Mission: How can we use Persuasion, Influence, and Engagement to encourage people to adopt a Plant-based/Vegan diet to help contribute to the fight against Climate Crisis?

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”  Dr Jane Goodall, Scientist & Activist

Persuasion, influence, and engagement is the key to finding out if we can help change a group of people and entice them to choose a better path of life for the greater good of the world. Persuasion, influence, and engagement is definitely not a wasted attempt at trying to see if people are capable of change, not only at an individualistic level but also at a team level.

Summary

I have prepared an article, researching different methods to try and achieve change in the world, that is designed for meat reducers who pose as passive allies in adopting a 100% plant-based/vegan diet. The topic that I believe needs addressing is best put into a question as ‘How can we use Persuasion, Influence, and Engagement to encourage people to adopt a plant-based diet to help contribute to the fight against climate crisis?’ This topic is related to SDG number 13 (Climate Action) & 14 (Life Below Water) in the following ways:

• With Greenhouse Gas Emissions rising every year, the food industry has a severe impact on these emissions. Within the food industry, 31% of GHGs are caused by livestock and fisheries.
• 40% of the world’s oceans suffer from overfishing, coral mining, pollution & ocean acidification making life below water fragile and on the brink of extinction.

More simply put, my goal for this creation is to persuade everyone who is not already on a plant based or vegan diet to join me in understanding more about the impacts of our choices when it comes to diet. We will also discuss a few more ideas that could help against this fight of climate crisis.

Purpose

My work is designed to illustrate to:

• Persuade the target audience to conform and adopt a plant based or vegan diet to better our chances of fighting the climate crisis.
• Influence the target audience through celebrities’ social media feed and try and be a part of the change against climate crisis by seeing their food in a different way. Also, looking at how different factors play a huge role in influencing us.
• Engage the target audience with several facts and documentaries to inform them about what is really going on in the world, and how they help just by changing their diet, in turn, making them active allies.

What does success look like to me? Based on my research, analysis, and application of using conformity in persuasion, using influence of celebrities through social media, and trying to engage people into being active allies for a good cause. I see success in the following way:

1. Target audience understands the impact of continuing with their old diet and choose to make a change, even if they are one small change at a time.
2. Target audience can convey this message and research to many of their friends and family and stand up to what is ethical and right for our one and only, Earth.
3. Even if a few people can make drastic changes to support not only Mother Earth, but also the voiceless animals, that would mean that there is an impact (however small it may be).

“The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for.” Ernest Hemingway, Author

Methodology

I created this work by first examining how conformity works in society, and then looking at how the society is influenced by celebrities on social media and other factors. I hope this would engage & change neutral allies to active allies in the real world. We will then be layering in aspects of the SDGs- Climate Action & Life Below Water in order to encourage more people to adopt a healthier and cruelty free diet for the benefit of the planet Earth. Peer review played an important part of my work because it helped me identify the concepts, I wanted to learn more about in order to create this final research project.

Tools & Media

I created this work in Pressbooks & WordPress and have integrated different tools and media such as pictures, videos, and graphs. I was able to use online platforms like H5P, Unsplash, Wikiversity, & Wikicommons to source some of the media. I encourage fellow students, educators, and users to engage with my work by reading/looking through and letting it inspire the change you want to create in the world, little by little.

Sharing my work

My intention is to make my work as an online open resource by licensing it as” Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike” and it will reside in both, my WordPress site https://wordpress.kpu.ca/greenbeings/ and my chapter on our ENTR 4140 class’ collaborative Pressbook site https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/persuadeinfluenceandengage/chapter/climate-crisis-every-bite-counts/. 

My Legacy

My experience in creating this project has been very rewarding, inspiring, and a wholesome feeling.

At first, upon embarking on this journey I felt quite overwhelmed and was concerned about whether or not I was able to come up with good content, yet excited about being able to create a piece of art that was written about a topic close to my heart. Along the way I learned things I did not know before, such as how to create a website on WordPress and a chapter in a book on Pressbooks. As I bring this project to a close, I hope future students will learn about the different ways we can use Persuasion, Influence, and Engagement in many aspects of their life and ENTR instructors will consider using this and other OERs in their courses to showcase the efforts of past students, and faculty creating great free content.

PERSUASION

Today we will discuss how to persuade our target audience i.e. passive allies to becoming active allies in adopting a plant based/vegan diet to fight against the climate crisis. We will refer to a few models to see how best to apply the theory to real life.

Earthlings are evolutionarily wired to be adaptable to the environment around them. We tend to adapt to different situations, different technologies, and different people seamlessly. Conformity usually means behavior that is deemed “accepted” in a public or business setting.

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

Mark Twain

Individuals use “Normative Behavior” when it comes to the plant based/vegan diet. Humans opt for paths of least resistance, meaning that they are likely to laugh at racist jokes, eat animal flesh, or remain bystanders at accidents if that is what others around them are doing. While being on a plant-based/vegan diet has its advantages with regards to the climate crisis, health benefits and ethical living; there are many who are scared to be portrayed a certain way when surrounded by others (meat-eaters).

People look to see what other people are doing before deciding what to do. If everyone around them is eating animal protein and animal protein is what dominates in grocery stores, restaurant menus, and advertisements, they will more than likely choose to conform to speciesism. However, if we look at it from the perspective of how adopting a plant-based/vegan diet seems to be the trendy thing to do these days, we see many more people joining the trend. The challenge for vegan activists is to nurture a new societal culture for people to conform to. 

We don’t want to look out of step or become the target of criticism just because we like different kinds of music or dress differently than everyone else. Fitting in also brings rewards such as camaraderie and compliments.

Sometimes it’s not clear what society expects of us. In these situations, we often rely on “Descriptive Norms“. That is, we act the way most people – or most people like us -act. This is not an unreasonable strategy. Other people often have information that we do not, especially when we find ourselves in new situations. This is why it is so important to have the correct information & knowledge to better help meat eaters around us.

If you choose to become an active ally in the fight for climate change, it is important to Model that to others around you. Your actions and words are powerful when it comes to being vegan. People will often find strength in your conviction and try following the steps you take.

We will quickly take a look at Monroe’s Motivated Sequence is a five-step organization pattern that attempts to persuade an audience by making a topic relevant, using positive and/or negative motivation, and including a call to action. The five steps are:

1. Attention: Grabbing the attention of your family and friends to shine light on the advantages of a plant based/vegan diet when it comes to health benefits and taste
2. Need: Establish the need and discuss how important it is for them to adopt this diet not only for their health, but also for the climate and the ethical way of living.
3. Satisfaction: Offer different solutions for these people. Show them more content around this topic, have healthy debates, etc. Show them what items to try out and where they can find these items.
4. Visualization: Paint a picture for them and describe to them a world where more people adopt this lifestyle, and how that would look compared to the one we’re headed for right now. Show them more documentaries so they have a visual understanding of how unethically their food is currently sourced
5. Action: Finally, I would like for you to ask them to take action. Whether it is to donate, sign a petition, become a flexitarian or vegan, or discussing and dispersing useful information with their family and friends.

INFLUENCE

Today we will discuss how to influence our target audience i.e. passive allies/meat reducers to becoming active allies by adopting a plant based/vegan diet to fight against the climate crisis. We will refer to a few models to see how best to apply the theory to real life.

We will look at how different factors like personal factors, social factors, external factors, & cultural factors alter our judgement and are able to influence us. Social media is a big aspect here. It can make your belief stronger and also completely destroy it. Here, we will discuss how much good it has done when it comes to the adoption of a plant based/vegan diet.

Influence is the power to have an effect on people or things. Who do we like to follow, and why? Kylie Jenner, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Kevin Hart, David Attenborough, Cristiano Ronaldo… There are so many to follow and even more to name. We, as individuals, tend to follow others whether it is for trends, problem solving, DIY’s or just to pass time. However, I do believe that influence happens!

Celebrities are said to have an influence on their followers on social media as well. When Kim Kardashian spoke about how good Beyond Meat tasted, there was a spike in consumption of Beyond Meat. While this could be coincidental, researchers claim that the two aren’t a coincident and that there is a direct correlation of the two events. Vegan celebrities are able to showcase the benefits of a plant-based diet quite well. If you or anyone you know has a wide range of followers and are meat reducers, I would think it imperative that you encourage them to share more content about the direct interrelation of the climate crisis and adopting a plant-based/vegan diet.

Variables such as age, sex, income, education, marital status, and mobility can all have significant influence on individuals’ behavior. This model here is divided into personal, sociocultural and external factors (such as political and economic factors). In order to select personal factors, looking at the influences of values/attitudes and knowledge/skills on potential behavior is helpful. But we will also look carefully at the role of emotions and cognitive dissonance, which are core factors that potentially help us to understand personal reluctance to reduce or avoid meat consumption in relation to the associated meat paradox of loving animals, but also eating and harming them.

The interrelations between emotions/cognitive dissonance and knowledge, values and attitudes are also explicitly incorporated into the model for our understanding. In addition, this model looks at the role of habits and taste in the meat consumption behavior. The arrows in the model indicate how the different factors influence each other and, ultimately, meat-eating behavior. Different internal and external incentives explained above would lead to reduced meat consumption.

What does this mean?

It is very important to find the right resources to help educate yourself on topics like climate crisis, and the interrelation it has with an individual consuming a meat diet. Moreover, if you or someone you know are experiencing lack of support or are negatively influenced by any of the above factors, try to stop and reset. What that means is try to remember why you are doing what you are doing. Whether you have a personal mantra, or a certain quote or video that helps you motivate yourself to keep doing good in the world. It’s not about one big change in the world, but millions of us making small changes that will eventually impact the world positively.

“If you want to change the world, start with yourself.”

Mahatma Gandhi

ENGAGEMENT

Today we will discuss how to engage our target audience i.e. passive allies to becoming active allies in adopting a plant based/vegan diet to fight against the climate crisis. We will refer to a few models to see how best to apply the theory to real life.

The reason I chose passive allies/meat reducers as my target audience for this project was because the first step in changing to a plant-based or vegan diet is being aware of not only the climate crisis, but also the impact we have on the lives of millions of animals.

Looking at the steps of engagement, we will go through each of them in and see how we can relay that to the adoption of a plant-based/vegan diet.

Awareness: (Add how many animals are killed per second) Being aware about your actions is the first step to inculcate change in any aspect of your life. This stands true in the knowledge needed to be gained in order to make the switch completely to a plant based/vegan diet.

Consideration: It is important to understand what we already know, and open our minds to new and improved information. Individuals consider a number of things before making engaging in a change. Some of those are general knowledge, world views, different beliefs, unique cultures, etc.

Preference: Some people are put off by the graphic images and videos put up online, whereas some may get bored by a paragraph written in a newspaper. People perceive information differently and are drawn to various modes of data these days. A good place to learn more information about the benefits of a plant-based/vegan diet is through documentaries, audiobooks, journal articles, podcasts, etc.

Action: As meat reducers, there is action to be taken in terms of how we get the word out to the public about their impact on climate change should they continue with their non-plant based & non-vegan diet. How can we do this? Sign petitions, share petitions to family & friends, join peaceful rallies and protests, create petitions and start drives amongst your friends who share a common mindset.

Loyalty: Once an individual understands the reasons why they chose to adopt a plant based/vegan diet, it becomes a lot easier to stay loyal to the cause and try close friends and family around you. Most times, people are caught up on how the food would taste, or how “uncool” it might look if they chose a plant based/vegan diet- try showcasing the various options available to them, and empower them when they’re doubting their loyalties.

Advocacy: Being an active ally is a big responsibility because it means you have to speak up for topics people avoid. The correlation between diet and climate change is often missing among people. Being an advocate for the voiceless will definitely help in raising much needed awareness around this topic.

By Sharmin Kuka, Kwantlen Polytechnic University (2021)

Conformity & Obedience by Jerry M. Burger. Used under CC BY-NC-SA. Desaturated from original.

Introduction Consumer Behaviour by Andrea Niosi. Used under CC BY-NC-SA. Desaturated from original.

Monroes Motivated Sequence by Eric Robertson. Used under CC BY-NC-SA. Desaturated from original.

Reducing meat consumption in developed and transition countries to counter climate change and biodiversity loss: a review of influence factors by Susanne Stoll-Kleeman & Uta Johanna Schmidt. Used under CC BY-SA. Desaturated from original.

Persuasive Speaking by University of Minnesota. Used under CC BY-NC-SA. Desaturated from original.

Stages of Engagement from Cobalt Community Research. Used under CC BY-SA. Desaturated from original.

Stommel, J. (2019). DGST 395: Final Digital Project. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HODPozxcWWShYqWET_nrc2ub1sjwnpStiShtohk6S3k/edit?usp=sharing