Four keys to improve awareness campaigns on the circular economy

The URJC Cyberimaginary group has published an investigation that identifies some barriers that are preventing the effectiveness of awareness campaigns that seek to change the habits of citizens to promote the circular economy. This same study also highlights a series of enhancers that could increase the success of these campaigns and offers four recommendations for communication professionals.

Writing / Irene Vega

The main objective of this research, carried out by the cyberimaginary research group of the URJC with the collaboration of the Pa.STIS group for the University of the studies of Padova and IE University, has been to identify the barriers and facilitating elements that the current communication model faces in order to generate a series of recommendations that improve future communication actions related to social behavior that contributes to promoting the circular economy.

“The importance of this research lies in its applied nature, that is to say, it identifies the clear problem that the efforts that have been made up to now to promote more sustainable habit changes in citizens have failed and proposes recommendations that can be applied from today same. For example, the figures for products recycled by Spaniards are still very low, despite all the efforts made in the field of communication”, points out Juan Romero Luis, a researcher from the Ciberimaginario group and co-author of the study.

These recommendations are mainly aimed at communication professionals who are involved in the creation of awareness campaigns, as well as academics in this field, although they are also a call to all active communication professionals to improve communication actions that promote sustainable habits. "Implementing them entails a change of mentality from the conception of the awareness campaigns, since it proposes taking non-general audiences into account when it comes to promoting a change of habit among citizens", points out the researcher.

The four recommendations in which this research has materialized, published in the scientific journal Cogent Social Sciences, are to sensitize politicians to reduce the barriers that prevent consumer behavior change, to involve companies in the actions of awareness campaigns so that they act as a lever for change, to promote long-term recreational activities against the short-term actions and take advantage of the most powerful transmission vectors: children and teachers.