Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Youngstown State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83). Also available via the World Wide Web in PDF format.

Diversion rates of solid waste due to recycling and other efforts vary across communities for multiple reasons. Past research has provided demographic and attitudinal profiles of recyclers and non-recyclers at mainly the individual and household levels with some at the community level. Researchers have found both commonalities and variations in these profiles. Studies have also looked at how the structure of a recycling program influences recycling behavior. The question asked here is how community-level demographic and attitudinal characteristics interact with the structure of public recycling programs to influence aggregate rates of recycling participation and diversion in 40 cities in the western United States. The results of this study provide modest support for my hypotheses that when recycling programs are less convenient, demographics and attitudinal characteristics will explain more variation in diversion of waste at the community scale. Similarly, as recycling programs become more convenient, the roles of demographic and attitudinal factors (recycling friendliness) are expected to decrease. This study found increased recycling program convenience and less visible fee assessment structures were associated with higher rates of recycling among cities regardless of their degree of recycling friendliness. When recycling outcomes were cross tabulated with indicators convenience and fee assessment, low rates were generally found among cities with low program convenience and high rates were generally found among cities with high program convenience. Cities with less convenient programs were more likely to see higher rates of recycling when their underlying demographic and attitudinal attributes reflected characteristics that have been associated with increased recycling activity. However, when program convenience was high (and fee structures less visible) high rates of recycling were found across cities with both favorable and unfavorable demographic characteristics. I use case-specific detailed narratives to explore the factors that influence outcomes among selected cities that did or did not meet my expectations.

The human race has always faced environmental challenges. What differs at present, however, are the scale and entrenched social structures (e.g., capitalism, man/nature duality, a dominant social paradigm) that are contributing to these problems and our own irrationality when it comes to possible solutions. Implicit testing methodologies, borrowed from experimental psychology, may be able to bypass some of these issues and provide a means to identify simple 'point of decision' interventions to effect change in behavior on an individual level. The approach adopted in the current thesis was to explore the extent to which movement dynamics (measured using MouseTracker) can inform the decisional anatomy of an important pro-environmental activity — recycling. MouseTracker is a useful methodology as it assesses the real-time conflict that people experience when confronted with the decision to recycle a particular item or not. There were three stages to the progression of this research: (1) using focus groups to gain knowledge of undergraduates' beliefs and opinions towards recycling (Study 1); (2) assessing the utility of MouseTracker as an implicit tool to explore recycling decisions (Expts. 1 & 2); and (3) establishing the extent to which personal (i.e, Social Value Orientation) and situational factors (i.e., environmental primes) influence the anatomy of recycling decisions (Expts. 3-6). Results from the focus groups confirmed that university undergraduates hold widely held societal beliefs about recycling, thereby justifying their inclusion in the current investigation. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed the utility of MouseTracker as a methodology to explore recycling decisions. Overall, participants displayed a stronger attraction to putting recyclable items in the rubbish bin than garbage in the recycle bin, a tendency that was reduced with increasing levels of environmental concern. Results in the subsequent experiments were mixed. An important individual difference variable (i.e., Social Value Orientation) failed to show an influence on recycling behavior (Expt. 3), and subtle environmental primes produced a collection of modest effects (Expts. 4 & 5). Most notably, a messy environment improved recycling performance (Expt. 5). Compelling results were observed, however, when self-directed attention was manipulated (Expt. 6). In particular, recycling performance was enhanced in the presence of a mirror, thereby confirming the relation between self-focus and normative behavior (the efficient disposal of waste). Discussion centers on the theoretical and practical implications of the current findings, limitations with the methodology employed, and consideration is given to future research on this important societal topic.

This is a report which details an independent project for the Computer and Information Engineering Programme held at Uppsala University involving the design and development of a mobile application to promote recycling habits. The application is called Pantarevir and its purpose is to act as a competitive game in which users conquer territories within a city by recycling more than other users within the same area. The project explores the concept of gamification in which themes and concepts normally found in games are in-cooperated in a non-game context. The non-game context for this project is the act of recycling. The Pantarevir game transforms recycling into a competitive game, designed to form an environmental awareness and mindset in its players as well as being fun to play. / Denna rapport beskriver ett oberoende projekt för Civilingenjörsprogrammet inom Informationsteknologi på Uppsala Universitet. Rapporten handlar om designen och utvecklingen av en mobilapplikation för att uppmärksamma människors återvinningsvanor. Applikationen heter Pantarevir och dess syfte är att fungera som ett tävlingsinriktat spel där användare tävlar om att ta över områden inom sin stad. Detta sker genom att tävla om vem som pantar mest inom ett område. Projektet utforskar konceptet spelifiering där teman och koncept som normalt sett finnes i spel samverkar inom något som normalt sett inte förknippas med spel. I detta fall handlar det om att spelifiera återvinning. Spelet Pantarevir förvandlar återvinning till ett tävlingsinriktat spel, framtaget för att uppmärksamma påföljden av återvinning samt ha en positiv inverkan på spelarna. Detta tillsammans med att vara ett spel vilket spelare även finner underhållande.

published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

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