Normative learning generates behaviour change: The case of drowning prevention

Drowning is a risk governance issue of global significance. The majority of coastal drownings occur at unpatrolled beaches. Interventions designed to influence public behaviours are measured in terms of ‘awareness raised’ and ‘intentions to act’ rather than actual ‘behaviours adopted’. As a result, up-scaling impacts defaults to the dubious assumption that the communication of information can raise societal-scale awareness that will result in societal-scale behaviour change. No interventions into coastal drowning prevention, though, have determined the impacts of raised awareness on actual behaviours and, as a result, interventions are presently blind to whether changed behaviours ‘spillover’ to unpatrolled locations; further, no research has applied mixed methods to explain the mechanisms of behaviour changes or spillover effects. We conducted an intervention that combines a 20-min safety lesson with a meaningful engagement involving active reflection. This intervention was paired with a control that involved the engagement only. The study was conducted at Lorne, Australia, and involved 12 lessons with approximately 600 participants; 4–6 months later, participants were contacted to measure impact. After screening for those who had returned to a beach and had had opportunity to alter their behaviours, statistical modelling shows that, relative to the control, the intervention significantly increased the number of risk mitigation behaviours adopted, the number of non-participants told, and the number of behaviour changes adopted at unpatrolled beaches. The major impact pathway of the intervention was normative learning rather than awareness raising. Qualitative analysis explains how the intervention supported normative learning (i.e., through reflection) and the mechanisms through which normative learning supported behaviour change (i.e., self-efficacy and altered worldview). We demonstrate a participatory methodology and innovative mixed-methods approach that results in actual behaviour changes that spillover to non-participants and to the locations where drownings concentrate. More broadly, the implications challenge awareness raising as the basis of risk management.