Hairdressers, Secret Weapon in Tackling Climate Change
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How can hairdressers play a role in tackling climate change?
You work hard to strike the right amount of intelligence and ignorance. The Last Show with David Cooper. When it comes to climate change, you might expect solutions from scientists, politicians, maybe even well-meaning billionaires. Probably not, though. But according to new research, one of the most powerful climate influencers who could help you might be Your hairdresser. I'm here with someone who recently researched this. His name is Sam Hampton. He's a social scientist at both the University of Bath and Oxford in the UK. Sam, what a joy it is to have you on the program.
What motivated the research on hairdressers as climate influencers?
Thank you very much for having me here. So your academic paper is titled Public Engagement and Climate Change, Exploring the Role of Hairdressers as Everyday Influencers. What made you want to look at hairdressers' role in climate change? It seems like such an unlikely connection for me. Yeah, absolutely. So I actually work in public engagement in climate change quite broadly, but I'm also interested in the role of small businesses and have done that for a long time. And so the two things kind of came together. Hairdressers are obviously mostly small businesses. There are millions of them around the world in every community. And so I kind of came to this from a slightly more boring, technical, who uses lots of energy and water and resources angle.
What makes hairdressers effective communicators about climate change?
And then when someone mentioned hairdressers, I was like, this could be really interesting because what are hairdressers famous for? They're famous for talking to people, not for being energy consumers, which is ultimately one of the things we want to do is help them to reduce their environmental impact. But actually, when we think about what's needed to tackle climate change, it's not just reducing our consumption it's also like spreading the word building social movements getting people to vote for the right kind of policies and parties and actually if we can help uh get those messages out through basically what our hairdressers are like actually kind of trusted communicators in embedded in in communities then like what that could be really effective
We all see like celebrities at the Oscars or the BAFTAs making big statements about the climate and big political statements. But to me, like these direct conversations you have with people in your community, it's no surprise now that I think about it that a hairdresser and a client could be a powerful place for a conversation like that. What makes these sort of interpersonal, not watching celebrities talk about it or influencers, what makes these conversations such a powerful tool? Well, I mean, as you say, it's a two-way conversation, you know, as much as we'd love to have a conversation with Leo, right? And all these kind of high-profile leaders. And of course, those people are important.
How do everyday conversations influence climate awareness?
And in fact, it might be that you talk about those celebrities and, I don't know, Taylor Swift's private jets or whatever it is at the hairdresser. But it's that ability to actually engage people in a two-way conversation that I think is really effective. I love this phrase, everyday influencers. What does this mean? This comes up in your research? Well, yeah, it's something that we actually, well, we think we coined from this. You know, I did a lot of Googling and I couldn't find it anywhere else. So it's this, yeah, we all know about the rise of the influencer. Now every 13-year-old kid wants to be an influencer when they grow up, right? And what we think of is, you know, Kylie Jenner and all of those people with millions of followers.
What experimental methods were used to study hairdressers' influence?
But actually, I think if you think about the concept of influence, that happens in a much more local way. You know, you probably the most... Influential people are your parents and your teachers and your friends and family, right? So actually, if you think about the kind of science of influence, those everyday influencers have just as much power as those high-profile leaders. So how do you even test this? How do you set up an experiment? Do you ask certain hairdressers to bring up certain topics and then interview the people whose hair they cut or worked on to see if it swayed their opinion?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
How can hairdressers play a role in tackling climate change?
0:05–0:42
2
What motivated the research on hairdressers as climate influencers?
0:42–1:31
3
What makes hairdressers effective communicators about climate change?
1:31–2:52
4
How do everyday conversations influence climate awareness?
2:52–3:33
5
What experimental methods were used to study hairdressers' influence?
3:33–5:20
6
What findings emerged about hairdressers and sustainability discussions?
5:20–6:31
7
What broader implications does this research have for social change?
6:31–9:30
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