Bloeiend: Encouraging neighbourhood participation

Bloeiend: Encouraging neighbourhood participation

Aalbers, F.

Mulder, I.J. (mentor)
Tassoul, M. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

DFI

2014-10-28

Austerity policies in the Netherlands cause citizens to become more responsible for social support, and to people in need of social support to keep living independently up to an older age. This led to the assignment by Zuidzorg to find new ways to encourage neighbourhood participation. Preliminary research and interviews with people in Budel, which is the context for this assignment, led to the insight that people who need additional support have a large social network. Support is however often not given, because of the facts that there is less trust between people from different generations, that the social network is often not available, that it that it is difficult to give to and receive, that in most cases no communal sharing occurs between neighbours, that there are not enough relations that inherit trust, that many people are lonely and that there is not enough motivation so support others. As an approach towards encouraging neighbourhood participation, the definition of social capital by Woolcock (1998) was used, i.e. the information, trust and norms of reciprocity of social networks. According to Fu (2004) these aspects are mutually reinforcing, which means that increasing social capital leads to greater participation. Trust can be increased by exposure, honest communication and following up on commitments (Sander & Lowley, 2006). Changing the norms of reciprocity was approached from a persuasive viewpoint, by giving people motivation, ability and triggers (Fogg, 2010) to give and receive support. Multiple ideas were generated, which led to three concepts being developed. Two of these concepts were developed into a campaign that carries the name bloeiend*. The first part of bloeiend* is a laser cut symbol of a flower, which can be pasted to any object or hung from e.g. a key chain. It is based on increasing trust by exposure and following up on commitments, and creates intrinsic motivation to support others by offering people a rationale and choice (Deci et al., 1994). The second element of bloeiend* is a calendar which daily offers something to think about or do, with the choice to act upon it. The daily quotes offer a rationale, thus together with making a choice create intrinsic motivation to give support, which increases trust. Almost half of the people in Budel is willing to participate in bloeiend*. It is expected that bloeiend* indeed leads to increased social capital and will be a stepping stone towards increased well-being.

social
participation
persuasion
social capital

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0b672470-1136-4048-a918-9f71ef7cc758

Campus only

51.276392, 5.588416

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Aalbers, F.