Two Measured Parameters Correlated to Participation Rates in Curbside Recycling Schemes in the UK

Mobilizing citizen effort to enhance environmental outcomes: A randomized controlled trial of a door-to-door recycling campaign

“…The variable Times is only significant at the 10 per cent level, indicating that there were changes in recycling across the periods, but its effect was weak. The final variable in Model 1 is street size and we found no significant relationship between street size and recycling rates unlike previous studies (Harder et al, 2006).…”

“…The influence of neighbours diminished as the length of the blocks increased (Shaw, 2008). Harder et al (2006) found that households on small roads tend to have a higher recycling participation rate. Suggested factors include increased attachment to the neighbourhood, community spirit and peer pressure, but the reasons are not explored in depth and this is identified as a potential area for future research.…”

“…High visibility events and roadshows can be successful in building awareness (Read, 1999). Incentives can work in areas with low recycling participation rates (Harder et al, 2006), but they may crowd out intrinsic motivation (Bryce et al, 1997); a recent survey of householders in London found that financial incentives are likely to be less effective in encouraging recycling than recycling scheme improvements and active promotion (Shaw and Maynard, 2008). Feedback cards left by collection crews to highlight boxes that contain contaminated material can be effective in reducing the amount of contamination and it is a cheap approach (Timlett and Williams, 2008).…”

The use of feedback to enhance environmental outcomes: a randomised controlled trial of a food waste scheme

“…The street is an appropriate reference group for the individual engaging in recycling because it is small enough so that individuals can think of themselves as members of the street and conceptualise its performance -so it is no surprise that studies of recycling commonly use streets as the unit of analysis (Tucker 1999, Harder et al 2006, Cotterill et al 2009 or contiguous blocks of houses (Shaw 2008). Households on small roads are more likely to recycle (Harder et al 2006) and are more influenced by their neighbour's recycling behaviour (Shaw 2008). The reasons for this are unexplored, but longer streets may be associated with lower levels of community, traffic issues, socio-economic disadvantage and higher population turnover.…”

Participation in curbside recycling schemes and its variation with material types

“…Neither was any found when each Scheme was considered individually. A detailed presentation of this data is given in Harder et al, 2005.…”