Evaluating a print-based ‘sustainability by stealth’ guide in the project home industry

Abstract

How can we encourage people to make more sustainable choices? And how do we evaluate the effectiveness of material designed to encourage them to do so? These are vital questions in a world where addressing issues of environmental sustainability and climate change is becoming increasingly urgent.

In 2008, Clarendon Residential Group and its then parent company Investa¹ responded to the need to encourage project homebuyers to be more sustainable by producing Your Home Buyer's Guide. This publication was designed to inform potential customers about the sustainable range of options that might be considered in the building of their home. A key task was then to evaluate the extent to which the publication was used and had made an impact.

This article describes the evaluation of the Guide and how the evaluation was able to come to conclusions about: the process of preparing the document; the response of customers to the Guide; and the ongoing challenges for educating project homebuyers about sustainability.

The evaluation concluded that the Your Home Buyer's Guide project illustrates how print material can educate and encourage people to make different choices with regard to sustainability without the motivational material being outwardly ‘green’ in its focus. It was also established that even for print projects such as this, it is possible (indeed desirable) to conduct a multi-level evaluation—and that such an evaluation is able to provide evidence for the effectiveness of the product and efficiency for the process.