Factors affecting household-level environmental decision making: a three-country comparison of the determinants of household recycling

As urban scales and income-driven levels of consumption rise with 'development,' waste generation expands, and urban ecosystems become ever more sensitive to local patterns of waste disposal. Local incineration and landfilling generate more urban ecosystem stresses than doesrecycling activity. Arguably, household-level decisions about materials demand and recycling effort levels are central to any society's private environmental decision making.Whatever public influences may be brought to bear on households, their decisions and behaviors are likely to be attributable to factors that may not be subject to modification by public action. These influences include the decision makers'locus of control, sense of responsibility, knowledge of choices, andattitude toward the decision problem, all factors inclined to vary with political and cultural contexts.We use data from the '1993 International Social Survey Program: Environment' collected from Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands to permit comparative analysis of thehousehold recycling decision process and how it varies within the European Union. The survey data collected demonstrate extreme variationin the factors described above and indicate that replicability of successful projects-or the development of 'model' recycling plans-is likely to be extremely difficult, possibly resulting in reliance on suboptimal approaches to stimulating household recycling efforts. The efforts presented, however, may be applied to existing programs to enhance their current undertakings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]