Greater Inclusion of People with Disability in Australian Workplaces: A Social Marketing Approach

People with disability represent the largest minority group globally, yet their participation in the workforce is significantly lower than that of people without disability. A persistent obstacle to the inclusion people with disability in the workforce is the reluctance of employers to hire them, which is often due to negative attitudes and stereotypes about disability. Australia, like many other countries, has faced challenges in increasing workforce participation rates of people with disability. Despite various policies and initiatives aimed at promoting inclusion, significant barriers remain. The present research emerged in response to this problem, with the particular aim of examining factors associated with employer willingness to hire people with disability. It does so by investigating the possibility of systematic heterogeneity amongst employers that explain their willingness to hire. The resulting insights are then used to recommend customised and targeted social marketing strategies that address the specific barriers preventing different sub-groups of employers from hiring people with disability.

Most countries in modern society consider genuine inclusion across society for all people to be a desirable ideal. Yet, hitherto, this and many other such societal aspirations have failed to translate to actual behavioural change or genuine inclusion for minority groups. Social desirability bias occurs when people publicly express support for inclusive practices because they think that is what others want to hear, but their attitudes and actual behaviours are incongruous with this. Social marketing has a key role to play in designing strategies that effectively influence attitudes, intention and actual behaviour related to social inclusion. A critical theoretical gap, however, is understanding which social marketing strategies are most effective in increasing intention to perform a socially desirable behaviour, including the role of beliefs on intention in behaviour change contexts where social desirability bias exists. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of whether heterogeneity among decision makers influences intention in behaviour change contexts where there is strong social desirability bias.

This program of research comprises three separate studies. Three theoretical frameworks informed the research design: the social programme, implementation, evaluation and sustainability social marketing framework (CSD-IES), theory of planned behaviour and the social model of disability.