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Journal of Environmental
Planning and Management
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http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjep20

Normative Influences in
Household Waste Recycling
Peter Tucker
Published online: 09 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Peter Tucker (1999) Normative Influences in Household Waste
Recycling, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 42:1, 63-82, DOI:
10.1080/09640569911307

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640569911307

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 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 42(1), 63-82, 1999
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CARFAX

Normative Influences in Household Waste Recycling

PETER TUCKER
Environmental Technology Group, University of Paisley, Paisley PA1 2BE, UK
(Received June 1998; revised September 1998)
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ABSTRACT It is often stated that social pressures to conform to the norm can help
stimulate some individuals into recycling. Wlzilst this can be intuitively accepted by
most people, there have been few scientific studies to show if and how these normative
influences can make any significant impact on recycling behaviour within a community.
Normative influences, however, are not directly measurable quantities. Their presence
may only be supposed either: (1) by showing that models of the expected effects are
consistent with observed behaviours; or (2) by questioning individuals on their motiv-
ation for recycling. This paper explores both approaches. Measured recycling perform-
ance indicators have been examined for evidence that non-chance behaviour is occurring.
Results show that if natural normative influence is occurring, its measurable effects are
likely to be small and substantially masked by natural random variation. The effects
themselves serve more to increase recycling frequency than to increase absolute levels of
participation. Simulation studies, based on a new model of normative influence, show
that increased overall weight recovery may be achieved, from a recycling scheme, througlz
management interventions to stimulate normative influences. This is, however, at the
expense of substantially more pick-ups being required to collect the extra weight. The
simulation results are consistent with the hypothesis that there needs to be a certain
threshold level of participants within a locality before the normative influences are
triggered.

Introduction
It is often conjectured that pro-environmental behaviours, such as recycling, can
be influenced by social pressures from family, friends or neighbours. These
pressures, or normative influences, are thought variously to provide role models
or change attitudes (Hopper & Nielsen, 1991), encourage dialogue about the
issues (Spaccarelli et al., 1989) or simply demonstrate what is the required social
behaviour (Erasmus, 1979). Positive social pressures might enhance community
recycling performance (e.g. Hopper & Nielsen, 1991; Everett & Peirce, 1992)
whilst negative influences within a group could prevent behaviour even when
individual altitudes are favourable (Spaccarelli et al., 1989; Hopper & Nielsen,
1991). Management interventions to engender strong positive norms in order to
enhance recycling rates have been reported by Nielsen & Ellington (1983),
Hopper & Nielsen (1991) and Burn (1991). Such interventions based on the
recruitment and briefing of 'block leaders' can have high initial costs (Burn,
1991) though may prove to be cost-effective in the longer term (Burn, 1991;

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