An investigation of littering behavior in a provincial park

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorBurr, Kevin F.en_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-13T00:06:57Z
dc.date.available2024-08-13T00:06:57Z
dc.date.copyright1980en_US
dc.date.issued1980
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Geography
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en
dc.description.abstractThe readily apparent and rapid accumulation of litter in the environment has created social concern. Litter not only detracts from environmental experiences, but is an expensive problem. The traditional method of litter control, consisting of legal penalties for littering and public clean-up operations has not provided adequate means to reduce the litter in the environment. Research investigating littering behavior has focused on individ­ual characteristics, attitudes, educational procedures containing prompting techniques, and incentive procedures. Studies exploring how individual characteristics and attitudes relate to littering behavior have resulted in inconsistent findings. Prompting procedures have had limited effects on littering behavior while incentive techniques have been successful in reducing this environmental problem. The present study investigated the effects of an educational and behavioral program on the littering behavior of campers at Bamberton Provincial Park in British Columbia. These programs are compared to control groups, which represented the existing littering conditions at the park. The educational program consisted of distributing anti-litter flyers and plastic litterbags to randomly selected camping groups. Anti-litter stickers were also placed in prominent locations throughout the park. The behavioral program involved the use of incentives and litterbags to reward campers for their participation in an anti-litter program. Two measurement techniques were employed to assess the effects of the educational and behavioral procedures. These were the change in litter at the specific campsites and the decrease in the amount of planted litter placed along the roadsides of the campground by the researcher. Information was also collected on the characteristics of the camping groups in order to relate these ·to the subsequent littering behavior of the campers. The results of this study indicated that four variables were related to the change in litter at the specific campsites. These were the number of nights spent at the campsites by the camping groups, the number of individuals in the camping groups, the number of children in the camping groups, and whether or not the camping groups were families. The behavioral program resulted in the greatest decreases in the amount of litter discarded by the campers while the educational program resulted in no significant decreases in litter when compared to existing littering levels at the campground. The behavioral program was also significantly different from the other experimental conditions in terms of the average amount of litter left by the campers at the campsites. The decrease in the amount of planted litter during the study supplemented the research conclusions, in that the behavioral program produced the greatest reductions in planted litter while the reductions recorded during the educational program were only slightly greater than the control groups. The present study has shown the effectiveness of an incentive technique in the control of an environmental problem. This procedure not only reduced littering behavior but also induced the collection of litter already on the ground. Given the success of the incentive procedure in the present research, further studies are needed to examine their value on large scale applications.en_US
dc.format.extent138 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/17145
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.titleAn investigation of littering behavior in a provincial parken_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
BURR_Kevin_F_MA_1980_261229.pdf
Size:
32.59 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD)
 
University of Victoria Libraries

We acknowledge and respect the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees and Esquimalt) Peoples on whose territory the university stands, and the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.