The Factors that Encourage People to Recycle Free Essay Example, 2500 words

Schultz and Oskamp (1995) also suggest that the relationship between environmental concern and recycling has decreased over the years. They suggest that in the past, the conditions in which recycling required a high amount of effort resulted in only people with high environmental concern recycling. However, nowadays, the increased financial incentives to recycle means people are doing so for more reasons than just altruistic concern for the environment, thus the relationship between environmental concern and recycling seems to have diminished or disappeared. City councils have also started to introduce fines for people and businesses who don t recycle their waste. Therefore, despite a rise in recycling rates, there may not always be a rise in environmental attitudes Poole s (1992) household waste management study also indicated that despite 88% of respondents claiming to recycle, it was only the top 20% of these recyclers who contributed 80% of recycled materials. Therefore the r elationship between individuals who recycle also appears to be unequal, and despite increases in recycling rates, it does not always mean more people are recycling. Situational VariablesBarr et al (2001) define situational variables as an individual s personal circumstances at a given time, represented by access to or knowledge and experience of waste management. Recycling behavior can be linked to a number of key situational variables including the amount of effort involved, convenience, storage space and access to recycling schemes. Tonglet et al (2004) collaborates with Barr et al s claim and suggests that situational factors were strongly correlated with sustainable waste management attitudes in two ways in their research: 1. Having the appropriate skills, resources, and opportunities to recycle contributed to positive recycling attitudes2. Non-recyclers stated that they thought that recycling was inconvenient, took up too much time and room, was too complicated and waste on m oney. We will write a custom essay sample on The Factors that Encourage People to Recycle or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now