Sagebiel, Julian and Karok, Lukas and Grund, Julian and Rommel, Jens
(2020).
Clean environments as a social norm: a field experiment on cigarette littering.
Environmental research communications. 2
, 091002
[Journal article]
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Abstract
Cigarette littering in public spaces is an environmental and aesthetic problem. Broken windows theory posits that visible signs of anti-social behavior such as littering create the perception of a social norm in built environments. Cigarette butts on the ground then encourage people to drop theirs as well. We test this theory on benches of a university campus in a field experiment with two treatments: (1) a clean environment with no cigarette butts on the ground and (2) a dirty environment with 25 cigarette butts on the ground. Our outcome variable is the number of additional cigarette butts on the ground after two hours. We find a small effect of approximately 0.5 butts less per 2-hour period on clean grounds. Increased cleaning efforts can thus reduce littering, but the effect is probably too small to justify additional cleaning costs.
Authors/Creators: | Sagebiel, Julian and Karok, Lukas and Grund, Julian and Rommel, Jens | ||||
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Title: | Clean environments as a social norm: a field experiment on cigarette littering | ||||
Year of publishing : | 2020 | ||||
Volume: | 2 | ||||
Article number: | 091002 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 10 | ||||
Language: | English | ||||
Publication Type: | Journal article | ||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||
Version: | Published version | ||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 5 Social Sciences > 502 Economics and Business > Economics (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 5 Social Sciences > 507 Social and Economic Geography > Human Geography | ||||
Keywords: | broken windows theory, sustainable urban environments, Berlin, Germany, public cleaning, built environment | ||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-107375 | ||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-107375 | ||||
Additional ID: |
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ID Code: | 17797 | ||||
Faculty: | NJ - Fakulteten för naturresurser och jordbruksvetenskap | ||||
Department: | (NL, NJ) > Dept. of Economics | ||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||
Deposited On: | 14 Oct 2020 06:42 | ||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 15 Jan 2021 19:46 |
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