Fostering Sustainable Behavior (3rd edition)

This book is a classic among the change-behavior-to-save-the-world folks!

Doug McKenzie-Mohr describes the concept of Community-Based Social Marketing, which identifies both the obstacles and rewards to changing our behavior, and helps organizations come up with programs to build on them, to help us do the hard work.

The book was written for people who design, implement, and evaluate programs to change behavior, but is also interesting and helpful for those of us who question why it’s so hard for us as individuals to do it, even when we know what’s right!

Community-Based Social Marketing acknowledges the difficulties of making changes and offers strategies and ways of thinking that help with change.

Dr. McKenzie Mohr’s approach, solidly based in research and program evaluation, and his “discussion about the critical importance of carefully selecting and defining the behaviors and deeply understanding the barriers/benefits before moving to program or policy design” is so important and vital!  We can use this information not only to construct programs to change other peoples’ behaviors, but also to change our own.

It’s a good book – I’m happy to lend out my copy!