What motivates you to help the air?
When you think about air pollution, what gets your attention most? Is it the effects on your own health, the impact on the environment or what air pollution, and how you might be contributing to it, are costing you in dollars and cents?
Yup – air pollution is proving to be costly to our environment, our health and our pocketbooks.
Check out this air pollution website created by The School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. This innovative calculator shows the various ‘costs’ air pollution has on individuals in that country and the cost of collective health.
But air pollution is a problem that impacts us all – 100 per cent of the time – no matter where we live or the state of our health. And in order to improve anything, we have to be willing to change. Starting with our own behaviour.
So we want to know – what makes you care most about the quality of the air we share? Is it a healthier body, bank account or community?
The question of personal motivators is one we think about a lot when we’re developing social marketing campaigns about the outdoor environment and its effects on health. Our goal of making people more aware of an issue, helping them understand it and see how it is relevant to them personally, is the precursor to motivating people to take action – to change their own behaviour.
Not unlike other social topics, people feel connected to issues in different ways – and these connections are what motivate them to do something.
When it comes to air quality, parents who have kids suffering from asthma are more likely to be motivated by health concerns. Others may be motivated by their passion for the earth and all its species. What about you? Maybe it’s only relevant when the day comes that you are asked not to drive to work because of high health risk from particulate matter in the air. Or the cost of gas is so high you realize it’s not worth it to idle your car unnecessarily. Will it be the financial considerations that are the kicker to making you care about the air?
Protecting our air for environmental and human health reasons is a continuous challenge. Behaviour change is a slow process. The more we know about what motivates people to think about air quality, the better able we are to shape these conversations about our most vital life sustaining resource – air — in a way that will get more people to sit up and listen.
Can you help? Leave a comment on what your top motivator is, and tell us what country or province/state you are from.
Who cares about the air?
Well it turns out, not enough of us.
Health Canada recently released an Environics’ Survey that examined our knowledge and attitudes about air quality – and the survey results will have profound changes on how air quality is managed and reported in Canada.
If you are like the one-in-seven Canadians surveyed, you are probably saying “so what” at this point and may be thinking about your dinner plans. Well don’t make your shopping list just yet. It seems that air quality affects us all. We just don’t know it yet.
The study found a significant difference between our understanding that air quality affects our health and our awareness of our own local risk factors. About 96% of Canadians believe air quality affects health to some degree; yet few Canadians seek out air quality information regularly.
A majority of us continue to rely on our sense to tell us when the air is ‘bad’. And it seems that we tend to think about the long term effects of poor air quality but are less good at identifying the immediate impact on health unless “the connection has been made directly through a personal experience”.
So why is it that even those of us living in the most polluted parts of the country do not seem to make the connection between air pollution and our own health?
The Survey authors suggest our collective head-in-the-sand approach might be due to a “they must be talking about someone else” reaction or even a “this is too big for me to think about” response.
But perhaps we are not getting information we know how to use.
When Environics compared provinces that had the highest (BC) and lowest (Alberta) air quality awareness, they found one critical difference – the Air Quality Health Index.
Launched in BC in 2006, the Air Quality Health Index is the first air quality measurement tool in the world that reports the health impact of the air we all breathe. It makes the connection for us. BC residents have been learning about the Index and now use it to manage exposure during times when the air quality is poor – like in the fires of 2010.
Those same fires created the worst air quality in Alberta that has ever been recorded in the province. But without the AQHI, residents had no way of knowing how the outside air was affecting their health. That is changing. Seeing the success, the Government of Alberta committed to a province-wide launch of the Air Quality Health Index in the summer of 2011. Now the AQHI is reported across the country.
Ask us again in a few years. It appears Canadians do care about the air and this new tool will help equip them in making decisions toward improved personal health.
Why mom’s voice is a good one when it comes to clean air
Listen to your mother – she’s got a powerful voice. It’s a message that has united a group of knowledgeable, eloquent, and determined women across the US who make up Mom’s Clean Air Force – an organization that has aligned itself with some of the most respected health establishments in the US to rally against air pollution.
The force includes a keen and informed group of bloggers (mostly mothers and some fathers, too) who fare from a variety of professional and personal backgrounds, providing many voices, points of view and calls to action to improve the air. The appeal has attracted politicians, elite athletes and well known authors, among others, who lend their support to the cause. The organization also provides tools, resources, and events for those who want to get more involved.
As a group of professional women and mothers who focus our work on communicating about outdoor health, we are impressed.
How do we maximize a “teachable moment”?
By giving people information when they need it most. The 2009 forest fires in BC’s Okanagan region posed a health threat to people most at risk from air pollution – and created a “teachable moment” to inform them about the relationship between air quality and health. In response, Communication Solutions created a social media strategy focused on using Twitter to inform British Columbians and influence their actions – when they needed it most. Read full case study here.