Encouraging Positive Behaviours

by stephen

I first heard these statistics from Ken Haycock and I was reminded of them last week when I saw them in the Wall Street Journal (May 20, p. A13)

There are some good reasons to encourage hotel guests to re-use towels on longer stays. It saves the hotel laundry costs and every little bit adds up in helpig to reduce our impact on the environment. Read these communication differences:

1. "Help the hotel save energy" results in 16% towel reuse.
2. "Partner with us to help th environment" results in 31% towel reuse.
3. "Almost 75% of guests reuse towels" results in 44% towel reuse.
4. "75% of the guests who stayed in this room reuse towels" results in 49% towel reuse.

Hmmmm. And Wow.

Now think about libraries. We have alll followed the Flickr group on bad library signs. There's much to learn. If we had a good discussion about behaviours we wanted to encourage what would our signs look like?

If you accepted the research based communication results above, how would you:

1. Communicate about fines or returning books (on time)?
2. Communicate about not reshelving books?
3. Encourage parents and caregivers to attend story hours?
4. Pushing DVD's or books that weren't bestsellers?
5. Appropriate mobile phone use?
6. Encouraging good teen behaviours or dealing with loud and boisterous seniors?
7. Etc.

Lots of good stuff could emerge while creating a postive communication environment.

Stephen