Moving Communities Forward: Social Marketing and Social Change for Transportation

Moving Communities Forward: Social Marketing and Social Change for Transportation

Project Description:

Many of the transportation-related challenges facing society today could be addressed by seemingly simple changes in behavior. For example, vehicle trips would be reduced if more people chose to take transit, bicycle, walk, or telework instead of drive. This project provides a mobile workshop targeted to transportation professionals who are seeking to change travelers’ behaviors for efficient and cost-effective use of the existing transportation system using social marketing. Social marketing is an approach used to develop activities aimed at changing or maintaining people’s behavior for the benefit of individuals and society as a whole. Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. Behavior change requires an action to be effective, not simply the recall of a message. This action-oriented workshop is designed to improve participants’ knowledge and application of established behavior change theories. Participants learn skills such as creating journey maps, segmenting the market, and pretesting materials. These behaviors could include encouraging adoption of a new behavior such as riding transit to work or rejecting a potentially undesirable behavior such as riding a bicycle on the wrong side of the road. Other efforts might seek to modify a current behavior such as driving outside the peak periods or abandoning an old undesirable behavior such as texting while driving. Participants will develop a people-centered social marketing plan that relies on insight and understanding, as much as on data for the creativity, design, and management of programs that strive for changes for good. This course combines on-line learning and in-person training at locations nationally.

Download final report: Commuter Transportation – Three Cities – Summary of Workshop Findings and Implementable Strategies

Co-Principal Investigators:

Julie Bond, MPA

Ms. Bond is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida with over 20 years of experience in transportation demand management, transit programs and bicycle/pedestrian safety research. She is an instructor for the Certificate in Social Marketing in Transportation and has experience conducting formative research using methods such as focus groups and interviewing. She serves as the Principal Investigator for multiple research projects and manages local Tampa Bay pedestrian and bicyclist safety programs.

Amy Lester, PhD, MPH

Dr. Lester is a Research Associate at the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida. Dr. Lester earned her PhD in Public Health concentrating on Social Marketing in 2014 from the University of South Florida, College of Public Health. Dr. Lester holds additional undergraduate and graduate degrees in Public Health, Anthropology, and Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Lester has strong methodological expertise, and her research interests focus on qualitative formative research, social marketing, social determinants of health, and program evaluation. She is an instructor for the Certificate in Social Marketing in Transportation.

Project Period: 9/01/2017 – 9/30/2018

This work is supported by a grant from the Center for Transportation Equity, Decisions and Dollars (CTEDD) funded by U.S. Department of Transportation Research and Innovative Technology Administration (OST-R) and housed at The University of Texas at Arlington.” and any acknowledgment required by the U.S. Department of Transportation Research and Innovative Technology Administration (OST-R) under Grant Number 69A3551747134 to UTA.