Environmental Stewardship on the URI Campus

Author(s)
Santiago, Joseph A
Leach, Lauri
O’Rourke, Michela
Toppi, Rachel
Keywords
Environmental Stewardship on the URI Campus
Joseph A Santiago
Joe Santiago
Lauri Leach
Michela O’Rourke
Rachel Toppi
Analyze the basis for the problem.
Litter is a big problem affecting the United States today. It has many negative effects on the environment and public health. Not only does littering poison animals and their habitats, pollute water supplies, provide breeding sites for mosquitoes and other disease-causing insects, and make the environment less attractive, but it also costs millions of dollars annually to clean up. Here at URI, many people do not respect the campus environment as much as they should, so they leave their trash in campus buildings and outside on the campus grounds. There are many reasons that this could be happening. Many people have no idea how much litter affects the environment. Especially if litter has already accumulated, people are more inclined to add their own trash to the pile. Since there are no penalties for littering or reinforcements for putting garbage in trashcans, many people don’t care if they leave their trash on the ground, especially since there’s no social pressure to do the right thing and throw it away. Sometimes there aren’t enough trashcans nearby, so instead of carrying their trash around with them, people will just leave it on the ground. Also, sometimes people don’t view the item as litter, which is very common with cigarette butts. There are several explanations as to why people think these things. The social learning theory says that behavior is learned through observation of others as well as through the direct experience of rewards and punishment. If people see other people littering, and when they do it themselves and receive no punishment, this theory says it is expected that people will start littering even more.
Conformity plays a role in why people litter as well. If littering is perceived as a norm, people may change their behaviors to fit in with that “norm”. The theory of planned behavior says that attitudes toward a specific behavior as well as subjective norms and perceived control influence a person’s actions. If there is litter all over the ground, people may perceive littering as a norm, so even though they may know it’s bad, they may decide to litter anyways because other people do it too. The actor-observer effect may play a role when there is not a trashcan present. An individual can know that littering is bad and think that other people who litter don’t care about the environment. When there is no trashcan present, however, and that individual decides to litter, the individual could tell himself that he does care about the environment and that it was the situation he was in that made him litter. When litter has already accumulated, the false-consensus effect may influence people, making them overestimate the extent to which others think it’s ok to litter. If many people are perceived to think littering is ok, an individual might be more likely to do so as well. A version of pluralistic ignorance seems to be in effect as well. When people see a lot of trash on the ground and they don’t see anyone else concerned about it,
A version of pluralistic ignorance seems to be in effect as well. When people see a lot of trash on the ground and they don’t see anyone else concerned about it, they may think there’s no reason to be concerned, making them more likely to add their own trash to the environment around them. Habituation also has a part in this issue. As people see litter everyday, almost everywhere they go, their responses to it are reduced, and they eventually become used to it. They may forget that littering is even a problem that has to be addressed and fixed. Diffusion of responsibility plays a role as well. If people believe that others will take action and clean up their trash, they may feel like littering is ok because someone else will clean it later.

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URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/468595
Online Access
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/sadcd/5
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=sadcd
Abstract
This poster campaign and report was an effort to get environmental stewardship to be more of a part of the student government at URI. It was used to raise awareness and link people's actions to theory so that future work could be built off this and assessed for its effectiveness.
Date
2007-04-24
Type
text
Identifier
oai:digitalcommons.uri.edu:sadcd-1004
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/sadcd/5
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=sadcd
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