Keep Britain Tidy Publishes Latest Report On Perceptions

04 April 2011

Keep Britain Tidy in collaboration with Defra has published its latest report, "Perceptions of Place", which aims to understand the drivers of perceptions of place and also the impact of levels of deprivation on perception formation.

Perception is defined as a process by which we come to understand the things that are presented to us.

The study explores the phenomenon of "perception/reality gap" or the "inconsistencies between perceptions of place and actual standards" and lends its solutions of mobilising community participation and involvement to bridge the differences. It also closely examines the influence the levels of deprivation have on individual perceptions and offers recommendations in terms of effective communication as a key to enhancing individuals' experiences of their neighbourhoods.

The research presents two practical tools to comprehensively assess the aforementioned problem areas: Keep Britain Tidy Scale of Deprivation and Perception Wheel. The former lays down three Perception Principles or key "tendencies":

How levels of deprivation influence the way people view their communities, how they think about the role they play in their neighbourhood and the responsibility they feel towards the people who live there. According to the research this has an impact on "community informing" with less deprived communities more likely to promptly report issues to the authorities and the more deprived communities preferring to talk to each other.

The level of deprivation also impacts the makeup of "perception networks," where individual perceptions are shared. This has an impact on the culture within a community and may also have implications for managing misconceptions in performance and service delivery.

Deprivation impacts people's feelings of empowerment to deal with issues, with people from more deprived communities less likely to consider feelings of influence an important part of community of life.

The study also offers separate recommendations to effectively deal with the discrepancies that arise due to different levels of deprivation. For instance, the research advices to "localize, emotionalise and personalise" any calls to social action, to target more deprived and cautions that a lack complaints does not mean there are no problems, because people in these communities prefer to share their problems with each other instead of reporting to the officials.

For the less deprived, the research recommends engaging them through communities of interest, such as, faith groups, places of work etc and sheds light on the fact that reported problems are likely to be current and quick responses are preferred.

The second tool, Perception Wheel, identifies seven drivers of perception of place that operate in conjunction with personal experience followed by a series of recommended "nudges", with an aim to effectively counter these factors to improve residents' understanding and awareness of their respective communities. For instance, some of the key drivers along with their recommended "nudges" include:

• The powerful role of the media and its influence on perceptions. How it leads to people thinking that they only hear bad news or being suspicious of good news. If nothing heard, it is immediately misconstrued as no action being taken to address key issues.
  To which the wheel recommends specific responses to resident's concerns in a format that clearly answers to: "We asked. You said. We did". The nudge also involves being transparent and intelligently scheduling press releases.
• Perception drawn from personal experiences and observations, meaning seeing or witnessing work happening impacts how people see the world.
  To which the nudge explains how "seeing is believing" is sometimes less about cleanliness levels and more about knowing someone cares and recommends the use of "smart" schedules.
• Perceptions drawn from inaccurate and often out of context statistics and data.
  The nudge recommends debunking inaccurate numbers and providing positive alternatives that have the "stickiness factor."

A detailed and complete analysis can be found here: http://www.keepbritaintidy.org/ImgLibrary/PoPP-FINAL%20Report_2889.pdf

Krishna Buddhiraju