the brutal art of persuasion

I grew up feeling suspicious of the marketing industry. Admen tried to convince me that I wanted something that I'd never heard of, and needed something I thought I only wanted. Levi's and Coca Cola have left their mark on my psyche. Like Freddie Mercury, I want to break free. These days I'm more accepting that branding is not all bad, but I still bristle when it's about the cult of personality, or a company image that has nothing to do with the product or service on offer.

Despite lingering fears of manipulative messages and subliminal stereotyping, if I am honest about my own field of transport planning, I have to ask: Why is it OK to change behaviour by building a new road, but not by persuading people to change their transport habits by convincing them that it would be better for everyone? Rory Sutherland poses the question in the April 12, 2008 edition of The Spectator. He suggests that if 15% of people drove to work later, we might discover we don't have a transport problem, we just have a timing problem. As long as problems are defined by civil engineers, we find that the solutions are - surprise! - more civil engineering.

That's an oversimplification, to be sure, but as much as the transport planning industry is starting to grasp the concept of integrated planning as a way out of unsustainable urban growth patterns, it has failed to recognise the extent to which current transport problems are a direct result of the way we plan.

Transport planners have deliberately and systematically created a transport system that favours private vehicles, at the expense of other transport modes. The result is that we have actively changed the way people move from place to place - we have manipulated societal norms of behaviour, and done so almost without question, without admitting that we have engineered an unsustainable situation. We can talk about improving public transport or creating better walking environments, but these plans will only bring about the necessary change if we alter our planning mindset, and undo the travel patterns we have created.

Should we enlist the admen to make it happen? Many will argue that it is not the job of government (or anyone else) to change public opinion, but the other way around. But such arguments fail again to recognise that traffic engineers have been doing that for decades. Is it worse to make people aware of the impacts of their behaviour than to force them to change, as engineers have done? Government might not always know best, but neither, apparently, does the general public. So who is going to step up and turn things around? (If you're interested, the comments below the Spectator article provide an intelligent debate on the issue of persuasion vs. coercion.)

Comments

[Rory Sutherland]

Thank you for picking up on my article. I am intrigued by the subject because it seems to me quite a lot of the behavioral changes required to reduce carbon emissions might be much easier brought about through persuasion than legislation or infrastructure. In some cases (vegetarianism would be one case) a kind of collective volunteerism seems the only way to approach it, since legislation would be so unpopular.

Anyhow glad to see that my suggestion (and it was simplistic, I agree) wasn't entirely insane.

[Rory]

Not insane, just swimming against the tide. Your article reminded me that it's very easy to slip into groupthink, particularly when it concerns environmental issues.

I also think there are cases where persuasion and legislation overlap, such as focing cigarette manufacturers to place health warnings on the cartons. That's "forced persuasion", and not a bad thing in my book.

I think the emergence of carbon (or energy, or water, or distance) labelling on food products is an example of producers paving the way for what you call "collective volunteerism". There is self-interest there, in creating new market niches, but does that make it wrong? We can't volunteer without the knowledge.

[Rory Sutherland]

I may write another piece this week about "The High Cost of Free Parking".