Analyzing the role of environmental advertising campaigns in promoting environmental citizenship behaviors: providing a framework for applying social marketing

1.Aim and introduction: Different governments formulate specific environmental policies that cover different social levels to limit the impact of climate change. Because, according to international studies, global warming is increasing, countries are not meeting key goals in global climate agreements, and humans must act quickly to avoid a climate change catastrophe. Social marketing can provide an effective approach to design and implement environmental programs, which can help how governments and government departments develop and choose public policies. Social marketing can also create lasting relationships with citizens and other stakeholder organizations. In addition, social marketing researchers can make a major contribution by developing and empirically evaluating usable strategies (interventions) to support the achievement of environmental sustainable development goals (SDG). According to the social marketing approach, in addition to market-based regulations and incentives, policymakers can use environmental advertising campaigns to encourage compliance with environmental policies. Therefore, according to the explanations provided, since reducing and adapting to global warming is one of the most important issues of the current human era, in this study, by analyzing the role of social marketing based on the effectiveness of environmental advertising campaigns in promoting environmental citizenship behaviors, a structured overview of when, why and how environmental advertising campaigns can improve environmental citizen behavior is presented. Also, a critical analysis of previous social marketing research on how to achieve changes in environmental citizen behavior and recommendations for social marketing researchers and professionals on how to design and implement social marketing programs based on effective environmental advertising campaigns at the individual level and Also, how to use environmental advertising campaigns more persuasively is provided. The basic question of this research is what is the framework of using social marketing in the role of environmental advertising campaigns in promoting environmental citizenship behaviors?
2. Methodology: The present study is one of the mixed qualitative studies that was conducted using the "framework synthesis" method as one of the subsets of the design science paradigm. Framework synthesis is one of the systematic review methods that has recently been increasingly used in studies by adapting the framework analysis methods. The framework synthesis method is a deductive approach rather than being inductive. The framework synthesis includes five steps: familiarization, selection of the framework, indexing, diagramming and mapping, and interpretation.
3. Finding: Although, most environmental social marketing programs that claim to use the CBSM framework in their design, do not fully apply CBSM social marketing principles at the academic or professional level. As a result, many programs do not have the expected effect and their effectiveness is limited. This study has analyzed and highlighted certain weaknesses related to the application of the CBSM framework in past environmental social marketing programs. In this study, research evidence on the effect of cognitive biases (reduction, perceptions of control, denial, defensive avoidance and reaction), emotions (fear and hope) and expectations (about communication source intentions and social norms) on the effectiveness of environmental campaigns. It is presented as a tool to promote environmental citizenship behaviors. If the social and psychological processes are ignored in the design of environmental campaigns, the messages of the campaigns can have opposite results. Also, in the framework of the application of social marketing, benchmarking criteria should be used as a guide for the design, implementation and evaluation of the environmental social marketing program and new methods, including neuromarketing techniques such as EEG, EMG, ET, FNIIRS and fMRI in formative research and new theories should be used to understand the barriers and benefits of target behavior.
4. Discussion and coclusion: Effective interventions supporting environmental citizenship behavior should target specific behaviors and audiences, and should be designed based on sufficient theoretical frameworks to overcome obstacles and promote benefits, design specific strategies based on previous stages, design experimental studies, intervention and evaluation. implementation on a large scale. Therefore, this study has addressed the criticisms of some authors about the ineffectiveness of using social marketing to combat climate change, in which social marketing serves more as a framework for creating behavior change programs than as a way to modify behavior. Also, based on the obtained results, it is necessary to consider psychological and social barriers in the implementation of environmental campaigns. Involvement of celebrities (for example, musicians, actors, athletes and experts in various subjects) in the design of environmental advertising campaigns and the use of new methods in formative research and new theories to understand the obstacles and benefits of the target's behavior to planners and policy makers are suggested. Persuasive technology, such as immersive technologies in the form of VR or computer games, can offer new and exciting opportunities to encourage environmental citizenship. While such technologies have been developed and become increasingly common in recent years, more research is needed to understand their potential to influence people's actions in social marketing and environmental citizenship behavior.