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Homo economicus and social

marketing: questioning
traditional models of behavior
Hamilton Coimbra Carvalho and Jose Afonso Mazzon
Department of Marketing, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Received 15 November 2011

Revised 4 September 2012
Abstract
16 March 2013
Accepted 19 March 2013
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to bring forth the limitations of some important models of

cognition and behavior adopted by social marketers and present important findings from recent lines
of research that contribute to a fine-grained understanding of human behavior.
Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper that presents a review of several
theoretical approaches to human cognition and behavior and their implications regarding social marketing
campaigns.
Findings It is concluded that the assumptions underlying traditional models of behavior need to be
revised, especially the assumption that human beings are rational decision makers the prototypical
homo economicus. Behavioral science has revealed that people are far from being rational and are prone
to be influenced by myriad factors, some deemed irrelevant under rational models. Social marketing
interventions have greater probability of success when they rely on more realistic assumptions of human
behavior.
Research limitations/implications Social marketing needs to embrace the contributions of the
several disciplines and lines of research centered on the study of all facets of human behavior, such as
behavioral economics and dual-system framework.
Practical implications The main implications are: the recommendation to assume people are
running on their System 1 when they are in contact with social marketing campaigns, the need to
consider the interplay of systems and selves over time, the recommended emphasis on place strategies,
and the need to avoid cash incentives and silver bullets.
Originality/value The value of this paper is in contrasting the assumptions of traditional models
of cognition and behavior widely used in social marketing with the evidence from several lines of
research portraying influences in human behavior not accounted by those models.
Keywords Social marketing, Consumer behaviour, Cognition, Social marketing theory,
Consumer attitudes, Theory of planned behaviour
Paper type Conceptual paper

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem neat, plausible, and wrong
(Henry Mencken).

Journal of Social Marketing

Vol. 3 No. 2, 2013
pp. 162-175
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2042-6763
DOI 10.1108/JSOCM-11-2011-0080

Recently, a Time Magazine article presented a provocative question Should kids be

bribed to do well in school? (Ripley, 2010). According to it, research led by Harvard
economist Roland Fryer in four big American cities concluded that financial incentives
to students worked in the short-term under specific circumstances. Newspapers and
anecdotal evidence show that while social demands are potentially infinite, there is also
no shortage of attempted solutions to address them. Some as simple as offering money
to steer people in the right direction. But can money buy the solution to social
problems? Or, in other words, is there a simple solution, a silver bullet, to address the
pressing issues that are on the radar of our societies?

There are two problems with the silver bullet approach. The first one is that social
behaviors are barely a resultant of single forces. On the contrary, they are most often
determined by an interaction of complex influences, ranging from unconscious and
biological ones to the broader level represented by situational pressures, social class
and culture. Changing social behaviors requires dealing with diehard preferences,
mindless habits, high social or psychological costs, adverse environments and the
exchange of direct benefits for more diffuse or uncertain ones (Alcalay and Bell, 2000;
Andreasen, 1997).
The second problem is a more conceptual one. Every initiative to change behaviors
implicitly assumes a model of human nature. Too often people are considered rational
and cold decision makers the prototypical homo economicus. To keep the example at
hand, if we assume people behave according to the homo economicus concept, then
money cannot be ignored as a tool to promote socially desired behaviors, since homo
economicus never ignores a surplus of wealth or the possibility of maximizing payoffs
(Mazar and Ariely, 2006). On the other hand, if the use of money empirically brings
about deleterious effects that challenge common sense (as evidence has been
showing see, for instance, Gneezy and Rustichini, 2000; Kivetz, 2005; Liu and Aaker,
2008), then we need to call into question the rational assumptions underlying some
well-intentioned interventions.
Why is this relevant to social marketing? First of all, no combination of marketing
mix, branding and other usual tools is enough to compensate for an inaccurate model
of human behavior. Properly branding monetary incentives is counterproductive if
people respond to them in an unexpected way. A classic example in the literature is the
typical decrease in blood donations as a consequence of paying donors for their
behavior (Benabou and Tirole, 2006). Second, scientific evidence has accumulated over
the last decades driven by advances in fields like behavioral economics (Kahneman,
2011; Loewenstein, 2007) showing that rational assumptions of human behavior are
flawed. Third, these assumptions are deeply ingrained in the behavioral models that
have been adopted in the discipline. Cash incentives do have negative effects on
behavior which are not predicted by traditional behavioral models. But the social
marketing literature still recommends them (Kotler and Lee, 2008). These points will be
addressed in the discussion that follows.
The main purpose of this article is therefore to bring forth the limitations of some
important models of behavior and discuss important facets of human behavior that
should be taken into account by social marketers when designing their programs. Given
the vast developments in theory and research in fields like behavioral economics and
dual-systems framework over the last decades and given the astounding number of
social problems that keeps challenging social marketing practitioners, we understand
that it is time to revise parts of the mindset still prevalent in the discipline.
Social marketing and three popular models of behavior
Stead et al. (2007) state that the most successful social marketing interventions are the
ones founded on sound consumer research. Social marketing, according to Lefebvre
(2012), has a transdisciplinary nature and thus needs to incorporate concepts from
disciplines that are centered on people. The same recommendation was made by Wymer
(2011), who criticizes the tendency among social marketing scholars to define the
discipline as a unitary one. Hastings (2003) emphasizes the sheer fact that individual

Homo
economicus and
social marketing
163

There are two problems with the silver bullet approach. The first one is that social
behaviors are barely a resultant of single forces. On the contrary, they are most often
determined by an interaction of complex influences, ranging from unconscious and
biological ones to the broader level represented by situational pressures, social class
and culture. Changing social behaviors requires dealing with diehard preferences,
mindless habits, high social or psychological costs, adverse environments and the
exchange of direct benefits for more diffuse or uncertain ones (Alcalay and Bell, 2000;
Andreasen, 1997).
The second problem is a more conceptual one. Every initiative to change behaviors
implicitly assumes a model of human nature. Too often people are considered rational
and cold decision makers the prototypical homo economicus. To keep the example at
hand, if we assume people behave according to the homo economicus concept, then
money cannot be ignored as a tool to promote socially desired behaviors, since homo
economicus never ignores a surplus of wealth or the possibility of maximizing payoffs
(Mazar and Ariely, 2006). On the other hand, if the use of money empirically brings
about deleterious effects that challenge common sense (as evidence has been
showing see, for instance, Gneezy and Rustichini, 2000; Kivetz, 2005; Liu and Aaker,
2008), then we need to call into question the rational assumptions underlying some
well-intentioned interventions.
Why is this relevant to social marketing? First of all, no combination of marketing
mix, branding and other usual tools is enough to compensate for an inaccurate model
of human behavior. Properly branding monetary incentives is counterproductive if
people respond to them in an unexpected way. A classic example in the literature is the
typical decrease in blood donations as a consequence of paying donors for their
behavior (Benabou and Tirole, 2006). Second, scientific evidence has accumulated over
the last decades driven by advances in fields like behavioral economics (Kahneman,
2011; Loewenstein, 2007) showing that rational assumptions of human behavior are
flawed. Third, these assumptions are deeply ingrained in the behavioral models that
have been adopted in the discipline. Cash incentives do have negative effects on
behavior which are not predicted by traditional behavioral models. But the social
marketing literature still recommends them (Kotler and Lee, 2008). These points will be
addressed in the discussion that follows.
The main purpose of this article is therefore to bring forth the limitations of some
important models of behavior and discuss important facets of human behavior that
should be taken into account by social marketers when designing their programs. Given
the vast developments in theory and research in fields like behavioral economics and
dual-systems framework over the last decades and given the astounding number of
social problems that keeps challenging social marketing practitioners, we understand
that it is time to revise parts of the mindset still prevalent in the discipline.
Social marketing and three popular models of behavior
Stead et al. (2007) state that the most successful social marketing interventions are the
ones founded on sound consumer research. Social marketing, according to Lefebvre
(2012), has a transdisciplinary nature and thus needs to incorporate concepts from
disciplines that are centered on people. The same recommendation was made by Wymer
(2011), who criticizes the tendency among social marketing scholars to define the
discipline as a unitary one. Hastings (2003) emphasizes the sheer fact that individual

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economicus and
social marketing
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behaviors are, above all, human behaviors. It becomes crucial, therefore, to ponder
whether the behavioral models that inform the research, design and evaluation phases of
social marketing programs encompass the most important dimensions of human
behavior and to what extent.
The first approach to consumer behavior in social marketing was based on the
concept of exchange. According to it, individuals weigh benefits and costs when
contemplating a behavior and only proceed voluntarily if the former outweighs the latter
(Kotler and Zaltman, 1971). This concept has somehow survived the test of the years:
Andreasen (2002) states that one of the factors that distinguish social marketing is the
emphasis on the creation of attractive exchanges that encourage the performance of
desired behaviors.
Gradually more sophisticated approaches were adopted. Over the years the theory
of planned behavior (TPB), the health belief model (HBM) and the transtheoretical
model (TTM) rapidly gained popularity among practitioners. Their success can be
explained differently by factors that speak volumes about human nature (including, of
course, practitioners mindset): parsimony, habit and ease of understanding. We
present below an overview of these frameworks.
The main assumption of the TPB is that intention predicts behavior (Fishbein and
Ajzen, 1975). Besides, intention, it comprises attitudes, subjective norms and perceived
behavioral control as core constructs. According to Ajzen (2002), human behavior is
guided by beliefs about the likely consequences or other attributes of the behavior,
beliefs about the normative expectations of other people, and beliefs about the presence
of factors that may facilitate or hinder the performance of the target behavior. In their
aggregates, these beliefs produce attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, and
perceived behavioral control. In combination, attitude, subjective norm, and behavioral
control lead to the formation of a behavioral intention, which is expected to translate
into actual behavior given the opportunity and actual control over the behavior.
Michie et al. (2008) point that while TPB is often used as a backdrop for behavioral
interventions, it is rarely employed in the design of such interventions. The theory is
often criticized based on its simplistic or reductionist nature (Armitage and Conner,
2000; Bagozzi, 1992).
The HBM had originally four constructs: perceived susceptibility, perceived
severity, perceived benefits, and perceived barriers. Self-efficacy and cues to action
were a later addition (Champion and Skinner, 2008). Since its conception the model has
been applied typically to the analysis of behaviors in the public health domain (Alcalay
and Bell, 2000; Kloeben and Batish, 1999), in which appraisals of threats and coping
responses are the main concerns. But there has been strong criticism on the definition
of its constructs and their relationship (McClenahan et al., 2006), on its predictive
validity (Armitage and Conner, 2000), and on the lack of normative and emotional
appraisals of behavior (Champion and Skinner, 2008). Also, the construct cues to action
has been scantily researched, even by the HBM adopters, and it has been underused in
the formative and evaluative research guiding interventions. There is also a lingering
validity issue: according to Champion and Skinner (2008), no research on the HBM
efficacy was conducted after the last one, in 1984. Moreover, the model cannot easily
accommodate behaviors outside the health domain.
The idea that human behavior progresses through different and known states of
change is the main tenet of the TTM. According to its proponents, the model can

integrate processes and principles of change derived from other theories (Prochaska et al.,
2008). The proposed six stages of change are precontemplation, contemplation,
preparation, action, maintenance and termination. Ten processes of change are advanced
to account for the progression from one stage to another, including actions like dramatic
relief and commitment. The theoretical similarities with other behavior models lie on
constructs such as decisional balance, comprising an evaluation of pros and cons, and
self-efficacy. In the social marketing literature, Andreasen (2006) has distilled the original
model into a compact one, comprising four stages: precontemplation, contemplation,
preparation/action and maintenance. Armitage and Conner (2000) claim that models
based on stages of change differ from other behavioral models only to the extent that
they suggest a qualitative difference among the social and cognitive influences occurring
in each stage. Moreover, they tend to be vague about what happens in each stage,
especially when considering the antecedents of behavior and their combination. The
authors also sustain that the stages cannot accurately describe the steps taken by
individuals in the course of behavior change and that there is no clear definition over the
mandatory sequential nature implied in such models.
There have been some propositions to unify themes from different models of
behavior. Fishbein et al. (1992), for instance, summarize the common themes to several
theories of human behavior, identifying three necessary factors (strong positive
intention, absence of environmental constraints and skills) and five factors (attitude,
social norms, consistence with self-image, emotional reactions and perceived
self-efficacy) that influence the strength and the direction of the behavioral intention.
Andreasen (2006), in turn, proposes a compact model that could be used in the analysis of
any individual behavior. His BCOS model stands for Benefits, Costs, Others and
Self-confidence (or self-efficacy). Notwithstanding these efforts, some important pieces of
the puzzle of human behavior remain absent. It is interesting to note that, for instance, in
all of the models above mentioned there is no account of why offering money as an
incentive could backfire. In other words, the well-intentioned social marketer who
intends to stimulate a given behavior with cash would not be deterred by any of these
traditional models of human cognition and behavior.
Besides, the criticism briefly outlined above, traditional models have at least three
more deficiencies:
(1) they presuppose a rational view of human behavior and do not give much room
to non-cognitive influences;
(2) they do not accommodate the interplay of dual systems (Systems 1 and 2) on
decision making and behavior; and
(3) they give little or no weight to construal.
Now we turn to these main deficiencies.
Human behavior too often departs from rationality
Let us consider TPB and its highly rational assumptions. Ajzen (2005) states that most of
daily behaviors are under influence of volitional control. Under the TPB, the deliberately
formed intention remains a behavioral disposition to be potentially converted into
action given the appropriate opportunity. He also states that TPB is based on the
presupposition that individuals behave on a sensible manner, taking into account
all available information and considering, implicitly or explicitly, the implications

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of their actions. Ajzen (2008) concedes that this deliberate process is not necessarily
rational because individual beliefs can be biased, unfounded or wrong.
But can we say that the irrationality in human behavior stems only from beliefs
that antecede attitudes? It does not seem so. In opposition to theoretical models that
describe the main cognitive antecedents of human behavior, there are several lines
of research criticizing the deliberative view on human behavior and emphasizing the
greater weight of automatic processes, habits, context, visceral states, and bias
(Bargh et al., 2001; Bargh, 2002; Schwarz, 2006). Loewenstein (2001) challenges the
view that human behavior is preponderantly deliberative and calculative by nature,
advancing the opposite view. People too often violate the main tenets of rationality in
their reasoning, judgment and decision making (Shafir and LeBoeuf, 2002).
Human behavior, according to LeDoux (1996), is the result of brain systems that run
unconsciously. People tend to act based on reasons they cannot fully articulate. So, one
of the main tasks of conscience is to create a coherent history based on the lived
experiences. Self-concept, memories, expectations, and social context are means to
generate such a history. Ask people why they are doing what they do and they will
automatically concoct a coherent but often wrong justification. Although people cannot
introspect about the actual reasons behind most of their behaviors and judgments, they
think they can (Pronin, 2007). We will return to this point in the next section.
But there is more to challenge conventional views. Behavioral economics has
thrived on the realization that several non-cognitive biases influence behavior and
decision making. Among its most important findings, we now know that people, for
instance (Kahneman and Tversky, 2000; Kahneman, 2011):
.
prefer the current state of affairs (status quo bias);
.
tend to ignore duration in their decisions (duration neglect);
.
base their decisions on irrelevant information (anchoring effects); and
.
evaluate objects based on the most vivid examples that spring to mind
(availability bias).
People are also prone to different and incompatible decisions depending on the
temporal perspective taken and the corresponding self that is activated. According to
Kahneman and Riis (2005), when we are evaluating our past behaviors, we bring forth
the remembering self which has a big say on important decisions vis-a`-vis the
experiencing self (the self activated when the frame of reference is the ongoing
experience). The classic example in this literature is a series of colonoscopy studies
(Redelmeier and Kahneman, 1996). Patients had a better memory of longer painful
procedures as long as these procedures fitted an improving pattern over time
(the peak-end rule). As a general rule, the memories dominate the evaluation of the
episodes even when they were clearly different or have a distinct hedonic tone when
contrasted with the actual experience. The remembering self drives people to collect
memories, which in turn will heavily influence the decision to continue the performance
of behaviors. While memories can be a dominant input in our choices, a focus on
the future brings about another self: the predictor self (Hsee and Hastie, 2006). The
evidence shows that we can be terrible predictors. We typically overestimate the
impact of future events on our well-being, sometimes valuing the wrong aspects in our
decisions (for instance, we think money will always make us happy).

The temporal perspective is not the only one to give rise to different selves. Another
theoretical perspective comes from lines of research adopting the dual-system
framework.
Two systems struggling for control
According to the general idea behind the dual-system framework, human behavior
relies on two different systems (or set of systems): the default System 1, which
encompasses evolutionary modules, and the ad hoc System 2, which is attuned to
regulatory goals (Evans, 2009; Kahneman, 2003; Lee et al., 2009; Rottenstreich et al.,
2007). The automatic System 1 rapidly suggests intuitive solutions to everyday
decisions and the slow System 2 only takes over when the default solutions feel wrong.
The System 1 is associative, highly influenced by context and sensitive to immediate
pleasure. It is wired to save cognitive effort. In turn, System 2 is controlled, deliberative
and dependent on cognitive capacity. Deeply ingrained and automatic behaviors the
focus of many social marketing interventions are a product of System 1. Also, in
many social contexts, human beings tend to be cognitive misers, resorting to System 2
processes only when clearly necessary and not always in a successful manner
(Stanovich, 2009).
The distinction between Systems 1 and 2 has deep implications for behavioral models
and social marketing. Awareness campaigns, for instance, assume that System 2 is in
charge. Consider also the fight against tobacco. Historically, researchers have been
measuring the effect of fear appeals using laboratory settings. According to the review
of Witte and Allen (2000), the dependent measures typically tested are perceptual ones or
behavioral ones based on self-report which can indicate the reflective System 2 in
action. Thus, many conclusions drawn from those studies may not hold in actual
contexts, where the action tendency associated with fear (flight) tends to be
automatically initiated as a System 1 default and there is no time or motivation to reflect
on the behavior and provide a report about it.
Bettman et al. (2008) stress the importance of considering which system is in
charge when consumers make their decisions. They argue that verbal protocols
and other self-statement methodologies in consumer research presuppose that
individuals are conscious of the process that guides their decisions, which would be
consistent only with processes running under System 2. Therefore, it is critical to
consider the interaction between Systems 1 and 2 and the prevalence of either one in
guiding judgments and behaviors, depending on the elicitors found in the situation
(Alter et al., 2007) and the availability of resources associated with System 2
(Mead et al., 2009). The predominance of each system in a given situation defines
whether implicit (System 1) or explicit (System 2) individual factors drive the
behavioral response. For instance, implicit and explicit attitudes can lead to different
behavioral outcomes (Perkins et al., 2008).
As Bazerman and Tenbrunsel (2011) exemplify in the case of ethical behavior,
general principles and attitudes drive peoples prediction on how they will behave, but
as the actual situation takes place the behavior is driven by concrete details. In other
words, System 2 is in charge when people reflect on their behavior, but System 1 tends
to be in control when actual behavior is performed. This increases the odds of
interventions that focus on the social marketing concept of place or environmental
design initiatives (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).

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Construal
Traditional models of behavior also miss the role of construal in guiding the response
to objective reality. Bertrand et al. (2006) state that one of the great developments
in psychological research is the proposition of this concept. Contextual cues play a
role as they provide vital inputs that help in the perceptual apprehension of the
situation. In other words, any object is construed according to subtle (or not so subtle)
contextual cues and to the social meanings associated with them. The action to be
taken in a given context is a function of the social role in which one finds herself
and the perception of the behaviors meaning and appropriateness (Sunstein, 1996).
Thus, it is necessary to focus on how people understand, interpret and construct
their responses to objective experience, inasmuch as behavior is directed not
toward cold and objective reality, but toward mental representations of social
phenomena. These representations, in turn, are shaped by social norms and by
contextual cues. The resulting construal frames the potential behavioral response to
social interventions.
The idea that construals guide the response to social reality is also consistent with the
concept of naive realism the persistent tendency to consider what we perceive as the
reality in an objective way (Pronin et al., 2002). After all, reality is in peoples minds.
A practical implication is the need to uncover and constantly monitor the shifting
meanings associated with a given object. A dramatic example comes from the spreading
obesity stigma that has been considered ironically as an unintended consequence of
anti-obesity public health campaigns (Parker-Pope, 2011a). These campaigns have
typically focused on seemingly controllable aspects of behaviors leading to obesity
(overeating, for instance) while neglecting the scientific evidence pointing to the inexorable
influence of biological factors (Parker-Pope, 2011b). This is turn leads to stereotyping of
obese people, a result not intended in the first place.
Contexts tend to prime different construals: they activate mental rules that will be
used as a filter to interpret incoming information from the environment and to elicit
internal drivers such as values (Torelli and Kaikati, 2009), preferences (Stanovich,
2010) or automatic performance (Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 2003; Adaval and Monroe,
2002). To take the example from the beginning of this paper, there is a wealth of
evidence showing that cash incentives activate a mindset that inhibits pro-social
behaviors and leads to a decrease in the performance of the very behavior one tries to
promote (Liu and Aaker, 2008; Mobbs et al., 2009; Mogilner and Aaker, 2009).
Frijda (1999, p. 193) concurs with the idea that different patterns of events give rise
to different emotions, the critical point being that:
[. . .] appraisal patterns are thought to consist in part of properties of the eliciting event, to the
extent that these are picked by the individual, and in part of properties added to the event by
the expectations, interpretations, schemas, and thoughts that the individual brings to it.

There is no reason to imagine that the same process does not occur for the appraisal of
any object, even the ones with low potential to elicit emotions. Sunstein (1996, p. 10)
describes a very similar pattern for the construction of preferences:
[. . .] what lies behind choices is not a thing but an unruly amalgam of things aspirations,
tastes, physical states, responses to existing roles and norms, values, judgments, emotions,
drives, beliefs, whims and the interaction of these forces will produce outcomes of a
particular sort in accordance with the particular context.

The role of behavioral science is to disentangle all these influences, but the point here
is to stress the importance of the subjective appraisal of events and its highly
idiosyncratic nature depending on the context or situation (Ross and Nisbett, 1991).
An interesting approach to the interplay between situational and dispositional
variables comes from Aquino et al. (2009). They showed that contextual cues can
activate or deactivate the moral identity of individuals. According to their
conceptualization, a moral identity is one among several facets individuals manage
in different contexts. This specific facet has a motivational drive inasmuch as people
always try to maintain consistency. Cues in the environment that have success in
activating the moral identity increment the chance of pro-social behaviors. Cues like
monetary rewards, on the other hand, can dampen the moral identity and diminish the
motivation to attain morally desirable goals.
In sum, heuristics and biases, different selves, dual-systems and construal are key
pieces, among others, in the puzzle of human behavior that have been absent in models
widely used by social marketers. Not only should these pieces be considered when one
is designing a social intervention, but also their implications remind us to be wary of
silver bullet approaches.
Implications and recommendations
There are at least four main recommendations for social marketers from the discussion
presented in this paper. The first one is the recommendation to assume that people
are not always running on their System 2 when they have opportunity to interact
with social marketing programs. Most of the time people are using their System 1 to
navigate the social world. For instance, traditional awareness campaigns have to
compete with commercial appeals and automatic patterns of everyday behavior.
The awareness fever is well known between practitioners but awareness still seems
to be an ultimate goal for several campaigns around the world. One can but wonder
at the astonishing proliferation of awareness days and the diminishing probability
of their effectiveness. They seem to be anchored on an information gap model with
the flawed premise that people do not perform some behaviors because they are not
aware of them.
The second recommendation is to consider the interplay of Systems 1 and 2 over
time, as well as the role of different selves. The greatest challenge for social marketers
remains to get individuals over the initial contemplation phase or the tentative
performance of behaviors. According to the framework outlined in Rothman et al.
(2011), goal setting, self-efficacy, hope and expected benefits are potential drivers of
performance in the initial steps of behavior change drivers that reflect the
engagement of System 2 (and probably the predictor self). As long as the individual
perseveres in the performance of the newly acquired behavior, the role of System 1
becomes progressively larger via implicit learning, as well as the role of the
remembering self. At the same time, in the continued response phase, people start
experiencing some costs associated with the behavior. These costs typically effort
can dampen the motivation to sustain the performance over time. The key to attenuate
this tendency seems to be the adequate use of situational or contextual factors in order
to engage System 1. For instance, a running competition with hedonic prizes could be
used to motivate exercisers that made the initial commitment to sign up for physical
classes. But when people successfully reach the maintenance stage, the behavior

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becomes less volitional as they are not struggling to perform it and the benefits are
clearly perceived (Rothman et al., 2011). Habit (the hallmark of System 1) is the next
and final stage, when there is no need to make a decision to perform the behavior,
saving the limited resources of System 2.
The third recommendation is the need to give a greater role to place in social
marketing campaigns. According to Lefebvre (2011), too few social marketing efforts
expand beyond communication tactics and vehicles. Place not only brings about
opportunity and convenience (Lotenberg, 2010) but it also provides cues and perceptual
inputs to define behaviors (i.e. construals). Given the strength of some associations,
contextual cues can be used to prompt automatic behaviors, leveraging on System 1
learned responses. Nudges, while not being a magic bullet, could also integrate the
toolbox of place strategies available to social marketers (French, 2011). There is another
advantage of focusing on place strategies. They force the social marketer to adopt an
ecological perspective what behavioral economists have been doing successfully
(Thaler, 2012). For instance, spiking rates of obesity in poor neighborhoods may result
from the lack of sports facilities, among other factors. This in turn may result from the
misallocation of public resources, indicating a need to employ social marketing efforts to
target politicians.
The fourth recommendation regards the use of cash and related single bullet
approaches to social problems. Evidence shows that cash incentives usually backfire in
the long run and fail to elicit commitment. Moreover, social problems often are wicked
problems complex, difficult to define and with many inter-dependent causal factors
(Kennedy and Parsons, 2012). This kind of problem tends to require a systems
approach encompassing several layers of action. Thus, buying compliance with cash is
not the solution to social problems and the role of financial incentives should be
reconsidered in social marketing.
We could have presented another model of human behavior here, but it would
contribute little to an already crowded theoretical space. Several important pieces
remain to be integrated in a coherent picture of social behavior, such as the processes
that give rise to extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (e.g. self-determination theory, Deci
and Ryan, 2002), self-regulation processes (Vohs and Baumeister, 2010) and the
broader influences of social systems that vary in their scope captured in theories
such as ecological system theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1989).
We did intend to call into question some of the assumptions of traditional models of
cognition and behavior, especially the assumption that human beings are rational
decision makers. In fact, the work of social marketers would be easier under this
assumption, since any combination of benefits would fit the bill. Monetary incentives
would always help. But the evidence shows that cash incentives usually fail and human
behavior is a much more sophisticated matter. Behavioral science has revealed a
disturbing but rich facet of us we are far from rational and we respond to irrelevant
changes in our environments. We think we know the reasons behind our behaviors,
but we do not. We are the net result of a myriad of factors interacting in unexpected
ways. Thus, several layers of complexity in human behavior challenge social marketers,
who must expand their toolbox to encompass environmental design and other, related
strategies.
Properly designed interventions have a greater probability of success when they
rely on more realistic assumptions of human behavior. As Wymer (2011) recognizes,

many social marketers are reducing their programs effectiveness because, among
other factors, they apply biased mental models in their effort to comprehend the social
problem. One tacit (and flawed) assumption in such models is the idea of individual
volition: individuals have control over their behavior. So, we must always question the
frameworks guiding our approaches and incorporate valuable insights from sound
lines of research that have been thriving over the last decades. Above all, the scientific
evidence that has accumulated so far provides all the reasons needed to discard homo
economicus from our frameworks a step that holds the potential for better results in
social marketing.
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Further reading
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About the authors
Hamilton Coimbra Carvalho works for the government of the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. His
interests include social marketing theory, well-being, dual-systems research and consumer
behavior in general. He obtained his Masters Degree in 2010 with a thesis on the behavior of
adopters and non-adopters of a social marketing program. Hamilton Coimbra Carvalho is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: hccarvalho@gmail.com
Jose Afonso Mazzon is a Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behavior in the Faculty of
Economy and Business Administration and the Coordinator of the Marketing Course at the
School of Arts, Science and Humanities in the University of Sao Paulo. He studied a well-known
Brazilian social program with a social marketing focus in his Doctorate dissertation (in 1981).
Besides a long-term interest in social marketing and consumer behavior, his research interests
also include customer relationship management, multivariate methods and the evaluation of
social programs.

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