National Conversation on Plant Health

Findings and Recommendations

The National Conversation project began in 2020 and has so far had three main phases of activity:

• Phase 1 – focused on understanding awareness, appreciation and understanding of plant health and biosecurity
• Phase 2 – included the development of evidence-based recommendations for plant health engagement, followed by a focus on understanding two target behaviours known to present particular risks to plant health and biosecurity – it also included in-field testing of an intervention
• Phase 3 – shifts the focus towards making it easier for members of the public to identify and purchase plants produced in ways intended to safeguard national plant biosecurity – this is the current phase of work

Phase 1

This phase focused on:

• building our understanding of public perspectives on plant biosecurity
• what they consider their role should be in reducing plant biosecurity risks
• what actions they already take and believe they should take
• what might motivate them to adopt responsible plant biosecurity behaviours

It included an initial review of existing evidence, focus groups to establish broad themes, and a national-scale online survey of the English population which set out to generate statistically robust trend data of societal-level perspectives. Both the samples for the focus groups and the survey were representative of key sociodemographic factors that had been identified as being important in the evidence review.

The survey was delivered during November and December 2021 and was completed by 7,000 participants.

Key findings include:

• most people agreed that it is important to protect plants and trees from pests and diseases, but the term biosecurity is not well understood, and the majority of people are neither searching for, nor seeing information on, plant health
• around two thirds of people agreed they have some responsibility for plant health, but most people expect government, local authorities and landowners to deal with it
• the top three activities that respondents considered as posing the highest risks to plant or tree health were:
  • poor awareness of pests and diseases
  • poor knowledge of plant health behaviours
  • personal imports of plants and trees by holidaymakers
• lack of knowledge, lack of resources and a lack of authority to take action were the most commonly cited barriers to taking personal action
• responses varied by age group, by membership of an environmental or outdoor organisation, and by participation in outdoor leisure activities

Key recommendations include:

• when communicating to the public:
  • avoid using the term ‘biosecurity’
  • ensure information about pests and diseases is easy to find and understand
  • connect plant health messages to better understood issues
• tailor interventions to specific groups, identifying relevant trusted messengers and preferred means of receiving information.

Download the report on public attitudes to plant health which summarises the results of the national baseline survey.

Phase 2

This phase included:

• delivering a scoping review of 18 behavioural science theories, models, tools and intervention frameworks, and capturing stakeholders’ experiences of mobilising audiences to change behaviours.
  • Stakeholders included representatives from Forestry Commission, Royal Horticultural Society, Royal Forestry Society, Scottish Government, Young People’s Horticultural Association, Bali, Royal Society of Biology, National Farmers’ Union, Kew, Woodland Trust, National Trust, Observatree, Tree Council, Welsh Government, James Hutton Institute, Yorkshire Arboretum and the Plant Health Centre
• user journey research applying the TESTS framework was based on qualitative interviews with GB residents, and focused on two specific plant health behavioural risks
  • the movement of plants into the UK in passenger baggage
  • the purchase of risky plants through online marketplaces
• a messaging experiment focused on two target groups of visitors to Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, which tested two messages alongside a control message.
  • the key message tested was ‘help stop plant pests and diseases moving around’.
  • this was accompanied by a physical intervention in the form of a disinfectant mat that visitors were encouraged to walk over on arrival.
  • the intervention was first piloted in focus groups and then tested on-site at Kew Gardens and Wakehurst Place to observe visitors’ compliance with the intervention following exposure to the messaging alongside an on-site survey and an online follow-up survey 6-7 weeks after their visit.

Key findings and recommendations:

• the review identified 34 approaches to messaging that could be applied to a range of plant health campaigns, organised according to the 10 principles for encouraging behaviour change proposed by Van Leuvan et al. (2022).
• the user research into two risky behaviours subsequently identified different personas for each:
  • ‘carefree tourists’ and ‘nostalgic diasporans’ were associated with bringing plants into the country in passenger baggage.
  • ‘casual hobbyists’ were associated with purchasing plants via online marketplaces.
  • ‘avid gardeners’ were associated with both behaviours.
  • in general, participants shared a love of plants and motivation to support plant health, but also a lack of awareness that their behaviours could potentially cause harm, potentially causing dissonance.
  • reasons for bringing plants home are highly emotive and rooted identity, making behaviours harder to shift.
  • behaviours may become normalised within communities, making the issue harder to recognise.
  • in general, interventions should speak to higher level motivators such as care for the environment and individual motivators such as reducing hassle.
  • different personas may require different interventions at different points along their respective user journeys.
• for the in-field intervention testing at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, targeting messaging to specific visitor segments was not found to affect the likelihood of visitors in those segments undertaking the target action.
  • Engagement with the test signs was high, with strong evidence to suggest that reading the panel was the best predictor for completing the action.
  • Simple messaging that states the behavioural ‘ask’, provides a very brief description of ‘why’ and shows a simple diagrammatic representation of the target behaviour is good enough to encourage a large proportion of people to undertake the action at the time, and to recall it later.