When it comes to environmental storytelling, you're often telling a story to educate or influence behaviour. And to influence change, you first need to convey the risk of not changing.
Risk perception drives action. That’s why it’s essential to understand what motivates people to change. You can throw facts at people until the cows come home, but facts alone rarely shift behaviour.
I was recently working on a storytelling project for a client and found myself reflecting on the mechanics behind risk perception and behaviour change. To solve environmental problems more effectively, we need to understand what drives someone to want to change – and what the consequences are if they don’t.
It’s hard to convince someone to change based on altruism alone, especially when that change involves extra cost or effort. That’s where risk perception becomes powerful. If we want better environmental outcomes, we need to show why doing nothing is risky for the individual – and what they can do to reduce that risk.
Understanding risk perception helps you tailor your storytelling to what matters most to your audience and motivates meaningful action.
To support your storytelling helping to inspire environmental change, I’ve put together a behaviour change guide you can download and print in A4 or save for future reference. Use it as a checklist to help communicate risk in a way which is personal and actionable, rather than just using facts alone – the compelling alongside the credible.
I hope this is a useful tool in helping your work to improve environmental outcomes through communicating risk. The more we can inspire positive environmental change, the better.