Changing Public Behavior - Increasing Citizen Involvement Through Use of Target Audience Information

Non-Technical Summary: Water educators transfer information to relevant audiences, provide water management tools and techniques, and facilitate the local environmental decision process. When educators focus on specific audiences, their work is more likely to lead to desired results. Many factors can influence whether an individual will adopt an environmentally significant behavior. This project creates and implements resources that educators can use to integrate information about their local situation into an outreach strategy that encourages citizens to take appropriate actions in their home, business, organization, or community. <P> Approach: To assure that project products address the needs of stakeholders and accomplish project goals, we have identified two project teams who will work with us on an informal basis. The Content Expert Team includes professors from three Universities and two federal agency professionals who have particular expertise in human behavior and in citizen participation. The Training Expert Team also has expertise in the proposed project content, but its members have extensive experience in translating this type of content for use in local education programs. Three of the Training Team members are the state water coordinators for their respective state Extension water programs. The project also plans to reinvigorate an existing Water Outreach Community of Practice (CoP) which includes about 200 professionals from across the country. These professionals joined a University of Wisconsin listserv over the last several years, as they learned about the opportunity for collaboration from participation in conferences and trainings. We will invite the CoP to become involved in the development of materials, to help identify training opportunities, and to evaluate the successful implementation of various new resources. We will also enlist them to identify new research and social science tools that define what practices are shown to have an impact on knowledge change, skills development, and behavior change. KEY ACTIVITIES 1. Translate research-based information about selected audiences for 14 audiences into searchable on-line resources for educators 2. Collect easy to use, cost-effective community analysis tools. 3. Develop and implement in-person and distance education training for how to collect and incorporate information about targeted audiences into outreach planning. 4. Develop and implement measures to evaluate skill development at 3 accomplishment levels 5. Support activities for a Community of Practice (CoP) that improves participant skills and resources for assessing target audiences