Knocking on doors: the everyday moral and relational work of environmental awareness-raising

Environmental awareness-raising has become a key instrument of contemporary environmental policy, relying increasingly on professional communication and behavioral change techniques. Drawing on a qualitative field study of door-to-door waste-sorting campaigns in several French local authorities, this article analyzes the everyday work of environmental ambassadors promoting eco-gestures to residents. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with frontline workers and coordinators, it shows that, despite the growing sophistication of persuasive tools inspired by social psychology and behavioral economics, awareness-raising remains demanding, uncertain relational labor. Rather than producing effortless behavioral change, these techniques frequently clash with field constraints, social inequalities, and resistance to moralizing messages. Ambassadors must continually adapt their discourse, manage the limited time available, and modulate moral injunctions to sustain the interactions. Their practices depend as much on standardized devices as on relational, emotional, and moral competencies developed through experience. By highlighting the situated and labor-intensive nature of door-to-door communication, the article challenges dominant policy assumptions that place individual responsibility and awareness-raising at the center of ecological transition while minimizing structural and political dimensions. It ultimately argues that environmental awareness-raising should be understood as work devoted to capturing the public’s attention, rather than as a magical solution to ecological change.