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Assessing the Beliefs and Behaviours of Waste Reduction Practices of Vancouver Residents

University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning

We examined waste reduction beliefs and behaviours in Vancouver, B.C. We were interested in determining what people in Vancouver believe to be the most effective waste reduction practices in their daily lives, what are the costliest, what actions they are currently doing, and what actions they would be willing to adopt. We distributed an online self-report survey questionnaire which a total of 134 Vancouver residents completed. We found several interesting results. First, we found that participants’ willingness to adopt waste reduction practices was higher on average, than their frequency to use the practices in their daily lives, although frequency and willingness were positively correlated. Second, we found that perceived cost did not play as significant a role as does perceived effectiveness in restricting participants’ waste reduction behavior. We found that Willingness and Perceived effectiveness were positively correlated, meaning that Vancouver residents are more willing to adopt the waste reduction practices that they perceive to have more significant impact on the environment. An implication of these results is that there may be another variable at play, other than cost or perceived effectiveness, which makes waste reduction less desirable. If that variable is time/effort, initiatives should be focused on making waste reduction more convenient. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Text

UBC Social Ecological Economic Development Studies (SEEDS) Student Report; University of British Columbia. PSYC 321

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0343152

Arts, Faculty of; Psychology, Department of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/