Page 290 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

266 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

the growth in restrictive remedies in the public health sector is that through
media advocacy, key behaviors (e.g., tobacco use, drunk driving) have
been reframed; private behaviors transmuted into public behaviors foster
support for marketplace restrictions.
The passage of restrictions related to destructive health behaviors may
require shifting the public view of the behavior from an individual trap to
a public protection issue. Many public health/public will campaigns at-
tempt this transformation of issue framing (e.g., smoking restrictions,
drinking and driving restrictions, trans-fat bans). In all these cases, the
immediate “victim” of the behavior is the person who engages in the be-
havior, but over time, the social costs are given increasing attention to
encourage the passage of policy. It is argued that a key reason for the
growth in restrictive remedies is that through media advocacy, key behav-
iors (e.g., tobacco use) have been reframed from classic individual traps to
social problems warranting public protection. Private behaviors trans-
muted into public behaviors foster support for marketplace restrictions.
An important insight from the public will literature is that the battle
over public health is as much a battle over public versus private as it is
over health consequences. A major element of this debate is how the costs
are cast. The public cost frame can be seen not only in the antismoking
emphasis on secondhand smoke but in other contexts involving health
and financial well-being. For example, the “proregulation” arguments have
been framed in this way: Bad loans lead to foreclosures, which destroy the
value of everyone’s homes; excessive trans-fats or sugar in foods leads to
health problems that increase health costs for all; payday loans damage
national security because so many victims are military families. To a large
extent, the antirestriction side plays defense by making the case that either
the harms are restricted to a relatively small segment (e.g., only a small
proportion of citizens ever take out a payday loan) or that alternative poli-
cies could limit the public costs (e.g., if people were responsible for their
own health care costs, the public would not be burdened by those who ate
too many supersized meals or crashed a motorcycle while not wearing a
helmet). These antirestriction efforts focus on keeping the behavior framed
as an individual trap.

Conclusion

Social marketers and public health agents often work together and share a
common desire to improve the well-being of individuals. Increasingly, these
social marketing efforts are aimed at upstream remedies targeting policy
change. This chapter has focused attention on the shift toward upstream