Behaviour change

Content - Summary

This issue of SSP deals with one major but often neglected issue of sanitation – the best technology is useless if not applied, a sophisticated operation and maintenance strategy not worth the paper if not implemented and affordable solutions not utilized if not demanded. Behavior change is the key to changing the sanitation situation and all connected problems.

The relatively small number of papers in this issue indicates that there is little experience and knowledge on changing behavior in sanitation on a significant scale. The papers of this issue are:
• Ekane et al. deal with the contradiction between national policies and policies and traditional norms at household level.
• Drechsel and Karg present a social marketing approach to behavior change.
• This is also the core of EcoSan Club’s own and recently started project in Uganda which is described in Lechner’s paper.
• Last but not least Jurga describes the behavior change campaigns of WASH United

Having understood the importance of initiating a factual behavior change from many years of practical experience, we hope that with this issue we can contribute to and emphasize the discussion on this topic and be in a position to publish another issue of SSP in the coming years with a lot more contributions of experiences and success stories.

Articles:

'Sanitation Governance viewed through different lenses' - Authors: Nelson Ekane, Marianne Kjellén, Björn Nykvist, Stacey Noel, Madeleine Fogde

'Motivating behaviour change for safe wastewater irrigation in urban and peri-urban Ghana' - Authors: Pay Drechsel and Hanna Karg

'Sanitation Marketing' - Author: Markus Lechner

'Show diarrhoea the red card' - Author: Ina Jurga

Bibliographic information

Muellegger, E., Langergraber, G., Lechner, M. (eds.) (2013). Behaviour change. Sustainable Sanitation Practice (SSP), Issue 16. EcoSan Club, Austria

Filter tags

Behaviour change (WG13) East Asia & Pacific English Sub-Saharan Africa

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