Making soil visible: social marketing design for sustainability literacy in schools

Abstract

Soil underpins food production, biodiversity, and climate mitigation, yet it remains weakly represented in public communication and consumer awareness. This paper examines how soil literacy can be operationalised through low-cost, age-adapted social marketing interventions in primary and secondary schools, treating learning environments as a pre-market arena where sustainability competencies are formed. Drawing on five pilot interventions in Serbian schools, the study assesses feasibility, acceptability, engagement, early learning signals, and behavioural intention. The interventions combined experiential learning, visual prompts, identity cues, scenario-based reasoning, and a peat-focused module connecting soil to horticultural markets. Results show a high level of acceptance among teachers, strong perceived clarity among students, and credible signals of learning and intention. The paper conceptualises posters, stickers, certificates, and quizzes not as supplementary teaching aids but as behavioural infrastructure that makes sustainability knowledge visible, memorable, and socially transmissible. Findings support a modular model of soil literacy that is scalable through age-differentiated design, experiential anchors, and competence-oriented assessment, with implications for sustainability communication, responsible marketing, and the European Union’s (EU) Mission Soil policy delivery.