What's going on in their heads?

I think that to make a poignant and relevant design in any field of context you have to have a good basis of what's going on in the heads of your target audience. I have been trying to figure out lately then, what is going on in people's head regarding the environment, a good step in the right direction was reading the book "Communicating Nature" by Julia Corbett of the University of Utah. It discussed how nature is communicated, and what current messages are communicating about nature. But while doing the research I realized that people have many other priorities which are affecting people's sustainable actions. I have noticed this myself as well, just from noticing that I don't recycle my bottles because I don't have a way to get them to the grocery store where I can turn them in. There must be lots of different factors that are putting each individual person's life, abilities and priorities above being environmental.

So my new problem is figuring out what are actually the priorities people have now, on a large sense. What do people think about everyday. What is important to them. By becoming informed about these factors, I may then be able to find a way to more productively conqer them.

I am currently on the search for books with information about this, but at the suggestion of my friend, and former humanities professor, I think I could gain a good insight by surveying newspapers, magazines and television as well. People's internet usage would also be a good hint. I want to see what media are the most popular (which shows, magazines, or newspapers are most widely sold), what are the headlines, or topics of the respective media, and what kind of advertising is in this media that might affect people's thinking/priorities. Or perhaps this has already beeen done, and I can just find a study somewhere :)