Laying low

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Laying low

• Environmental knowledge and the public from a
  corporate perspective

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This paper

• Background
• Aims, objectives and methodology of research
• Introduces case studies
• Reports on results and compares that with
  literature
• Presents the major findings and discussion
• Explores implications and offers challenges

3
Acknowledgements
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Research team

• Dr Kate Burningham (of the Department of
  Sociology and CES)
• Dr Julie Barnett (of the Department of
  Psychology)
• Dr Walter Wehrmeyer (of CES)
• Professor Roland Clift (of CES)
• Dr Anna Carr (of the Department of Psychology and
  CES).

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Yes... arent they?
The laymen are revolting!
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House of horrors Sperm counts are falling and
cancer levels are rising. Something is very wrong
somewhere, but what? The answer may be
uncomfortably close to home The Guardian
supplement, 13.01.04 page 9
7
Background

• Lay participation in environmental
  decision-making attracting increasing attention
• Definition of lek
• Functional arguments (ends-based)
• Moral arguments (means-based)

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Previous studies

• Theories of local, situated, ordinary or common
  knowledge

• Controversial relationships
• Risk and uncertainty
• SUP PUS

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The gap

• Corporate sector missing from SiS

• Environmentally strategic action needed
• Beyond consultation market research
• To develop CUP

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Aim

• to contribute to existing academic, corporate and
  public knowledge by providing a clear account of
  how lay environmental knowledge and concern is
  conceptualised, accessed and used by industry

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Objectives

• To define lay environmental knowledge and explore
  the way it has been conceptualised by
  corporations
• To identify what motivations and barriers exist
  for companies to make better use of lay
  environmental knowledge
• To evaluate the relationship between
  organisational functions and use of lay
  environmental knowledge
• To develop recommendations on how lay
  environmental knowledge can be incorporated more
  effectively within industry

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Methodology

• 3 phases
• 1 Literature review
• 2 Case studies
• 3 Web-survey

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Case-studies
Business to business Business to consumer
Large Small
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Interviews

• Who was involved?
• How many people were interviewed?
• What has happened to the data?
• 4 sets of questions were asked
• definitional, about environment knowledge, on
  communication and on management

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The public

• Confusing semantically

• Builds on product-base and markets

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Marketsconsumerspublic

• 56 million consumers
• Dark/light green or red
• Everyone
• Weirdos
• Gold-diggers

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Stakeholders public

• People in a work role
• Different roles at different times
• Traditional political role
• Silent majority

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Citizens public

• Members of society
• Context is everything
• Cf public policy, public funds, public opinion

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Who are lay-people?

• Not a well known term
• Etymologically religious
• Belief and trust
• Need an authority
• Hostility, skepticism

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Lay people are

• Not knowers, non-expert, non specialist
• Sponges, users, passive, average

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Occupy public spaces

• Citizen consumers
• Consumer citizens
• Critical or uncritical
• Vote with their feet
• Scientifically illiterate?

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Lay people R Us
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Not always ordinary
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Lay people are citizens
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Overview of results

• Public Consumers
• Lay-people Individual users
• Public stakeholders and opinion-formers
• Lay-people opinionated, outsiders
• Citizens public and lay actors
• Careful and critical analysis required
• Multiple roles and interactions

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Overview of literature

• Similar confusion of public lay roles

• House-wives, civil servants and factory workers
  (Furnham 1988)
• Disaffection, resistance resourced by broad
  cultural dynamics (Horst 2003)
• Corporate perception of public changing

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Discussion

• Era of unquestioning acceptance in products and
  of corporations over
• Involvement of consumer citizens imperative
• Language
• New?
• Dropping the tags?
• Drop the concept

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Recap of major findings

• Corporations do not see lay people solely as
  whistle-blowers or passive end-users and neither
  do they treat the public solely as consumers,
  time-wasters or weirdos. Underneath the use of
  public or lay as a sort of heuristic device
  there are much more nuanced ideas about the
  dimensions of publics which include taking an
  active citizen-consumer role in society and
  having a critical inquiring stance to knowledge.

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Implications

• Corporations will seek new communication
  strategies with citizen consumers

• New research is required to understand and assist
  this
• Academics must stop thinking of corporations in
  uni-dimensional terms
• STS scholars need new lay-expert model

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Challenges

• How can corporations engage consumer citizens?
  Who initiates debates on this?

• New research is required to understand and assist
  this
• New models of consumer-citizenship are required
• Fairer and better environmental decisions and
  outcomes may eventuate

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