Effectiveness of Electricity-Saving Communication Campaigns: Neurophysiological Approach

Abstract

Public communication campaigns are among the tools for promoting electricity saving. A crucial task in the process of creating a campaign is to design a simple message to effectively reach the average consumer. It is a beneficial practice to create alternative messages and pretest them to find the most effective. The research methodology during pretesting includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. However, it is believed that the outcomes obtained with the use of conventional techniques are not fully reliable. Therefore, the following question arises: What additional research methods should be applied at the stage of testing the message of a communication campaign so that its effectiveness can be assessed more reliably and/or improved even before its broadcast? In this study, we aim to present the possibility of applying cognitive neuroscience methods in conjunction with a questionnaire to experimentally check the effectiveness of the message using the example of selected electricity-saving communication campaigns. The key results of this study indicate that merging conscious and subconscious reactions to media messages allows us to gain new knowledge that can be used in the future to improve the communication campaign effectiveness. Our investigation showed the benefits that can be obtained by synergizing traditional research methods with neuroscientific approaches.