Moving theory focus beyond individuals targeted for change: observing project stakeholder interactions

Abstract

Purpose Social marketing theories have habituated to a theoretical and methodological focus that is criticised for being myopic and stigmatising. Following recommendations to redirect focus theoretically, the purpose of this paper is to apply an observational methodology to understanding how project stakeholders interact to examine whether consideration of stakeholders can identify factors facilitating or impeding farming practice change. Design/methodology/approach More than 48 events involving as many as 150 people including project stakeholder meetings, one-on-one consultations and annual events were observed over more than 100 h by between one and five researchers. Field notes were gathered, and thematic coding focussed on understanding how stakeholders facilitated or impeded practice change. Findings Observations identified limited provision of information about the project by on ground project stakeholders to targeted individuals (farmers). On the rare occasions where information sharing was observed, communication was delayed making it difficult for individuals to connect actions with outcomes observed. Participating stakeholders did not freely support delivery of activities needed for individual practice change. Practical implications This study indicates the value of wider process and outcome assessment encompassing stakeholders to identify factors impeding and facilitating farming practice change. Social implications Approaches that centre attention on individuals fail to acknowledge the inputs, activities and outputs delivered by project stakeholders within a system of change. By redirecting evaluation focus, shared responsibility is gained and stigmatisation of one stakeholder group can be avoided. Originality/value This study demonstrates how observations can be used to redirect focus to consider actions and interactions occurring between on ground project stakeholders. A stakeholder evaluation approach extends monitoring and evaluation focus beyond individuals targeted for behaviour change. Implications, limitations and future research directions are outlined.

BUILD: a five-step process to develop theory-driven social marketing interventions

“…Social marketing has been criticized for its myopic focus (Brennan et al , 2016) and this can be reasonably leveraged at the current study. Frameworks are emerging extending research focus to the institutional settings and regulations, market forces and stakeholder interactions surrounding individuals that may deny or support behavior change attempts (Domegan et al , 2020; Roemer et al , 2021). The research community needs to work together to build a semantic structure to facilitate the translation of theory-driven research into social marketing practice.…”