Marketing For Good

Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology John Petersen ’88 says yes to both. “The tools advertisers have developed to influence people’s behavior are well researched,” he explains. “Instead of convincing people to buy a lot of things they don’t need, we should be using ads to convince people to exhibit pro-environmental and pro-community behavior.” 

Petersen and Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies Cindy Frantz coauthored a field study published in 2024 in the journal Sustainability that demonstrated digital signs were effective in fostering positive environmental norms and behaviors. This includes greater awareness of (and sense of connection with) the local community and ecology; increased electricity conservation; and increased perception of youth engagement. “There are advertisements all over the place, and a lot of people believe they’re not influenced by them,” Frantz says. “But research shows you can be persuaded even if you’re not consciously paying attention.”

The professors first zeroed in on the online opportunities for digital research and social connections. The problem, Petersen and Frantz explained, is that people tend to occupy online communities that reinforce their preexisting beliefs. Unless people purposefully seek them out, pro-environmental messages can get lost in virtual echo chambers. 

Around 70 percent of U.S. residents report they believe in climate change. But people also greatly underestimate the beliefs of others. For example, Petersen notes that people who care about climate change but believe other people don’t are less likely to take action to address the problem.

Frantz and Petersen theorized that public digital advertising, which is encountered by happenstance, can circumvent online habits. With funding from sources like the Environmental Protection Agency’s People, Prosperity and the Planet program and the Great Lakes Protection Fund, Petersen developed the Environmental Dashboard, a system of digital signs across the city of Oberlin. The signs display community events, environmental conditions, and consumption of electricity and water.

The Environmental Dashboard also highlights Community Voices (CV), a series featuring images of community members with quotes about their positive activities in Oberlin. A previous Frantz and Petersen study in the journal PLOS One demonstrated that people shown CV content in a controlled setting felt more environmental concern. 

Testing the messages in the real world on the Environmental Dashboard was the next step. To populate the CV images, Oberlin students collected positive thoughts and actions related to the environment and the community from local residents. The project intentionally developed more content representing the perspectives of Black residents to negate a false perception that white Americans are more concerned about the environment than Black Americans. The team then worked with community members to place the signage in high-traffic public areas where people from diverse social, economic, and racial backgrounds would encounter them. 

Student research assistants working with Frantz and Petersen surveyed 174 community members at six Environmental Dashboard sites before the signs were installed and 133 people two years after the screens were placed. They asked questions about community and environmental norms they predicted would be most affected by Environmental Dashboard content. 

“We found that when the environmental actions of community members are made visible, it really does shift social norms,” Frantz said. “If you see people you identify with making statements about what they’re doing or what’s important to them, it makes you more hopeful and more likely to take action.”

The researchers found a significant increase in pro-environmental beliefs two years after the signs were installed. They also found that boosting Black representation on the screens made a significant impact on the responses from Black respondents, with their environmental norms shifting more than those of white interviewees. 

Based on their results, Petersen and Frantz have launched a similar study on climate change action. The team is also installing digital signs in Cleveland to test the impact of Community Voices, using vignettes of community climate action and more climate-oriented content. 

Petersen praises Oberlin’s collaborative environment for his decades-long research partnership with Frantz. “There’s a creativity here that happens in no other environment,” he says. “And there are so many opportunities for students with broad interests to engage with faculty who are working in unique ways across disciplines.” 

Frantz says she is excited about what the future might hold with the power of environmental messaging. “We have this impression that nobody cares about climate change,” she says. “But that’s not true. And we’re turning that false narrative on its head, using digital signs to shift social norms and make people more likely to take action on climate and environmental issues.”