trying to address. Pre-testing is thus an essential element of campaign development".

Prior to a list of references, the resource explores anti-corruption campaigns, noting that: "To generate public support, an anti-corruption campaign must frame the issue in moral terms and demonstrate the impact on human life. Key messages should aim to make corrupt behaviour become unacceptable. A campaign should communicate the harm done by corruption; in particular the human consequences of corruption. It should also highlight the action that needs to be taken such as the proper procedures to report corrupt activities and specific individuals..." Citing a 1998 World Bank report, this section of the resource stresses the importance of specificity: relying upon a set of issue-specific tactics, rather than the issue as a whole; ensuring that approaches are culturally and country specific; and dividing the intended audience of anti-corruption campaigns into different segments.

More information about corruption issues may be found through:

• The Transparency International (TI) Facebook page
• Twitter hastages #corruption and #anticorruption