Project acronym: / MAX
Project title: / Successful Travel Awareness Campaigns and Mobility Management Strategies
Integrated Project
6.2 Sustainable Development
1.6.2 Sustainable Surface Transport Objective
3.1.1.1.3 Advancing Knowledge on innovative measures in urban transport
Title of Report:
MAX-WPA TF5: Case study School Traffic Snake (Region of Flanders - Belgium)
Status: Final
Period covered: / Date of preparation: / 20 June 2008
Start date of project: / 1 Oct. 2006 / Duration: / 36 months
Version:
Prepared by: / M21
Checked by:
Verified by:
Status: / Final
Dissemination level: / public
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2008)
Table of Contents
1 Overview of the case study, objectives and research questions 5
2 School traffic Snake 7
2.1 Back ground Context 7
2.2 The Traffic Snake Game Campaign 9
3 Method 11
3.1 Literature review 11
3.2 Sources of quantitative data 12
3.3 Campaign & education Materials 12
3.4 Interviews 12
4 Results and Discussion 13
4.1 What are the elements of the Traffic Snake Game campaign and how do they relate to each other? 13
4.1.1 Media 13
4.1.2 Message 13
4.1.3 Marketing approach and the message receiver 14
4.1.4 Feedback 14
4.1.5 Educational interventions 14
4.1.6 Physical/fiscal intervention 14
4.1.7 Partnerships 14
4.1.8 Relationship between the elements of the campaign 14
4.2 Do the elements of the conceptual framework match up with elements found in the school Traffic Snake Game 14
4.3 Does the school Traffic Snake Game offer any additional elements which can be added to the conceptual framework? 14
4.4 Are there particular success factors or barriers to success evident in the campaign? 14
4.4.1 Success factors 14
4.4.2 Barriers 14
4.5 Does the school Traffic Snake Game demonstrate a balance of emotional and rational approaches within its message? 14
4.6 Has the School Traffic Snake Game changed behaviour? 14
5 Conclusions 14
5.1 Recommendations for campaign design 14
5.2 Recommendations for task force 5 14
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1 Overview of the case study, objectives and research questions
Within MAX-WPA the case study approach will be used in almost all task forces to investigate various research topics. In the task force 5 particular aspects of this conceptual framework (i.e. combination education/TA) will be further refined and taken up into detailed research questions for their case study research.
The purpose of the case study research of good practices is to set up theory/hypotheses on good campaign design. With analysing existing cases we want to refine insights into what good campaign design means: what variables are of importance, why they are important and what influence do they have.
This case study aims to investigate the campaign “School Traffic Snake Game (TSG)” in Flanders (Belgium). The school traffic snake started as a local awareness raising campaign in the elementary schools in 8 communities in the province of Limburg in Flanders (Dutch speaking region in Belgium) in the year 2000. Over the following 7 years it was rolled out across the whole region of Flanders reaching each year about 350 different elementary schools. The total number of elementary (nursery and/or primary) schools in Flanders is about 2320 schools. From 2006 onwards the Traffic Snake Game concept has been introduced in the Netherlands and in Austria on a smaller scale and with slight differences; moreover in Austria a thorough evaluation of the campaign has taken place. Currently, the campaign concept of the school traffic snake game is being disseminated in Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, UK, Italy and Slovenia as part of an EU-STEER-project called CONNECT (2007-2010) with TSG campaigns in these countries beginning in May 2008.. The school traffic snake combines awareness raising activities with educational activities targeted at pupils of the age group 6-12years and their parents ; the campaign takes place in elementary schools and involves the school community (school director, teachers, school traffic working group, attainment goals, …), children and their parents as well as the local authorities (local mobility administration, police department, etc.). In this case study we will go in depth into all campaign elements and give special attention to the combination of education and awareness raising in order to refine the conceptual framework on campaign design (cf. research plan for MAX-WPA).
Of additional interest for MAX is the fact that the campaign concept is now going to be introduced into new countries and different cultures (among them are some new member states). It is interesting to see how this campaign will be implemented, how it is accepted among the different school cultures, within different frameworks regarding attainment goals and educational systems.
The overall case study objectives are the following (cf. other case study in other WPA-TF’s):
· To refine the conceptual framework developed for WPA, more concretely with respect to combining awareness raising with education.
· To assess in detail the strategy of combining awareness raising activities and educational activities;
· To examine success factors which may be applicable to Travel Awareness campaigns;
· To understand in detail the role of emotional and rational arguments within this particular campaign.
The following research questions will be analysed using the information generated by the case study (cf other case studies):
· What are the different educational and awareness raising elements in the Traffic Snake Game and how do they relate to each other?
· Do the elements of the conceptual framework match up with elements found in this campaign case?
· Does the school traffic snake offer any additional elements which can be added to the conceptual framework?
· Why was the campaign designed in this way?
· Are there particular success factors or barriers to success evident in the campaign?
· Does the campaign demonstrate a balance of emotional and rational approaches within its message?
· Has the school traffic snake changed behaviour?
Following the conclusions from WPA-TF1, emphasis will be put on the following issues (text taken from p24, section 8, subsection 8.1. ):
(a) Firstly, it is important to address the issues raised in the major conclusions 1-3 highlighted in the overall conclusions.
- Importance of the planning stage to understand audience needs and attitudes and to fine-tune segmentation
- To recognise the ongoing dialogue between the campaign designer/manager at all stages of the campaign process.
- The need to strengthen the evaluation of campaign results so as to ensure that funding partners and other stakeholders are assured with regard to the effectiveness of a campaign
(b) It is well documented that stakeholder support is a key to success but there is also a need to investigate the importance of social networks at the community level.
(c) The literature points to the way in which emotional messages should be used to engage interest. Our initial review of case studies points to the use of rational messages with little emotion involved yet individualised travel marketing seems to deliver results. Is there an optimum mix of emotion and rationality? Is there a sequencing which is important?
(d) The use of champions rather than celebrities is an area where little work has been undertaken and the message giver work will develop this.
(e) Some theories relating to marketing and campaigns have been discussed in this review. Taskforces 2-5 should attempt to analyse whether the campaigns they are studying to explore the influence of these theories in their design
(f) The revised conceptual framework will contain more detail about evaluation processes at different stages of campaigns. TF 2-5 should attempt to identify examples of evaluation in campaigns to aid their research.
2 School traffic Snake
2.1 Back ground Context
The School Traffic Snake Game is an awareness raising campaign organised in about 350 primary (elementary) schools every year. The campaign is organised during one week in the month of May in the Dutch speaking region of Flanders in Belgium.
The overall aims of the campaign are the following:
- to promote sustainable travel modes for home-school traffic in primary schools;
- to enhance choice of transport autonomy of children;
- to solve the lack of safety linked with the increasing traffic density at school gates;
- to promote safe travel to school by promoting the use of a helmet and a fluorescent jacket;
- to introduce a mobility culture within primary schools.
The campaign target groups are primary schools (the school management and teachers), pupils (age group 6-12 years) and their parents. The secondary target group of the campaign consists of local actors such as local police, local government, and public transport providers.
The campaign concept is multi-layered: starting from easier awareness raising activities with results in the short term and with a relatively small involvement asked for by the partners; leading to introduce more educational activities asking for larger involvement from the school environment and to more structural actions asking for longer term involvement of the school, parents and local authorities (police, mobility department, PT-provider).
The first layer is the school Traffic Snake Game, which is a fun game played during one week in May focused at raising awareness among pupils and parents.
In the beginning of each school year (end of October) a campaign information package is sent to all 2300 primary schools in Flanders by mail. With this mail, schools are invited to sign up for one of the 400 free school Traffic Snake Game packages. The first schools to respond are selected for a free campaign material package. This material consists of a big banner, some game cards and dots, a campaign manual, information leaflets for the parents, posters, stickers (small incentives for the children, class and school forms for the evaluation).
Within the campaign week a lot of educational activities are organised in the school (second layer) next to the Traffic Snake Game such as :
- a track for learning cycle skills,
- an educative walk in the direct school environment to practice street crossing, to detect bottlenecks in traffic,
- children make cycling trips
- local police men are invited to the school to do a technical check up of all the bikes, etc, one day during this week,
- the street of the school is shut off to motorised traffic, etc. so that children have more space to exercise
- cycling exams, cycling certificates
- all kinds of theoretical and practical traffic lessons
Most educational activities are practical lessons focussing on improving cycling skills and learning the right skills and attitudes to apply in real traffic situations.
During the game week parents experience less traffic density at the school gates when children are cycling or walking. This situation serves as a kind of show case for parents and sometimes parents start organising car pooling, or it can initiate larger scale projects (third layer) with numerous parties such as changes such as awareness raising, education, infrastructure and transport organisation. For example, to setting up a working group on traffic and mobility; inviting parents to be involved in cycling or car pooling on a longer term basis.
A good experience with the Traffic Snake Game can act as a signal from the school community to the local government that they are ready to engage in setting up a school travel plan, etc.
Alongside the Traffic Snake Game, each year a limited number of schools can sign up for a free consultation from the external consultant Mobiel 21. In total 50 free consultation sessions are distributed among schools. Schools can choose consultation on a topic most relevant to themselves, topics available are:
- guidance in setting up a school travel plan,
- design of a traffic educative route in the direct school environment,
- guidance in setting up a bicycle pooling project,
- all round guidance in setting up awareness raising and educational activities, etc.
Based on the number of candidates for the free guidance and the motivation of schools, a selection is made and a M21 expert visits the schools once or a couple of times.
The campaign concept was tested for the first time in the year 2000 in the schools of eight communities in the province of Limburg. The campaign week is sometime in the month of May. The first time, the TSG-campaign was launched within the Flemish Campaign Week of The Vulnerable Road User (In Dutch the so called week van de zachte weggebruiker). Within this annual Flemish campaign week on mobility, a lot of press attention is given to vulnerable road users in general and among them to children.
After this first edition, an evaluation was made based on a survey of sustainable mode use of the children in those primary schools a short time before – during and a short time after the campaign week. Also a survey on the satisfaction among school management and parents was organised. Based on these results, the campaign leader and campaign sponsor decided to spread the campaign concept all over Flanders. From that point onwards, the number of free campaign material packages available every year increased from 200 (in the years 2001 and 2002) to 300 game packages in 2003 and 2004. In the past three years, annually 400 schools can sign up for a free Traffic Snake Game package.
Table 1: Participation in the Traffic Snake Game in Flanders by year
School year00-01 / 01-02 / 02-03 / 03-04 / 04-05 / 05-06 / 06-07 / 07-08
N° TSG-campaign packages / 200 / 200 / 300 / 300 / 400 / 400 / 400 / 400
Number of schools / 184 / 159 / 242 / 256 / 308 / 318 / 309 / 309
Number of pupils / 40000 / 40000 / 61440 / 60000 / 77000 / 79938 / 76927 / 76927
Number of parents / 29000 / 32000 / 44450 / 41350 / 55587 / 55364 / 51664 / 51.664
Number of teachers / 2700 / 2600 / 4496 / 4300 / 5572 / 5795 / 5763 / 5763
Number of individual school consultations / 50 / 50 / 50 / 50 / 50 / 50 / 50 / 50
Source: Mobiel 21
The campaign has remained very popular in elementary schools within this 8 year period. Within this time period the Traffic Snake Game itself has remained more or less the same (except for an extension of the game suited to nursery classes for 5 to 6 year old children). Improvements have been made relating to the communication with schools. Moreover, the offer of educational activities within the campaign week has been changed and improved based on changes in the policy context (e.g. speed zone 30km in school environment) but also based on the feed-back of schools after the campaign week each year.