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Changing Homeowners’ Behaviors Involving Toxic Household Chemicals: A Psychological, Multilevel Approach
Author(s) -
Werner Carol M.,
Adams Dorothy
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2001..x
Subject(s) - publicity , dispose pattern , psychological intervention , behavior change , promotion (chess) , psychology , applied psychology , presentation (obstetrics) , social psychology , business , engineering , marketing , medicine , political science , psychiatry , law , politics , radiology , waste management
We describe an education and behavior change program with a multi‐level approach. The program goal is to change how people think about, use, store, and dispose of toxic household chemicals. We assume that changing long‐standing behaviors is difficult, requires interventions at multiple points in the individual/group/society/physical environmental system, and requires interventions that address both short‐ and long‐term behavior change. The heart of our program is small group discussions, with a trained leader who uses psychological theories to increase educational impact. Questionnaires indicated that participants were very pleased with the program, especially recipes for homemade nontoxic alternatives. We estimate that the presentation yielded almost three times as much cooperation as the previous 5 years of publicity and promotion (33% vs. 12%).