An Overview Of Our Solution
The Conscious Consumption Test (CCT) is a tool that aims to increase the self awareness of individuals or create a snapshot of the level of consciousness of a community, in regard to their consumption habits.
Through the adaptation of a methodology that has been used by Akatu Institute in quantitative researches, the tool is now an interactive platform that allows people to get an overview of how responsible their consumption behaviour is in many areas, such as resource consumption - i.e water and electricity -, transportation, eating habits, production and disposal of waste, etc. and provides custom made sensitizing material in a friendly language to help them minimize the negative impact of their consumption through repertoire building.
In communities, eg. a set of employees in a company, it allows to gather information, assess awareness and plan activities.
- Population Impacted: 38,000
- Continent: South America
Last name
Organization type
Context Analysis
Akatu Institute has recently published a research, and one of it's main results was that only 24% of Brazilian consumers practice some behaviours that indicate awareness of the impacts caused by their consumption and willingness to minimize them. The remaining 76% only attests to practice a few acts that indicate some lower level of consciousness. This data supports the premise that in Brazil, the general public still needs to be sensitized and mobilized towards a more responsible and conscious way of consuming, through information, education and repertoire building.c
This is particulary relevant in the context of recent political, economical and environmental crisis in Brazil, in which people tend to feel very unmotivated and impotent in the front of massive challenges. One of the most noticeable negative impacts of this overall situation is the increase of Brazilian GHG emmisions, and society as a whole needs to engage in quickly making significant changes in their daily lives.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
CCT is a web-based platform that, through a methodological approach that has been developed, applied and validated since 2003, produces insights of consumption habits, and provides tailor made sensitising content to respondents.
It consists of 54 questions designed to indicate the degree of assimilation of conscious consumption, analyse the adherence to values and behaviours from various consumption dimensions, such as planning, buying sustainable products, savings, etc., and drive actions in education or communication key areas.
Finally each individual is taken to a tailored page with action tips and information to facilitate a behaviour change in the areas where they have room for improvement, and it's also possible to extract general data from specific groups. When a specific community is tested, Akatu analyses the data collectively to come up with an action plan.
By adopting proposed habits negative impacts of excessive resources consumption and GHG emissions would be reduced.
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
The CCT addresses 2 main factors of social psychological models of behavior: a) Personal factors, which are intrinsic to the individual, such as their level of knowledge or their belief in their ability to change their behaviour and habits; b) Social factors, which concerns to how individuals relate to each other and the influence of others on their behaviour. (CGN, COI. 2009)
Individuals have access to their own results and also to a comparison with Brazilian consumers (from Akatu's quantitative, nation-wide research). Knowing how they fit in a larger picture is a form of social incentive. Also, there are questions that specifically address the fact that consumption is a social act, and that there's a role and an opportunity to multiply good practices through being an example.
There is also an emotional appeal approach embbeded in the CCT, since the platform saves each individual's response history, so that respondents can track the evolution of their own behaviour, and in case of communities, how individuals can contribute to a larger group. This serves as an encouragement for personal and collective improvement. The tailor made content at the end of the test is also designed to be emotionally engaging, since it's produced according to the behaviour change theory, that in order to make a proposed behaviour change seem attractive, people need to be able to visualize their impact on themselves and others.
The tips are very specific to increase the likelihood to be adopted.
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
CCT can be applied as a tool for behaviour change in itself, but it's also very effective as a means of diagnosing the initial state of a community. With the information gathered after the CCT's application, it's possible to come up with a targeted behaviour change project that acts on specific key areas.
Also, every individual who has completed the test has already had contact with more responsible behaviours through the questions in it, and the moment they see the results, they simultaneously receive practical information on how to act differently, in an encouraging way. Based on Akatu´s pedagogies each tip is detailed designed, this also means that any behaviour change project developed after CCT has a higher chance of success.
Describe your implementation
Like mentioned previously, the Conscious Consumption Test exists since 2003 and it's applied through a methodology that aims to identify the level of consciousness in a community through how many behaviours each individual practices in a set of 13 selected ones, which are correlated or indicative of hundreds of other behaviours. This methodology was and still is used as a basis for Akatu's quantitative research.
In 2013, a project was executed to adapt and expand this methodology into an online platform in order to increase its scale and reach, and to make it a more interactive and inspiring experience for the respondents.
This process involved the revision and adaptation of the methodology applied to extract the insights, but also because Akatu Institute was aware of the importance of maximizing the impact of this tool through the visual, language and design identity of the platform. The online version of the Conscious Consumption Test was launched in December 2014 and has been used as a behaviour change tool in many projects ever since. You can access it on the website: http://tcc.akatu.org.br/.
On this general version of the Test any person can access it, create a login and take the test as many times as they wish, track their progress and have access to sensitising, mobilizing and repertoire building content.
For usage on companies or other project driven groups there's also the possibility to create exclusive links to be shared to specific communities, and the platform provides a comprehensive report of those group's results for Akatu's team analyze it and extract insights.
As a best practice recommendation in addition to the test itself an activation activity, such as workshops, is recommended in order mobilize behavior change in an accelerated way.
The CCT is a very flexible tool, since it works as an initial diagnostic of adherence to conscious consumption practices, but also as an education tool for sustainable lifestyles by itself & to single users.
External connections
Many companies have applied the CCT internally as a tool for measuring the current scenario of consumption consciousness of their stakeholders. These companies are main partners of Akatu since they recognize this type of initiative as important and act as multipliers, providing to Akatu the opportunity to test the relevance and acceptance of this methodology in practice.
Olivas Digital, the webdeveloping agency that worked with Akatu on the implementation and is still responsible for the maintanance and technical support of the website, is also an important stakeholder.
As an example of how it can be applied to policy making, Akatu Institute was contacted by an environmental entity called the Secretaria Distrital de Ambiente - SDA (District Office of Environment), that promotes, guides and regulates Bogota’s environmental sustainability to replicate the CCT in a project entitled "Co-responsibility to Adopt Sustainable Lifestyles", whose purpose was to develop a co-responsibility agreement between the company and its collaborators to adopt sustainable lifestyles, and the CCT was indeed used as a tool to measure the awareness level of the participants in this project.
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
Since its launch in 2014, over 38 thousand people have taken the CCT, either in groups within specific projects, or individually through Akatu's website.
Within companies, the application of the CCT is accompanied by other activities, such as events and the distribution of other communication and education materials, and many employees have testified to making significant changes in their daily lives.
Unfortunately there's no quantitative data to share at the moment.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
The CCT touches some behaviours and consumption areas that are directly linked to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as transportation, energy consumption and food habits.
Through raising awareness that these are areas in which consumers can proactively contribute to reducing GHG emissions, the platform aims to empower people and give them the means to act differently and become more willing and able to mobilize other institutions, such as governments and companies.
Every tested behavior is chosen because it has, or can have, a significant reduction in negative impact. For example, in short trips (1,5km round trip), a person may opt to walk instead of using a car, if it happens five times a week, over the course of their lifetime (57 years, considering average life expectancy and the minimal age to get a permit in Brazil is 18 years old), this person will avoid the emission of an amount of GHG that is similar to that emitted in producing enough electricity for a residence.
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
Unfortunately there is no quantitative measures of the positive environmental results achieved by the implementation of CCT in communities, because of resources' limitations. Still, this is an issue that Akatu plans to tackle in the near future.
Regardless, it is of note that, through the behaviour change attributed to the CCT in several consumption areas such as recycling, responsible resource consumption, political participationa and eating habits, it is safe to infer that the CCT has resulted in negative impacts reduction.
Sustainability
Because of the solution's nature, its development and launch phase were the ones that required bigger investments. After that, the tool is basically self-sustained and doesn't require much investment. There's a small monthly fee to be paid to the webdeveloping company, but it is diluted as part of the service package since they are responsible for maintaing Akatu's website and some other communications' platforms.
If structural changes or updates need to be made in the platform, something of Akatu's interest, then it's necessary to raise funds, which is not necessary for operating the CCT on a daily basis.
Activation activities are grant or donors funded and executed according to financial availability.
Return on investment
The total investment to translate the Conscious Consumption Test into an online, interactive platform was of R$ 62.250,00, around 15,562.00 USD.
Considering that up until now 38,000 people have already taken the CCT, the cost of it is roughly R$1.6 or 0.4 USD for each respondent. Since this tool requires an investment only at milestones like its launch or eventual updates, it's a cost efficient tool.
Still, there's a lot of potential for improvements and expansion, especially concerning to the gathering of more tangible results.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
Applying the solution in different regions would require the translation of all the platform's textual content and the sensitising content's adaptation to more local realities. An example of one of the contents with an image that targets impact quantification and tangibilization is:
< Avoid using disposable bags - A Brazilian family that manages to avoid using 56 disposable shopping bags monthly, will have, by the end of a year, avoided the consumption of a "plastic line" with 40 centimeters wide that would go from the base to the top of the Eiffel Tower > This kind of content would need to be adapted according to the habits of each country and use local references like population size.
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