Program Evaluation of a Sanitation Marketing Campaign Among the Bai in China

Abstract

This social marketing campaign among the Bai ethnic minority group in Eryuan County, Yunnan, China, documents a community-based intervention to increase household toilet building and use in an effort to reduce cysticercosis. The formative research for the development of the social marketing campaign included the use of door-to-door surveys, a rural participatory assessment tool called the “ten-seed technique,” a baseline human neurocysticercosis study, and focus group discussions. Based on the formative research, a toilet-building campaign was implemented in two intervention villages. The results of this social marketing intervention are contrasted with the results of a traditional “outside-expert” approach conducted by a government agency in the two comparison villages. Although marginally fewer toilets were built in the intervention villages, a post-campaign consumer satisfaction survey revealed that satisfaction with and use of the toilets built using the social marketing approach were much greater. This study is the first to report the use of the social marketing of toilets in China and the first to report the use of the social marketing of household toilets as an intervention to reduce cysticercosis.