Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Psychology Recycling Motivation A look at the factors shaping recycling habits Recycling Motivation A look at the factors shaping recycling habits Recycling Motivation: A look at the factors shaping recycling habits The United States generates more solid waste each year than any than any other nation. The total cost of disposing of this waste has reached nearly $75 billion annually. Only 17% of the municipal solid waste is recycled in the United States, compared with 40% in Japan and up to 60% in some Western European countries (Oskamp et al., 1995). America’s landfill system for disposing of this waste is quickly reaching its limits, and managing this waste is becoming increasingly costly and problematic. There are two solutions available for this problem: reduce the amount of waste originally generated or to increase recycling (Porter et al., 1995). In focusing on the second solution to this problem, I have chosen to investigate how factors such as a person’s age, income, gender, education, region and that region’s environmental public policy affect their attitudes and behaviors towards recycling. A key to understanding how these factors affect a person’s attitudes and behaviors towards recycling is to determine how strongly their behaviors are dependant on their attitudes. Concern about the environment has been identified, as measured in public opinion polls, as a concern of a clear majority of the American public (Guagnano & Markee, 1995). However, since the 1970’s the connection between proenvironmental attitudes and recycling attitudes has fallen to statistically insignificant levels. Because more people are recycling today, and doing so for more reasons than just altruistic concern for the environment, the relationship between general environmental concern and recycling seems to have diminished or disappeared (Schultz et al., 1995). Because of this lack of correlation we cannot use general environmental concern as a predictor of recycling behavior. However, relevant specific attitudes have consistently been found to correlate with recycling behavior. Research findings regarding the relationship between recycling attitudes and recycling behaviors have been generally consistent with general attitude-behavior theories, showing a significant, though relatively small relationship (Schultz et al., 1995). In explaining what ideas other than pure environmentalism shape people’s recycling attitudes Huhtala sites reasons given in his surveys which were not purely environmental. Recycling was also seen to represent “a viable alternative for a throw-away society’s wasteful lifestyle” (1999). In addition to the growing number of materials being recycled today, there have been changes in the typical types of recycling programs, from short-term campaigns and drop off programs, to voluntary curb-side collection, and later to community wide recycling, with recycled materials either being separated by the household or commingled (placed in a single container, rather than separated by type). Despite procedural differences, most recycling programs have one thing in common – reliance on individual participation (Shultz et al.,1995). In attempting to develop reliable and sustainable ways to reduce the amount of trash buried in landfills, scientists, policy-makers, and community leaders need to understand the factors that lead people to recycle. One specific attitude that has been clearly shown to affect behavior is satisfaction (or lack thereof) with local environmental conditions and governmental environmental policies. Individuals’ dissatisfaction with the condition of the environment and their expectation of positive changes in the quality of their environment predicted their subsequent level of participation in environmental activism. So, regarding the connection between attitude and behavior, dissatisfaction or annoyance with environmental problems can be seen as a motivational factor leading to activism. It can also prove to be a significant determinant of environmentally friendly behaviors, such as recycling (Pelletier et al., 1996). Dissatisfaction with governmental policies can also prove to be a significant motivator of environmentally friendly behaviors and activism. Lower levels of satisfaction with government environmental policies were associated with the more self-determined forms of motivation underlying environmentally friendly behaviors (e.g., frequency of purchasing environmentally friendly products, conserving, and recycling) (Pelletier et al., 1996). The broadest factor affecting recycling is the region of the nation in which the subjects live. And while geographic region does not appear to have consistent additive effects, it does interact with other sociodemographic variables to influence environmental concern. Of the respondents, to Guagnano and Markee’s survey on regional differences, those who were over 65 years of age had significantly higher levels of trust in business, industry and politicians to protect the environment. Those who were 46-65 had significantly higher levels of trust when compared to 26-45 year old respondents. Respondents residing in the Northeast were significantly more likely to report that the responsibility for protecting the environment lies with business and government than residents of the North Central and Western regions of the country (Guagnano & Markee, 1995). Regardless of the region in question, people in large cities have shown more concern for the environment. Urban dwellers or those near large cities are more exposed to pollution and hence more favorably disposed towards expenditures and policies combating it (Elliot et al., 1997). Though geographic region, on its own, doesn’t have a significant affect on recycling, the specific public policy decisions within those regions strongly affect recycling behaviors. The clearest example of this comes from Oskamp’s study on recycling in cities which required individuals to sort their recyclables versus cities which had commingled recycling. Household curbside recycling behavior was observed in two similar, adjacent cities. In one, all recyclables were mixed together, and in the other, four types of materials were separated. The commingled program achieved a higher average weekly participation rate (58% v. 42%), and more households participated at least once in 8 consecutive weeks (90% v. 77%), (Oskamp et al., 1995). The is a perfect example of how a simple public policy decision can greatly affect the participation in recycling programs. The observed trend of environmental public policy having a strong affect on recycling also seemed to hold nation-wide in a study comparing cities with curbside recycling versus cities, which had only drop-off centers. Cities with curbside recycling programs had much higher estimated household participation rates (mean = 49%) than ones having only drop off centers (mean = 25%), (Oskamp et al., 1995). In reviewing statistics of this type, though, one must be careful to note how they are recorded. The two most popular methods of reporting are self-reports - because of its relative inexpensiveness - and direct observation - because of its accuracy. Self-reports seems to be more related to a homogeneous perception of being (or not being) a recycler in all situations, while observations would reveal the heterogeneous quality of conservation behavior, which results in the recycling of some products, but not all of them (Corral-Verdugo, 1997). In this paper I have attempted to use only reports recorded through direct observation. Another of the factors I examine for it effect of recycling was gender. And while there was no significant relationship between gender and recycling (Shultz et al., 1995), it was a good predictor of proenvironmental behaviors. Women are significantly more likely than men to participate in environmentally friendly behaviors and policy issues (Steel, 1996). The evolutionary perspective gives us a possible explanation of why this is so. Wilson proposes that sexual selection theory provides a rational for predicting that men, especially young men, may be more willing than women to risk harms and to discount the future in the pursuit of short term gains. These propositions apply to many domains of risky behavior, and it is likely that they apply to decisions involving harm to the environment as well (Wilson et al., 1996). Just as with gender, age has been found to be a factor in determining general environmental behavior, yet has not shown a consistent relationship to recycling. So, whereas age and gender are not good predictors of recycling, income defiantly is. Income has been consistently found to correlate positively with recycling behavior, meaning that people who make more money are more likely to recycle than people who make less money (Shultz et al., 1995). This is one case where proenvironmental behaviors and pro-recycling behaviors seem to correlate. Economics is a powerful factor in almost all aspects of life. This includes recycling habits and environmental concern. Macro-level economic conditions play a role in conditioning the acceptance by individuals of increased environmental funding (Elliot et al., 1997). Economic valuation of environmental policy may not always be valid, however. Evidence is found to support the view that environmentalists choose to operate on a rights based approach, which rejects the relative welfare arguments of economics and positively attributes compensation to future generations for environmental damages. This means that economic valuations of environmental attributes will lead to values, which are biased towards technocentric optimists and against the environmental movement (Spash, 1997). As for predicting individual recycling habits, Steel found that when examining who participates and who does not in the United States, research consistently indicates that participation is greatest among those with the highest socio-economic status – high incomes, high levels of educational attainment and employment in prestigious occupations (1996). Income is the most important of these factors, while education has a smaller, though still significant affect (Shultz et al., 1995). As proof of the positive correlation between income and education, and recycling habits, Guagnano and Markee found that respondents to their survey earning less than $15,000 were significantly more likely to place responsibility for protecting the environment on business and government than those earning $30,000 or more. Likewise, those respondents earning more than $60,000 were more likely to accept personal responsibility for protecting the environment than those earning between $15,000 and $60,000. The belief that environmental protection requires economic tradeoffs in the form of business competitiveness and loss of jobs also indicated that education had significant main effects, with higher education levels resulting in lower reported economic tradeoffs (1995). Regarding education, respondents to their survey with lower levels of education were significantly more likely to place responsibility for environmental protection on government and business. Thus respondents with higher education were more likely to accept personal responsibility for environmental protection. We can now see that there are many factors affecting people’s recycling attitudes in some way. The most powerful factor, in terms of actual participation in recycling programs, however, is clearly local environmental public policy. The best predictors of recycling behavior are structural variables such as accessibility and ease of use. Those people near-by recycling centers or curbside recycling services are much more likely to recycle than those without such services available or nearby (Steel, 1996). Another way of looking at this issue, which makes this claim even clearer, is to look at the reasons people don’t recycle. The majority of people who don’t recycle claim not to do so because of nuisance and location (Schultz et al., 1995). Schultz claims that one of the most direct, but often overlooked, ways to increase recycling behavior is the removal of barriers to recycling. The three main barriers he found during his research were distance of the collection location from the participant, method of collection, and sorting of materials (1995). These are all issues which could be addresses through environmental public policy. Applied behavioral science has been very active in leading research efforts to develop interventions aimed at encouraging proenvironmental behavior. Through studies on environmental public policy and community led programs, psychologists have identified many ways to boost recycling participation. In their review of such behavioral programs Porter et al., identified several specific programs to meet this goal of increased participation (1995). People who were regularly reminded through verbal or written prompts were more likely to participate in recycling programs. Verbal prompts by block leaders reliably resulted in more recycling than prompts delivered in a written format. Written-commitment strategies were also more successful at increasing recycling than were verbal commitments. These two strategies were found to be at least as effective as reward-based strategies. Penalty based experiments provided strong evidence that the reality of an economic loss increased recycling of wastes. Passing laws to increase recycling is certain to increase recycling behavior of an overall community, regardless of education or individual differences within that community (Porter et al., 1995). This once again, reinforces the idea of environmental public policy being the dominant determinant in recycling participation. Social psychological theory and research findings concerning behavior change of other sorts can give leads as to promising methods for increasing recycling (Oskamp et al., 1995). Behavioral science has made significant contributions to our understanding of the variables influencing recycling. To be of continued benefit, however, it will be important for the field to expand the scope of its focus to include strategies for the application of penalties in a way that minimizes resistance yet maximizes people’s motivation to recycle more and add less to the waste stream (Porter et al., 1995). In a country like the United States, however, which is so strongly wed to its notions of personal liberty, passing penalty based legislation will be difficult if not impossible in many regions of the country. It has been widely studied and reported on that the people with the highest level of environmental concern seemed to be young, female, better educated, higher earners, urban dwellers and ideologically liberal. Yet researchers and policy makers are only just now beginning to realize that recycling may be less related to knowledge about global environmental issues than to knowledge about the specifics of recycling (Schultz et al., 1995). The traits, which mark strong proenvironmentalists, are not the major determinants of recyclers. To continue to build on the tremendous growth in recycling in the last few decades researchers and policy makers will need to continue to strip away the barriers which prevent people from recycling. Making the process easier to use and bring it closer to home should have strong positive results in increasing recycling behavior. Policy makers need to capitalize on the public’s broad willingness to pay for increased environmental expenditures by assuming the costs of sorting and transportation of recyclable waste. If policy makers enact these proposals, than it won’t matter what the socio-economic differences among us are, recycling will continue to grow and more and more waste will be diverted from our already overstrained landfill system. Bibliography: References Corral-Verdugo, V. (1997). Dual “realities” of conservation behavior: self-reports vs. observations of re-use and recycling behavior. Journal of Environmental Pschology, 17, 135-145. Elliott, E., Seldon, B. & Regens (1997). Political and economic determinants of individuals’ support for environmental spending. Journal of Environmental Management, 51, 15-27. Guegnano, G. & Markee, N. (1995). Regional differences in the sociodemographic determinants of environmental concern. Population and Environment, 17, 135-149. Huhtala, A. (1999). How much do money, inconvenience and pollution matter? Analyzing households’ demand for large-scale recycling and incineration. Journal of Environmental Management, 55, 27-38. Oskamp, S., Zelezny, L., Schultz, P., Hurin, S. & Burkhardt, R. (1996). Commingled versus curbside recycling: Does sorting matter? Environment and Behavior, 27, 73-91. Pellerier, L., Legault, L. & Tuson, K. (1996). The environmental satisfaction scale: A measure of satisfaction with local environmental conditions and government environmental policies. Environment and Behavior, 28, 5-28. Porter, B., Frank, L. & Dwyer, W. (1995). Solid waste recovery: A review of behavioral programs to increase recycling. Environment and Behavior, 27, 122-152. Schultz, P., Oskamp S. & Mainieri, T. (1995). Who recycles and when? A review of personal and situational factors. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 105-121. Spash, C. (1997). Ethics and environmental attitudes with implications for economic valuation. Journal of Environmental Management, 50, 403-416. Steel, B. (1996). Thinking globally and acting locally?: Environmental attitudes, behavior and activism. Journal of Environmental Management, 47, 27-36. Wilson, M., Daly, M., Gordon, S. & Pratt, A. (1996). Sex differences in valuations of the environment? Population and Environment, 18, 143-157. Word Count: 2327
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