Odpowiedzialność ekologiczna a komunikacja marketingowa

It seems that these days everyone understands the importance of environmentally friendly behaviors. Research that has been conducted in Poland last years shows that more and more Poles believe that environmental problems are important in their lives, but what they do to help the environment is limited to saving water or energy. The aim of this paper is to verify the thesis that in order to encourage people to more responsible and active behavior the way how messages of organized campaigns are created should be changed. The thesis has been proved by results of the test of different messages, carried out with the participation of 151 students. A limitation of the study is the fact that it has embraced young people only (20–24 years). Despite the fact that Poles believe that the close contact with nature is important, and that this nature has intrinsic value, and they are interest in ecology, it is difficult to persuade them to other acts than water saving and waste segregation. This is due to the fact that they do not see hazards in an environment in the milieu (70% believe that there is nothing to worry about). So they think about the problems of ecology on a global basis. In that case, one may assumed that Poles need extra incentive to go out and do something for their community. Such incentives can be placed in the appropriate persuasion in messages talking about environmental actions. As it is connected with people’s needs it should be named marketing communication. It is stated in the article that existing messages often do not say who is the sender of the information, or what exactly is expected from a receiver, or who will get benefits if the recipient decides to comply with the request. Therefore, a way of conviction should be changed to one that clearly shows the effects and benefits of conducted actions. In the article it is demonstrated that in the latter case, a lot more people declare action, although it should be added that in the surveyed group overall desire to do something in person is very low. This is a somewhat surprising result, because in general, more and more Poles believe that individual actions can make a difference. This may be due to the fact that respondents have not held any consequences of their actions, yet they feel relieved from the responsibility for the problem. On the other hand, in spite of all, these attitudes need to be change, perhaps through better communication, because today the fact that a man is part of nature and civilization development must adapt to the needs and opportunities of the environment cannot be denied, that means reevaluation of attitudes presented so far. For many years the need of building environmentally friendly attitudes among a society has been stressed. This article presents one of the ways how to convince people (especially young people) to be more active in the field of ecological lifestyle.