Recycling and Other Conservation Behaviours (3) Flashcards
What are conservation behaviours?
Anything that we do to minimise our negative impact on the environment - both preventative and restorative
What are light green environmentalists?
- people that engage in behaviours at an individual level, such as recycling waste products, taking actions to preserve energy in our homes by choosing energy efficient appliances and insulating effectively, car sharing etc.
- more likely to believe in the idea of making the current global nature of capitalist society more sustainable, allowing people to live in much the same way
What are dark green environmentalists?
- engage in and promote action at the community and societal level to improve sustainability, such as requiring people to live in the same town/area where they work, ensuring communities grow their own food and generate their own electricity
- they are more likely to believe that the current economic model needs to be fundamentally changed
What factors motivate engagement in conservation behaviours?
- situational factors: some may promote (e.g. high quality maintenance services) and some may prevent (e.g. recycling centres being far away)
- individual factors: relating to the physical ability to do so (e.g. people with disabilities may find it harder to engage), values we hold (altruism etc.) and cognitive factors (e.g. cost benefit model)
- social factors: peer pressure, group engagement and approval - awareness of issue will also be a factor
What is Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour?
- seeks to explain the relationship between attitudes, intentions and behaviours
Attitudes: positive/negative evaluation of the behaviour combined with beliefs about the outcome
Perceived Behavioural Control: individual’s perception of the ease or difficulty of performing a particular behaviour
Subjective Norm: perception of social norms/pressures to perform the behaviour and an evaluation of whether the individual is motivated to comply
How does the ‘attitudes’ element of Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour link to conservation?
- Tonglet et al. researched 191 participants in Brixworth, assessing the elements of TPB in relation to kerbside recycling
- found that positive attitudes towards recycling were the strongest predictor of whether they actually undertook it
- however, Bickman found that 94% of 506 participants expressed positive attitudes towards recycling but only 1.4% actually picked up litter
How does the ‘perceived behavioural control’ element of Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour link to conservation?
- Cheung et al. asked 282 students in Hong Kong to complete questionnaires about recycling behaviours
- found that perceived behavioural control did predict the intention and behaviour of recycling one month later
- however, Cheung also suggests past experience and knowledge of the environment were other important elements that predicted behaviour (neither included in the TPB - suggests there are other important factors too)
How does the ‘subjective norms’ element of Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour link to conservation?
- Groot and Steg studied TPB in relation to using a park and ride to reduce car use in the Netherlands
- 305 respondents to a questionnaire: found subjective norms were closely correlated
What are antecedent and consequent strategies?
Antecedent: occur before the behaviour such as information campaigns, prompts to behaviour
Consequent: occur after the behaviour such as returning a deposit paid for a glass bottle, being fined for littering etc.
What research suggests that education alone as an antecedent strategy seems to be ineffective?
- Heberlein showed there was no significant change in behaviour when people were given either a booklet about energy saving tips, a letter about the costs of not conserving energy, or a pamphlet encouraging them to use more energy
- impact varies depending on the source, the message, the recipient and the situation
- more creative messages can often be highly effective
What research found in favour of consequent strategies?
- 1971: law passed in oregon givng people 5 cents for every can, bottle or drinks container they returned to the store
- return of these items rose 90% resulting in significant reductions in litter and improved resource conservation
What research found evidence against the use of consequent strategies?
Gneezy and Rustichini found introducing a fine to parents for their child arriving at school late actually increased the number of children arriving late
What was the aim of Lord’s study?
- investigate the effectiveness of different message approaches (positively/negatively framed) and source strategies in enhancing beliefs about, attitudes towards and compliance with community recycling programmes
What procedure did Lord carry out?
- data obtained from 140 households in a metropolitan community in north-east US served by kerbside recycling programme
- received either an advertisement, newspaper article or personal letter with a positive or negative message - no message was the control
- stimuli designed with the aim of engaging people in the community through persuasion
- negatively framed messages outlined risks of failing to adhere, positively framed focused on benefits
- quota sampling used to ensure households selected were diverse and representative
How was data collected in Lord’s study?
- 1st week: on kerbside collection day, students discreetly observed and recorded the contents of each test household’s recycling bin (+ what categories they fell into)
- following day: left a stimulus message at the front door of each household, avoiding face to face contact
- 2nd week: observation repeated
- following day: students delivered a questionnaire to an adult member of each household
- assessed their beliefs in the arguments presented through a 7 point likert scale: also assessed attitudes towards recycling and demographic information
