Solid Waste Recovery: A Review of Behavioral Programs to Increase Recycling

Twenty-four Earth Days have come and gone and science is still concerned with making our world more proenvironmental. Applied behavioral science in particular has been very active in leading research efforts to develop interventions aimed at encouraging proenvironmental behavior. This article documented the labors of researchers who specifically targeted recycling with behavior change programs. Twenty-seven articles describing 31 experiments were reviewed. The interventions in these articles were categorized into antecedents (i.e., conditions introduced prior to the target behavior) and consequences (i.e., conditions presented after the target behavior occurred). Twenty of the experiments manipulated antecedent conditions as the primary intervention, 10 focused on consequences, and 1 used both. The general conclusion of the review was that the years of effort have produced several successful interventions that showed promise for increasing recycling behavior. Unfortunately, though, very few of these interventions demonstrated response maintenance after being discontinued, a finding common for such interventions not only targeting recycling but behavior change in general. The discussion focused on the need for (a) interventions to motivate long-term changes in behavior and (b) interventions aimed at reducing the amount of waste generated.