Investigating the Key Success Factors of Social Marketing in Promoting Environmental Consciousness: A Dematel-Based Approach

Abstract

Due to the overuse of the environment and natural resources, our environment has suffered long-term damage and natural disasters have been exacerbated by climate change, resulting in a significant impact on people’s livelihood and security. People must consider saving the environment as everyone’s responsibility. Hence, Environmental consciousness should be promoted to inspire public participation. This study used the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method to identify the key success factors of social marketing in promoting environmental consciousness. The DEMATEL method has been proven highly effective in gathering the views of experts and thereby providing information of greater reliability in many areas. The results of this research suggest that “Take advantage of existing successful campaign”, “Using appropriate media channel to increase the participation”, and “Enhancing campaign success by appropriate research” are the main strategies for promoting environmental consciousness. The findings of this study may be used in future success factor evaluations where social marketing is compared with other measures aiming to increase the efficiency of the campaign.

Evaluating the Social Marketing Success Criteria in Health Promotion: A F-DEMATEL Approach

“…The most significant aspect of DEMATEL is the function of constructing the relation and structure of the criteria in multi-factors decision making area [ 48 , 49 , 50 ]. In addition, the DEMATEL method was successfully applied in many situations, such as marketing strategy, social marketing, environmental issues, information systems, service quality and in the business ecosystem [ 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ]. However, the problem of the organization is mostly under uncertain circumstances.…”

Two-stage taxonomy for measuring success in social marketing practice

“…The results showed that constructing effective messages to target audiences was the most important success factor, followed by meeting the need for beneficiaries to enact voluntary behavior change. Importantly, the author warned that success was determined by having enough resources/ continued funding to carry out the social marketing intervention (Liao, 2020b), signifying funders' role, power and authority in measuring success (Akbar et al, 2021b).…”

“…Others do not precisely define success but associate the term with compliance with certain conditions that predict success. Several terminologies are interchangeably used to present these conditions in the literature, including frameworks (Cohen and Andrade, 2018; NSMC, 2010), factors (Akbar et al , 2021a), foundations (Kim et al , 2021), criteria (Andreasen, 2002; Lynes et al , 2014; Liao, 2020b) or principles (Lee, 2020; Carins, 2022).…”

“…The premise of how success looks like in social marketing practice was further developed by Liao (2020b), Lynes et al (2014) and Akbar et al (2021a). These authors broadly defined success factors, including some of Andreasen’s (2002) benchmark criteria and novel factors emerging from practice.…”

“…These authors broadly defined success factors, including some of Andreasen’s (2002) benchmark criteria and novel factors emerging from practice. For example, Liao (2020b) tested 14 factors along with the execution of a health social marketing intervention in Taiwan to demonstrate which factors will lead to success and which factors were more influential/causal. The results showed that constructing effective messages to target audiences was the most important success factor, followed by meeting the need for beneficiaries to enact voluntary behavior change.…”