Waste Management Perceptions

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Project Citation:

Barnett, Michaela. Waste Management Perceptions. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-03-14. https://doi.org/10.3886/E181063V1

Project Description

Summary: We explore public perceptions of effective waste management strategies in the United States. Across several measures, a significant majority of participants erroneously consider recycling to be the most effective option. However, this misplaced preference for recycling is not static. The number of participants who preferred source reduction increased when fewer choice options were presented and when actions were framed socially instead of individually. For some measures, participants understand that preventing waste is better generally—but misperceive recycling as the best action that they can undertake as individuals. For consumers and producers alike, policies and other interventions should promote source reduction and reuse, which may also help correct the misplaced preference for recycling.

Funding Sources: University of Virginia's Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative and Indiana University’s Prepared for Environmental Change Grand Challenge initiative

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: perceptions; consumption; recycling bias; waste management

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 3/24/2022 – 3/26/2022 (March 2022)

Collection Date(s): 3/24/2022 – 3/26/2022 (March 2022)

Universe: representative sample based on simplified U.S. census data and balanced on sex, age, and ethnicity of adults on Prolific.

Data Type(s): survey data

Methodology

Sampling: Representative sample of U.S. adults balanced on sex, age, and ethnicity. Participants from Prolific.

Data Source: Prolific.

Collection Mode(s): web-based survey

Scales: Participants first responded to standard demographic questions. Participants were then told: “Household waste can cause many environmental problems” and asked an open-ended question about the most effective thing they could do to help solve this problem.

Next, participants were presented with the four waste management strategies present in the U.S. EPA’s waste management hierarchy and asked to rank the choices in order of 1 (best for the environment) to 4 (worst for the environment). Participants then completed the same ranking task for the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) and indicated the frequency with which they do each action.

Participants were then asked to sort common products into virtually represented recycling, compost, and trash bins and indicate how certain they were about their choice. Participants also rated their certainty about whether items they place in recycling bins actually get recycled). Participants were then asked to choose between recycling waste and preventing waste in terms of environmental efficacy, which they did more frequently, and which was easier.

We then presented participants with two systems thinking questions. Participants were told “Household waste can cause many environmental problems. There is a long process for products that eventually become waste, beginning with resource extraction and ending with disposal.” Alongside this description was a graphic depicting these different stages. Participants were asked at which stage they thought efforts should focus in general and which stage they thought they could have the most impact.
Participants then responded to hypothetical scenarios regarding their consumption and disposal behaviors and a reduced consumption measure (Helm et al., 2019) and materialism measure (Helm et al., 2019) as well as a series of questions about recycling heuristics.

Unit(s) of Observation: individual participants

Geographic Unit: United States

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-03-14]

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