Behavior change requires time and effort

In order for promotional efforts to lead to latrine sales, the Cambodia team found that a concentrated engagement with potential customers, such as group sales events or door-to-door sales, is necessary.

Light-touch promotion initiatives such as engagement through health centers and religious leaders can add points of exposure, but unless they are coupled with intensive training and coaching, such channels do not directly target non-owners or address their individual needs and desires.

Similarly, paid advertising is difficult to measure, often expensive, and is further removed from the end user. More discussion on this topic can be found in the report produced by Hystra, in which Hydrologic, a subsidiary of iDE, was one of 15 social enterprises featured. Please see the full report here.

Case Study: a one-year behavior change campaign

In the first phase of the program, iDE conducted a year-long Behavior Change Communications (BCC) campaign in 20 communes in Cambodia’s Kandal and Svay Rieng provinces. It leveraged existing national Stop the Diarrhea Campaign* materials.

The purpose of the BCC campaign was twofold: first, to learn whether the additional intervention of a BCC campaign would increase latrine uptake; second, to learn whether the Commune Committees for Women and Children (CCWCs) would be the recommended government partner body for implementing such an intervention.

The campaign comprised of two phases to ensure multiple touch points with villagers, which has been shown to be helpful in achieving behavior change. Both phases consisted of hour-long interpersonal communications sessions featuring an engaging experience to trigger people to move along the behavior change path. User insight research informed the content of each phase.

Twenty CCWC members received training and coaching through iDE then served as the direct facilitators of the BCC session. Additionally, the campaign engaged the Provincial Department of Rural Development and the existing lines of management above CCWC to support monitoring and coaching of the CCWC, with the objective of exposing local government to the practice of managing a BCC campaign.

After the sessions, households indicated their interest in purchasing latrines. This led to an effort to integrate a sales component with BCC—an evolution from the original model, which tried to keep the BCC sessions explicitly separate from sales. To respond to the demand, the project trained CCWCs on how to speak about the latrine product and connect with Latrine Business Owners and sales agents.

The BCC experience was a positive testament to the potential of government taking an engaged, influential role in increasing rural sanitation uptake when proper evidence-based tools, training, monitoring, coaching, and incentives are provided. Please see the Behavior Change Tactic Report here for more specifics about the BCC campaign.